simplerich

Once upon a time I was a troubleshooter. I think that’s the nice name for it. If there was a store or area that needed help I’d get a call. I didn’t have any kids and it was easy for me to travel. I could go to the area and sometimes figure out who was worth saving and who wasn’t or I’d already be tasked with replacing everybody. If it was option two I was part of a team that would go in and take over, get a new crew, get them trained and leave again. Now, that wasn’t my job at the time. My actual job was I was an area supervisor with anywhere from 4 to 11 stores to supervise. But if something came up. I was often the one that got the call. I really liked the travel. I got to work in every state we had stores in and got to meet a lot of interesting people and see a huge variety of stores. It was a lot of fun.

I never saw myself as a hatchet man. I was more of a fixit guy. I got to take part in store take overs when we’d buy some stores and go in and turn them from a mom and pop store into one of our stores in a couple of weeks, switching out the inventory, point of sale system, and train the crew all without closing the store. It was definitely a hit the ground running kind of thing in both situations. Our primary concern was always to make the transition as smooth as possible for the customer and to try to retain (in most cases) as many of the people as would stay and do things the new way. Sometimes it was part of a fire everybody and start over thing. I didn’t like those as much. Sometimes it was a fire the manager and see who in the crew should stay. Those were harder. The only one of those I didn’t like was when it was a manager who had no idea they were in trouble. That one felt bad. He should have known it was a possibility. But, he didn’t and I didn’t know it until after it’d happened. He handled it better than I did. I felt like a shmuck.

I got to do that for years and without even thinking about it I wound up getting a reputation as a hatchet man. It was NEVER my idea to do this to stores. I was just the person that got called to do it after someone else made the decision it needed doing. I saw it as I was keeping as many as could be kept and making things better. From the outside it looked like I went in, took out the opposition, replaced them, and then went home to wash my hands and rest up to do it again, and never lost a moment’s sleep. Mostly that’s true. I didn’t lose sleep except when I was working the long days, in one store there were some 24s. That was a takeover and we didn’t get the computers when they were supposed to show up. I didn’t care. It was New Orleans and I was eating on an expense account. Any amount of hours is worth that!

Fast forward to last year when I stepped down and became manager of a store that opened up. Do you want to guess how the crew felt when I showed up to be manager? They were all scared to death of me. I couldn’t figure out why. I hadn’t done anything to the previous manager. I took his position when it opened up, but I didn’t open it up. Didn’t matter. My reputation had preceded me. Nothing I could say would change their mind. It didn’t help that customers knew of me from when I’d done it at other stores… turns out I was sort of KNOWN for going in and cleaning house and then wandering off whistling and drinking a cup of coffee with a smile on my face. The rumors were impossible to deal with. “Oh, he’s just being nice until he gets your replacement. He’s like that. Seriously. You have to watch him. He’s good at what he does, and what he does is clean out stores.” Wow.

So… It’s been six months now. I’m still here and haven’t wandered off with a cup of coffee and a smile. But today, this morning, the janitor asked me, “So, you going to X to clean out the store? I heard they needed it and that’s what you did. You’ve been here a while.” *sigh* What’s it take to convince them that I’m done with that part of my job? Not because I’m glad to be. I miss the travel. But because I want to be home more? I dunno. You’d think six months of me and they’d know I was settled down and happy here. Maybe I should fire them all and start over. *grin* KIDDING! But seriously… how long does it take for them to stop thinking I’m an ogre? I wasn’t then, and I’m not now. But I can see how they’d think so. In my defense, most of the time the stores where I went, they liked me and wanted me back after I left. THEY didn’t see me as an ogre. It’s just all how it looked from outside. (You want a hatchet man, that’s MY boss… he’s the one that made the decisions. I just implemented them as humanely and kindly as possible and saved as many of them as I could.)

A friend of mine sent me this and it is/was timely and sums up how I felt about New Year’s Resolutions this year.

I didn’t make any resolutions this year. I instead thought I should work on personal improvement overall… Not one area, but generally. I wasn’t clear on a process but it was starting with better health, and I started eating more in line with that. More vegetables, less eating out, more cooking from fresh, less meat, and smaller portions. I quit my gym membership, but that was a money thing. I wasn’t using it any more so paying was stupid. I’ve got home gym stuff I can use and it’s already paid for. I plan to continue the work on my NaNoWriMo novel, it needs work. Just lots of stuff to do, but no plan. I know me and that was, already a recipe for failure. If I don’t have a plan of attack I tend to flounder. It’s why I was so successful learning to run with the Couch to 5k Program. It was very structured. I do well with structure.

