simplerich

Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card is almost certainly in the top 3 most influential books I’ve read. I discover something new that I didn’t know I’d incorporated into how I do things every time I read it or, in this most recent case… listen to it. The most recent quote to hit me while I was driving down the road listening to Ender’s Game on audiobook follows:

“Listen, Ender, commanders have just as much authority as you let them have. The more you obey them, the more power they have over you.“

The company I work for changed ownership a couple times over the past few years and has settled down finally and things are going pretty well generally speaking. During the past 18 months or so though, while the company was being restructured and ownership was settling in there was a LOT of political maneuvering. There were armys of people in the central office jockying for power, and calling the field identifying themselves as “Mongo from corporate…” and conjuring with that name expecting obedience from all who answered. The thing is/was… they didn’t really have the power they were reaching for.

They wanted the power, but looking at organizational charts and chains of command they weren’t even close to as important as they wanted to be. As soon as people started jumping when they called though. As soon as they started being obeyed they had the power over the people who obeyed them. Not only that… the people who were doing what they were told got in the habit of jumping when somebody called them and told them to jump. Obedience is 95% habit after the first time. Ask the Dog Whisperer if it’s true.

Now, I’m not saying they didn’t need the things they were asking for, and we’re one company working toward the same goal so it’s not a case of my saying that I would automatically ignore them when they called to tell me to do something. I would, however, send the things they asked for to the people that actually needed it instead of to the gatekeeper who was asking for it. If Mongo wants to know how many widgets I have in stock for Roy and could I just drop everything and count those for Roy right away… Well… there’s a very fine chance that I’ll be on the phone with Roy asking what Roy’s deadline is, and if he really wants the count or not and when. Then, when it’s done I’ll send it to Roy. More often than not, Mongo wasn’t speaking for Roy. Mongo was building a case against someone else and was preparing to blindside them by going to Roy with it.

Political in-fighting is annoying in a company. It’s never helpful, doesn’t increase profit, morale, efficiency, or anything good. What it does is waste time. The biggest way I’ve found to avoid it is to recognize who is in charge, who is pretending to be in charge, and who while in charge by title, is absolutely hopeless and not in charge of anything at all. So, don’t fight. If Mongo wants to fight you for perceived power let Mongo fight by himself. As soon as I engage Mongo I’m giving credit to him. I’m admitting he’s got a claim. It’s like arguing with a 3 year old. You just wouldn’t do it. So why argue with someone who hasn’t got a point to make, who hasn’t got any authority or power but is grasping for it? It’s what 3 year olds do when they’re denied something. They fight, scream, kick, and cry. So, ignore it. Don’t encourage it. Don’t feed it. Don’t acquiesce to it. Let them have their little fit and you, you float above it as serene as foam on a stormy sea. All the crashing waves and roiling water is beneath you while you ride on top, above it all, and not stinking of low-tide and in-fighting.

That being said, how can YOU use this as a manager? Well, the part where obedience is mostly habit? That’s very easy to use to your advantage. First day on the job as a new manager might not be the day to try and get the whole crew to rip everything off the walls and paint the store. Maybe that’s the day to start by dusting and cleaning the product… starting small, getting them in the habit of saying yes, paves the way for big projects later being easier to say yes to.

Nature abhors a vacuum and so do power structures. I once worked for a small mom and pop outfit whose owner/manager was absentee. He wasn’t to be bothered with the day to day so lots and lots of decisions were just deferred because the manager wasn’t there to make them. After being there a while as a front-liner I realized that the manager wasn’t temporarily gone, this was long term. He didn’t care at all. His shift managers were supposed to hold it together and they didn’t care because why should they? He didn’t. So we were spiraling slowly downward. I didn’t particularly love the job, but it was close to home, and my car was busted so I wanted it to be there for a while longer.

I started making the decisions and doing the things that other people weren’t. I had no authority to do so, and I had no right to do so. Instead of getting in trouble I got more work. I soon had the crew looking to me for guidance and I was the most junior person there. I just was the one willing to DO something. I’d filled the power vacuum. Not because I wanted the power, but because I wanted the job. I wanted things to run smoothly, and things run better when someone cares; when there’s someone making decisions. The shift managers didn’t care because well, they didn’t care. I was doing their work for them — who are they to rock the boat? I stayed at that place long enough to get hired somewhere better, and I got my car fixed using the money from the place. It closed six months after I left. Nature and power structures abhor a vacuum. If nobody steps up it will fall down.

If you like science fiction at all and haven’t read Ender’s Game lately you should. It’s one of my top five favorite books.

