Work Matters

Category: Bosses

  • Why Newcomers Often See Things More Clearly Than Old Hands

    The Wall Street Journal had a fascinating story this morning about about "Fabulous Fab" Tourre, the young Goldman Sachs banker who is at the center of their latest public relations nightmare.  Writer Dennis Berman argues that Fab may be A Hero in Villain's Garb because, if you look at the emails he sent to friends, he is often questioning his "place in an-ever absurd realm of CDs, CDOs, and CDO-squareds."  Berman notes that Tourre "expresses deep doubts about some of the very things that got Wall Street in such a mess."  The inspired part of Berman's analysis is that, although Goldman called the Fab's emails "immature and embarrassing to the firm,"  he suggests that we consider that the Fab's:

    "[D]oubts and concerns reflect the virtues of newcomers in organizations — when they first arrive, they can see the virtues, flaws, and quirks of an organizational culture.  But as they become more deeply socialized, they begin to accept it all as "normal," and do not question — or even notice –what they are doing or why the are doing it."  

    Building on Berman's lovely point, the young and under-socialized are often those who see the world for what it is, and speak up about it.  Of course, it is a child who speaks the truth in the "The Emperor's New Clothes," the classic the tale by 'Hans Christian Andersen about two
    weavers who promise an Emperor a new suit of clothes invisible to those
    unfit for their positions or incompetent.  When the Emperor parades before his subjects in his new clothes, a child
    cries out, "But he isn't wearing anything at all!"

    The Goldman case aside (I am not ready to call The Fab a hero), there is a crucial lesson here for every boss and every organization.  Awareness — and innovation too– depend on listening to the young and naive, to those who are not yet brainwashed and unable to see what is odd, wrong, and what might be done differently.   As I argued in Weird Ideas That Work, if you are an expert, seek and listen to novices, as their fresh eyes can provide insights that you are unable to see.  Or as Diego puts it over at Metacool, seeing old things in new ways, depends on finding ways to adopt "the beginners mind" or "the mind of a child."  In some organization's I have worked with, senior executives accomplish this with "reverse mentoring" programs, where they are assigned to listen to and be coached by newcomers.  This is an effective strategy if the veterans actually make it safe for the rookies to speak their minds.

    Along these lines, one of my favorite stories (as told by Firefox's Asa Dotzler) was when Netscape hired a 15 year-old kid named Blake Ross as a summer intern. Blake apparently stood-up at a company meeting and explained why the website had become so crappy and was doomed to fail.  This is the same 15 year-old kid who had been working for free on the Netscape open source project that eventually led to the development of the Firefox browser — and had spent hundreds of hours stripping-out lousy Netscape code, so he knew what he was talking about. And his prediction about the demise of Netscape was on target. 

  • Mass Exodus at Gorilla Coffee: Employees flee from “perpetually malicious, hostile, and demeaning work environment”

    One of the last posts I wrote before taking a couple weeks off warned that, since the economy seems to be finally coming back and job opportunities are on the rise,it just might be the last chance for many incompetent and nasty bosses and organizations to finally start treating their people right — otherwise employees may start running for the exits.

    Well, although I am not sure the economic upturn played a role, the story of Gorilla Coffee in New York City provides a cautionary tale for every asshole boss.  The New York Times "Diner's Journal" reported on April 11th that nearly all the employees resigned, that the coffee shop "isn't going to open anytime soon," and the allegedly abused employees who quit are seeking jobs elsewhere.  The story in The Times (it looks like a blog post) reveals staggering differences between the employee's and owner's perspective:  The owners said things like:

    “It’s a complete surprise." 

    And they portrayed Gorilla as a workplace that "is mostly happy if
    often busy,"     but:

    When one employee started expressing her dissatisfaction,
    “it got out of hand.”

    In contrast, the long letter (see the story) from employees explaining why the mass resignation occurred tells a much different tale:

    The issues brought up with the owners of Gorilla Coffee yesterday are
    issues that they have been aware of for some time. These issues which
    have repeatedly been brushed aside and ignored have created a
    perpetually malicious, hostile, and demeaning work environment that was
    not only unhealthy, but also, as our actions have clearly shown,
    unworkable.

    The Times also reported that employees felt especially abused by:

    Carol McLaughlin, one of
    the two owners, and demanded that she withdraw from daily operations at
    the coffee bar.