Enter Train your Monkeys.

An inner “monkey” is a drastically undeveloped part of yourself. You may think at it like a long term goal which was never attained. Or like a deeply buried dream you never dared to dream until the end. Or something you declared to yourself you’re going to follow up through, but never did.

A “monkey” is a goal frozen in its evolution. Like a genome which was never able to reach the human form. It was only strong enough to mimic its human shape but at the core level it’s just an unfinished project.

That is perfect! He’s got a previous post where he is going to Train 12 Monkeys this year, one a month. That’s a little more erm… that time line won’t work for what I’m going for with some of them, but I like the idea. I also like the idea that if I can pick a certain number and areas I can post progress as it happens… some sort of bloggy-accountability. So, look for me to be listing my monkeys soon.

One tool I know I’ll be using is the Seinfeld Calendar. First — I need to get a calendar. This is one where online isn’t as good. I want it on the wall and I want the big visible to everybody checks on it.

I’m excited. I’ve gone from vague numinous thoughts to something a little more concrete. Yeah. I know we’re all supposed to start on January 1st, but I was so incredibly sick then… it wasn’t a good time to start. I want this to be well thought out. So, first step is to name the Monkeys and post to you guys what my goals are and how I hope to measure them. I may or may not give the metrics and time lines on some of them… I haven’t decided yet. What I will do is have the post where I name the monkeys done by next Monday. Come back and see what the monkeys are.

You got any monkeys that need training? Let me know!  I’d love to hear about them!

I haven’t blogged in ages. During November it was because I was participating in 2010′s NaNoWriMo event in which writers all over the world attempt to write a 50,000 word novel during the 30 days of November. I managed to complete the word count in the time… but I don’t feel like the story’s finished. Rather than re-hash the whole idea I’ll aim you towards the post where I talk about that over at simple-writing. I encourage you to go read the most recent post if you’ve read the previous posts there and are wondering what happened next.

Work since the step down, I hesitate to use the word demotion as it was only in title and pay, but in personal and professional satisfaction I’m much happier now. I believe I was promoted to a place of increased happiness by stepping down from a place of increased stress, what was I saying again? Ah yes… Work since the change in position has been interesting in the Chinese sense of the word. “May you live in interesting times.” I lost an employee. I gained an amazing employee as my assistant manager. He’s every bit as good as I am when it comes to salesmanship. For the first time ever I’ve got an employee who can beat me in $/ticket. (That’s how much each receipt is worth and is used to measure the sales associate’s salesmanship along with the items/ticket.) It took him two months to catch me, and in his third month here, this past month, he passed me. I was elated. So was he.

Other employees watched and one wondered aloud if I wasn’t threatened by him. “Aren’t you afraid he wants your job?” I was asked.

“Not at all! I KNOW he wants my job. I also know that I’m not a sales person. I’m the manager who also sells. So just being a great salesman doesn’t automatically make him a great manager, or even a good one.”

“I’d be afraid of him if I were you.”

“You’d be nuts if you were. I hope he keeps trying to beat me. It makes both of us better. Makes both of us try harder.”

We had a sales contest, just a local one at the store I put on. See who can sell the most of a product that’s a good product at a good price, easy add-on material. We tied. He was crushed. The other employees were elated. They were scared to death he’d win and I’d be crushed. So, when we got more in (we stopped the contest only because we sold 4x more than our stocking level in a week and ran out.) he started a “Sudden Death” re-match to see who would win. He couldn’t abide a tie. He won and has been very gracious about it, but he’s thrilled. It’s so exciting to see an employee so excited to sell, to excel, and to want to be better than me rather than just saying, as many have, “He’s the best. Just let him do it. I can’t ever be that good.” He’s a breath of fresh air.

I’m thrilled to have him on my crew.

I’ve been manager here for three weeks now and I think the number one thing that’s made a difference in the crew hasn’t been inspiring speeches, reams of paperwork filled out on them, or the wealth of memos and written instructions I’ve left, but is instead, the example I set. Surprisingly this most basic piece of management advice was Rosa Say’s most recent blog topic over at Talking Story:

It’s advice all managers hear, and will never question, for it sounds so sensible, so right. “Set a good example.”

As I inherited this crew from the previous manager there were a lot of cultural things that were different from the way I do things and the way I wanted things done. The previous manager wasn’t doing things wrong necessarily, just differently. I wanted things done MY way. Not out of a power trip thing, but out of an “I do things differently” sort of sensibility. 