When your biggest problem is your most senior employees then your biggest problem may be you! As a manager I’ve been fortunate to get crews that stick around and continue to work for me and then I have said to myself, “Well, they know what they’re doing. There’s no reason for me to nag them to do what I know they need to do.”

I think we all know where this is going. I, as their manager, have to find ways to keep those old dogs doing old tricks as well as new tricks… tricks they’ve done so often they can do them faster and better than I can in a lot of cases. They should be able to… they do them more frequently than I do. Well, they used to.

One way an employee starts slipping is when we, as their managers start slipping on noticing if they’re doing what they’re supposed to. We start not noticing, or start making excuses for them. “Well, Mongo missed his cleaning list last night, but I’m sure he’ll do it next time he works.” Once the long-time employee has his manager trained to make his excuses for him he’s golden. We have to notice when they do it exceedingly well and we need to notice when they do a bad job.

I don’t have the answers on how to keep all my employees motivated all the time. I can’t do that. I’m not a good pusher. I don’t lead well by nose-rings either. I’m better at, I think, getting people to want to do better because they want to. That for me is more important. The whole carrot/stick approach works if you know what carrot people want. Money isn’t the only carrot out there and it’s not the best carrot in my experience. That doesn’t mean I have never used it or that I’ll never use it again. Just that it’s not the only one out there.

One of the dirty tricks about management is that sometimes it’s more than just getting great results out of people. Sometimes it’s getting to watch someone go from being a fair employee to being a great employee… during that transition, when the employee is growing their manager is, to use an ugly word… manipulating that employee… tricking them to do things. There are a ton of books out there on the subject and I love reading them. Helping them help you keep them engaged is often as easy as just asking them to help you. They’re long-timers for a reason. They are typically the type who are willing to help.

Complacency is the danger on those long time employees. Lately I’ve been battering my head against that wall at a couple locations and have gone with the shake things up for the sake of shaking things up route. New checklists. New cleaning lists made by new people. New duty distribution. What used to be store front jobs now merging with store back jobs. Having the lifers… anybody here over five years has earned that title from me (January is 15 years for me)… having the lifers help make the lists, and having them intentionally trade jobs with other employees in other departments has been helpful.

None of this is new. None of this is earthshaking or digg fodder I know. But it’s important… and as a long time employee myself. I’d forgotten it until recently. I’d gotten used to seeing the same thing and seeing what I expected to see recently. My boss recognized it in me though. He didn’t come right out and accuse me of going through the motions, but he did point out that I was enjoying special projects more than day to day stuff and that I tended to do better on special projects than I was doing on the day to day. He never said I wasn’t doing well on the day to day stuff… just what areas I was doing better. Then he stopped talking and waited for it to bug me enough to come back to him.

So, look around… are you going through the motions? Are your employees doing it?  I was. I’m better now. I’ve been very lucky with bosses lately.

What is that? (Τι είναι αυτό;) 2007

One of the dangers of management is that while we have heard a question 21 times the person asking us hasn’t asked it 21 times. It’s their first time asking it.

A blog, a weblog can be anything from a personal blog about cooking, family, kids, or any other of a lot of hobbies or it can be a business blog managed by a major corporation meant as their public face to the Internet public. What I do is somewhere closer to the personal. I talk about my take on management. I blog about my personal life, and my personal take on management. My blog isn’t now, nor has it ever been an official blog about the place where I work. In fact I work very hard to not mention where I work or what line of work I’m in other than retail sales. (My first weblog was called a Journal, the word blog didn’t exist yet and was from February 1999.)

I don’t blog about work specifically for example. I’m not a representative of this job while I work. I blog about general management topics. Some of the topics about which I blog are inspired from work, but none are “ripped from the headlines” as it were from work locally. Twitter in this case is something I’m treating as a blog. It’s sort of a micro-blog, 140 character limit is certainly micro.

Four rules of thumb to follow when blogging about work:

1. Never use real names of businesses or people.
2. Never blog it close to when it happened in time.
3. Moderate ALL comments and don’t let comments through that violate rules 1 & 2.
4. Never blog from work or during work hours.

1. Never use real names of businesses or people.
When I’m telling a story about where I work now or have worked, or even when talking about another business I have dealt with I don’t give real names. When I talk about people I often refer to Mongo and Roy. Neither of those are real names of real employees. They’re nicknames of a couple guys I know who don’t mind at all that they live on in my blog as examples. Don’t try and be clever either. If your boss’ name is Stan Buehler and you say Ban Stuehler it’s going to be pretty hard to make the case you’re not talking about your real life boss.

