Middle Management Blues

Behind every screw-up, behind every poor decision, behind every botched project there lurks a conflict.   Someone, somewhere was not sure about what to do, or they favored the wrong thing, or they just plain misjudged the situation and bad things happened.   Bad things, man.   Life for a manager is tough enough and then fate throws bad things down.   How many times this week have you had to drop the good stuff to go pick up the debris from a conflict? Trouble is, you rarely know a conflict is brewing.   They don’t teach ESP at Harvard last I heard, and they didn’t teach it at my beloved Podunk state school either.   There are pretty twisted people in my department, whether it is natural or self-induced, and I doubt I would want to know what they are thinking anyway.   But for their own good (and my own good) I need to know.   Maybe I can guess… I’m not talking about the traditional definition of “conflict” here.   We don’t have emplo...

If you scroll down a bit you will see a section on the right hand side that has a few flippant sayings and decoders of things I occasionally say.   One of them is WIIFM, what’s in it for me, which I claim is the key to motivation.   Someone wrote in and basically told me I was full of it, because if people only did things that were best for them the world would be a shallow, greedy place.   In that context I absolutely agree.   But you’re missing the point… Motivation is a tricky business.   What motivates some is a downer for others.   What works today fails miserably tomorrow.   There is no sure thing.   There has been a lot written about it by folks with more pedigree than me, and they probably know what they are talking about (except for Lou Holtz ).   I’ll sum up many pages and many dollars worth of writing in one simple sentence: Know your people . Piece of cake, right?   Back when Bill Parcells coached the Giants, I...

I’ve always heard that batting is the hardest thing to do in sports.   The guys who are very good at it make it safely to base 40% of the time (aka on-base percentage or obp).   (According to espn.com, only seven majorleaguers have an obp above .400 at this point of the season.)   This also means that the best in the world FAIL 60% of the time. How about soccer (or football in the rest of the world)?   Argentinian Carlos Tevez led Man City in goals last year in the EPL.   He had 20.   On 120 shots.   About a 17% success rate.   Yes, I know that’s not really a fair judge of performance on the pitch, but strip it down and the guy only succeeds once for every six tries. American football?   There would be very little controversy if you proclaimed that both Tom Brady and Peyton Manning are among the best ever to play quarterback, and yet neither of them succeeds more than two times out of three, and Manning actually gave the ball aw...

There are two people at work who drive me absolutely nutty.   Neither has seen the inside of a gym in years ; both are loud know-it-alls (who don’t know half what they think they know) and both play the power game and crap all over the poor people who work for them (while at the same time telling those same people that everyone else did the crapping but them).   I think you can guess that they are both ass-kissing lackeys.   They both have abilities, and it’s a shame that they have gone to the dark side. What is it about human nature that makes me think they are in it solely for themselves and not for the team?   I would swear on a stack of Business Weeks that every move they make is designed and preplanned to bring glory to themselves and work and drudgery to others.   However, I would bet a paycheck that they believe in their tiny, puny little hearts that they are uber-team players. I’m writing this in the aftermath of the rancor in DC about the ...

Ah, sweet summertime, allowing me to hang outside until bedtime.  Unfortunately I haven't been writing, but you already knew that.  So, some catching up... In a recent post that seemed to be about the band Phish but really had some lessons it in (trust me), I forgot to mention one thing about younger workers that I should have made clear: they screw up.  All the time.  In my org this is the opportunity for the manager to pull the poor quivering kid into his office, close the door, and make like a dickhead for five or ten minutes.  There really are few better ways to stifle creativity than yelling and screaming.  However, if you can stomach a mistake now and then, and if you're patient, and if you can keep the kid out from under the bus people will send for him, the bright light of new stuff will guide you into obscene bonuses and thoughtless promotions.  Or not.  Just go easy on them - they were you, once.  You can tolerate a...

You may know author Norman MacLean from the short story “ A River Runs Through It ” which was made into a movie starring Brad Pitt and Tom Skerritt.   MacLean also wrote a fascinating study of a forest fire in Montana in 1949 that killed twelve “Smokejumpers”, the elite fire fighting parachutists.   The fire at Mann Gulch in central Montana takes up the first half of “ Young Men and Fire ”, published two years after Maclean’s death in 1990.   The second half is the story within the story of MacLean’s efforts to find what really happened so he could write the first half of the book, all the while knowing he had to hurry because time was gaining on him. It may be a stretch to fold an account of a forest fire in the middle of BFE into a blog about management, but as I read the book I realized similar situations happen at work, although our fires are obviously figurative.   I’ve wondered to myself if I would have had the foresight and the courage to unearth the proble...

Organizations tend to take on the personalities of their leaders.   I fought this one, I really did.   I tried to find examples in my organization where this wasn’t true.   I failed, utterly.   There are considerations to make.   In the case of my group, after about 12 months they began to be a little more relaxed, a little more willing to change, and a little less likely to make excuses when things didn’t go well (in other words, more like me).   Unfortunately, they also bitched a lot more about upper management, they were less patient with their operations counterparts, and they were too easy on the mechanics (in other words, too much like me).   Of course their personalities did not fundamentally change.   I’m asserting that they all moved just a tad (a noticeable tad, mind you) closer to me. I admit to changing as well.   I am definitely less laid back than I was when I took this job.   Though I’ve had more bosses than Bill Simmons...

