Work Matters

Tag: bosses

  • Work Matters: The Best of 2009

    I tried to resist the temptation to do one of these "best of" lists, but I succumbed as I started looking back at posts from the year. As I looked back at this year versus last, I realized that the focus on workplace assholes that was so strong when I started this blog in 2006 has faded quite a bit, and I tend to focus more broadly on workplace and management issues. Sure, I still talk about assholes (I have accepted that, no matter what else I ever have done or will do, I will always be "the asshole guy").  Yet, no doubt because it is the theme of my next book, I now talk more about bosses — what it takes to be a good one, the difference between good ones and bad ones, and a host of related topics. 

    I picked my favorite from each month. I usually picked a post that generated a lot of comments. I always appreciate the comments that people make, and I thought that they were better than ever this year — so I thought it would also be fun to pick my favorite comment on each post.  I know this runs long; sorry,  I am professor who is prone to profess too much!

    January: Eleanor Roosevelt vs. Randy Komisar on Failure.  This post was inspired by two opposing quotes, which are contradictory, but — I believe — both true.  'The first is from former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt: "Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself." This has to be true. But serial entrepreneur, serial author, and venture capitalist Randy Komisar also made a compelling case when he argued "yes, you can learn from others, but  "the only way to really, really get your money's worth, is to do it yourself" because "nothing else creates that hollow feeling in your stomach."  

    This post generated 10 thoughtful comments.  My favorite was from John, who wisely pointed out "I also know a few airplane pilots. They are definitely in Eleanor Roosevelt's camp. It may depend on how onerous the penalties for failure are." 

    February: CEO Compensation Research : Why You Want Rich People to Set Your Pay.   I picked this one because CEO compensation has been such a hot topic.  This post summarizes a study by Charles O'Reilly and his colleagues that shows — independently of firm performance and size — the more money that people on the CEO's compensation committee make, the more they pay the CEO. Essentially, people use themselves as the standard to set pay.  Here is a key sentence from the post " O'Reilly and his colleagues report that for every $100,000 that
    the average member of the compensation committee is paid, the CEO's pay
    goes up another $51,000 per year."

     Of the eight comments, I especially liked Murthy's (a former student) detailed response, which ends with "When you become an investor, your
    job is to help and support companies to increase their shareholder
    value. Bashing them or their leadership to the public does not increase
    your shareholder value. If anything, it creates essentially the same
    emotional dynamic that any of us have when we have a jerk for a boss.
    So maybe a little less "I think wall street sucks" and a little more "I
    believe in the American financial system" would be useful for the
    morale of those companies as well as the morale of the country in
    general."

    March: My Final Exam Question: Can You Answer It?  This was about the final exam question that I have been using in my introduction to organizational behavior class for over a decade — in fact, Murthy answered it when he was student.  I will be using it again next term: "Design the ideal organization. Use course concepts to defend your answer."  For years, I told the students that it was really hard and I would have trouble answering.  I realized that I finally did answer it a few years back when I wrote The No Asshole Rule. Every year, I wonder if I should try something else, but then every year the best answers are so good that I can't resist asking it again.

    I suggested that, while the students get 3000 words, and The No Asshole Rule ran over 40,000 words, that if I was forced to write something short, I would say ""A place where people are competent, civilized, and cooperative — and
    tell the truth rather than spewing out lies and bullshit."  I would also add that this is pretty similar to how I define a good boss in my new book.

    The best part of this post were the 24 comments that people made about their vision of an ideal organization.  I can't resist picking two because they were so good. Whitney wrote "My ideal organization is one where I can have more positive impact in the world than I can accomplish on my own.I've worked for both kinds of companies. I left my last employer
    because group work took everyone down to the lowest common denominator.
    Where I work now, 1 + 1 usually adds to 3."  And Hayli wins the brevity award "Fewer meetings, more teamwork."

    April: A Well-Crafted Critique of Business "Success" Books and My Ambivalence About Good to Great.  This post was about Drake Bennett's article in the Boston Globe, which reviewed the weak evidence that underpins many management bestsellers — especially Good to Great.  Drake included a quote from me, ""There's value in mastering the obvious," he says. "If Jim Collins's
    impact is to get people to do stuff that they know they should do
    already – facing the hard truths or being selfless or whatever – I
    certainly don't think that's a bad thing." 

