I try not to get too philosophical in this blog, but I found myself feeling that way when reading about the death this week of Irvine Robbins, one of the founders of the Baskin-Robbins chain of ice cream stores. He died in Rancho Mirage, California, at the ripe old age of 90.
The story of how he named the business he started with his brother-in-law, Burton Baskin, is uniquely American. As The New York Times recalled today in an obituary, “Although it was Mr. Robbins who opened the first store, at the intersection of Adams and Palmer Streets in Glendale, California, on December 7, 1945, and it was three years more before he and Mr. Baskin became partners, they took a carefully familial approach to deciding who would come first in the name of what eventually became a vast international enterprise. They flipped a coin.”
More important, in my book, is how the two brothers-in-law managed the company. “They worked closely on everything,” according to Robbins’ daughter, Marsha Veit. “They would come up with ideas for flavors based on what was happening at the time, like Cocoa a Go-Go, when go-go dancers were popular. They would sit in the kitchen tasting, making sure the best ingredients were used.”
Read enough of the obituaries of Irvine Robbins (such as this one in the Los Angeles Times), and you can’t help but come away with the feeling that his legacy will be about the great innovation and fun-loving spirit he brought to his work. I’m not sure Robbins ever spent a lot of time worrying about that, but it got me to thinking: Do any of us spend much time considering what we will leave behind when our days as managers or executives come to an end?
For example, I spend a lot of time here writing about memorable good, bad and crazy workforce management practices. But on a more personal level, what do I want people to remember about me as a manager?
I don’t have a glib answer for that. What I always say when people ask me about my management style is this: Ask the people I’ve worked with. In fact, I’ve done this in job interviews. I tell the interviewer to phone any company I’ve worked at and simply ask for someone who remembers working with me. I’m confident that whatever they say will be a good reflection on who I am and what I do. If that’s my legacy, it’s one I’m happy with.
So, what is your legacy as a manager? What would you like for people to say about you after you’re gone? I’d love to hear what you have to say—either as a comment at the end of this post or as an e-mail sent to me directly at jhollon@workforce.com. I’ll share the best in a future blog post.
What struck me about this article wasn’t the advice it offered, which was pretty straightforward and basic. What got me thinking were some of the statistics listed in the Tribune story, such as “Young workers face the prospect of changing jobs nearly nine times before they reach age 32, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, ” and that in March, “the average length of unemployment for all ages was nearly 17 weeks, [and] workers over 50 face longer job searches.”
The Tribune story makes the point that today’s workers always need to be preparing for the worst and that “there’s little excuse these days for not being ready to kick a job search into high gear at a moment’s notice.” That’s great advice to keep in mind, because no matter whether it is called a layoff, buyout, cutback or “Productivity Transformation Program,” the stability of the job you’re in today is a tenuous illusion at best.
I’ve learned this the hard way, as I’m sure many of you have too. It’s always great to hope for the best, but you’ll be better off and sleep better at night if you also make sure to prepare for the worst, because it generally happens when you least expect it.
I don’t fly on Delta or Northwest much these days, so I don’t really have any personal insight into whether the proposed merger of the two airlines makes much business sense. One thing I do know, however, is that making one strong and profitable company out of two struggling ones is near impossible if you don’t get the workforce to buy in.
And, that’s where this one may have a struggle. A story in The Detroit News headlined “Wary workers cloud Delta-Northwest merger” talks about the challenge of merging the workforces of union-dominated Northwest (with about 22,500 union employees out of 32,000 total) with primarily nonunion Delta (where 6,300 pilots and a small number of dispatchers out of 47,000 employees are represented).
“Delta’s an interesting company in that it’s been able to maintain a decidedly nonunion culture while staying on relatively good terms with its employees,” said Michael Boyd, president of the Boyd Group, an Evergreen, Colorado-based consulting firm. “Even through bankruptcy, management has succeeded in convincing employees that their best representative is themselves.”
But, The Detroit News points out, “selling that culture to Northwest’s entrenched unions won’t be easy. Even before merger talk began, the Association of Flight Attendants got enough signatures on a petition requesting a unionization vote of 12,000 Delta flight attendants. Neither Delta nor the union has speculated on the outcome of the current election.”
If they can make this merger work, the combined airline would be the largest in the world. “The new Delta,” says The Detroit News, “is expected to employ about 75,000 people after the two companies are fully integrated. [But] employees worry: Will management follow through on promises not to cut jobs or close hubs? If the companies are in such dire financial straits because of fuel prices, will they be looking to cut wages next?”
