simplerich

I’ve been spending a lot of time on Google+ lately and am finding the conversation over there excellent. I’m getting a lot more traction there than here. Funny how that works. One of the things I’ve noticed over there, and the Internet-at-large honestly, is a lot of people claiming to be entrepreneurs as their job.

I call foul. If a person is truly an entrepreneur they’re starting up a business. They have a stake in it and they are trying to get it off the ground. I would think if they were engaging in a social network they would want to advertise their business, you never know when you’ll find someone interested in helping a fledgeling business take off. These people aren’t talking about a business though. They’re talking about a mindset and that mind set isn’t a job.

There are entrepreneurs I look up to. Myspace Tom is one. He was Myspace for a lot of years. He didn’t say he was an entrepreneur. He said he was Myspace. Today he says he’s retired but he continues to look for an idea he’s passionate about that he’ll do next. He doesn’t call himself an entrepreneur. He recognizes that it’s not a job to be an entrepreneur. It’s a calling. It’s a way of life. It’s the way you’re wired. It’d be like saying you’re a Libra (well… except that Libra isn’t all that real but you get my meaning.)

Imagine you’re an entrepreneur starting up a new business selling widgets and you’ve got three employees in your start-up. You’ve invested all your money in it. Mortgaged your house, cashed in your 401k and your wife’s 401k and you’re making a go at it with all cylinders. Would your business card say “Entrepreneur” or would it say “Widgetopia!” My guess is it would say “Widgetopia!” And that’d be in 20 point type.

What’s it mean to your employees, those three people you stay up all night with working with to get things done by a deadline, what’s it mean to them if your business card says “Entrepreneur?” It means to them as soon as you can get the business off the ground and sold for a profit you’re going to hit the road. You’re not in it for the long haul. You’re in it until you can monetize them and run. It’s one thing to have the entrepreneurial spirit or to think like an entrepreneur. It’s another to claim to be one all the time.

I wonder if they’re really entrepreneurs or if they’re dilettantes? If they don’t have the attention span or commitment to do the running of a business. Or maybe they’ve got an idea that’s good enough to sell during a bubble, but not sustainable and they hope to get out before anybody notices? Or maybe they’re unemployed and don’t want to say that. I don’t know what it is. But I don’t know if “entrepreneur” as it’s used today by those people calling themselves “entrepreneurs” means what they think it means.

I get that it’s today’s go-to buzzword way for a person to indicate they’re creative, think outside the box, and are able to do a wide variety of tasks to get things done. But it’s not at all indicative in it’s spirit of sticking to a project. It doesn’t portray to an employer, a person who is in it for the long haul. If you want to be thought of as creative just use that word, and then show it. BE creative. BE thoughtful. BE civil. BE polite. BE the person you’d want other people to think you are.* Don’t just say it. And, if you DO say it, use the word correctly.

I was training a new employee at work today. Today was her first day. She used to be a customer and would only come in when I was working because I made her feel welcome, comfortable and special. She said she wanted to work at a place that employed that kind of person. She and her mother came in almost weekly for about six weeks. They wound up sending me a thank you note and bringing me a plate of goodies after they were done doing their party they were doing. It was VERY nice.

At shift change today my clerk that’s been there six months and the new girl were talking and the six month employee said, “Rich is the best manager I’ve ever had. You know some places have like good cop assistant manager and bad cop manager? Well Rich is totally good cop and he’s the best manager I ever worked for. He really cares about his employees and it’s awesome.” The new girl said, “Whose the bad cop?” The six monther said, “You don’t need a bad cop when everybody looks out for each other. The assistant is more gruff or short or rough around the edges, but he’s not a bad cop. Rich likes to think he is but he’s totally not.” I was counting my drawer down while they “girl-talked.”

I interrupted from my counting, “Don’t believe her, I’m a jerk if you mess up.”

Six-monther said, “You won’t want to mess up. It’s like you let him down and he doesn’t yell at you at all, he just goes all quiet and talks about how he knows you can do better and how did he mess up in the training or the communication of what he wanted and by the end of it I’m all, ‘Just yell at me! I’m sorry!‘ He’s great. I don’t ever want to work for anybody else. I wish I could have trained you one day, but I’m not management though.”

I interrupted again, “If the schedule had worked out I’d have totally let you train her. You’ve got an excellent work ethic, you do your cleaning really well, the customers really like you. I’ve got total confidence in your ability to be an excellent example to anybody I hire.”  That’s true too. I wasn’t just saying that. She’d have done an excellent job.

