Playing school
“How to play school” is one of the best lessons you can learn in school.
That phrase may have different definitions to people, but I would call it “being able to figure out what a teacher wants so you can skirt by doing the minimum to achieve the grade that you wish.”
You often hear that we should teach kids things that have real world application. “How to play school” sure hits that target.
Let’s discuss my first job out of college, “selling” radio advertising. I put that in quotes because I wasn’t good at asking people for money, nor collecting it, and didn’t really believe in my product. Those weren’t exactly attributes of a good salesperson.
By the end of my tenure I was the top billing, senior salesperson, who was praised by the general manager to the entire staff for the year over year growth in a bad economy. I almost laughed out loud writing that.
“I knew how to play school” gets all of the credit for that.
We had to turn in our weekly planner on Friday afternoon every week. That was “what are we planning to do the following week? What sales calls do we have? How much are we pitching to sell?”
Mine was turned in, on time, every single week, without fail. “Jason knows how to hit deadlines and is a good planner.” Sure! Thanks!
But they never discussed the content. I knew that the managers didn’t have time to check on every single appointment, or cross reference the planner to previous weeks. Or see that the amount I was “pitching” was something that was already done. It was all total nonsense. And the thing is—everyone knew it was, we all just pretended like there was meaning. But who is going on the radar more? The person whose planner is on time every week, or the person who is reminded for the sixth straight week to get it in on time?
Learn how to play school. In this case:
Show up on time.
Get crap in on time.
Keep the advertisers already advertising by being nice to them.
Was enough of “playing radio salesperson” to get me to be the top billing senior salesperson in a job that I hated 97.3% of minutes doing.
I’ve realized that the skill helps when you manage people too…you can spot who is trying to play school…but that may be a post for another time.