simplerich

Well, my past two posts talked about sort of last ditch advice to managers that were under me. This one’s not like that. This one’s more for me and the  job in general. I’ve had this job since 2000. That’s over ten years of District Management. Now, back to single store management. From a hundred employees to five. From multiple locations that are frequently 24 hour locations to a single non-24-hour location.

In District Management I was always having to rely on other people to a huge degree. As manager of a single location  I’ll be able to be more hands on, more able to know the things I’m interested in because I’m the one that my boss will be looking to to know things. I’ll still have direct reports, 4 of them now, but the distance between me and the information is so much shorter as a manager when compared to District Management. My ability to affect the changes I want will be much easier than before.

Part of the issue for me as a District Manager was communication. We had Sharepoint, faxes, conference calls, weekly meetings, phone calls, text messages, and all the face time I could squeeze in when you consider the 400 miles between some stores. But with all that there were times when communication wasn’t happening. I was too far away from the people I needed to be talking to, the front-liners. That was part of it. Another part was the filtering happening. Another part was I would say something and my managers would hear something else, then they would say what they thought I meant and the Sales Associates would hear what they thought the managers meant I meant. It was like a horrible game of telephone. I would say “Please make sure you smile at the customers when you’re talking to them,” by the time it would get to the Sales Associates it would be “And if you come to work crabby just stay home. Leave your problems at home.” Which isn’t at all what I was saying. Sure, that’s a great idea, but really, all I wanted was the employees to smile more. (That’s just an example. If any of my managers are reading this wondering when I said that it’s just an example, relax… although, smiling more is never a bad thing.)

So. My work was becoming more than what I did. It was becoming who I was. That’s true for a lot of managers. I think in some ways it is what makes a good manager into a great manager. The problem was… and this is a big one… I didn’t like who I was becoming, not as a person or as a manager. The joy was no longer there for me. When my phone would ring it was always something that made my skin get a size too small. Everything was an irritation. It got harder to find the things that made me love my job and I took vacations to try and find the joy again, to recharge my batteries, but it wasn’t coming back. I kept taking vacations that I didn’t want to come back from. Not just for a few more days, but ever. The problems were too big. I was too unable to fix them because I felt I was too far away from them and I felt that the job was too big for me. When I started as a DM I had 4 stores. When I stepped down I had 11. Somewhere in between those two numbers is the right number. I may have been able to do 11 more easily if I’d had stronger managers in some locations, but I couldn’t find them. I had too many places where I was getting by on what I had and didn’t have the time or resources (from above) to put into getting the warm bodies replaced. I had too many people who were adequate. They kept the stores opening (mostly) and they kept the shifts covered (mostly.) But if I felt I needed two weeks to get an extended stay hotel and really work on a store I was told that wasn’t in the budget and it wasn’t the way to do things.

So… too often problems remained unfixed and that was killing me. If I couldn’t fix the problems and was required to leave band aids on them… I couldn’t keep doing the job badly. So. I quit it. I stepped down. I tried to do it for a year longer than I wanted to. Maybe my heart wasn’t in it the last year and maybe I wasn’t trying as hard as I could. Maybe I was only going through the motions the last year. I really am not able to judge. I was too exhausted to try any harder though.  Years of that and I’d quit getting any satisfaction from my job at all. All that was left of the job was the comfort of a steady check in an economy that was anything but reliable.

What do I hope to gain out of stepping down? Honestly? A break and some satisfaction from my job again. Throwing myself into fixing one store, really fixing it. From the floors to the doors to the customer service will be something I know I’m good at, something I know I can do. I hope to get back in the habit of success and not just the habit of exhaustion. The old job had killed any feelings of success in me. I felt like a consistent failure and wasn’t enjoying things any more. That’s no way to live. It was to the point I had to change what I was doing or quit. Life was happening all around me. My friends were all having lives without me and I’d hear about it on Facebook while I sat in a hotel three states away. So, I went back to managing for some time back home, with my friends, doing a job I know I can do and doing it in a store I know I can change and turn around. I’m ready to have some fun again at work and I’m ready to have some successes.