“See! Isn’t he great? Now how awful will I feel if I mess something up tonight?” Six-monther laughed, “I won’t though. He makes it easy to do good.”

Now, I’m not saying this because it makes me look good or makes me look like a push-over. I’m not… but there are a LOT of ways to manage and expecting good things, encouraging good things, and rewarding good behavior works for me, a LOT better than just punishing bad behavior. Which I DO do when it needs it. But it’s nice when an employee is bragging about how great it is to work at a place. I’m super excited for my crew and for the new employee being excited to join a crew that’s excited to have her and doesn’t see her as a threat to their hours.

Surprisingly the hardest part of managing people for me isn’t the big mistakes members of the crew make. It’s the little things. On a day to day basis the big mistakes are pretty rare. It’s not often that something huge comes up. What does happen is that little things build up and they’re little, trivial things that don’t matter so I forget to mention them by the time I see the crewmember next. Then they do it again… and again… and again. Eventually there comes a point when I find that I’m dreading working after that employee because of the laundry list of things they “keep doing wrong to drive me nuts.”

Taken on their own none of the things are rule violations or deal breakers. I deal with those pretty quickly. Leaving the cash drawer not ready for the next shift. That’s inconsiderate but not a rule violation. Leaving the dusting/cleaning stuff out where it doesn’t go. It’s not a rule’s violation, but it’s frustrating. I feel like I have to clean up after them. The problem is I don’t notice right away. Let me be up front about this. It’s MY problem. If I noticed sooner I could point out what they’re doing and ask them to do it differently and I’m positive they would.  But, by the time I notice I’ve noticed EVERY LITTLE THING they do that gets under my skin and it seems like they do it on purpose. Some of this is because I’ve had people do it on purpose to tweak my nose. This isn’t usually the case though.

A long time ago, the first time I quit smoking the head of Human Resources called me to see if I was OK; to ask what was going on in my life. I said nothing and wondered aloud why he asked. He said he’d gotten more write-ups for little things in the past week than he’d gotten from me for real things in the past year. I blushingly asked if he’d throw them away for me and I’d apologize to the crew and we’d talk about things. So, he did and we did.

If I were to be honest with myself I’d say I’m there now. Outside stressors are impacting not just my work, but my perception of my employee’s work as well. So, I’ve got to find a way to talk to them about the things they’re doing that are inconsiderate and that are real, not just perceived wrongs on my part. Leaving the paper towel dispenser empty after your shift is real. It’s not good. Leaving food on the counter after you work is real. That’s messy, inconsiderate, and gross; with spring coming on it’s an invitation to infestation. Having bills facing weird directions in the drawer isn’t real but it drives me nuts.

I suspect a crew meeting will be the best time to go over a bunch of the stuff. We’re over due anyway and I can make sure I catch everybody at once. It’ll be quick, not beat anybody up for little things, and it can tie in with the new checklists we’re supposed to be implementing next month so it won’t be just me holding a gripe session.

Will I remember to catch these things earlier next time or will I just let them build up until I have an employee I don’t want to work after because they’re driving me nuts with their thousand little things that they’re doing “just to irritate me?” I’d like to say I’ve learned from past mistakes on my part and I’ll nip it in the bud before it gets too bad. I’m pretty sure I’ve said that before too.

Here’s the funniest part of all this and then I’ll let you go back to whatever you were doing before this popped up on your radar. I actually DO talk to my employees. I talk to them every day. We talk about a lot of stuff. And one of the things they almost always ask is, “Is there anything I should be doing better or differently?” or “Is there any change in the way things happen that I need to know about?” It’s probably asked in one way or another 4 out of 5 times we talk and at no point have I EVER remembered to talk about the things I’m talking about now. They really are minor and maybe if they weren’t happening just as I was getting going on the work day they wouldn’t be so much like fingernails on a chalkboard to me. If I were to say to them when they ask, “Say, could you remember to X.” They’d smile and nod and probably not do it again. I don’t remember until it’s too late though and now the list is too long… it’d feel to them like I was beating them up and that’s not fair. Again… as you read this please remember I KNOW this is my fault. It’s not my biggest challenge with managing others. It’s my biggest problem with managing myself.

