The Lemonade Factor

Our neighborhood has a yearly yard sale. Selling lemonade to the captive audience has become big business for the 8-10 year-olds on the street.

This year the self-appointed CEO of the effort, a 9 year-old girl who is just beginning to learn the lessons of leadership, came to me quite upset. “Sophie wants to let one of her friends, -a seven year-old – work at the stand, but I think she’s too young,” the CEO complained. “ I want Sophie to stay but she can’t just tell everyone they can work,” she’s not in charge.

We talked about the issue for a few minutes and finally came up with a way to tell Sophie her friend was too young to work.

While age may not be an issue in most companies, experience, knowledge and simple managerial preference are often criteria used to create teams which are suddenly expanded when ‘volunteers’ decide they’d like to help out a friend.

What’s the best way to make sure the people you want, are part of a team without any extra ‘talent?’ Now that’s a management question.

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