Those are all good questions, because those are all reasonable worries for workers to have. Delta has promised that no frontline workers will lose their jobs in the merger, but is that realistic given the huge and unrelenting rise in fuel prices?
I question that promise, and so does Joe Tiberi, spokesman for the union that represents 9,500 Northwest baggage handlers. “There’s no way they can combine without massive losses of jobs,” Tiberi told The Detroit News. “We’re also worried about merging our unionized workforce with Delta’s nonunionized workers. We have pensions, but they don’t. We have no guarantee Delta wouldn’t want to get rid of our union.”
It’s hard enough to make one good airline out of two struggling ones when everyone is on board. But it is damn near impossible if you have union squabbling and critical workforce issues to hurdle. The only saving grace here is that Delta’s management seems to be driving this deal, and frankly, Delta’s management seems a lot more sensitive to worker issues than Northwest’s does . That raises the odds of success, but not enough for me gamble my next trip on Delta. I’d be surprised if a lot of other frequent travelers don’t feel the same way.
But in case you need proof that the coming talent shortage is actually a myth, consider this new evidence (which, admittedly, is more about economic necessity than engagement, health or happiness): The current economic downturn is causing many workers who were thinking of taking early retirement to reassess their plans.
A recent story in The Wall Street Journal noted that “according to economists and demographers, a huge exodus from the workforce should be happening. … But it has run into a brick wall. Investment advisers and retirement planners at more than a dozen firms, including Charles Schwab Corp., Edward Jones and Merrill Lynch & Co., say they are seeing large numbers of older workers put off retirement as the housing and stock-market troubles have deepened.”
In fact, the Journal story points out that as boomers delay leaving the workforce, a very different problem may surface: more competition for jobs with younger workers.
“However, there is a potential upside,” the Journal story noted. “People who earn more as they age may rely less on Social Security, easing the burden on these programs—including Medicare—and keeping them solvent for longer. The trend could also be good news for ‘knowledge-based industries,’ such as technology, science and health care, which are predicted to suffer from a drain of experienced workers.”
My point all along has been that the baby boomers have never been predictable or acted in ways that the “experts” expected. And as I have written, “Yes, we are facing some large demographic changes in the workforce, and businesses need to plan for them, but all the gloom-and-doom talk of a giant worker shortage may just end up being more myth than reality.”
Maybe I’m just a curmudgeon about this, but I don’t have much use for April Fools’ Day in the workplace.
Don’t get me wrong; I think a work environment with laughter and humor improves employee morale and overall productivity. My firsthand experience in managing people for more than 20 years is that they just do a better job and accomplish more in a lighthearted workplace culture than they do in an overly serious one.
The survey asked the following question: “How appropriate do you think it is to play April Fools’ Day jokes in the office?” While only 29 percent of marketing executives found such jokes to be very or somewhat appropriate, 51 percent of advertising executives thought April Fools’ Day high jinks are OK.
A similar survey by Careerbuilder.com found that 32 percent of workers say that they have been involved with April Fools’ Day pranks at work, either on the giving or receiving end. It even went so far as to list the top 10 most memorable pranks. These included:
• Sending a fake love note to a co-worker from another co-worker.
• Calling electric company and using a co-worker’s name (and personal information) and saying he was moving, so the electricity got turned off at the co-worker’s house.
• Adjusting the sprayer in the kitchen sink to squirt co-workers when they turned on the water.
• Putting a for-sale ad for a co-worker’s home in the newspaper.
Am I the only one who thinks these “pranks” are not only stupid, but could result in legal action from the unsuspecting workers on the receiving end? An open workplace that allows people to joke and have a little fun is generally a good thing, but “pranks” that are directed at specific employees or groups hold up people to unwarranted ridicule and sap morale and esprit de corps.
Megan Slabinski, executive director of the Creative Group, probably said it best: “A distasteful or mean-spirited joke can easily damage someone’s professional reputation, co-worker relationships and career prospects. … What is viewed as lighthearted fun in one environment may be frowned upon in another.”
In other words, what qualifies as April Fools’ Day “fun” depends on your definition of the word (or maybe on whether it was your house that was listed as being for sale). Since everyone views such things very differently, my advice is to avoid pranks like these at all costs. There’s little upside, and a whole lot of downside, when you engage in such workplace “fun.”
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