Back to work after a week of vacation and I think… no, I know I could have done with another week and still not wanted to go back. Mostly that’s because the weather is absolutely beautiful now and I don’t want to be inside because I know Old Man Winter is shuffling his way this direction.
If any of you manage anything/anybody I want to recommend a friend of mine, a super nice lady from Hawaii, Rosa Say. As the economy does what it’s doing and seems to steadily ignore what we want it to do Rosa’s post are encouraging. (When I say nice in this context I mean that as a compliment. She’s been encouraging and friendly to people all over the Internet and takes time from what I know is a busy schedule to encourage people whether she’ll ever meet them or not. This is a hugely good character trait in my book.)
I am in favor of encouragement in the face of adversity for a couple of reasons.
1) If looking down the barrel of a bad situation being defeatist or negative won’t help at all. Just the opposite, hope, optimism, and mutual encouragement can make the going smoother even if they don’t address the problem at hand. Attitude is everything.
b) Sometimes weathering bad times isn’t a function of anything we do at all… sometimes big giant things happen to us, hurricanes for example, that we can’t really do anything about and we just have to wait for it to go away and there are times when being open to new ideas, optimistic, and encouraging foster and create an atmosphere where the community going through it all comes out the other side stronger because of the relationships or ideas formed during the hardship. It may be that sitting around a campfire in the devastation of a tornado brings up conversations that “When this is over we should…” and those things, those building blocks actually come to pass.
iii) Encouraging small behavioral changes, things we CAN do helps build things in areas we can change. I can’t personally impact the nation’s economy. What I can do is help my employees with savings and maybe with opportunities to increase their pay with sales incentives and bonus programs. I can’t help everybody, but I can help those I can help and just because it doesn’t stem the tide it does start a ripple that can add to other ripples and maybe that will be enough to change things… or at least moderate things a bit.
IV) Being pleasant to be around is a good thing.
There are a lot of opportunities out there to tear people down for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it’s just fun to be an ass. I’ve met people who sincerely believe that by bullying or threatening they can help a situation. I happen to really enjoy a debate online as long as nobody resorts to name-calling or takes it personally and starts acting bat-poop crazy. Can all situations be dealt with by applying a healthy dose of Pollyanna-juice? Not all, not all the time. But I can’t think of a situation where being a jerk or making threats was more helpful than being supportive or helpful and encouraging. Maybe it’s time to start a random act of kindness campaign if nothing else.
I’m a store manager with no more authority than any other store manager out there. I work for a chain with around sixty stores in it so there’s sixty of us out here. I’m not a special little snowflake and I know it. Many of the people in the office have never known me as more than a store manager. Some of them know I used to be a bigger shot, but I’d say it’s about fifty-fifty these days when it comes to people knowing where I fit in the scheme of things.
We were setting up a store once upon a time and our technician needed a piece of paper from the office. I don’t remember what it was. It isn’t important what it was. The important part was he had been waiting for this paper for two days he said. He’d called his contact person and been told they didn’t have it someone else did so he left messages daily and called and waited and two days had gone by. Two days where he’d been unable to do his job. He really really needed that piece of paper. It was a map of some sort showing where things went. When I got tired of watching him do nothing while I was busting my butt I finally asked, remember I’m a manager. There’s a much bigger shot on site, but I was the one that got tired of watching tech-guy spin his wheels.
Me: What’s up?
Tech: I can’t figure out who to ask for this thing and I have to have it. I’m wasting my time here without it.
Me: What’s it called? Who did you think had it?
Tech: Store layout schematic. Mongo
Me: Grabbing cell phone and calling.
Tech: I’ve tried that. I keep asking for it, nobody knows who has it.
Me: I’m not asking. ring ring
Contact Person: Hello.
Me: Hey Mongo. It’s Rich. I’m in Podunk and we need the map for Roy so he can get these things put up. Would you e-mail that to me before lunch so he can get going on this for me?
Contact Person: I don’t know if I have it.
Me: I know, but you’re there and I’m here and I really need your help, could you track it down and e-mail it to me please?
Contact Person: I’ll see what I can do.
Me: I knew you were the go-to-guy! I owe you a soda. I’ll let you know as soon as it arrives.
Contact Person: Anytime.*click* Tech: He told me he didn’t have it. ten minutes later my phone alerts me I have an e-mail with attachment from Mongo. Me: Dialing the phone to Contact Person: Thank you! It’s here and he’s off beavering away! Drinks are on me next time I’m at the office!
There’s no reason he should have done it for me instead of the tech. The tech’s bigger than me in the pecking order of things. I’m just some guy. But I asked like I had a reason for asking. I asked with an assumption it would be done and my asking was just a polite way of telling him what needed to happen. That part sounds jerky but it’s not jerky. The thing with being manager is if you have an employee you can tell them to do things or you can ask them to do things. It’s really the same thing when they’re in your chain of command and you’re higher than them. Polite requests are just politer orders. I learned that in the Navy. It’s still true in the real world. The trick, and it IS a trick… is to do it to someone above you.
We were doing a store setup and the person I was calling knows I’m “just a manager” but he also knows I’m on a special project at the request of the owner and CoO (Chief of Operations) that doesn’t happen by accident. The person I was talking to doesn’t know if I’m talking with the authority of a store manager or with some sort of weird temporary project manager authority by proxy from the CoO or the owner… he’s not sure. I’m an unknown. The tech is a known. He can back burner him all day long. As far as totem poles go the tech carries about as much weight as… well… not much weight. It’s safe to put off the tech in this situation. Me? I’m an unknown and for me to be talking as if I had authority… it is safer to assume I have it and do what I ask than to risk not doing it and finding out the CoO had me do the calling for him because he was busy.