    And that:

    When both owners refused, seven baristas quit. (Another barista
    resigned, but the owners say that person wasn’t an employee.)

    Of course, I can't know all the facts here because the stories are so different and the 87 comments from Times readers further muddy the picture — although there is a pretty strong hint that the asshole poisoning also was evident in how employees treated customers.  And if you look at research on power dynamics, odds are that those in power — the owners — were oblivious and insensitive to their underlings. 

    Regardless, this story, along with my earlier post, suggests that it is a good time for all bosses to ask themselves what their followers really think of them — a lot of leaders out there are living in a fool's paradise.  As this story shows, the costs of being seen by your people as an asshole (or simply incompetent, I would add) can be mighty high regardless of what YOU believe about yourself as a boss.  Remember, if you are the boss, the test of the quality of your leadership is what your followers think of you, NOT what you think of yourself.

    This story also reminds me of a saying by Jim Goodnight , CEO and co-founder of SAS software, which is currently #1 on Fortune's best place to work rankings.  He often says something like, " When my people go home at night, I just hope that they come back in the morning, otherwise I am out of business."   The Gorilla Coffee case reveals the truth of Goodnight's wise words. 

    P.S. Thanks to Johanna for sending this story my way. 

  • Dear Bosses: Is It Your Last Chance To Reverse Your Vile Ways? Or Is It Too Late?

    I was delighted to read that, finally, we saw some serious job growth last month in the United States, with 162,000 new jobs added in March.  When this bright news is blended with the recent Conference Board study showing that employee dissatisfaction is at an all time high (less than half of Americans are satisfied with their jobs, down from 61% in 2005, and workers under 25 are especially dissatisfied), it suggests that a lot of companies and bosses better come to grips with the fact that many of their best people are laying in wait, patiently grinding out the days, but will dash for the exits when the job market gets better. 

    As much research shows — by Gallup and many academics too — people quit bosses, not organizations for the most part. If you are a boss and believe that your people love you and will never leave you, well, it just might be a good time to look in the mirror.   As I've discussed here before, the very act of wielding power can make you blind to how your subordinates are really responding to you.  And, of course, given the lack of options, many smart employees (especially those with emotional control and long-term time perspectives) realize that the wisest strategy is to stay on the good side of a bad boss to avoid negative performance reviews and the demotions or firings that often follow — and so they will get good recommendations when they try to land a better job (and boss) down the road.  This means, dear bosses, that you may well be victim to a game of mutual deception, where you are deluding yourself into believing that you are great at your job, but if you really knew how it felt to work for you, you would be shocked to discover that you are seen as an asshole, incompetent, or both.  AND your most able employees are helping you sustain this delusion to protect themselves in the short-term and keep their options open in the long-term.

    After these years of cost-cutting and treating employees as if they are damn lucky to have a job, we are seeing hints that the balance of power is starting to swing back back to employees. A lot of companies and bosses have treated their people badly during the rough last few years — doing far damage than is necessary (as I have written about in Harvard Business Review article and talk about in this related video on the McKinsey site).  It is probably too late for many lousy employers and managers out there to reverse course, as even if they try to do so, their people will  rightfully see it is an inauthentic ploy.  But a good start for many companies might be to try to figure out who your worst bosses are and make an extra effort to reform or (if necessary) remove them as quickly as you  can.  And even if you have been a truly good boss — or good company — during these tough times, it might be a good time to take stock and consider how to treat your people even better and find out what they really need to be happy and perform well on their jobs — and do everything within your power to give to them. 

    I would be very curious to hear from readers: If you are a boss, are you stepping up your efforts to treat your people well?   What about those of you out there with good bosses?  Is the research right?  Have you built up loyalty that will persist when the good times return?   And what about those of you with crummy bosses, have you been waiting, patiently, to politely tell your vile overseer to take this job and shove it when something better comes along?

  • The Power of the First Follower

    Check out this fantastic 3 minute TED video.  Derek Sivers provides a brilliant brief conceptual analysis, touching on points including:

    1. Leaders are over-rated, if someone does not follow, they are just lone nuts.

    2. The first follower is the one who creates a leader.

    3. The leader had the wisdom to treat the first follower as an equal, which encouraged him to join and stay.

    4.  The people who come after everyone's doing it are interesting, as they rush to get there soon enough when it is still cool but safe because a lot of people are doing it.