If you’ve made it this far in the series thank you. I’m going to finish this series with a quoted twitter post from a friend of mine Chris Kasten from Denver, CO. I think he groks what I am talking about. His post summarizes where I’d been before I walked away from it all and stepped down.

My startling realization of the day: It is way too easy to confuse comfort for satisfaction.

– Chris Kasten on Twitter.

This is part 2 in my short series of posts revolving around my job change. They’re a cross between a farewell letter to my managers and a helpful advice from a lame-duck district manager. I’m torn between looking forward to the challenge of it, missing the people involved with my old job, and obviously the income change will take some getting used to. When you go from being over 11 stores to being over 1 there’s a definite change in disposable income! This post will be about the priorities of a manager. My last post was a bit rambling, but was supposed to be about the manager needing to advocate for their store. My hope is that these posts give me a sense of closure to a job/position I’ve held for 10 years that I’m walking away from now.

Priorities.

We pay attention to the things our bosses pay attention to. Sure, the memos from the office and from our boss may talk about things like improved customer service, better cleaning, more consistent branding, and being friendlier, but what do the bosses talk to us about when they come to the store? What does the office send follow up things about? What are they looking at? What gets us in trouble? What are we accountable for?

If they talk about the customer service part of things only at employee meetings, but then the rest of the time we talk to them harp on us that our paperwork isn’t legible or how many widgets a week are we cranking out then we have to assume that customer service is something we talk about, but widget cranking is the important bit. If we get in more trouble for forgetting to fax a piece of paper whose information is already available on the computer somewhere else than we get into if we’re rude to a customer then it’s obvious where priorities are. They’re on the paper.

If the District Manager calls and expects the person answering the phone to drop everything, including the customer they’re waiting on to help them with whatever special project they’re working on that tells the person answering the phone that the customer is second to the DM. That’s the slippery slope we start down as DMs when we get full or ourselves. I tell my employees all the time, please, if you’ve got a customer put the phone down and wait on them. I’ll hold while you help them. I don’t even mind holding! What I mind is if I hear they’re doing both because then they’re doing neither very well. I’m not a fan of multi-tasking.

So, when you’re working the store and 12 boxes of who knows what comes in and you start ignoring customers to get the product checked in and put out you’re doing exactly what you have to do to keep your boss off your back. It says right in the rules & regs or policies & procedures, that we’re not to leave product sitting around un-checked in. The problem with that is… the trainees see that. The Sales Associates see it. Then they assume that their work, their assigned tasks, their widget polishing, or gadget alphabetizing is the same as receiving all those boxes… something that’s more important than the customer. We teach them that by what we do, not what we say. None of us say, “ignore the customer to get your work done,” instead, we do it while saying not to.

I ask that we hit the floor and offer to help customers periodically and get an amazing amount of push-back. It makes me mad to have Sales Associates tell me, “customers don’t want us to talk to them.” ARGH! When the SA’s say that I don’t want them to talk to me! That’s for sure lol. Don’t just stand behind the counter and wait for them to come to us but a lot of people do exactly that, saying, “Well, I’m polishing widgets, or ordering gadgets” so I don’t have time to wait on the customer. And that’s just not true! It’s so frustrating to me to see it. That’s when I go do it and then go back to what I was doing. I try and show, by example, that you can indeed stop doing something to go help customers. Helping customers shouldn’t be an interruption to your ‘real job.’ It should BE the real job!

I can tell you now, after having met with, visited with, and talked about priorities with the new bigger than big shot that priorities need to be customer first. Your new DM is that way too. We’ve been “getting better” for a long time now. It’s time to “get great” at it! Not just at employee meetings, but all the time. It’s what I intend to do in my new job to increase sales. I hope it works immediately. One of the areas we can continue to grow and beat the competition is outstanding customer service. I don’t mean to say that it’s not better today. It is. But better isn’t good enough any more. It really is time to get great. It’s also an area where first impressions are hugely important. If a DM walks in and sees customers on the floor and people checking in product or polishing widgets or whatever, and never talking to the customer they’re not going to know that you JUST got back from making the rounds, offering to help them all, and helping them. They’re going to only see that the customer is being ignored right now, at the moment they turned on the live surveillance cameras or walked in the back door. We have to not just make sure we are providing great customer service, but we actually have to look like it! Not just to the cameras, but to the customers.