2. Never blog it close to when it happened in time.
If something at work demands a blog entry and you are dying to blog it go for it… but edit the time stamp for some time in the distant future. It’s possible your boss or employees may read your blog and will know that you’re talking about them. Let time pass, let the heat go away and revisit the post before it goes live to see if you would re-write it or tweak it. Make sure you’re still saying what you meant to say but without getting too specific. The more time you can get between whatever it is you’re talking about, and the post the better. Best choice? Everybody in it’s dead from old age! lol

3. Moderate ALL comments and don’t let comments through that violate rules 1 & 2.
I’ve got employees that read my blog and co-workers and my boss knows about it as well. I believe one of the owners of the company I currently work for knows it exists. I write as if they’re going to read the blog. I don’t let any of those people comment on my blog in a way that may get either of us in legal trouble or fired. It’s my blog and I feel responsible for what is said there. I’m pretty sure I’m not, but if an employee said something horrible on my blog while I wasn’t looking and their boss saw it and they lost their job I’d feel bad. I am very up front with my employees and co-workers about MY policy about work and my blog. It’s not company policy, it’s my blog’s policy, and as the blog-owner… I don’t have to ask for permission. IT’S ALL MINE! MUAHAHhahahahahahaha.

4. Never blog from work or during work hours.
This one to me is an ethical thing. If I’m being paid to work I should be working and not blogging. That being said, I’ve twittered from work and will probably do so in the future. I don’t blog during work hours though. Now, if you’re going to blog from work, maybe your job is one where you have the time and are able to. Do it smartly, edit the time stamp so it doesn’t hit while you’re at work. There’s no sense in giving your boss ammo against you for an unemployment hearing. “See, here he’s supposed to be working and he’s plainly blogging about World of Warcraft! How is that related to his job of widget cranking? Obviously he was off task and blah blah blah…”

The job market out there isn’t all that great if you’re looking so when you’re online think a little before posting. Think before twittering. Think before doing anything insane on Facebook or Myspace. Any interviewer worth their salt is going to have checked a lot of those sites for you before you walk in the door. While you don’t have to live like a saint you should certainly be aware that future employers as well as current ones are not ignorant of the Internet and there’s a great chance they’re curious about what you’re saying out there.

There’s a saying in business that nobody’s indespensible. That every employee can be replaced. It’s true. In the past two years the company I work for has changed ownership I think 3 times. If even the owner of a company can change I think it’s a sure bet that an overnight janitor at one of the smaller locations can change, regardless of time with company or even quality of work. Everybody can be replaced.

Earth Day is about conserving and the difference between Disposable and Replaceable becomes important. I’ve owned a Dodge Dart, Monte Carlo, a Mercury Sable, a Renault Encore, a Ford Escort, and a Suzuki Forenza. All of them were replaceable but none were disposable… well maybe the Dart, but I only paid 200 bucks for it and it was a LOT of fun – three on the tree transmission! But I digress.

Just because something can be replaced doesn’t mean it should be treated as disposable. I’ve got a coffee cup I refill every morning on the way to work. It saves me fifty cents and saves the convenience store a cup. One day I’m going to lose this cup as I do and I’ll get another one. But until then I take care of this one. I don’t throw it on the ground and I don’t leave it unwashed. I treat it as if I intend to keep it for the long term. I really do hope to do that. But history tells me that at some point something will happen to it. I may lose the lid. I may leave it somewhere and not be able to find it. I may leave it in a hotel room. Sometimes people and jobs grow apart just like me and my coffee cup. But that doesn’t mean I hasten either one of those things along.

My employees and I can be replaced. My guess is that in a year nobody would notice we were gone, I may flatter myself. It probably wouldn’t take that long, but hey, I think I’m great so go with it. But that doesn’t mean they’re disposable. I want them to stay for the long haul.

Employee retention is a money saver for a lot of reasons. It saves us money in training and it saves us money by the employee knowing more than their replacement will know. The mall here has a book store in it that has had the same 3 core employees for at LEAST 10 years. I know if I ask them a question about a book or an author they’ll know the answer. If I see a new person there… I typically wait until I find one of the lifers. I like getting the old timers. They just know things. I want my stores to be the same way.

I want my employees to be the ones customers wait to see. There will always be some turn over. It seems every store has one position that rotates through someone every three months. For the life of me I can’t figure out what it is that causes it (I have a theory). I work every day to try and convey to my employees the value they bring to me as an employer and to the company for whom they work. I set my expectations high and then try and help them live up to them. I give them too much credit and then let them show me I was right to do so. Most of the time that works. It doesn’t work for banks or mortgage brokers, but it can work with managers.

So yeah, we’re all replaceable but we’re not all disposable. Today is Earth Day. Make sure your people know they’re not disposable today and every day.