I once worked for someone whose pattern of rampant dishonesty blew my mind. Shortly after beginning work, I realized two things: Ernie absolutely could not admit that he was wrong, and he consistently lied to everyone around him – coworkers, staff, and users.
You’re just trying to get to a final result, but the other party doesn’t seem to have the foggiest idea how to get there. To add insult to injury, the other party doesn’t accept your way to get there. You end up stuck and frustrated.
An email ruined my weekend. (And I’m still mad.) It was an email filled with extraordinarily useless feedback, including completely false accusations. The person who sent it was so unaware … Continue reading Useless Feedback
It’s easier than you may think to ‘kill’ your managers. I’m personally not the greatest middle manager in the world, but I’m grateful for my time as one, since it … Continue reading Are you killing your managers?
When RecruitLoop and I were in our final stages of negotiating, we started talking about value. About how my primary concern was feeling valued by a company. Talking about value on both sides honestly is probably what got us to the point where we had an agreeable situation for both sides – we knew where we stood, and both sides could see that we considered each other valuable.
The day we got to a verbal agreement, something surprising happened. They asked for my home address (something about lawyers needing it for the docs), and then, a bit later, sent me an email that said:
Ben at the front desk should have something for you (and your husband) tonight 🙂
Just to set the stage, it had been a crazy day. It was my husband’s birthday, I had a flat tire that I had to replace, I was talking to someone I knew from high school about working at Amazon, and I had just verbally accepted a job offer. When I got the email, I was sitting at my desk playing stupid computer games in order to take a much-needed mental break. I usually wasn’t home that early, but (thanks to the car) I was this time. I looked at my computer in confusion a few times, grabbed my keys, and headed down to the front desk of my apartment building.
As I approached the front desk, Ben (our fantastic concierge) pulled out a wine bag and said, “It’s not from me.”
I may or may not have thanked him. I was shocked. Stunned. I looked in the bag and realized that there was a bottle of Oregon Pinot Noir in it. This meant that they had actually listened to some of our social conversation when I mentioned that wine was one of my hobbies, and that Oregon Pinots were my favorite. And then they had done something that seemed magical – they managed to get a bottle sent to me the very day that I verbally accepted their offer.
To put it mildly, I felt pretty darn valued at that point :).
What they don’t know, however (until now, of course), is that this gesture was beyond perfect for me…
At one of my law firms, the management team would constantly talk about what employees wanted. We wanted to figure this out, since it would help with morale and retention. Could we ask the partners to give out bonuses, or would more salary help, or whatnot. During these conversations, I’d always say this:
It would mean more to me if the partners gave me a bottle of wine than a bonus. In giving me a bottle of wine, they’d show that they knew what I valued and demonstrated that they value me in return.
Interestingly, I never got a bottle of wine from the partners. But I got a bottle of wine – my favorite kind, no less – from RecruitLoop. Demonstrate that they value me? Nailed it.
There’s a big lesson in this for me. It’s that it’s really not that costly to truly show employees that you value them. It takes attention and a little bit of time, but it’s not that hard. And while it may not be hard, showing value goes a really long way.
I was recently reading an article about why Agile implementations are failing (yes, I’m a total geek), and it got me thinking about safety. I haven’t thought much about safety explicitly (beyond being an Amazon Safety Czar for my floor, which is different from emotional safety – I have a bright orange vest :)), but now I realize how important it is for your team to feel emotionally safe at work.
If your staff doesn’t feel safe, things might get pretty rough.
I’ve been thinking of ways to identify when folks don’t feel safe, and I’ve come up with the following:
I haven’t been thinking about this issue for long, so I’m sure I’ve missed things. What other safety warning signs are there?
A few years back, I realized I was killing my staff.
I thought I had found the ultimate in productivity. In order to manage my completely ridiculous inbox, I found a system. Each night, I’d leave the office late and go wait for the bus. While I was waiting, I would use my trusty Blackberry to clear out my inbox. I would merrily send emails as follow-ups, delete things, and set myself up for a pretty darn productive next day. Hey – I’ve always loved the concept of Inbox Zero (even though practicing it in Outlook is pretty much impossible). This made me, well, happy.
I’d go home, make (well, order) dinner, and relax, knowing that I was prepared for the next day.