When the customer walks in and sees us busy behind the counters and a floor full of people they immediately think we’re too busy to help them. If we all shout the greeting at them without looking up at them and making eye-contact that doesn’t mean anything. Shouting our greeting with offers to help before they’re even in the door all the way may meet the letter of the law in regards to greeting customers but it’s not the intent. It’s not a greeting or welcome that is meant. It’s a pro-forma going-through-the-motions greeting that is as insincere as it sounds, and as someone who’s heard lots of them… There are a LOT of bad sounding greetings out there.

I hear people now clamoring that the product must get checked in, and their store sees hundreds of people a day and how the heck do I expect them to pretend to sincerely greet each and every one of them? The thing is I don’t expect you to pretend to be sincere. I want you to feel it. I can’t make someone like customer service, but if you don’t you shouldn’t be doing it.

There will be the occasional customer you DO have to fake it with. The man with the nervous tick where he ALWAYS coughs into his hand before reaching into his pocket to get his cash. That guy, I have to pretend to like him. I don’t like him. I don’t like him at all! He makes me sick, sometimes literally as well as figuratively. But I greet him like I’m happy to see him because he’s my customer and I want him to stay my customer. The lion’s share of the customers, I am glad to see. And I never mind a break from receiving product to talk to customers. It’s a break from the receiving. I’d rather wait on customers than work on receiving product any day of the week. I was a shipping clerk at a warehouse for a year or so. It was so boring I quit. The other end of that, receiving clerk… not my cup of tea at all. I’m in this job for the customers. If you’re not then maybe it’s time for you to consider a different job too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is a complete violation of my blogging rules in regards to work. It’s neither distant from now in time, nor made up enough where the principles wouldn’t recognize themselves. I have two things going for me that make it a safe thing to do though. First, those involved don’t have or want the Internet and secondly, they don’t know my online persona so they probably won’t find this. Lastly, if they do… I don’t think they could take issue with what I’m going to say. SO! Disclaimer’s aside, and that’s not a way to grab the reader I know, but this was different enough that I felt I should.

The phone rings. It’s 730am. It’s a manager at the hospital with his expecting girlfriend. There are complications and the store opens in two hours. He can’t reach anybody what should he do? He doesn’t want to lose his job but can’t leave the hospital. I’m 8 hours away and wouldn’t get there before the next shift started anyway.

I send a broadcast text to the employees identifying myself in case they don’t have me in their phone books, identifying the problem, asking for help, and thanking them in advance. Then I sat and waited.

An hour goes past and an employee who used to be the assistant manager but who stepped down because his priorities weren’t in the right place (his words) got back to me by text. He could go in but he was supposed to work at five pm so it’d make it a double… a really long day. I thanked him. Left it up to him if he wanted to do the banking or not, not really his job, appreciate any help he can give in this time of trouble, etc. He did the banking, he volunteered to. I didn’t ask him to.

Fast-Forward to 2pm. Nobody’s gotten back to either of us about coming in to help him with the second shift. I thank him for caring enough to do the double, for having the consideration for his co-workers, the store, and the pride in his job to step up this way and help out.

He says he wished he’d had all those things when it counted when he was assistant manager. I pointed out that it still counted. He was helping out the store and I was aware of it and he’d done what no one else could or would do at a time when we needed him and that spoke volumes to his character and his caring. Again I expressed my appreciation.

I’ve thanked him three times at this point. 1) For volunteering to come in early 2) For volunteering to do the banking and 3) In advance for volunteering to stay and do a double… which he hadn’t actually volunteered to do yet. The thing is… after that talking up, that pep talk, that vote of confidence was there any expectation that he wouldn’t stay for a double shift? He stayed.

Now. I could have been a jerk. I could have just been saying those things to get what I want but that’s not the case and he and I worked together several times when he was assistant manager so he knows if I say those things I mean them. I knows that I’m not the type to blow smoke. My reputation as a manager who pays attention to good employees, recognizes good work, and good employees, that is what made yesterday possible. Had I been a jerk or been a bully, or been a flatterer who doesn’t back up the things they say, that store would not have been open. If I hadn’t earned his trust in the past I couldn’t have gotten those results yesterday.