I’m a manager. I’ve been a manager for a lot of years. One of the things I hear all the time is how we shouldn’t strive for fair. We should work to be consistent. We should treat all employees the same. We aren’t supposed to do things differently for different people as that makes things unfair for the rest of the crew.

Human Resources loves to beat that drum. The human resources department at the company I work for now worships at that altar to the point where if they add a form to the new hire pack for California it goes in every state’s new hire pack, Connecticut get a new form? So do the rest of us… our new hire pack is currently very consistent… it’s also fifty five pages. I joined and left the Navy with less paperwork.

Discretion is the difference between a good manager and a great manager. Any manager-by-binder can treat every employee the same in the  name of consistency. Heck! The modern day class room allegedly teaches at the pace of the slowest student so that they are consistent and all students get the same exposure. Teaching and managing to the lowest common denominator gets you loads of low denominators. Blech. Who wants that? No denominators left behind indeed!

Needless to say I was amazed to see Rosa over at Talking Story putting on the Consistency is King bugbear costume. And not doing it ironically either, she appeared to mean it. You could have pushed me over with a new hire pack! (That’s not as hard as you’d think. You roll that bad boy up and you’ve got a sheaf of papers to be reckoned with!)

Employees aren’t the same. To treat them the same is a weird, lazy way of doing things. Heck! I’m an employee myself and I hate it when I’m treated like everybody else. If you treat me with my 15 years with the company experience the same way you treat a manager that’s been on the job for a week you’re going to get on my very last nerve… and waste a lot of both of our times. But it happens… all in the name of being consistent.

Once upon a time I hired a guy I didn’t know was dyslexic. Treat him like everybody else? Sure! Fire him in no time for it too. It’s amazing how his mistakes would pile up when reading was required. Oh wait… that’s illegal. We’re supposed to try and work with handicaps. I did. Not because I had to to comply with the law, but because he was a great customer service type person. He wound up working with a keyboard with colors all over it. He became an excellent Sales Associate and didn’t do much the same way anybody else did things. We adapted the job in a lot of ways to work with him. Again, not because it was the law but because it was best for the store. Some things I didn’t require of him that were part of his job. How to fill out membership applications when he could neither read nor write? I had him have the customer fill them out (specifically verboten in our handbook at the time), explaining to them that he’d forgotten his glasses that day and if they could do it for him it’d be a great help. That’s just one example, and it’s only a big deal if you knew what a big deal was made of it in the handbook to not do that.

I once had an assistant manager who was excellent in every regard, except he would come in late to work more than was acceptable. The only person who would know was me. He only ever relieved me. So, I let him. One day when I was on vacation he wrote an employee up for being late to work. When I returned and saw it I was beside myself. How can he hold them to a standard he couldn’t meet with any regularity? From that day forward I held him to the standard he had held them to. He lasted another month before I fired him for breaking the rule he himself had set when he wrote up the person for being late. In the next 10 years they never had an assistant manager as good as he was. We both lost out on that one. (I’m was a new manager at the time and allowed him to get away with that… I’m not sure how I’d react to that today.) We’re still in touch these years later and he agrees he shouldn’t have done what he did since he was setting up a situation where he wasn’t living by the rules he set and that was what’d irritated me so much. I don’t let managers have a set of rules for themselves that are more lax than the rules they have for their employees. That’s no good.

Expectations are important. We have an eval form that scores people from 1 (worst) to 5 (best). If I’m evaluating a manager who has been with the company for three months will their level of ability be the same as the manager who has been here for five years? Are my expectations the same? If both managers performed at exactly the same level would they get exactly the same score? To be consistent probably… but that’s either brutally unfair to the newer person, or profoundly not expecting much out of the one that’s been doing it forever. My first set of evaluations I do for new managers when I was a district manager was based on where I thought they should be with the experience they had. My expectations for a long-time manager were different than for someone new to the job.

Attendance is something we look at as well. What’s an excessive pattern of absences? I’m a single guy with no kids. I rarely miss work. What if I were a single parent with two kids, a pre-schooler and one in first grade? Those little germ factories get sick all the time, and once they’ve got a fever good luck getting a sitter to take them! That means missed work. Sure, the family medical law protects parents from discrimination for taking care of their kids, and it should! But if I’ve got two otherwise equally qualified employees, one with kids who cause them to miss work and one with no kids who never misses work… what’s the answer there? Who gets the promotion? What if they both want it? What is the right answer? No clue. Luckily I haven’t been in that position.

