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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

 You think I’m making this stuff up, but I’m not. I’ve talked about how customer service is something we’ve been working on in my area recently. Starting with defining it, going into what our expectations should be where I’m making LOTS of phone calls to direct reports (managers), skips (sales associates), and anybody else who will take my calls (other area managers, the HR department, janitors, anybody!). We’re all talking about what they like to see in a store for customer service, and what I hope to see and what the managers hope to see. We’ve been trying to create a vision a goal we’ll all strive for. Part of that was, after talking to all these people I put together an evaluation of how the employees did on the things they’d said individually and collectively were important for good customer service. Then I had managers rate their perceptions of their employees and then employees rate themselves BEFORE they went over the manager’s numbers. After both have been faxed to me the manager and I would discuss the numbers, and then the manager and employees.

It sounds more complicated than it really was. The hardest part was I asked the managers to evaluate their employees for the store. I defined 5 as average for their store. Obviously they couldn’t judge for the whole company, they didn’t KNOW the whole company, but I wanted them to rate their employees within the dataset that was their store. With 5 being average. I pointed out that average meant some would be higher and some would be lower. That’s what average meant. It was only possible for nobody to be below average if nobody was above average.

Then the scores started coming in. One store the average for the employees was 7.6. Now, I’m no dummy. I can norm the scores out and readjust them so they are really averaged, just graph them and move that axis up until it’s at 7.6 and there’s your normed numbers. (Norm might not be the right word here.) But what it told me about the manager was more than what it told me about his employees. He honestly thought all his employees were above average.

I see this a lot in employee evaluations. I will get employee evaluations where the employee has every score above average and there is no area in which there is room for improvement. There is no area in which they are weak. I’ll turn the page and the essay portion of the quiz, sorry, employee evaluation, where it asks the manager “Performance Concerns” and “Performance Goals” and I’ll see an answer along the lines of “none.” Those always get sent back and there’s a coaching session. What that says to me is that the manager cares so little that they don’t care if the employee improves or not. That’s crushing.

When a manager gives evaluations that are way too high I get to decide then if they don’t know any better, if they’re friends with the employee, or if they’re scared the employee will quit if they’re honest with them so they just blow smoke up their… evaluation to appease the employee. Those are all options, and they’re all signs of an unhealthy situation. It’s almost always fixable though.

No employee wants to hear that they’re stinkerific and good managers don’t want to tell their employees that. It’s a sign of a failure on their part to an extent, but it doesn’t help things improve if we can’t recognize an area where improvement is needed. If your kid can’t swim you don’t tell him that he can and chuck him in the deep end out of fear you’ll hurt his feelings! Why do we do that with employees? It’s exactly what we’re doing when we give evaluations of their abilities that are artificially inflated. We’re killing them.

So, have I drawn any great conclusions about employee evaluations? Not really, but I DO think it’s interesting to have managers do this once in a while, evaluate their entire crew as I’ve suggested, then move the numbers until average really is and show them that while they gave Mongo a 6 (above average) on Widget Polishing, everybody else had a 7 or 9 so obviously that’s an area where Mongo can improve if he’s the lowest rated person in the place. The numbers skewing is more obvious when they do many evaluations at once than it is when it’s just one at a time.

While I’ve mostly talked about the people who overly inflate evaluations here there are also managers who think that by putting their employees down they can show how necessary they are. Those managers will tend to trend lower than average on their evaluations and that’s also no good. I’m fortunate in that I haven’t got that going on right now. It’s bad too, but is also fixable.

The title of the article was "What If Your Business Got Sick?" and she told two mini stories within the article. The first, (brutally summarized, go read her article) was about her being challenged to think of her business as a person and not an inanimate thing. That mental switch being flipped changes the way we relate to our business. Now. I don’t own my own business, but I’ve worked for the same company (Can it be the same company if it’s changed names and owners several times and my position has changed many times? I think that’s akin to Theseus’ Paradox.)