    As I explained in the post, I do think that Collins book is a good read and has helped many managers do a better job, but as someone who believes in and has written about evidence-based management, I am disturbed by the book because it makes such excessive claims about the quality of the research and newness of the ideas.  As I wrote in the post "ironically, this book about the virtues of modest leaders reveals considerable hubris in its claims." 

    Of the nine comments, I thought that Glenn's was especially thoughtful " I debate
    this with 'Collins Disciples' all the time. Also, I believe what adds
    to the issue is that too many people have stopped thinking. They read a
    book, follow it blindly, and believe they have all the answers. When
    they should read it, apply some critical thinking to see if and how it
    applies to their situation, then implement as appropriate." 

    May: Of Baboons and Bosses. This post dug into a claim in my June 2009 HBR article on "How to Be a Good Boss in a Bad Economy" that "the typical member looks at the the alpha make every 20 to 30 seconds to see what he is doing."  I linked this to research showing that subordinates are often hyper-focused on every little move that their bosses make — something that many bosses are remarkably oblivious to and that undermines their ability to lead effectively. 

    Of the five comments, I liked John Foster's best, notably his reminder that "leaders
    should always remember they are on stage, being "looked at" for cues.
    It's a powerful way to create movement or change."

    June: The Selfish Superstar Inventory.  The aim of this post was to ask for questions and ideas for a survey I was developing to assess if an organization breeds and rewards — or punishes and expels — selfish backstabbing superstars.  I suggested statements indicating that people who get ahead in such organizations do things like "stomp on colleagues on the way to the top" and "Are always loved by their superiors, but often despised
    by their peers and subordinates." 

    The 17 comments in response to this post were especially wonderful. My favorites include many on Tory's long list including "Scrub subordinates names from their work before passing it up the chain," Ed's "If a project fails, I don't feel bad if my part of it was successful," and Stu's 'Believe in the 30 Rock mantra, "I'm going to get mine!"'  A descendant of the "SSI" will appear in my new book and I will put out an online version around the time the book is published.  I used a lot of the suggestions, so thanks everyone!

    July: You Know Your Boss is A Certified Asshole When…..  I was inspired to write this post both because the ARSE continues to be completed by so many people (it is now well over 200,000 completions) and by a note I got from an executive who had an asshole boss that her kids called Mr. GIANT BUTTHOLE."  The responses to this questions from readers who wonderful, including Lesa's "Making a
    staff person drive 80 miles round trip at 9:00 pm at night to a
    client's house to get a (non-essential, non-urgent) signature because
    "we do whatever it takes to get the job done."  I also cringed at Ergoboy's "    He
    corners every employee that you work with and interrogates them looking
    for dirt on you. Any possible dust particle gets wildly exaggerated,
    documented, and then shown to you on a write-up." 

    August: Wal-Mart and Girl Scout Cookies: Thin Minty Gate.  This post was inspired by CV Harquail's story about how Wal-Mart was test-marketing imitations of two of the best-selling Girl Scout cookies — a post that generated a lot of national media attention.  I expressed disgust with Wal-Mart's actions and I especially focused on why it was a bad business decision for them, taste and ethics aside.  I also warned readers that I was biased because my wife, Marina Park, is CEO of the Northern California Girl Scouts. I thought Cecelia summed it up well "The most
    important issue in this article is the community responsibility Walmart
    carries. (Or lack thereof in this case). It is in bad taste to go into
    direct competition with an organization they work closely with in order
    to provide a safe place for these girls to fund-raise. In communities
    where Walmart is already established, their profits exceed that of the
    local Girl Scout troop by a disgusting amount."  

    September:  What are the Dumbest Practices Used By U.S. Companies?   This one was pretty fun, as I asked for ideas for a speech I was going to give in Singapore. I started with three: 1. Dangerous complexity; 2. Dysfunctional internal competition, and 3. Breaking-up teams constantly.  Then 27 great comments roared in, including Pat's wise 'Rewarding Firefighters not Fire Inspectors.In other words, the people spotting the problems and fixing them
    before the "fire" do not get rewards. The "firefighters" who rush and
    put out fires in progress do get reward.'  I also loved Patricia's "Killing the messenger" and Rodney's ""When the
    risk of making a decision for employees inside the organization is
    considered to be greater than the benefit of making one."  I can't resist one more, Wally has made a lot of great comments this year, including "    We hope
    for magical leadership instead of developing good systems. When we do
    develop systems we favor the engineered and the technological over the
    human and common-sensical."