If I get an employee I see potential for I’m going to nurture that potential. I’m going to ask more of them. I’m going to give them as much room to grow as they want and I’m going to let them. If I’ve got someone working until the next semester starts… someone marking time in a position to get some money before their next round of courses starts up and they leave… how could I possible be consistent with them? One’s looking at learning, growing, and getting their own store one day, and one’s waiting for a new pair of shoes before they cut and run. There are places for both types of employees as well. As long as they perform the work well I don’t expect every employee at an entry level position to be looking to be CEO in 20 years. I’ve taken jobs I needed just for a while, and I did my level best at them while I had them. That’s OK!

In Rosa’s article she talks about the manager being consistent with their values and the employees knowing what the manager’s decisions will be based on. They’ll be based on a well stated value-system that everybody knows. I couldn’t agree more with that sentiment. She doesn’t say “consistent=same” I should point that out before she blows up my comments… that’s not her, that’s an HR Dept. person somewhere else saying that.

So, consistency making me crazy? Only when it’s misapplied. There are scads of reasons we should treat people consistently, and there are scads of reasons we should not. There are reasons there are different rules for different people. It’s not the same to say consistent = same. I’ve done it and railed against it for a long time here. But the thing with consistency is people want to know what to expect. That’s what’s great about consistency. If they expect you to behave in a way that moves you towards your stated goals THAT’S a consistency I can get behind. It moves you forward. It’s acceptable to the employees who get to deal with and live with your decisions. The objections to rules not being the same is when it is possible for other employees to cry “favoritism” and that’s what makes HR’s hair stand on end when consistency isn’t the same as… well, as same. If an employee feels like another employee is being favored that’s dangerous. When they feel like they’re being discriminated against then that’s not good either. But if they know the reason the ball bounced the way it did in advance, and know that it would bounce that way every time based on values-based decisions that they’re aware of… then they know how to get the ball to bounce their way. That sort of thing is, I think, OK. It’s a playing field that everybody can play on. It’s one in which we all have a chance at succeeding, thriving, growing, and moving forward.

So, yeah… consistency does make me crazy when it’s used interchangeably with “the same.”  But consistency that is based on clearly defined rules and expectations, that’s just fine. That’s how chess is played. All pieces don’t move the same way and yet nobody claims the bishops are unfairly advantaged over the pawns. Sometimes the rules are different, and as long as everybody knows ahead of time what the rules are and how they’re applied, that’s consistent and fair without being the same. That doesn’t make me crazy, that’s not the hobgoblin of the manager-by-binder. That’s just fair. I can live with fairness… as long as it’s consistent.

My job is changing soon. I’ll be going from District Manager to something else. I’m not allowed to say yet, but I’m allowed to say it won’t be District Manager of any District. My stores all know I’m a short-timer already. The memo hit on Monday. The responses varied from sad to see me go to fear of the new guy. I’ve written down the names of those who didn’t say they’d miss me and I’m destroying their employee files as we speak! (That’s a joke!!!)

I’d like to say this, in an open letter to all my direct reports. All of you with whom I worked directly over the past 3 years as a District Manager. Thank you. I’ve had a really good time working with you. We’ve come so far from where we were when I first got here and you’ve done a ton of work. Our customer service is head and shoulders better than it was before. I believe our facilities look better, and our merchandise is better presented and displayed. None of that is because of anything I did. It’s because of the work you and your crews have done. I got here just as the economy was preparing to do unprecedented things and while there have been store closings none of them were mine and that’s a testament to the hard work you and your employees have been doing.

We’re not done. We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us and I want you to know that your new District Manager will notice things I missed and that’s OK. Don’t ever feel disloyal to me when he sees something I messed up or dropped the ball on! I make mistakes! He will prioritize things differently from me and things I didn’t care about may rate high on his import-o-meter. Don’t feel like you have to cover for me or like you should throw me under the bus either. LoL. I still work for the same company he’ll be able to phone me and say, “Did you really say to hide all this product in the bathroom until they had room to put it out?” I’ll not only tell the truth but I’ll know which of you it is making that one up! You know who you are you back-stock addict!!! But seriously. I’ve worked directly with your new DM since 2005 and I enjoy working with him. He’s been a great boss to me and is a helluva guy in real life too. Even when we disagree on things he’s respectful and he listens. We talk about it and then I do it the way he told me to. LoL. Remember, with him, as with me, sometimes we’ll be crazy, let us… do the crazy thing and let’s watch it together!