If my job, my career of the past 15 years were a person what would our relationship be? What would the dynamic between me and my job be? Would it be an equitable one? In a healthy relationship both partners give and take and share with each other. When one person cares more in a relationship… when one person doesn’t treat the other with respect… those aren’t healthy relationships. They’re not lasting relationships.

The funny thing is we wouldn’t put up with it in a relationship with a person we call friend. We’d say they weren’t our friend if someone treated us badly, lied to us, disrespected us. We would say something. We wouldn’t just take it or just put up with it. We’d either address it and see if it’s going to change or we’d break it off. We’d break up. Why is it that with work the rules are different? Because they pay us? Because there’s pay involved? So. Just because there’s money involved doesn’t mean we should put up with a bad relationship with our jobs. Unless we’re masochists obviously.

I’m not a masochist.

My work has changed hands a lot, different owners, different CoO’s, different cultures. And in all that time it’s been fairly equitable. I’ve had great relationships with my bosses and subsequently with my job. It hasn’t all been sunshine and roses. Obviously. It’s been a fifteen year relationship and there are going to be rocky times. I’ve been very lucky when things got weird or tense or I felt like it wasn’t an equitable relationship I was able to bring it up. I was able to talk about it with my boss and addresses it.

Lately the job itself, the work culture has been a lot different. I’ve wanted to go back to the way things were… We’ve heard the saying that you can never go back… you can’t cross the same river twice. And I don’t know if I’d like it for real if I got to go back… but I’ve been able to talk about it with my boss and he understands it. He understands my differences with the job as it has become. The job has changed over time just like people do. Are we growing apart? Is there a divorce in the future?

It’s a fifteen year relationship. Just like a relationship requires work and patience and communication so does this relationship. Nobody throws away fifteen years worth of relationship over a month or two of tense times or bad times. But if there’s no communication and no real attempt to fix things, no real attempt to work things out, ON BOTH SIDES then the divorce will be inevitable. If I were to sit and brood about how I don’t like things now but don’t talk about it to someone who can actually do something about it then it’ll be my fault if things don’t work out and we break up. If I talk to people able to change things and they don’t change then I will have done what I could. If I expect that just because I tell them to change they must change then I’m being selfish too. It’s not all about me. It’s a relationship and the relationship should be about us. If it gets too one-sided then it would quit being satisfying and dynamic and meaningful. It would lose value. The value in the relationship is in the give and take. It’s in both parties in the relationship caring about the relationship and treating each other in a way that both of them believe is equitable.

Any conclusions from all this? Not as such. This is still new in my head. I only read her column today and it’s still new in my head but it’s still rolling around in there and it has really made a difference in how I’m thinking about things.

A majority of human resources professionals (54%) make their final decision to hire a person based on “chemistry,” according to a poll released Tuesday by the Society for Human Resource Management.

from: Poll: A Majority Hire based on ‘Chemistry’ over at WorkExposedBlog.com

I’ve had managers ask me over and over again how to interview as if there is a silver bullet or super secret trick I’ve learned in the years I’ve been doing it and I frequently disappoint and surprise them. We’re in retail. What we do is entry level stuff. Just about anybody with good people skills can do it. Seriously. It’s not that tough to do. To do it really well needs a certain type of person and that is, for me, what the interview is for.

How well will the person fit in with the good/great members of your current crew? How will you feel after talking to them for 10 minutes during a shift change? What will they be like during an employee meeting? Are they positive? Upbeat? Do they smile easily and readily? Are they easy to talk to? They’ve just met you and they’ll deal with customers all day long that they have only just met as well… how relaxed and easy going they are during an interview is helpful to knowing how they’ll do with strangers during a normal work day.

Just talk to them. Are they profoundly qualified but after two minutes of talking to them you want to kick your dog? I wouldn’t hire them. You have to work with this person. I don’t care if they DO have 12 years experience working as a team leader at a competitor twenty miles away and they only left because the place flooded and closed. If you can’t stand to talk to them how will it be to work with them? How will it be on the co-workers and customers?

So is it a good idea to hire based on chemistry? I doubt it. I think that it gets in the way when we hire people who are just like the people we’ve always hired. I think sometimes we wind up losing something when we lose variety.