    October: The post that probably had the most content was Challenging Ingrained Assumptions at HR, which summarized the short speech I ultimately gave in Singapore — and the 27 comments were great.  Dblwyo, for example,  was tough but (often) on target when he argued that "HR like many other functional specialties, e.g. IT and logistics, doesn't have more clout because it hasn't earned it."

    But I can't resist picking Art Imitates Life: The Muffin Incident on Entourage as the best post.   In this scene on the HBO show, my favorite TV asshole, Ari Gold fires an assistant for bringing him the wrong muffin — which is exactly what (according to the Wall Street Journal) Academy Award winning Producer Scott Rudin did to one of his assistants. There were only two comments, but I thought Tony summed-up Ari well "I am also
    a big fan of Ari Gold from Entourage. It is funny how such an
    ego-centric, manipulative character can be so interesting. Working with
    someone with his personality would be a nightmare but his aggressive
    drive is impressive." 

    November: Your Lack of Planning is Not My Emergency.   This is a saying I love.  This post generated seven comments, I especially liked Flint's comment "Or the corollary, "If everything is an emergency, then nothing is."  This was also the month where I did a bunch of posts on testosterone — including the study that showed young men who drive a new Porsche respond with higher levels but not when they drive an old Toyota Camry station wagon. 

    December: The Boss's Journey.  It was my last post, but it was my favorite because the comments were so good.   My argument was that  'As psychologist William Schutz
    explained, “Understanding evolves through three phases: simplistic, complex,
    and profoundly simple.”'  I suggested that      bosses might follow much the same journey. Wally, as usual, was spot on, commenting that  'Most
    "leadership development" programs are isolated courses that don't
    recognize that leadership development is cumulative. If you can help
    less experienced supervisors learn, use peer support to help them get
    vicarious experience, and teach them to use feedback and mentors, you
    can help them develop faster and more effectively.    '  

    The Good Cop, Bad Cop Technique also generated some great comments, notably "culture guru," who reported "You just
    explained our parenting style, added at least another 10 years to our
    already 22 year old marriage, and have removed my final resistance to
    going into business with my husband."

    Congratulations if you have read this far. I suspect this is my longest post of the year.

    It's been quite a year. And now I am not the only blogger in the family.  My wife, Marina Park, now blogs regularly at SF Gate, the online arm of the San Francisco Chronicle, in the City Brights Section. I especially liked her recent post on Small Steps to Make the World a Better Place.

    I started writing Work Matters in June 2006. It  passed one million page views this year (1125533 as of this moment, with a lifetime average of 863 page views per day.)  It now includes 815 posts and 3195 of your comments.  Thanks for reading my stuff and thanks for all those wonderful comments.

    I hope you and yours have a happy new year.



  • The Boss’s Journey: The Path to Simplicity and Competence

    Being a great boss is a lot tougher than it looks. 
    I realized this a few months back when one of my former students came back to
    chat.  When he took my introduction to organizational behavior class, he
    routinely ripped apart his former bosses and many bosses we studied in class,
    calling them “lazy,” “idiotic,” and “incompetent.”  He sure changed his
    tune after getting his first job as a boss — heading a small product
    development team.   During our conversation, he admitted that he
    needed “a little therapy” and confessed “This is really a tough job.  I am
    confused and keep screwing-up.    ”

    This new boss was in the second phase of the journey
    required to develop true expertise in any craft. As psychologist William Schutz
    explained, “Understanding evolves through three phases: simplistic, complex,
    and profoundly simple.”  (I have written about Schutz before, see this
    post    ). This process means, as my distraught student learned, being a great boss
    seems deceptively easy at first blush.  But no boss can master the craft
    without traveling through a purgatory of uncertainty and confusion.  The
    best bosses also realize that, although the stretches of confusion become
    shorter and less frequent over time, this quest for deep understanding never
    ends.  There is no magic cure or shortcut that will instantly transform youy into a skilled
    boss.  But I do believe – following Schutz’s model – that path becomes
    easier if you devote yourself to the relentless pursuit of simple competence     (a
    theme I expand on in my     BusinessWeek
    essay     published earlier in the year).

