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 mistake every now and then.
I recently wrote that our plant manager was a world-class second-guesser and a national champion blame-affixer (and those are some of his good points). This will come as no surprise - he was recently removed from his duties (or vice-versa) and sent back down to the minor leagues where he came from. Our new plant manager was plant manager years ago, and was promoted away from us to a bigger plant in a less desirable area of the country. The scuttlebutt has it that his wife made him threaten to quit if they didn't find him a job in a more suitable (for her, of course) location. They took him in at HQ for a while, but he must have worn out his welcome there and they've sloughed him off on us. Added bonus: he hates my guts. This is the Einstein who was perfectly willing to fire people who showed deterioration in their hearing tests (we have annual testing) so the company could avoid paying for their hearing aids after they retire (and he was incredulous when told that this would be illegal)(it's due to managers like him that we have OSHA, NLRB, the FBI, and a boatload of other TLAs and FLAs...).
A month or two back I shared about a young engineer who had taken on a critical and difficult task when one of our senior guys quit, leaving the then-manager a heads-you-win, tails-I-lose decision about whether or not to go through with the task as it could shut the plant down (he went for it). The engineer erred - he asked a tech if the tech was familiar with the job, received an answer in the affirmative, and let the guy go on his way...to screw up because he really had no clue and was too dumb/proud/scared to admit it. Mgmt came down on the head of the engineer, even though he had busted his butt to make the job happen. He barely escaped the death by one thousand pointing fingers, and when it was clear he was less than mortally wounded (I believe I'll pull through, sir) he was slightly indignant. Indignant enough to go out and find a better job. He's gone and now we have no engineers in that section. They thought they had one hired, but I heard that the interviewee's salary demands are more than the manager makes (and nearly twice what the kid made). Proof that pointy hair will cost you money...
Some good news to report. Well, all things are relative... The new (or should I say latest) boss, who was already retirement age when we hired him, is doing very well. He filters the less rational edicts that come from above, he includes many in his deliberations and decision-making, and he has realistic expectations about the amount of work that can be done in a day. BTW when the plant manager was paddled and sent back to his old plant like a naughty school boy, it was the exec VP who came to the plant to personally administer the hacks. We all knew he was coming (the rumor mill is effective) and we laid even odds that our boss would be the one getting the professional vasectomy instead. Thankfully we were wrong. Even though the exec VP has the brain of a bi-polar rodent, he managed to get this one right.
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 mistake every now and then.
I recently wrote that our plant manager was a world-class second-guesser and a national champion blame-affixer (and those are some of his good points). This will come as no surprise - he was recently removed from his duties (or vice-versa) and sent back down to the minor leagues where he came from. Our new plant manager was plant manager years ago, and was promoted away from us to a bigger plant in a less desirable area of the country. The scuttlebutt has it that his wife made him threaten to quit if they didn't find him a job in a more suitable (for her, of course) location. They took him in at HQ for a while, but he must have worn out his welcome there and they've sloughed him off on us. Added bonus: he hates my guts. This is the Einstein who was perfectly willing to fire people who showed deterioration in their hearing tests (we have annual testing) so the company could avoid paying for their hearing aids after they retire (and he was incredulous when told that this would be illegal)(it's due to managers like him that we have OSHA, NLRB, the FBI, and a boatload of other TLAs and FLAs...).
A month or two back I shared about a young engineer who had taken on a critical and difficult task when one of our senior guys quit, leaving the then-manager a heads-you-win, tails-I-lose decision about whether or not to go through with the task as it could shut the plant down (he went for it). The engineer erred - he asked a tech if the tech was familiar with the job, received an answer in the affirmative, and let the guy go on his way...to screw up because he really had no clue and was too dumb/proud/scared to admit it. Mgmt came down on the head of the engineer, even though he had busted his butt to make the job happen. He barely escaped the death by one thousand pointing fingers, and when it was clear he was less than mortally wounded (I believe I'll pull through, sir) he was slightly indignant. Indignant enough to go out and find a better job. He's gone and now we have no engineers in that section. They thought they had one hired, but I heard that the interviewee's salary demands are more than the manager makes (and nearly twice what the kid made). Proof that pointy hair will cost you money...
Some good news to report. Well, all things are relative... The new (or should I say latest) boss, who was already retirement age when we hired him, is doing very well. He filters the less rational edicts that come from above, he includes many in his deliberations and decision-making, and he has realistic expectations about the amount of work that can be done in a day. BTW when the plant manager was paddled and sent back to his old plant like a naughty school boy, it was the exec VP who came to the plant to personally administer the hacks. We all knew he was coming (the rumor mill is effective) and we laid even odds that our boss would be the one getting the professional vasectomy instead. Thankfully we were wrong. Even though the exec VP has the brain of a bi-polar rodent, he managed to get this one right.
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