The No Complaining Rule
By Jon Gordon
176 pp., Wiley, 2008, $20
I’ve often joked that my jobs in Slot Operations would be perfect if it weren’t for the customers and the employees. That’s not totally true, since I’ve developed numerous close relationships with team members and guests over the years. But there’s nothing that can ruin your day like an employee problem. The worst issues come from what many commentators describe as the “energy vampires.” They can suck the life out of any good day. And when their virus spreads, it doesn’t take long before you have an epidemic of bad morale on your floor. When I was younger, the solution seemed obvious: fire ‘em all. But that didn’t always solve the problem, and it often created more issues.
Jon Gordon’s 2008 book The No Complaining Rule made a profound difference in how I thought about this subject, and it seemed to have the same positive impact on my fellow supervisors and managers when I shared it with them.
This brief text – just 155 pages, including introductions and postscripts – is in the compact leadership self-help category along with titles like The One Minute Manager and Who Moved My Cheese. You can knock any one of them off in a day or two at the most, and they’re usually excellent fun to read.
I wish I could say the same about this one. It was almost painful getting through the first 90+ pages, like watching a bad soap opera with no narrative thrust and virtually no excitement. I was also put off by some of the plot points, which seemed like emotional pandering. Whether or not the heroine has or doesn’t have cancer didn’t seem relevant to understanding leadership principles, nor did her lingering angst over her recent divorce.
But that was before I got to the end and realized that I was complaining about the no complaining rule. By then I’d discovered that the author was using those tragic, albeit somewhat boring, issues to let you know that things could always be worse. He posits that, even in the face of setbacks or personal issues, you can still maintain a positive environment at work.
Despite the title, the author does not urge you to stop complaining. Rather, he suggests using complaining in a more productive manner. It sounds counterintuitive, but maybe those slow first 90+ pages are what makes it so easy to become a fan of Gordon’s eventual recommendations.
Here’s one of the gems that, when put into practice, worked consistently for me: “For the ‘No Complaining’ process to work effectively, your people need to know that their complaints and solutions don’t necessarily have to be acted upon, but they will want to know that their ideas were considered.” Gordon makes this point after he rules that no complaint can be uttered unless accompanied by one or more proposed solutions. Trust me, it works. Read the book and you’ll understand.
Former Notre Dame football coach Lou Holtz has a blurb on the book’s back jacket: “Excuses always come from the losing locker room. In Jon Gordon’s book The No Complaining Rule, he provides the winning edge.” It’s doubtful that the book alone will get the Fighting Irish back on top of college football, but I’m certain it can make a positive contribution if you have a morale issue with your slot, table games, or other operational team. Remember, it’s a short read. What can it hurt to give it a look?
You might want to skim the first ninety pages or so, though.