    My view is that great bosses realize there will always be
    times when they are overwhelmed and baffled, that confronting and wallowing
    through excessive complexity is necessary for developing useful rather than
    useless simplifications.   Yet no matter how bewildered great bosses
    might be at a given moment, they strive to develop a simple mindset and master
    seemingly obvious moves.  The result is that, if you talk to the best
    bosses about their craft, they often make it seem so simple — P&G’s AG Lafley
    being exhibit one here.     After all, this
    clear thinking and elegant expression are the fruits of their labors. 
    This is why, when you ask great bosses about the “secrets” of their success,
    they usually answer there is no mystery; they are     just doing their jobs. 

    This perspective is based on some theory and research,
    but of course, it is just an opinion colored by my biases and the quirks of my
    experience. What do you think?  Does it fit your view of the boss’s
    journey. Also, what important parts have I left out?

  • Quote of the Day: Roaches and Assholes

    I want to thank everyone for the great comments on my last post, which raises the question: Is the only effective way to deal with an impossible boss to suffer in silence until you can escape? 
    Every comment so far is extremely thoughtful. I was especially taken taken with how John described how he had learned to deal with impossible bosses as he traveled through his career.   My favorite line, however, comes from Jason, who comments:

    "Since I
    read your book I've been watching at my firm and my observation is that
    asshole bosses are like roaches–there is never just one."

    As I've written here many times, being an workplace asshole is often a malady that you catch from other people.  But the roaches analogy is a lovely way to out it.

  • Leaders get the behavior they display and tolerate

    I was at a gathering of HR managers and executives yesterday held at Pixar, and one of the participants made this observation at one point. Frankly, there were a lot of people and we kept rotating among groups, so although I write it down quickly so I wouldn't lose it, I got so lost in thought about it that by the time I looked-up, we were all rotating to different groups and I lost rack of who said it.  I will try to figure out who it was — yes, it is an oversimplification, but one of the most compelling ones I've heard.  I especially like that word "tolerate" as it conveys the subtle notion that there are often many things that happen in the workplaces that bosses don't try to discourage or stop because they have so much other stuff to do, they don't know how to go about stopping it, they believe they have more pressing matters to deal with, or they just don't have the emotional energy to deal with. 

    Then,  I started thinking about this quote again when I was watching The Office last night and saw how the tolerant Jim (now co-manager) brilliantly dealt with a level of defiance and screwing around by Ryan that he couldn't tolerate by assigning him to an office in closet (see the episode here on Hulu).

  • Testosterone Levels, Top Dogs, and Collective Group Confidence

    My favorite behavioral science website, BPS Research Digest, posted a summary of an amazingly weird and rather troubling psychological experiment.  The upshot is that people — both men and women — vary in testosterone levels and (no surprise), when people with high testosterone levels aren't in leadership positions, "they can find it stressful and uncomfortable when denied the status that they crave."  A bit more surprising is that the reverse is true as well, that "people low in testosterone find it uncomfortable to be placed in positions of authority." The main finding from the research is that when groups suffer from "mismatch" between status and testosterone levels (where those with high testosterone levels are placed at the bottom of the pecking order, and those with low levels are placed at the top), the group has less confidence in its abilities get things done.  I quote from the BPS summary:

    Michael Zyphur and colleagues
    assigned 92 groups of between 4 and 7 undergrads to an on-going task
    that involved meeting twice a week for 12 weeks, and included creating
    a professional management-training video. Six weeks into the project
    the researches measured the participants' testosterone levels via
    saliva samples. They also asked all members in each group to vote on
    each others' status. Then six weeks after that, at the end of the
    project, the researchers measured each group's collective efficacy by
    summing members' confidence in their group's ability to succeed.

    The
    key finding was that groups made up of members whose status was out of
    synch with their testosterone level tended to have the lowest
    collective efficacy. The researchers think that testosterone-status
    mismatch within a group probably has a detrimental effect on that
    group's collective confidence. However, another possibility, which they
    acknowledge, is that a lack of group confidence leads to a mismatch
    between testosterone levels and status among group members.

