Believe it or not, I get asked this question a lot, and it is akin to asking about the occupant of Grant’s tomb: Where can I go to find great advice about managing a workforce?
This question usually gives me a headache, and once I get done pointing out this blog and my monthly “Last Word” column that appears both at workforce.com and in Workforce Management magazine, I have to stop and think for a bit. And then it hits me—what about the Corner Office column in the Sunday New York Times?
And there is this advice that is so glib and shoot-from-the-hip cool that it sounds good on first glance, but really, is just simplistic and silly when you examine it closely. Here’s what I’m talking about, from last Sunday’s New York Times: Mindy Crossman, CEO of HSN, claiming that her hiring philosophy is that “you only hire Tiggers. You don’t hire Eeyores.”
OK, I get the notion of not hiring someone like Eeyore, who is “generally characterized as a pessimistic, melancholic, depressed old grey stuffed donkey who is a friend of … Winnie the Pooh.”
I had a guy who used to work for me who had an Eeyore-like demeanor, and he was terribly depressing to hang around for more than about five minutes. But if hiring an Eeyore is a bad thing, why is hiring someone like Tigger (another friend of Winnie the Pooh) viewed as the better way to go?
Here’s what Mindy Crossman told the Times: [I don’t need people who] “have to be loud, but I need energy-givers and I have to get a feeling that this person is going to be able to inspire people. Are they going to be optimistic about where they’re going? Are they going to attract people who are like that?”
She’s right that high-energy people can be a great addition to a workplace, but who said that only high-energy, Tigger-like personalities inspire people? Plus, most workplaces are made up of a lot of different types of personalities.
People with a lot of energy are great in some ways for some things, but an office full of them? Somehow, I don’t think a place where everyone is bouncing off the walls makes for the best workplace environment.
And here’s one more thing: What kind of CEO speaks of their workplace and hiring philosophy in terms of fictional cartoon characters? I mean, I enjoy a good cartoon as much as anyone, but I wouldn’t describe my hiring or business philosophy in terms of Montgomery Burns, George Jetson or any other such character.
Maybe HSN’s Cindy Crossman wasn’t completely clear when she talked to The New York Times, but maybe that’s just the nature of the newspaper’s Corner Office column, because it seems to me that all too often the advice from these captains of industry is completely wrongheaded and seems to be what you should AVOID doing at all cost.
So it seems with Mindy Crossman, because her admonition that “you only hire Tiggers” is as foolish as it is shortsighted. Yes, it doesn’t pay to hire glum Eeyore types, but then again, bigger-than-life people who constantly overhype their worth and are bouncing off walls like kindergartners on a sugar high isn’t the workplace answer either.
Eeyore or Tigger? That’s a terrible choice to make, and thankfully, most CEOs know that hiring and business decisions aren’t as simple or clear-cut as that. If you look to cartoons for your hiring philosophy, well, be prepared to feel like Wyle E. Coyote chasing the Roadrunner, because it’s likely you’ll be running into a lot of walls along the way.
I don’t write much about self-management in this blog, and there’s a simple reason why: It’s because this Web site, and the related newsletters, blogs and magazine, are all focused on one thing — the art of managing a workforce.
Once in a while, however, I bump into something that’s a little far afield from what I normally focus on here but is still really, really interesting. So it was today when I read this commentary from Advertising Age (a sister publication of Workforce Management) titled “How to Advance Your Career Without Selling Your Soul.”
It’s written by Joe Hodas, senior vice president of brand communications at Vladimir Jones, a privately held, full-service advertising agency in Colorado, and it struck me as an uncommonly good bit of common-sense advice whether you apply it to yourself or pass it along to those you manage.
Plus, it runs counter to a lot of the snarky “I have a blog so I know better” rants by thinly credentialed “experts” who seem to be taking over so much of the Internet today. The fact that it comes from someone like Joe Hodas, a guy who has worked for years in the trenches managing people and knows firsthand what he’s talking about, well, that just makes it must-read advice in my book.
Here are Joe’s 11 rules for managing your career, or, for you to use to help your workforce manage theirs. It’s great advice for just about anyone toiling in today’s challenging and difficult workforce:
1. Nothing replaces hard work. In an industry where smoke and mirrors are used in abundance, take heed: Nothing can disguise the absence of hard work. And don’t confuse effort with results. I don’t care how early you arrive or how late you stay—it’s about ROI.