    5. At some point, it may spread so far that people will risk ridicule for not joining.

    6. Leaders are over-rated, early — especially first followers — followers provide an underrated form of leadership.

    I would add, as a small addition, that another way to think about the leader here is he succeeded because he was sensitive to what would motivate the first follower and the other early followers. 

    This is a case of influence by someone without authority.  But just think if you had authority and also applied these principles. That is what great leaders — and first followers — do, it seems. 

    P.S. A big thanks to Scott for sending this my way.

  • I Think Bloggers Matter at Lot, But Blurbs Don’t Matter Much for Creating Buzz: What is Your Opinion?

    I have been putting the final touches on my new book, Good Boss, Bad Boss: How To Be The Best …. and Learn From The Worst.  It is already available for pre-order on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, but as it isn't out until September 7th, it seems a little early to talk about it too much and in any event, the pictures and text there need to be repaired.  You will be hearing more about the content book here in the coming months, but in the meantime, I thought I would raise a little marketing theory that I have, and ask people what they think.

    When I did my first book  The Knowing-Doing Gap, now a decade ago, with Jeff Pfeffer, we were told by our publisher that we needed blurbs, those endorsements by well-known people, to help sell the book.  I commented that I didn't think they were necessary, my publisher agreed, but said to go ahead and get some anyway. And so we spent weeks and weeks — getting turned by quite a few people — but ultimately got some pretty good people, notably John Chambers from Cisco (who did not read the book),  and Bob Waterman (who did read it), and also Richard Kovacevich of Wells Fargo (who also read it).  For my next two books, I got blurbs as instructed and got a lot of well-known people, and we turned down by many more.  These three books sold pretty well, but none was a blockbuster. 

    Then along came The No Asshole Rule, with my then new editor Rick Wolff at Business Plus.  His philosophy was, if you could get someone really famous who was exactly right for the book, blurbs were good, but otherwise, they have little impact because after all they are not reviews, they are praise (and in fact, are edited by authors and publishers). So I tried for Richard Branson of Virgin fame as he seemed perfect.  That didn't work, so we went forward with no blurbs, just a statement on the back that says "Are you part of the problem or part of the solution?"   So, my first book with no blurbs also became my first New York Times and BusinessWeek bestseller. I believe that, any qualities of the book aside, the the most effective thing we did was to send out a bunch of advanced copies to bloggers (especially people who I had some past relationship with through Work Matters or for other reasons), and that got the buzz going.  There are other reasons, but I think that is the most important.

    So, here I am with my new book, Good Boss, Bad Boss.  The story is the same. I tried one very famous boss that i admire more than the rest.  He has never endorsed a book before, but I figured I would try. That failed, he told me he liked the book but decided to continue his policy so he would not be deluged with requests.  As a result, we decided to ask no one else, are putting a bit of text about the book on the back, and are again going to rely on bloggers for advanced buzz and of course all the usual press outlets.  Now, I still do blurbs for other people and I do hope they help.  And it is always fun to read a book in the early stages.  But as you can tell, my perspective at this point is that blurbs don't help much — but having a lot of bloggers and other websites buzzing about a book does.

    I wonder what other people think.  Am I overgeneralizing from my very small sample?  What do you think when you read a blurb on a book?   Is it a hollow ritual or something that actually affects your opinion?

  • Blame is Contagious, Except When People Have High Self-Worth

    A pair of themes that I have returned to over and over again at Work Matters are:

    1. One of the most revealing tests of a leader or organization is "what happens when people fail" (especially, creating psychologically safety rather than a climate of fear is important, as is accountability for mistakes).

    2. Emotions, especially negative ones, are dangerously contagious.  Indeed, one of the main themes of The No Asshole Rule is that one of the most reliable way to turn into a jerk is to have a boss who is a jerk or to enter a swarm of of them — it is hard to resist catching the poisoning.  

    A recent study by Nathaniel Fast at USC (who got his PhD at Stanford) and Stanford Business School Professor Larissa Tiedens in the January 2010 issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology provides compelling new evidence of the nuances of how an especially vile form of nastiness spreads — blaming others when things go wrong.  The article is called “Blame Contagion: The Automatic Transmission of Self-Serving
    Attributions” and is apparently the first series of experiments that have ever examined if blaming others spreads like a contagious disease. Plus it contains a fascinating twist — blame was highly contagious EXCEPT when the researchers first took steps to help research subjects bolster their self worth.  There is a great summary of on the USC website here.  But some key highlights are (quoted from the summary):

    1. Anyone can become a blamer, Fast said, but there are some common traits.
    Typically, they are more ego defensive, have a higher likelihood of
    being narcissistic and tend to feel chronically insecure.