    The implication is fairly horrifying — perhaps companies will start using testosterone levels to make decisions about whether or not to put people in leadership positions.  Even if it is "evidence-based" (although these results are preliminary), the thought makes me a bit sick. 

    Here is the reference:

    Zyphur,
    M., Narayanan, J., Koh, G., & Koh, D. (2009). Testosterone–status
    mismatch lowers collective efficacy in groups: Evidence from a
    slope-as-predictor multilevel structural equation model. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 110 (2), 70-79.

  • Leading Innovation: 21 Things that Great Bosses Believe and Do

    CFI Goes to the Tesla Dealer
    As I blogged about awhile back, this week, Perry Klebhan, Alex Kazaks,Huggy Rao and I are running rather intense executive program called Customer-Focused Innovation.  As you can see from the schedule, we are keeping the 21 executives in the program mighty busy. We kicked off with a tire-changing  exercise led by Andy Papa, who among other things leads the pit crews at Hendrick's Motor Sports, where one team established the all time CFI speed record, changing in a tire on a NASCAR racing car in under 13 seconds. Yesterday, the group spent the day at the Tesla dealer in Menlo Park talking to owners, potential customers, people in sales and marketing at Tesla, and people who didn't like the idea of owning a Tesla at all. In the picture above, the two executives on the left are interviewing George Kembel, the d.school's executive director (he is the tall guy facing the camera) and the group on the right is interviewing one of the Tesla salespeople (the woman in black with sunglasses in her hair).

    The idea is to use their observations, empathy for others, and identified needs to develop prototype solutions to improve the Tesla car ownership experience.  The group focuses on cases, theories, and models in the mornings, and applying design thinking in the Tesla project in the afternoon. It is a lively and motivated group, and we all are very curious to see
    the suggestions and prototypes they offer to Tesla executives on
    Thursday.

    Huggy Rao and I kicked off yesterday morning by doing case discussions and a bit of lecture on the hallmarks of innovative organizations. As part of that session, I put together the list below for the executives. I've also included links for anyone who wants to dig into the subject a bit further. I will add a few more ideas and links during the course of the week.  I would love to hear some additional ways that great bosses spark innovation and comments — and extensions — on the ideas below.

    Leading
    Innovation: 21 Things that Great Bosses Believe and Do

    1.
    Creativity means doing new things with old ideas.

    2.
    Treat innovation as an import-export business. 
    Keep trying to bring in ideas from outside your group or organization,
    keep trying to show and tell others about your ideas, and blend them all
    together.

    3.
    Look for and build     “intersections” places where people with diverse ideas
    gather together. And when you go there, talk to the people you don’t know, who
    have ideas you know nothing about, and ideas you find weird, don’t like, or useless    .

    4.
     Treat your beliefs as “strong opinions, weakly held.”

    5.
    Learn how to listen, watch, and keep your mouth shut.

    6.
     Say “I don’t know” on a regular basis.

    7.
     Have the courage to act on what you
    know, and the humility to doubt your beliefs and actions.

    8.
    Reward success and (intelligent) failure, but punish inaction.

    9.
    Make it safe for people to take risky actions and “fail forward,” by developing
    a “forgive and remember culture.”

    10.
    Encourage people to learn from others’ failures – it is faster, easier, and
    less painful.

    11.
    Eliminate hiring and reward practices that reinforce cultures where “the best
    you can be is a perfect imitation of those who came before you.”

    12.
    Hire people who make your squirm.

    13.
    Create teams composed of both experts and novices.

    14.
    Make it safe for people to fight as if they are right, and listen as if they
    wrong.

    15.
    Encourage your people to be “happy worriers.”

    16.
     Sometimes, the best management is no
    management at all.  Know when and how to
    get out of the way.

    17.
    Have the confidence and resolve to make tough decisions, stop your people from
    whining about the decisions made, and to get on with implementing them    .

    18.
    Kill a lot of ideas, including a lot of good ideas.

    19.  Innovation entails creativity +
    implementation.  Developing or finding a
    great idea is useless if you can't implement it or sell it to someone who believes they
    can.

    20.
    Remember Rao’s Recipe for Innovation: Will +Ideas + Tools.

    21. Innovation requires selling your ideas.  The greatest innovators, from Edison to Jobs, are gifted at generating excitement and sales.  If you can't or won't sell, team-up with someone who can.