I’ve blathered more than once in these pages of my admiration for Phish.   I’m not a true Phan, because I’ve never been to a concert, but that doesn’t stop me from having opinions (imagine that!).   Though I’m a connoisseur I think the overall quality of the songwriting has gone downhill since the golden age of Phish that occurred in the early 1990s.   It’s no coincidence that the four members of Phish were all in their late twenties at the time.   Let’s look back… After forming in the mid 1980s, the band released a series of self-produced CDs that features many songs still in the band’s playlist.   Many have unusual chords, tempos, keys and arrangements that are interesting and entertaining, but they don’t always work.   The songs lurch in spots.   The first time I heard them I thought it self-indulgent, but I’ve learned to disregard such foolish thoughts.   This is what an artist calls “challenging the listeners”.   Bearing in mind here tha...

You would think that if your chosen management style was to act decisively after bad things happen (in other words, being reactive) then you would be pretty good at it.   You would think that if you declare for all to hear that your management style is being pro-active, then you wouldn’t be reactive.   You would think that it would be impossible to combine to naturally opposing management styles, but I’m here to tell you all that it is indeed very possible and astoundingly bad. Bad in this case is called over-reacting.   One of my favorite sayings around work is that there’s no use reacting when you can over-react.   It purports to show your underlings that you are in control (even though you’re not) but what it really shows is that you are clueless.   Here’s the story… The Mardi Gras of the plant calendar is the week we shut the boilers down for maintenance.   Since the plant barely operates without steam, every department gets in on the act and does...

Training professionals is a tricky business.   Around here the daydream scenario (for both the professionals and management, strangely enough) is a week in Orlando (or Vegas , yeah, Vegas, baby) on a subject that is somewhat germane but with a outfit that knows that half the attendees come in with a hangover in the morning and the other half will be on the golf course (or …) right after lunch.   The professionals all want a boondoggle like this but never get it.   Management thinks their professionals treat any training this way, but few actually do.   Usually it is the weasels who eventually become managers who screw off, so I guess we can close that loop. A manager gets that faraway look in his eyes when the subject of training arises.   In abstract, training could do wonders for his department.   One can see him wistfully thinking of the day when all his people know every detail of any possible permutation of a days events, and do all the hard labor to...

I would imagine there are many organizations that spend a good deal of management’s time and effort in promoting a “team” or “family” atmosphere. My organization spends its idle time in related pursuits. Fridays tend to be low-key since much of the maintenance department works four-tens (M-Th). Recently management made the decision to hold “town hall” meetings every Friday morning in an effort to bring us closer together. They bought motivational books and handed them out, and unleashed a new vision statement that showed an awkward attempt to promote “family” and “relating with integrity”. The high-level managers have been taking turns “teaching” these concepts, which takes about half the time allotted, and then they spend the remainder going around the room asking for feedback from the attendees. As I am a professional cynic, I did not have any kind thoughts when it came time for me to share my views. On the other hand, I have just an inkling of hope each time that mgmt is ...

Since I am a professional griper, or at least I strive to be a professional griper, I should complain bitterly and meanly about travelling. It seems that many people who do what I do LOVE to complain about travel. And, yeah, there are some things about it that suck, e.g. missing the family, getting stuck in places like this , (and BTW that has got to be one of the worst airport web pages in the history of the internets), losing your luggage, and bathing in airport restrooms. (Did I forget the "MOOOs" while waiting to board any Southwest flight? I did? Sorry.) Ladies and Gentlemen! It's really not that bad. Right at this moment I'm sitting in an airport terminal waiting for an airplane that, God willing, gets me home. And this part does suck. But I've been having a great time (until now). I met some new, interesting people. I ate some food that I enjoyed and would probably never have tried had I been with other folks. I saw some sights that are famous (to some peo...

I am now working for my 5th boss in lees than three years. I'll wait just a bit so that this will sink in... It's a position just a heartbeat away from plant manager. It's pretty important to the whole organization. The only person who has more folks under him, directly and indirectly, is the plant manager. Decisions made by the person in this spot have a huge impact. Remember the old joke about it taking 1000 bolts to build a car but it only takes one nut to scatter it all over the road? The guy two bosses back was pretty nutty, but he doesn't hold a Roman candle to the new guy. This might be a good thing. Then again, it might be another catastrophe. Bad things first... The new guy is old. He has been receiving this for at least a decade. He doesn't hear well and I am terrified to take him out in the plant because he doesn't walk very well, either. The boys have taken to calling him "Walleye" because his left eye is so lazy that he ca...

I've been doing other things lately, so it's nice to get back to writing. Plenty of things to think about... I wrote a few weeks ago about my experience on the negotiating team, and how it's sometimes better to have a cohesive union. After a few weeks negotiating we dead-fish flopped our way to a contract that both sides accepted, only to have the union rank and file dump it like the barf bag it was. No new talks are scheduled. I continue to be dumbfounded by the flat ignorance on both sides. The union (or I should say a vocal segment of the union) is steadfast against any company take-aways, and the company is just as stubborn that the take-aways will indeed by a part of the new deal. It appears that the company is "winning". The hourly folks simply do not have the leadership to pull the group in any direction. They have to rely on the company to give them something they can all stand behind, and the compny, in their infinite idiocy, have handed them a g...