I once had a manager who staffed her store for over a year entirely with young African-American lesbians. (I swear I’m not making that up either.) Eventually I had to point out, gently, and carefully, that perhaps someone named Susan or Steve wouldn’t be completely out of line. Two weeks later she called me, so proud she’d “hired a Susan” which turned out to be a white lady that I don’t believe was a lesbian, but I never asked. This was a really good manager, she just had gotten in the habit of hiring people she clicked with. (I am in no way implying she was dating her employees. She wasn’t. I knew her family and that wasn’t something that was going on. She just kept doing it over and over again. She said, “that’s all that applies!” Well, we found that wasn’t entirely true and wound up diversifying a bit over time, slowly… and it didn’t kill her!)

So, while I firmly believe that we should hire people who will work well with others and who I can work well with… I also believe that just like I should do something different and unexpected once in a while, I should also hire outside my comfort zone just to make sure I don’t get too comfortable.

I talked interview tips in a previous post but it wasn’t the same type as this one so I’m OK doing it again. This one was from the interviewer’s point of view too, and the previous post was tips for the person being interviewed. Also, if you’re not subscribed to the Work Exposed Blog yet I recommend it really highly. It has one of my highest click through rates on my feed reader.

One of my favorite management tools is the Daily 5 as talked about by Rosa Say over at Say Leadership Coaching.  The daily five minutes is, short-version, go read the long version, time for you, the manager, to take five minutes to talk with AND LISTEN TO your employee. This isn’t five minutes to tell them what to do or five minutes where you top down all over them. This isn’t five minutes of your critiquing their performance on some recent project and then ending with a “So, what’ve you got to say for yourself?” It’s five minutes of conversation with them. Yes, I said conversation which means there will be a point when we, as managers, need to shut up and listen… actively listen to our employees. Ask leading questions, repeat back to them what they’ve just said in your own words so they know you understand them. Make use of that information later to blackmail them into covering extra shifts so their HA! Didn’t think you were paying attention, that was a test. Obviously I don’t mean the last part. That was a joke.

But engaging our employees to actively talk to us about what’s important to them can only help us be better managers. It’s a great time to find out what the rumors are out there that are keeping people up nights and address them. Those little things, rumors, can be tremendously destructive. But they’re hard to bring up to a manager who an employee is nervous about talking to or with. If we build a good relationship with our employees and make sure they know it’s important to us that we communicate with each other about things that are important to each other we’ll both win.

It doesn’t just help by opening lines of communication open either. It helps all day long when you’re NOT engaged in conversation and see them. If they know they’ll have your ear at a future date they interrupt less frequently because they know they’ll get a chance to bring things to your attention, or ask questions later. If your employees think they’ll be able to talk to you once in a blue moon they’ll grab you whenever they see you or call or interrupt what you’re doing because they’re never sure when they’ll have a chance again. Once they get in the habit of talking to you, and know they’ll be able to again very soon they’ll dial back the pestering… most of the time. Some people are so needy they won’t stop pestering… those you can tell, “You know what. I’m buried right now, how ‘bout we catch up on that during our talk later OK? Thanks. Take care. Bye. Don’t let the door hit you in your codependent… See… I did it again there. Glad you’re still with me. But seriously, you can defer them if they’re not playing by the rules. Some people don’t have a filter. Some people think of something and call you on the phone immediately, afraid they’ll lose it if they don’t. Those people are in need of organization more than they’re in need of my advice or answers… typically I think they just need to read and implement a version of Getting Things Done, but that’s another topic for another time.

Fire Safety around outside fires is a big matter of being ready if it spreads. Fire’s a hungry beast and it’ll eat anything it can get to. If you’re burning brush or yard waste good on you for living somewhere that you can! Nothing says fall like the smell of burning leaves! That being said, you’ll want a fire break of some sort between your pile of leaves and your Porsche. You’ll also want something nearby in case the wind picks up and moves some embers from your fire to your front porch. Remember the fire extinguisher I suggested for the kitchen? That would work. A bucket of water would work. A garden hose turned on would work. Heck, a bucket of sand would work if you had one of those nearby but why would you? What wouldn’t work? A bucket or pan of cheap kitty litter. Some of that stuff is dusty and might explode on you if you threw it on an open flame and if you really want exploded used kitty litter on your front porch please… don’t invite me to any of YOUR fireside chats.