    2. The experiments showed that individuals who watched someone blame
    another for mistakes went on to do the same with others.In one experiment, half of the participants were asked to read a
    newspaper article about a failure by Gov. Schwarzenegger, who blamed
    special interest groups for the controversial special election that
    failed in 2005, costing the state $250 million. A second group read an
    article in which the governor took full responsibility for the failure.     Those who read about the governor blaming special interest groups
    were more likely to blame others for their own unrelated shortcomings,
    compared with those who read about Schwarzenegger shouldering the
    responsibility    .     (the emphasis in mine). 

    3. Another experiment found that self-affirmation inoculated
    participants from blame. The tendency for blame to spread was completely
    eliminated in a group of participants who had the opportunity to affirm
    their self-worth. “By giving participants the chance to bolster their self-worth, we
    removed their need to self-protect though subsequent blaming,” Fast
    said.

    This last finding is especially important and has all sorts of interesting implications for leadership, life, and  especially politics.  Apparently, pointing fingers at others is not only contagious, it is amplified by insecurity and apparently eliminated when people feel valued and esteemed.   Note this crucial to the effectiveness of a group or organization because, when something goes wrong, if the response is a "circular firing squad" as I have heard it called, then not only do people devote their energy to attacking each other, they have less energy — and little incentive — for working on repairing the problem.  

    Also, this research perhaps helps explain the sad state of much of American politics these days. Blamestorming is a contagious disease that has spread and I am confident that among those in the political ranks (or who aspire to higher office) the incidence of insecurity and especially narcissism is very high.  As an example of someone who plays in both spheres, Carly Fiornia former HP CEO and now candidate for Senate in California was infamous for her narcissism and her penchant for blaming others, as documented in the Fortune article that finally drove he board to fire her.  Turning to her new life as a politician, if  you have not seen her Demon Sheep Attack Ad, you have missed something weird and wonderful). Although Carly does not suffer from insecurity, the narcissism findings ring true.

    To return to leadership and management, the lesson from this new research, as well as many other studies of psychological safety. is that great bosses treat mistakes as an opportunity to learn, develop careers, and make the system stronger. And, yes, for accountability too.  As the USC summary of the above research indicates, there are organizations out there that are remarkably good at learning from mistakes, rather than as an opportunity for finger-pointing and humiliation of culprits:

    Or managers could follow the lead of companies such as Intuit, which
    implemented a “When Learning Hurts” session where they celebrated and
    learned from mistakes, rather than pointing fingers and assigning blame.
    The blame contagion research provides empirical evidence that such a
    practice can avoid negative effects in the culture of the organizatio    n.

    This is damn good advice for any boss.

     

  • If Your Actions Inspire People to Dream More, Learn More, Do More and Become More, Then You Are A Leader

    Apparently, John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of the United States said that. I like that quote because, while so much writing, research, and advice focuses on what leaders say and do (which is right), sometimes people forget that the measure of a leader is found in how he or she affects others, and Adams makes the point so well.

    I encountered this quote in an "inspirational" slide deck with music called "Are You A Leader," which was apparently done by a company called Signature. A reader named Matt was kind enough to point me to it, suggesting I might like it.  I did like a lot of the quotes in it and it was well done, although it is a little too pretty and uncritical for my tastes, but that probably says more about my personality than the quality of the deck — which was clearly done with much thought and care.

  • Let’s Invent a New Word or Phrase: What do you call someone who “opts out of participating in something but then complains about the outcome.”

    This question came in an email yesterday from Mozilla's Asa Dotzler, who is renowned for his skill as an open-source marketer, especially in spreading the Firefox browser.  The engine that propels any open source community is having a wide range of smart and hardworking people who generate and refine solutions, and are eager to step in and fix them when things go wrong.  So maintaining norms that encourage people to participate in generating solutions and making decisions– rather than those who don't pitch in or help make decisions but always complain bitterly about the outcome  — is crucial to any open source community. 