2. We all have a personal tool kit—know yours and how to use it. As my mother told me on numerous occasions, I have special talents. Specifically, I’m a good consensus builder. You may be a killer salesman. Or extremely detailed. Whatever your “special talents” are, hone them and let them help define your personal brand.
3. It’s about teamwork, but know who is and isn’t on your team. I too hate office politics. And avoid them at all costs. Ignoring their existence is not only careless, but possibly counterproductive. Even if you don’t engage in them, someone else might on your behalf. Know who has the boss’s ear, who the players are, and who could take or leave ya. Whatever the political landscape in your company, it’s your reality and one you’ll have to navigate whether you like it or not.
4. Never lose your shit—at least not in public. Let’s play a little game of association. When I say Christian Bale, you say what? Probably not “great actor from ‘American Psycho,’ ” right? Rather, I bet you said something along the lines of “overindulged jerk who pulverized some poor sound tech on a movie set for making a mistake.” I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be human, but one single outburst—even if merited—can do permanent damage to your personal brand.
5. Life is not always a box of chocolates—so decide how much you can take before you bail. The perfect job doesn’t exist. I would imagine that even the taste-tester at Krispy Kreme has complaints about his gig (though I can’t imagine what they might be). Too often we hit tough times and jump ship for a lateral move or get frustrated and stop giving 110 percent. A career is like a relationship, so make sure you’re putting as much effort into trying to fix the problems as you put into feeling bad about them.
6. Humility goes a long way. Nothing infuriates your boss (and co-workers) more than employees who feel they deserve something they haven’t earned. I’m a firm believer that raises are for the work you’ve done, and promotions are for the work you can do.
7. Individuality is to be respected—as long as you’re still part of the team. Sometimes, there is an “I” in team. It just has to be the right kind of “I”—distinctive yet collaborative, unexpected but on strategy. Don’t be afraid to stand out, but do make sure you don’t alienate your teammates in the process.
8. Always try to add something smart to the discussion. Ask a smart question or make a great point that no one else has thought of. But do your homework so you can back up your comments and aren’t asking things that you should already know the answer to.
9. Sometimes you have to shout to be heard. You’ve heard the phrase “Squeaky wheel gets the grease”? Well, take note: Occasionally, persistent voices are listened to. Don’t be afraid to speak up when you’re passionate about something.
10. Have a perspective on the past, present and future. It’s not enough to do well today. Your boss wants and needs to see that you have a broader outlook on where you/the client/the work/etc. has been, is now and will be going.
11. Always be that ray of light in your boss’s/co-worker’s day. This one’s simple. Surprise. Delight. Be the kind if individual you’d like to spend 200-plus days each year with. And to be clear—that’s much different from kissing ass.
Here’s one of them, and a question that every manager has to come to terms with: How much managing does a manager actually do?
In my view, anyone who is a manager is probably always managing at some level, but I am talking more about the outward signs of management and how aggressively you control your employees, or how much leeway your staff gets to work and make decisions on their own.
Yes, how you approach this has a lot to do with your personal outlook on life, but it also speaks to a lot of other factors—experience, confidence, the industry you work in and/or the type of work you do, and sometimes, company culture. For example, I once worked for a large media company that believed in aggressively managing everything and was top-down driven.
This worked pretty well for them most of the time, but it meant that managers were micromanaged from above so they in turn micromanaged those below them. That doesn’t make for the happiest working environment, I quickly found.
This leads to the question that I don’t think enough managers ask themselves: Should I overmanage or undermanage, and why do I do it that way?
I’ve known lots of managers and executives who, like Joe Girardi, seemed to be more focused on showing off how smart they were rather than doing the right thing by their staff, and that’s certainly an occupational hazard when it comes to managing.
But here’s the thing—managing is also about leading, about coaching, about nurturing, about helping your people to do their absolute best. Some do it with a lot of drama, but in my book, the best managers do it quietly, without a lot of fanfare, and without feeling the need to draw attention to themselves.
Each has their own unique style, but each is also focused on one critical thing: helping their people so that they have the freedom and the opportunity to do their very best. In short, it’s not about overmanaging or undermanaging, but rather, about supportive managing that lets people reach their full potential for the good of the entire organization.