"Each of us has a fire in our hearts for something. It’s our goal in life to find it and to keep it lit."
– Mary Lou Retton

We, as managers who have a calling for management have that fire in our hearts and it’s our job to spread the fire to our employees. To do that, according to the fire triangle we’re going to need three things to get a fire going and keep it going. We’ll need heat, fuel, and air.

Heat: The heat we’ll need to kindle the fire in our employees is from our own heartfire*. It’s the heat of our passion for what we do and how we do it. Our employees need to see us doing what we care about and what we say we care about. If we say we care about customer service but we ignore the customer while we talk about a newest memo there’s no heat transfer there. The employee sees that we care about the customer until something else comes along. We need to pay attention to our attention. Our attention, our focus, that’s where our heat is going. If we want our employees to think something is important and get excited about it we need to do more than just say it. They need to see us live it. They need to see our excitement. They need to see our involvement. They need to catch the fever from our heartfire so they can burn with it as well.

Fuel: Fuel is what they’re going to burn with the heat we give them from our heartfire. We have to give them work to do. Yes. You heard it. Delegate, involve your crew in the work you want them excited about. Get out of their way and let them be great. Micromanaging is smothering their fire’s. It’s using your fire to burn up their fuel so they can’t catch fire themselves. Give them work, help them do it if they need it, coach them, kindle the fire in them and then, like they do on the TV show Survivor, tend the fire as it catches in the tinder and help it to grow. Don’t pile more fuel on the new flame and bury it. You’ll burn them out if you do that. Keep the fuel coming, and keep sharing the heat of your excitement and your heartfire to keep theirs going as they burn through the work you ask for their help on.

Oxygen: You’ve shared your excitement, and you’ve given them work to do and they’ve done it and if you want to keep them doing it, and keep that fire going you’ve got to fan the flames. You’ve got to reward good behavior with genuine, specific praise. Let them know that what they’re doing is good, appreciated, and important. Let them know that you noticed. Coach them if there’s need for improvement, but do so in the spirit of encouraging a fire to grow inside them. Rewarding good behavior is as important as any other leg in the fire triangle. When an employee knows that what they’re doing is important work, and it’s noticed by other people it helps keep the fire going. If you give an employee a job and never notice if it was done or how well it was done, it wouldn’t surprise me to come back a month or so later and find it being done worse than the first time they did it. Feed the fire with your praise.

There has to be a balance with these three things, and that’s where management becomes an art. The balance is different for different employees. Some think that praise is too much sooner than other people. Some people need it daily, and some think that sounds phony. Some need it weekly and any less is that management is ignoring them. Some will ask for more work and some will wait for you to notice if they’re capable of more or not. They’re testing you to see if you notice. So many employees and so many management styles, it’s the part that keeps every day fresh and different.

It IS National Fire Prevention week and I said I’d talk about fire safety. When I was 20 years old an on leave in the Navy I was driving home and saw a van on the side of the road with the hood up. I was in traffic and didn’t stop, but what struck me was that the engine was on fire. They were on the side of the road, the engine was on fire, and there was nothing they could do about it. Since then I’ve carried a small fire extinguisher in my car and kept one in my house. It may be that an engine fire does a lot of damage really fast, but letting it burn itself out isn’t going to make it any cheaper to fix. Same at the house. If you haven’t looked at getting a small fire extinguisher for your car or kitchen think about it. You may never use it, but if you need it and don’t have it well… I’m not one to say I told you so, but drop me an e-mail. I may start being the kind.

*Heartfire is a word I got from Orson Scott Card’s book, Seventh Son. It’s the first in a series called the Tales of Alvin Maker. It’s an alternate history series about colonial America and that doesn’t do it justice at all. It’s a great series of YA fiction I recommend whole-heartedly.