    As I edited this list a bit, I realized it is important to remind people that there is a lot about innovation that sucks.  Yes, it is necessary, but innovator beware, it is an inefficient and distressing process plagued by a high failure rate — and a lot of self-delusion. And that is when you are doing it right!

    Sources:  Rao’s book Market Rebels  Sutton’s Weird Ideas
    that Work    ,      and Sutton’s personal blog Work Matters. 

  • When is the change going to be over?

    An executive my wife knows reported one of her people recently asked her this question.  The last couple years have been tough on all of of us, and especially tough on people who had assumed that the future would be an imitation of the past.  Of course, the answer is that the change will never be over. More so than ever, a boss's job is to prepare his or her people by developing expectations that there will be constant change, while (as I wrote in HBR), providing as much prediction, understanding, control, and compassion as possible.

    I wonder, what else can a boss do to help people anticipate, cope with, and flourish in the face of change?

  • Former CEO Richard S. Fuld of Lehman Brothers: A Striking Picture

    Richard-fuld

  • Do You Learn More from Working for a Bad Boss than a Good Boss?

    Bad bosses suck, as I often document here.  Of course, you knew that anyway — many of you know it all too well from first hand experience.  But perhaps they do more good than I have given them credit for in the past. Carol Bartz, the feisty, tough, unusually plain-speaking CEO of Yahoo! (see this earlier post or this story), makes an intriguing point about bad bosses in today's New York Times that is weirdly related to my recent post On Noticing That You Don't Notice. Here is the link to the interview, and the argument I found especially intriguing:

    I also think people should understand that they will learn more from
    a bad manager than a good manager. They tend to get into a cycle where
    they’re so frustrated that they aren’t
    paying attention actually to what’s happening to them. When you have a
    good manager things go so well that you don’t even know why it’s going
    well because it just feels fine.

    When you have a bad manager
    you have to look at what’s irritating you and say: “Would I do that?
    Would I make those choices? Would I talk to me that way? How would I do
    this?”

    There are several elements of this comment that made me stop and think. The first follows from my post on not noticing, as the implication is that when things are going great, you don't engage in very deep cognition about them, because little is happening to give you pause or upset you. In fact, this point is consistent with research on cognition and emotion suggesting that people in good moods do not engage in as much mindfulness,deep thought, or self-doubt as people in bad moods. 

    The second thing that intrigues me is as I thought about some of the more interesting bosses I've been reading about and communicating with, I've ran into quite a few who make a related argument.  Perhaps most famous is the late Robert Townsend, author of the still amazing Up the Organization, who argued repeatedly that he learned how to be a good boss at American Express because his bosses were so bad and the company was so badly ran that he learned what not to do — very close to Bartz's point.  Even closer is an amazing comment I posted here a couple years ago from a surgeon, who during his residency at a prestigious hospital, got together with  fellow residents every week to vote on the senior or "attending" surgeon who most deserved the "asshole of the week" award — and wrote in a journal that had been passed down from generation to generation of residents. The great thing about this story is that he his fellow residents all vowed not to be assholes when they became more senior, and all — who now hold prestigious appointments through the country — have all worked to try to keep that vow.

    Now, as much as I love Bartz's thought process, I do disagree with her that when people have a lousy boss and want to escape, she tells them " You have to deal with what you’re dealt. Otherwise you’re going to run from something and not to something. And you should never run from something."

    That bugged me for two reasons.  The first is that, if these complaints are about a lousy boss who reports to Carol, it is her job to do something about it, not to just tell the victims to suck it up and just deal with it.  Indeed, there is so much research showing the damage that lousy bosses do to productivity, commitment, and well-being that Carol or any other boss who learns of a horrible boss below them in the pecking order owes it to their company to deal with it. The "victims" may be learning more, but those lessons come at a high price that hurts both organization's and people.

    The second thing that bugs me is from the victim's perspective, which is that there is so much evidence that bad bosses do damage (recall this Swedish study on heart attacks), that if you care about your physical and mental health — and those of the people you come in contact with, your friends, lovers, children, and so on — that you should escape as soon as you possibly can.

    Clearly, I don't agree with Bartz about everything, but I admire her enormously because she is so thoughtful and so straightforward, a refreshing voice in a world where too many people are afraid to express strong opinions.