Authority is so much perception by the people involved. Authority is a trick kind of. People will often let you have more than you do on the assumption that if you’re acting like you have it you must actually have it or someone else would have stopped you. Someone higher, for example. Nature abhors a vacuum and so do power structures and authority will expand to fill any gaps in a power structure. I’ve often done jobs that were above my pay grade by virtue of the fact that I saw they weren’t being done and they needed doing. I offer to help. I help. I expand my authority as far as it will go. It’s surprisingly rare that I get push back. Now, I’m not a pushy person by nature. But things need doing, and sometimes in businesses, in corporate structures, there’s inertia, there’s empire building, there are gate-keepers and there can be people working to make sure certain egos are stroked before the genie is released from the lamp… if you let those people have authority over you… if you submit to their pretend worlds you’re playing their game, and once you are submitting to them you can’t change it up later and be the one with authority over them.
I’m not saying that you should engage in power fights are outright wars… but mostly I ignore them when they don’t suit me. If someone decides to be a gate-keeper I go around them. I’ve got no problem ignoring chains of command if someone is trying to play silly buggers with me. I start by doing things the right way. But if I have someone pushing back for what I think is a stupid reason I will go around them. I don’t throw them under the bus. I just go to their boss and ask them the question I needed their subordinate to take care of for me. If they find themselves doing their subordinate’s job for them frequently… that’s something they can fix.
What’s the point of the post? Asking for something with your hat in your hand is only good for hat holding practice in my opinion. If you need something to do your job ask for it as if you’ve already gotten it and thank them for their help as you ask them. Ask for their help. Point out that you NEED their help. People like to feel helpful… but end the conversation with them knowing you’ll get back to them with a thank you as soon as you’ve gotten it… and then call to thank them. Even if it’s screened to voice-mail. They’ll recognize the implied, “And I’ll call back if I haven’t gotten it too” in there. It’s frequently easier to just make you go away by giving you want you want.
Over on my personal blog I mentioned I was not only back from Lincoln, but gave a few of the notes I’d taken of things to remind me to blog about when I got back. Some aren’t going to be long enough for a whole blog by themselves and some are… well… some may need two. They’re at the rolling around in my head stage of development right now.
It was nice to go back to doing my old job for a week. The setting up the new store was nice and the working with a new manager was nice. The store wasn’t open so a lot of the training opportunities I’d have had in that sort of situation didn’t present themselves as I’d like them to have. There were chances to teach though. At one point when the employee was upset about something that affected her personally… a mistake that’d been made (and rapidly fixed!) I managed to turn that into a teaching opportunity as well. Whether or not the new-manager turned it into a learning opportunity or not is another matter. That was one of the things we talked about believe it or not.
The days were long, and the work was hard. It was hot out and some of the work took me outside long enough to work up a good sweat… which is unfortunate. But the heat and work meant that no matter what I ate, within reason, I didn’t gain any weight… and believe me. When eating on the road and on expense account AND with a bunch of other people (who are NOT watching what they eat) it’s easy to go off-plan.
I think my first blog post will hit tomorrow and will be on a topic not mentioned over at the other site, but hinted at here in this post. Glad to be home. Looking forward to the next time I get to go help out on a special project. It was fun.
I’m a quiet manager. I don’t yell. I don’t scream. I don’t throw things. I’ve known managers like that. But that’s not me. Usually that works well for me. Well, it works for me. I hope it works for my employees. I’ve had employees say to me, “I wish you’d just yell at me. You make me feel like a jerk when you do that.” Mission accomplished then. If I yelled I’d feel like a jerk. That’s not true. I don’t want them to feel like a jerk. I just don’t want them to do it again… whatever “it” was.
The problem comes up when I run into an employee that wants to be yelled at and believes if I’m not yelling I’m not serious. Even if I say words like, “I’m serious” or “this is serious.” They think, since I’m not yelling I must not mean it yet. Just good old Rich giving me a hard time about something I’ve done. And off they go and do it again. I’ve said before I don’t believe someone should be surprised when they’re fired. I believe they should know why and should have been told about it several times before, not just what they did wrong, but what they should do in the future to avoid being in that position. Explain the bad behavior. Explain the expected behavior, and ask them if they understand. That’s the pattern. None of it requires a change in volume. Yes… even if I use words like “Failure to improve will result in termination,” not “could result” or “can result” but “WILL result in termination” there have been those who stared at me slack-jawed asking, “Seriously?” when it came time to finally fire them for something I’d talked to them about many times.
If I’d yelled they may have gotten it… but that’s not how I do things. It’s not how I’ve ever done things. It’s not a good way to do things I don’t think. But, when those people I’ve had to fire that I’ve warned over and over, with paperwork and everything… when they’re staring at me surprised… I wonder then if maybe my clinging to my management style is as effective as I’d like it to be. Somebody, my mom I think, said a good communicator wasn’t the one who could use the biggest words, but that could convey an idea to the broadest range of people effectively. I’m almost sure this was while I was learning all the vocabulary I could find studying for the SAT and was prone to using the longest word I could find for any situation. Maybe yelling is a valid way of doing things in management. It isn’t for me. Overall the number of people who have been surprised when I’ve had to let them go is pretty small. I guess I’ll stick with what I’ve been doing so far. I don’t like the yelling. I’m serial. I’m super serial!
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.)