The main point I’m trying to make here is we’ve done a lot together. We’ve come a long way together. You’re going to hear that we’ve got a long way to go yet. You’ll hear we’ve got a lot to do yet. Don’t let that invalidate all you’ve done! You HAVE done a lot. But that was then. Keep those accomplishments in your heart and in your mind as real accomplishments. They count and they matter. But we’re not going to stop there. We’re not going to dwell on them. We’re not going to hold them up as trophies and say “We’ve arrived!” Where we’re going isn’t a place. We’re going on a journey so don’t expect to “get there.” Don’t think that one day you’ll walk in and be perfect and we’ll all have a week or month or year to put our feet up and relax. That day will never ever ever come. Don’t look for it. When we quit trying to improve we’re done. Our competitors won’t rest so we can’t either.

We’re not moving forward chasing the competition. We used to be. Not any more. Today we’re moving forward and are pulling ahead of them. I believe some of the new hires made recently are part of that sea-change we’re feeling. I’ll talk more about this in future posts. We’ve gone from the best we could be under doing things the old way to a new level… a level of we’re going to start doing things a new way now, a different way, with different approaches to some of the same problems. Hiring from outside the company for a leading position? That’s crazy talk! They don’t know anything about us! How can they possibly lead well? Really? That’s not even a real question. Sure, there are specific things about our company that a person wouldn’t know off the street but we’re in retail. We’re in customer service. Anybody who has a solid background in that is going to bring things to the table that we need there. Things that weren’t our primary focus years ago. I’m honest enough to realize that our attention to the customer was primarily in how much he’d leave at the counter. That used to be enough. It’s not any more. I once attended meetings of DMs and it was day TWO of the meetings, after lunch, before any of the speakers even mentioned the word “customer“. I know because I was waiting for it, listening for it. That was years ago. It’s not that way now. More on this later.

I said working with you has been good, and it has. Some of you never called or bothered me. Some of you managed your stores just fine with no bugging me at all. You just clicked along on your tracks like a mining car hauling stuff into and out of the mines. Others of you felt like I’d forget to pay you if you didn’t call at least twice a day. If you ran out of a product that you thought was selling well my phone would ring immediately after you noticed it. If I didn’t get back to you when I said I would my phone would ring. Most fell somewhere in between those extremes. Seriously. I preferred working with the pests. You made me a better DM by holding my feet to the fire. You expected more out of me and made sure I did what I said I was going to do. Those of you who said, “Oh, he must be too busy. I’ll ask him next time I see him or next time he calls me,” frustrated me so much.

As a manager, my best advice for you is please, advocate for your store. Be a pest for your store. Work hard to make sure your new District Manager doesn’t forget your store. Don’t be the place that the DM goes to rest. Be the place that he goes to get stuff done. Be the squeaky wheel that gets the grease. Hold his feet to the fire. If you don’t fight for your store who will? Seriously. If your new DM thinks you don’t care enough to call and bug him to take care of your store… what’s that tell him? I tried to call and touch base with people on a regular basis. Some of you knew that and used that as a reason to not call me, and that’s great. That’s what that communication from me to you was for. But don’t put aside important things waiting for me to come to you.

Don’t do that to the new DM. Maybe he won’t call as often. Maybe he’ll get busy and forget for a few days. Don’t do it. If you need something ask for it. If you don’t get it ask again. But don’t stop asking. That’s my biggest failure as a DM in this area was those of you who weren’t big enough pests. I should have either fired you and replaced you with people who would be a pest for their store, or I should have managed somehow to convince you that you had to make sure I paid attention to you and your store. Obviously firing is not the best choice in that situation.

Advocate for your store. Be a pest! The owner of the chain was recently in the stores with me and said to one of the managers in front of me, “Keep being a pest. Keep making sure you get what you need.” I was so glad he recognized that she was one of the pains in my butt. She is and was a great manager and the owner knew it. It says good things for a manager when the owner knows you’re a pest and encourages it. All of you should learn from that example. All of you should advocate for your store to your new DM. You should be pushing him, not him pulling you.

PS: When I say be a pest I hope you know what I mean and don’t call him for stupid things on Sunday nights or his time off just so he hears your voice. Some of you do that to me to this day… and you  know who you are lol… being annoying isn’t advocating for your store.