    I would add that the same goes for life inside organizations: Some people refuse to speak-up or pitch-in when ideas are being developed, are unable or unwilling to go to key meetings, and generally don't have the will, time, or inclination to help their colleagues, but then repeatedly shoot-down the decisions that are made, refuse to help implement them, and bad mouth their more hardworking colleagues.  They are destructive assholes in my book.  Indeed, as Jeff Pfeffer and I showed in The Knowing-Doing Gap, there are some organizations where people seem to get rewarded and promoted for shooting down other people and their ideas — not for generating, proposing, and implementing ideas.  At one large bank we studied, we saw and were told about episode after episode where people who proposed new ideas were ripped to pieces. The people who got ahead in the organization had learned it was career suicide to actually develop and push ideas — the rewards were all given to critics who not only took down the new ideas, but also took down people who developed and proposed them.

    To return to Asa and his friends at Mozilla, they want to discourage this kind of behavior (and so do people in a lot of other workplaces), and are trying to come-up with a punchy, sticky, and fun word to describe these destructive characters.  Here is what Asa wrote me:

    A few of us at the office today realized that we didn't
    have a good word for someone who opts out of participating in something but
    then complains about the outcome. The most obvious example is someone who
    doesn't vote and then laments the election results. Ideally this word wouldn't
    be specific to simply expressing a preference (as in voting) because we'd like
    it to also include people who, given the opportunity to participate in
    something much more involved (say, stopping global
    warming,) fail to take advantage that offer and then
    complain about the results.
     


    We came up with a few multi-hyphenated phrases, what I'm
    calling the "German" approach, but it sure would be nice to have a
    single, short, and at least somewhat derogatory sounding term for this kind of
    person. 
    If you know of an existing English word, or care to help
    by making one up, we'd love to hear from you.

     

    We'll also definitely credit any new word to the
    creator if we manage to push a that new word into popular use.

    I can't come up with anything good.  Terms like "lazy complainers," "destructive second-guessers," and "listless lamenters" don't cut it.  In the spirit of the open source movement, I asked Asa if I could put this out here and see if the readers of Work Matters could come up with something better. We would love to see your ideas. Language is a powerful thing, and it would be great to have powerful word to describe this destructive behavior and/or the people who do it again and again.

  • IDEO CEO Tim Brown: “I found it vaguely embarrassing and frustrating to be in an office.”

    I have argued in the past that there are a lot of evidence-based disadvantages to working in an open office, as there are many more interruptions, distractions, and other stressors — and of course less privacy.  And there are quite a few studies that show when people move from closed to open office designs, they don't like it all and their productivity sometimes drops.  I had an experience a few weeks back, however, that has me questioning the limits of this research — and believing that if an organization has the right norms, leadership, and especially collective trust  (and have the right people and right skills to truly do cooperative work), that open offices can be a splendid thing. 

    This all struck me a few weeks back when I went to visit  David Kelley at IDEO to chat about some ideas we were hatching for the Stanford d.school (which David, a Stanford professor, co-founded along with IDEO… David was the strongest driving force behind both ventures).  I had the usual delightful conversation with IDEO's receptionist (Joanie was working that afternoon) and went upstairs to what is best described as IDEO's "management floor," where IDEO's CFO, head of marketing, Chairman (David Kelley), General Manager (Tom Kelley), and CEO (Tim Brown) all work.  As I turned the corner to the main floor, sitting right where the receptionist on the floor would sit (if they had one, they don't) was none other than CEO Tim Brown.  I frankly took a double-take, as (in many organizations) he was sitting in just the place that would be reserved for an assistant, and frankly, would be seen as one of the lowest status places to sit because of the constant interruptions and because there was no gatekeeper to keep colleagues and random visitors like me from walking-up and talking to him.  I assumed this was a mistake or something, but became more puzzled when I realized that there was some stray group (including Chris Flink, head of  IDEO's New York office) in what I thought was Tim's office.  After I met with David (who was charming and fun as always), I saw that Tim was still there, and I asked him why he wasn't in his office. He said it wasn't his office any longer and that he had moved to what I would call the "receptionist's position," which made him — as he later explained it — "the most public person on the floor."