    This all raises a great question: What is the most important thing you ever learned NOT TO DO from working for a bad boss?

    P.S. One another thing I agree with Bartz about — in fact a headline of the article — is that perhaps we ought to get rid of annual performance reviews, as there is good reason to believe that they do more harm than good, as I blogged about here and this Wall Street Journal article by Sam Culbert argues. 

    UPDATE: I always appreciate the quality and range of comments that readers make, but in this case, they are even better than usual.  I suggest that you read them carefully.  This post has been up less then a day, so I expect even more good stuff and to change my opinion again over the coming days.  But my initial reaction to the comments is that I (and certainly Bartz) should have emphasized the dangers of bad bosses even more, the damage they do to people and as at least one comment implies, the danger that — just as abusive parents tend to produce abusive children –  the odds are high that bad bosses will teach their followers to be bad bosses like them.  Also, by just talking to people who have survived and learned from bad bosses, and become bosses themselves, we blind ourselves to all the able people who have left companies and occupations because they had the sense to leave, were so damaged that they had to leave, or worse yet, became lousy bosses someplace else applying what they learned — and after doing a lot of damage — got fired and demoted. Yes, there are examples of the opposite effect, of people who have become great bosses by doing the opposite of past lousy bosses, but the psychological forces of imitation, learning, and identification with authority figures all push people in the opposite direction.  Perhaps the best way to learn for bad bosses is to watch and study other people's bad bosses — that way you get the learning without the damage and risk of imitating their incompetent and nasty ways. 

  • You Better Start Treating Your People Right, Or The Best Will Be Leaving Soon

    This week's Economist has a story called Hating What You Do, which presents a rather discouraging but well-documented argument that, since the downturn began, a lot more people are a lot more unhappy with their jobs.  For example, to quote the story, "A survey by the Centre for Work-Life Policy, an American consultancy,
    found that between June 2007 and December 2008 the proportion of
    employees who professed loyalty to their employers slumped from 95% to
    39%; the number voicing trust in them fell from 79% to 22%." Ouch.

    Certainly, some of this unhappiness is due to the fear, bad news, pay cuts, loss of benefits, objective loss of job security, job overload (an effect of layoffs on survivors), and other bad experiences provoked by these hard times.  But there is huge variation in how well or badly different organizations have treated their people during the past couple years.  The Economist article refers indirectly to my HBR article on being a Good Boss in a Bad Economy (see the McKinsey interview for free). If you recall from my prior posts, my basic argument was that there is a big difference between what organizations and bosses must do to survive during tough times and how they do it — and the keys to doing dirty work (like pay cuts and layoffs) well include providing people as much prediction, understanding, control, and compassion as possible in the process.

    Well, now that we seem to be seeing early signs that, within a year or perhaps less, many companies will be hiring again (in fact, I notice that Google is back to hiring already, and they did some layoffs earlier in the year), your chickens will be coming home to roost soon. If you are a boss or organization that has treated your people well despite the challenges, the return of the so-called "war for talent" will be great for you because your best people won't run for the door when the job market starts heating-up again and you will have an easy time recruiting great people because, after all, the good word spreads. 

    But if you have treated people like dirt during the tough times (for a horror story, see here), have been inept about how you have implemented tough decisions (see here) or have simply been clueless about your people's perspective during these tough times (see here), you may have been able to keep great people working for you during these tough times and to hire some of the best. You can be sure, however, that they have told their friends about how much your company or you suck.  They are waiting for things to get better, and perhaps encouraged by the signs the labor market is coming back, are probably doing their jobs extra well these days to enhance their reputation for that coming job search.  So you may be fooling yourself into believing all is well when it is not.

    In my view, if you have been nasty, inept, or greedy about how you've treated people during the downturn, you will deserve everything you get when, as things start getting better, your best people start leaving in droves and the best candidates not only turn down your job offers, they don't even bother to apply because your reputation stinks.  Looking at it from your perspective, however, you've might have just enough time to salvage your reputation if you begin reversing your vile ways right now.  And, if you've treated your people well during these tough times, cranking up the respect, attention, and — if you can afford it (I know it is tough) — your pay and benefits right now just a bit could pay huge dividends down the road.