If that’s what you’re doing as a manager, well, congratulations, because you’re doing it right. If that’s NOT how you’re doing it, well, you had better step back and take a good look at yourself and figure out how you can be more like Warren Buffett than Joe Girardi.
Making decisions is at the heart of what managers do.
That’s why one of the big things that gets all-too-many managers into trouble is NOT making a decision when one is desperately needed, as so many Yahoo workers discovered during the disastrous reign of CEO Jerry Yang. Yang was a terribly indecisive general who fiddled around and failed to make the kind of basic management decisions that the troops needed to help move the company ahead.
But this gets to another management truism: You gotta have a strong heart, supreme confidence and some pretty big balls (as they say on the TV show Wipeout) to make your decisions in public, where everybody and their brother gets to second-guess the call.
“Just when you thought the 2009 postseason umpiring couldn’t get any worse,” says a Yahoo Sports blogger named Duk (and so much for transparency in the media cesspool known as the blogosphere), “Tim McClelland goes ahead and makes what ends up as the worst call—or non-call—of all time. Yes, you read that right. The worst call of all time. Not just this postseason. Not this entire season. Not this decade. Not this century. I challenge you to think of one that was worse.”
Blogger Duk goes on to eviscerate umpire McClelland for the better part of 15 paragraphs. And as a sports fan who gets tired of the histrionics of arrogant, overpaid referees (Who goes to a game to watch them preen and overwhelm the action on the field?), I believe McClelland, the crew chief of this group of umpires, deserved it.
However, this made me wonder: How would you manage if every decision you made was televised to millions of people and analyzed endlessly by an army of pundits?
This is what paralyzes the Jerry Yangs of the world. It’s the inability to make a tough decision, or sometimes, any decision at all. Yet decision-making is one of the core functions of a leader and critical if the goal is to get the maximum out of the workforce.
“Decisions … are not made well by acclimation,” said the late, great management guru Peter Drucker, although Drucker also said that you needed healthy disagreement to really make sound decisions in the end.
I don’t think Drucker had Major League Baseball umpires in mind when he wrote that, but he’s right. The best decisions aren’t made by a committee, but rather, by a smart and insightful manager who takes in all the relevant data before ultimately making the call.
Still, most managers don’t make that call on national television for all to see. It’s why making big decisions in the public eye isn’t for the faint of heart, and it’s why major-league umpires like Tim McClelland gets paid as well as they do. It’s a thankless job on a public stage, and how many managers would want to submit to that?
That’s why I welcome Bartz’s challenge to a longstanding management task that long ago seemed to outlive its usefulness—the annual performance review.
“If I had my way I wouldn’t do annual reviews,” she told The New York Times, “[especially] if I felt that everybody would be more honest about positive and negative feedback along the way. I think the annual review process is so antiquated. I almost would rather ask each employee to tell us if they’ve had a meaningful conversation with their manager this quarter. Yes or no. And if they say no, they ought to have one. I don’t even need to know what it is. But if you viewed it as meaningful, then that’s all that counts.”
I’m with Bartz on this one. I am not a fan of the annual review process, mainly because of the focus on the “process.” The discussion with the employee isn’t the problem, but rather, what you must go through to get to that stage—the inflexible forms, the manual process and the lack of a good follow-up system that makes the evaluation truly meaningful.
I might feel differently if I had access to some slick software that automates the process—and I’m told by my HR vice president that it is coming in 2010—but in the meantime, it’s more about the process than it is about the communication with the worker.
The solution that Carol Bartz suggests—an ongoing process of discussion, review and coaching with the employee—makes a lot of sense but also takes a lot of time. That’s in short supply for a lot of managers as they cope with the effects of the Big, Bad Recession, but I think that Bartz has the right idea.
A just-in-time system for regular employee feedback might go a long way toward helping keep workers engaged as we all struggle with an economic environment that makes it tough to keep workers’ heads in the game.
“People should understand that they will learn more from a bad manager than a good manager,” she told the Times. “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?’ When people come to me and say, ‘I can’t work for so-and-so anymore,’ I say, ‘Well, what have you learned from so-and-so?’ People want to take a bad situation and say, ‘Oh, it’s bad.’ No, no. You have to deal with what you’re dealt.”
That’s the trick in life, isn’t it—“to deal with what you’re dealt.” Those are words of wisdom that all managers need to live by, in good times and in bad, because they are the very essence of what it takes to be a successful and effective manager.
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