    I called him a week or so later to ask more about this approach. He told me that most of IDEO's senior people had moved out of their offices and now when there was a need for more private conversations, there were a lot of small conference available (i.e., their old offices) that everyone could use.  He then explained that after working for IDEO for many years — including as head of their London and San Francisco offices — after he became CEO five or six years ago and was given his own office (albeit a pretty small one with glass that limited his privacy) he found it "vaguely embarrassing and frustrating to be in an office." After awhile, he and others moved to a different approach, where they were out in the open and there was more casual and exchange and fewer barriers.  I also asked Tim what happens when visits IDEO's other offices — at places like London, Chicago, New York, Shanghai, and San Francisco. He said that — although he spends time in conference rooms in meetings with IDEO people and clients (especially when confidential matters are discussed), he takes a desk in the middle of the action because "When I am there to visit and get to know the people and how they work, I can't learn much sitting in a private office."  

    We also had a conversation about what he does when he needs a quite place to work, after all, he did write a great book last year called Change By Design.  He said that he has plenty of quiet time to think, especially when he travels, and that to write a book, well that was something that he did at home on nights and weekends!

    To me, the upshot of all this is NOT everyone should move to an open office and every CEO should be in the middle of the social swarm like Tim.   Rather, the lesson is that what Tim and other senior people at IDEO do works when you have the right kind of culture and leadership, when the work requires interdependence and knowledge sharing, and people have developed the right skills and routines to work effectively when they are out in the open and on display to everyone else.  I think it is especially important to develop strong norms around courtesy, about how loud to talk, when to avoid interrupting others, and so on, and to make it safe for anyone in the setting to gently remind others when they are violating such norms.  I have noticed, for example, that it took some years to develop these kinds of norms at the Stanford d.school (the one "open place" that I work at a fair amount), and we are now — on the whole — quite considerate and respectful. The great thing about IDEO, of course, is that they have the kind of culture and skilled people who can make openness work.

    P.S. In fact, if you are interested in Tim's perspective on the kind of people they strive to hire and develop, check out this recent interview that Morten Hansen (of Collaboration fame) did with Tim Brown on "T-Shaped People."

  • The No Asshole Rule Versus Compassion for the Mentally Ill

    I got an email from a colleague who I had not heard from for years, and as often happens when people contact me for the first time in a long time, her note touched to The No Asshole Rule.  She linked to an article published at Inside Higher Ed that described the strange case of Ohio University Journalism Professor Bill Reader who, "Despite glowing teaching evaluations and no documented trace of disciplinary action in his past" narrowly (7-5) was approved for tenure by the evaluation committee, which set the stage for several administrators to decide to deny him tenure.  I have never seen a vote like this… in fact, having voted on a lot of tenure cases, my guess is that a possible meaning of such a vote could be "we don't have the guts to make a real decision, so we will leave it to administrators to decide," as such votes are usually recommendations to them — and a 7-5 vote really isn't a recommendation at all, it means "it is up to you."  In any event, it is no surprise that this vote "served as a precursor for recommendations of tenure denial from the
    school’s director, the college of communication's tenure review
    committee and the dean."      The No Asshole Rule (translated in academic language as "the norm of collegiality")  was cited as a primary reason for these denials, "Reader’s director and dean have cited a “pattern” of non-collegial and
    even “bullying” behavior as the reason for their concerns, and those
    misgivings were “heightened,” his dean said, by Reader’s admittedly
    angry reaction to the narrow tenure vote.

    Apparently, the final decision around the case has not been made, that is coming in a few weeks. But regardless of how the decision goes, it raises a serious issue that advocates of The No Asshole Rule like me need to consider — that people who show all the hallmarks of acting like an asshole may be doing so because they suffer from serious mental health problems.  Indeed, although claims and counter claims are flying in this case about whether Professor Reader made threats after the vote, it is clear that he was suffering mental health problems before the close vote and really freaked out after that.  As Reader himself admits in the article:

    When Reader learned that Hodson planned to recommend
    against awarding tenure, he made the bizarre decision to expose scars
    on his arms where he had used a branding tool to burn the words
    “comfort” and “truth” into his flesh. Reader branded himself during a
    difficult divorce two years earlier, and he told investigators that he
    wanted to demonstrate to Hodson and Robert Stewart, the school’s
    associate director, that his commitment to work had contributed to the
    dissolution of his marriage.

    “I just felt completely betrayed,
    and to be honest I was in the middle of a nervous breakdown,” Reader
    said. “I probably shouldn’t have shown them my arms, but I did.”