We have a book we use every shift at the start and ending of shift change. It would wind up wherever it wound up. There was no place for it. So, every shift change started with looking for the book. It was a minor time-waster, and a minor aggravation, but it was unnecessary. So, I made a place for it. I made a place for almost everything behind the counter and at the meeting I walked through the importance of being able to find things to looking competent and feeling confident behind the counter. It’s frustrating to be looking for the stapler when there’s a line. So, after going over it and talking about how important it was to me. (Yeah, I know, doesn’t sound important, but it’s a safe/easy example.) Then after that I made sure I put everything back where it went every time I used it. If I found it somewhere else I put it where it went. I didn’t say anything to them, I just moved it. If I saw them put it somewhere else, almost everybody had a favorite place to put it but no two favorite places matched up, I would, while talking to them about something so I know I had their attention, move it back where I wanted it. I’d put it there and extend my hand as if I were saying “Stay!” to a dog. In under a week everything stayed where it was supposed to be.

This sort of thing is minor I know, but I’ve applied the same way of doing things to everything I want changed, steady, unrelenting pressure by example. I greet every customer every time. I make sure to BE the behavior I want to see. I make sure they see it. I make sure I don’t take any “warm body” days right now. (A warm body day is one of those days when you’re just not feeling it so you sort of coast through the day as a warm body, not bringing your A game, but you’re there so it counts right? No, not really.) 

How’s it going? I think the store’s numbers show that it’s working.  Customer service is improving, the store’s appearance is improving, and it’s happening by my making sure I’m modeling the behavior I want to see more of. If I forget to do something I apologize to them and fix it. I draw attention to where I dropped the ball, and they’re not stupid, they get it that if I’ll point out where I made a mistake I’ll certainly notice where they did. This also means to them that I don’t have a set of rules for them and one for me.

Some managers do the “do as I say, not as I do,” thing when managing. They’ll take short-cuts or leave out steps they want their employees to follow, and I’ll admit to having done it in the past, but not when I’ll get caught. I know. That sounds terrible. Just like a parent can drop the F-bomb when they’re in the car alone if they do it when the kids in the car it’d be pretty disingenuous of them to think the kids wouldn’t pick up on it. So, the more I make sure I do it right all the time, the more likely I am to always do it right as well. It becomes a habit, and my habits will, hopefully be the habits my employees pick up on as well. 

So hats off to Rosa for her timely post. And all you managers out there… if you do as you say too things will go better for everybody! 

“If the owner of the company decided he didn’t want this store any more and he just gave it to you and your income were based on store income what would be the first things you would change?”

That’s my favorite question to ask employees when I go visit someone else’s store. If I’m there to help fill in, train, evaluate, or whatever it is that takes me somewhere that’s unusual to me. It’s amazing to hear the front liner’s ideas on what their stores need.

The majority of time the ideas are pretty good. More than half the time the ideas are easily implemented at once. And even more super-surprisingly I think only once did someone say “Pay the employees more.” We’re not a huge payer. We have entry level positions requiring no specialized education or training beyond what is gotten on the job and the base pay is low plus sales based bonuses. When I give them the hypothetical kingship they don’t give the employees a raise.

Today I asked 5 more people that question and none of them said they needed more money. They wouldn’t refuse it of course if I offered it and from what I saw at least two of them deserved more than they were getting in base pay (I’m also sure they make up for it in sales bonuses. They were great with customers.) And the ideas they DID come up with I was able to approve and get going with just a few phone calls. The ideas were good, didn’t cost me much at all to do and it is always amazing to see how much an employee’s attitude will change if they feel listened to… if they feel like their input matters… if they feel like someone cares what they have to say about how things are done… if they realize that they’re trusted.

Another surprising thing to me, and not good surprising, sad surprising… is how often employees are surprised when I ask them. Employees who have been at a store over a year, over two years… and nobody’s ever asked for their input before. They almost never put me on hold or don’t have an answer. It’s a question they’ve thought about. It’s something they’ve rolled around in their head when they’re working an overnight shift. How exhausting must it be for a manager to do all the thinking and not ever ask their employees for input? Why would any manager do that?

Sure, there are some top-down things I do and I have to do them. I’m still a boss. I get that part. But that doesn’t mean it’s all one-way, top-down, or that I never ask the people doing the front-line work day in and out what I can do to make their job better. Just the opposite. The more I can help them be more effective the more work I can get out of them. I’m not completely altruistic in this. I’m their manager. The more I can help them accomplish the better we all do. I’m trying to get as much out of them as I can get and have them grow with the company and move up and out. Ideally we’ll continue to grow and we’ll need managers and I’d love to provide them all from my area. So, I ask how I can help them and do what I can to help them be more effective and then I work to get it done for them.