And then something really annoying would start happening – my Blackberry would start going off. My team, fresh from their own dinners, would start replying to my email. Being a rather Type A personality, I’d then feel the need to read the email, which kind-of messed with my evening, but I got enough email from others that it didn’t mess it up that much. I’d ignore the email until the next day (except for urgent ones), and go to bed.
The next morning, I’d walk into the office, perfectly chipper because I knew what my day entailed. On my way to my office, I’d do my usual check-ins with my team (my office was at the end of the hall, so I did morning drive-bys).
Oddly, I found exhausted people who would immediately ask me if their response was OK, or expect me to have responded to their responses.
Sometimes I can be a bit slow, but after a few weeks (months?), I realized that my team was stressed and becoming less productive. I eventually even realized it was my fault. When I was replying to email after hours, they assumed I expected them to do the same. Sadly, they were already working enough, and I wasn’t expecting it. But I was the manager, and that’s what I was doing.
So I stopped. It was downright painful to have to come in each morning with a full inbox and deal with things I could have dealt with the night before, but the change in my staff was worth it. Their stress levels went down, they eased into their mornings, and they became more productive because they stopped working stupidly.
Here’s the thing with being a manager – YOU are the mold. You are what your team attempts to replicate. If you work stupidly, they work stupidly. If you work late, they work late. If you answer email at all hours, they answer email at all hours.If you manage stupidly, you’ll eventually kill them with stress. Or at least lose them to your competitors.
It’s easy to manage stupidly. Are you managing stupidly without realizing it?
I know, lame title. But I recently had an experience that reminded me that it’s not easy to make an effective informal business argument, and I wanted to record some of my take-aways. Note that I’m not going to tell you whether I’m the person who may or may not have made some of the errors below :).
I’m sure I’ve missed some. What are other ineffective ways to make business proposals?
I realize that pretty much everyone is writing about the Yahoo! work from home debacle (hi Jim!). Just in case you’re living under a rock, here’s the salient part of the memo:
To become the absolute best place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we need to be working side-by-side. That is why it is critical that we are all present in our offices. Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people, and impromptu team meetings. Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home. We need to be one Yahoo!, and that starts with physically being together.
Beginning in June, we’re asking all employees with work-from-home arrangements to work in Yahoo! offices. If this impacts you, your management has already been in touch with next steps. And, for the rest of us who occasionally have to stay home for the cable guy, please use your best judgment in the spirit of collaboration. Being a Yahoo isn’t just about your day-to-day job, it is about the interactions and experiences that are only possible in our offices.
I’ve heard lots of good and bad points about this, but several things just boggle my mind. Here’s my list. In order to attempt to be entertaining, I’ll start each point with my actual knee-jerk thoughts.
I realize that very little of this hasn’t been said already, but I just had to contribute to the discussion. Am I right? Am I crazier than usual?
I’m becoming convinced that there are three basic types of managers: chutes, shields, and shows. Each of these types should be preceded by a certain word that I won’t say on my blog, so let’s call it stuff.
Especially if you’re a new manager, is is incredibly easy to be a stuff chute. If you’re a chute, you take all the stuff generated above you, concentrate it, and direct it directly at your staff. You’re a chute if you:
If you haven’t figured it out, you don’t want to be a chute. Maybe you think you’re doing things right by being transparent about the “hair on fire” attitude of the PTBs, but what you’re really doing is concentrating all of the stuff from them and stressing out your team with it. Unfortunately, chutes tend to have stressed out staff who dislike their employers, which leads to morale and retention problems.
It’s definitely harder to be a stuff shield. You have to walk the tightrope between transparency with your team and shielding them from the stuff from above. You’re a shield if you:
In the battle of the corporate world, shields sometimes fail (as you might), but you can always re-arm. (Did I push that metaphor too far? Sorry about that…)
The most annoying managers create their own stuff, so I call them stuff shows. They might also be chutes – or even (rarely) shields – but they primarily function as shows. You might be a show if you:
I can come up with an almost endless list of how to be a show, but I’m hoping you get the idea.
Clearly, you’d rather be a shield than a chute or a show. Unfortunately, I’ve seen very few managers who are shields who haven’t spent significant time and effort on meeting the needs of their team. How to be a shield, however, is a post for another day.
Leading Geeks 