    This incident and some nasty emails that Reader apparently sent do suggest that he was acting like an asshole.  Regardless of the exact facts of the story, it raises an interesting and difficult question about how to treat abusive and destructive people who are acting out because they are suffering from mental health problems — and in this case there are hints that Reader was good at his job (and that students liked him, they don't give nasty teachers good teaching evaluations).  I am all for enforcing The No Asshole Rule in academia, and believe that consistently abusive and selfish people (who are otherwise competent) should not be rewarded and promoted — and unfortunately I have seen too many cases were such people are promoted and then go on to leave a path of destruction for decades.

    BUT if such behavior has not been a problem in the past, and is provoked by life pressures or changes in physical health, it seems to me that compassion and understanding is called for… so in a case like Reader's (I don't know the facts well enough to say what should be here done for sure), perhaps the best thing to do is to delay the tenure decision for a couple years and make it contingent on him changing his behavior — in other words, contingent on him returning to sufficiently good mental health to keep his inner jerk in check.  I realize that circumstances vary from place to place, and that may not be right or possible in this case, but I think that showing  compassion and emotional support is necessary in such situations.  Skilled and well-meaning people are sometimes overwhelmed by what life throws at them, and discarding them despite great skill and potential troubles me — especially if there is good reason to believe their behavior can change. 

    To be clear, however, if someone has a pattern of abusive behavior and — regardless of the cause — it does not stop, that means to me that the person is incompetent to do the job, and should be grounds for not promoting someone or firing them.

    This brings me to another lesson from this case — if the report is accurate, the administrators who voted to deny him tenure made things much harder on themselves and ultimately on Reader because they did not have the guts or energy to call him out on his nasty behavior before the tenure decision (at least in writing).  In fact, his written evaluations suggest quite the opposite, especially from his bosses (notably school director Tom Hudson,  who voted against Reader apparently because of his hostile behavior). The story reports:

    There is not a single piece of documentation from Reader’s eight
    years at Ohio, however, that shows he was ever disciplined for any
    “volatile, bullying, or other anti-social behavior,” according to a
    report of the university’s Office of Institutional Equity…. What
    is documented before the tenure vote is a pattern of congratulatory
    evaluations, endorsed by the very department head who is now
    challenging Reader’s tenure status. In 2004, Hodson called Reader “the
    ultimate team player.” He followed that up in 2007 by declaring “I am
    proud to be your colleague."

    Despite Hodson's written praise, and a lack of any written documentation, Gregory Shepherd, the college’s dean (who also made the decision to deny Reader tenure), argued: 

    “Just
    because something doesn’t occur in a narrow piece of the written record
    doesn’t mean there were never any discussions, conversations.”

    Shepard declined to elaborate. So there may have been conversations where Reader was given pointed feedback and a chance to quell his nasty behavior — I want to be careful to make clear that I do not have all the facts on this case.  But there is a key lesson here if these bosses lacked the will or skill to do to give Reader negative written reviews and work with him to change his alleged behavior.  This not only may  weaken their legal case against him, if such a spineless pattern persisted throughout Reader's career at the school, it damaged everyone involved.  Academic administrators have tough jobs, but I don't have much sympathy for any boss who lacks the courage to take tough but necessary action — and then votes to fire someone (despite a history of glowing written reviews) by claiming that, really, this had been a problem all along.

    There is an important and broader cautionary tale for every boss here: If you don't have the guts to do the dirty work, and can't or won't find someone to do it for you, you are in the wrong job.  If you let an asshole run wild for years and years, write glowing reviews all the while, but finally get so fed-up that you vote to fire him or her — in my book you don't deserve any sympathy when the whole situation blows up in your face.  This theme, that the best bosses have the guts to do the dirty work (and understand that there is a big difference between what you do and how you do it… the best bosses make and implement hard choices without turning into bossholes) was also a central theme in my HBR article on "How to Be a Good Boss in A Bad Economy" — the article is here and I talk about it here).

    To return to Professor Reader's case, the whole thing sounds like an unfortunate mess.  I hope that it is resolved in a manner that is best for Ohio University students in the long run — that is the most important thing, even if the impact on students if often ignored in such decisions. 

    P.S.  Everyone involved in this case would have benefited from reading and following the advice in C.K. Gunsalus' The College Administrator's Survivial Guide.

    P.P.S. Check out Sherman Dorn's post on this case, he does a great job of digging into the norm of collegiality and how tough it is to enforce and figure out what it means in practice.