We have to manage every day for the day when we need those employees to help us out. It’s why I think bully-management is the worst kind. There’s no way I could have made anybody come in for that shift. He had to make himself and he did. Not because I’m such a great guy. But because he is, and he knows I recognize that. I sincerely believe people want a chance to shine and be noticed shining.

I’m not taking credit for it being open. That was all due to the employee that came in 8 hours early and stayed all day, doing a 17 hour day for the store because all those things I said about him were true. He does care about the store and about his job. He does take pride in his work and in the store. He also wants that to be recognized. By recognizing good behavior we see more of it. We can, through encouraging, recognizing, and expecting outstanding behavior actually see outstanding behavior while managers who expect to see failures will see just that, at every turn.

The part where I feel like a heel for pushing the buttons that I knew would keep him there makes me feel like an ass though. The times when I do that… when I’m manipulative as a part of my job… I hate those. I feel bad for this time. He IS a good employee and everything I said is true, and I’ll help him return to assistant manager at some point in the future if he, as he said, “have done a lot of growing up since I had to step down.” I’m humbled by employees like that and wish I could do more for them monetarily than I can.

So, if you’re reading this, and you know this is you I’m talking about… When did you get Internet? What the heck?!? LoL Kidding. Thank you. Knowing you’re up there to help out is one of the ways I’m able to sleep at night.

So, I’m an area manager with eleven stores that report to me. I’m responsible for 20% of the stores in the company I work for and how’d I get here? Really?

Well, I was a manager of a store, not a very big store really. The store was frequently in the bottom 3 of the company when I took over and it worked it’s way up to bottom 4. Yeah. I know… glorious. But in that time I increased sales by quite a bit in the store and decreased turn-over. I was a good manager. I know that. I didn’t steal. I didn’t screw up too terribly ever, and my employees didn’t hate me any more than any other manager’s employees hate them when scheduling overlaps a holiday and it’s unavoidable that someone has to work it.

Then, one day the person over me transferred away. They didn’t promote up, they transferred. Nobody else would say “yes.” So… I wound up promoted. You think I’m kidding, but I’m not. I was suddenly responsible for stores that did as much in a weekend as I had previously done in a week. I had managers working FOR me that had twice the experience I had and had turned down the job I’d accepted.

I’d like to imply that my bosses saw some secret spark in me that proved to them I’d be great for my job as an area manager but I sincerely believe what they saw was a good manager who would say “yes.” Well, they were right. I was a good store manager. I still think I’m a better store manager than I am an area manager and I want to go back to store manager so bad. I’ve asked for it a lot and been turned down for it.

I see it a lot in companies where we promote people away from where they were great to a place where they’re just good. Being good as a manager of a single location isn’t the same as being great as a manager of many locations at all.

When we area managers look around and wonder where the great store managers have gone we need only look around… we’ve promoted them out of where they were great to where they’re “good.” If we were to value store managers more we’d have an easier job of things as area managers. But we tend to not pay the store managers enough… and we act like store manager is a stepping stone to where the REAL money is… and it’s not the way things should be.

I would love to give a third of my pay to half my good managers because they work harder, longer, and do a better job of things than I do… they don’t need me and I’d be a fool to send them up to an area manager position because they’re so good where they are now… I wish store managers were valued more… not just because I want to be one again either. The part of my job I work hardest at now as an area manager isn’t the paperwork, checklists, or mechanics of the job it’s trying to make sure the managers under me have all the tools they need to more effectively do their job. I see my job now as more of a way to help the people under me be more effective than for me to top-down them into the ground like a hammer driving a nail.

To all you store managers out there reading this. You’re doing a great job! I hope your hard work is recognized by your boss. I’ve had your job and I loved it and miss it. If you do it and love it never leave it… promoting up for more money isn’t the right reason to promote up in my opinion. I did it and I’d trade with you in a minute. I miss the store manager job. I miss the customers. I miss the store.