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?

Every week, America’s most prominent newspaper has a Q&A on leadership and management with a prominent business executive. The advice from these captains of industry goes from smart and sensible (like Yahoo’s Carol Bartz making a great case for ditching annual performance reviews) to head-scratchingly dumb (Carol Smith of the Elle Group claiming that women are inherently better managers than men are).

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.

Get my latest blog updates on human resources and workforce management news by following me on Twitter.

Carol Bartz has certainly shaken up the culture at Yahoo since she took over as CEO, replacing the leadership-challenged Jerry Yang. Although some of her ideas seem a little over the top, I give her a lot of credit for trying to shake up a workplace culture that was clearly in need of some big changes.

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.

Yes, there are a lot of good reasons to do annual performance reviews, but I don’t think I have ever really had an annual sit-down that yielded all that much. And, this isn’t just me. We’ve written here on numerous occasions about how all too many managers gloss over the real issues when it comes time to do a formal review, and the problem seems to be widespread.

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.

Bartz also had some words of wisdom on one of my favorite topics—learning lessons from terrible managers.

“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.

Get my latest blog updates and workforce management news by following me on Twitter.

Hey, Management Guy! I know people really value honest, straight-shooting executives, but how honest is too honest? For example, does it ever make sense for the Big Boss to diss or put down his or her workforce? This seems like a really counterproductive and shortsighted management strategy to me.

— Sam in San Jose, CA.

Sam:

A couple of years ago, The Management Guy would have told you that it is over-the-top stupid for ANY senior manager to openly diss or talk trash about the company’s workers. Not only does this violate Hall Of Fame football coach Vince Lombardi’s old maxim that a leader should always “praise in public, criticize in private” (a philosophy The Management Guy has tried, with modest success, to emulate), but it also makes the manager in question look like a churlish philistine.

But, that was then and this is now. Today, there are certain trend-setting, award-winning executives, such as Tribune Co.’s Sam Zell, who make it a point to publicly (and unrepentantly) demean the very workers they need to help them move the business ahead.

Never mind that this behavior defies all logic or business sense. Guys like Zell do it because, well, the “devil made them do it.” Yes, the same comments would probably get any other employee fired, but sometimes, top executives get to be top executives despite the fact that they are missing a basic impulse-control gene. They succeed in spite of themselves, and that’s why they sometimes end up treating and talking about workers like they are the conquered chattel of Attila the Hun.

And, lest you think this an issue that only infects macho male executives, think again. In less than six months on the job as the new CEO of Yahoo Inc., Carol Bartz has shown that she can:
• Match any male executive, expletive-for-expletive, with a vocabulary that would embarrass a sailor on shore leave in Singapore;
• Publicly put a bounty on blabbermouth employees who leak her memos to bloggers and the public; and,
• Go out of her way to openly diss her workforce in public without even giving it a second thought.

Just this week, Bartz appeared at an investment conference in New York where she was questioned about how quickly the changes she was making at Yahoo would begin to pay dividends. That’s a pretty standard question, of course, and Bartz had a pretty standard answer, according to the Associated Press.

“While pointing to some progress,” the AP reported, “Bartz said it probably will take another year or two before Yahoo reaps the gains from her shake-up.”

Most CEOs would have left it at that, but Bartz, for better or worse, isn’t like most CEOs. She couldn’t resist the urge to follow up her straightforward assessment of Yahoo’s progress under her leadership with a gratuitous and unnecessary swipe at her workforce that would make Sam Zell proud. “For everything you can do in three steps,” Bartz added, “it will take Yahoo 22 steps [to get it done].”

What does that comment do for Yahoo’s workforce, except demoralize them even more than they already are after a couple of years of terrible management?

You would be right to point out that it is foolish, shortsighted, and does nothing at all, but then again, you aren’t a big-time CEO like Sam Zell or Carol Bartz.

Dissing your workforce in public would not seem to make a lot of sense for most managers, but Zell has taken a very cutting-edge approach at Tribune, even going so far as to push the company into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. That’s what I call a unique and out-of-the-box way to go after business success.

Now, Carol Bartz is not Sam Zell, but she does have a lot of the same qualities, including a wonderfully colorful vocabulary. It remains to be seen whether trash-talking her workforce in public will help in her revival of Yahoo, but The Management Guy remains unconvinced.

He’d rather put his faith in Vince Lombardi’s Super Bowl-winning advice than in the approach of Zell or Bartz, but then again, Lombardi was also known to swear like a trooper, too. The difference is, he never publicly dissed his workforce. Like all good coaches, he knew you don’t get very far by trash-talking the very players you count on for your ultimate success.

—The Management Guy

Get my latest blog updates and workforce management news by following me on Twitter.

I get a lot of questions here at the Business of Management, and many of them have broad appeal to managers at just about every level. So, I’ve started a new Business of Management blog feature: Hey Management Guy! If you have a question about a workforce management practice (stupid or otherwise), just post it at the bottom of this blog item or e-mail it here to me at jhollon@workforce.com. I’ll pick out the best queries and answer them here each month.

Hey Management Guy! My company has a problem with employees who don’t know how to keep their mouths shut. Management is constantly hearing about internal information that has been passed along to competitors, vendors and, worst of all, the media. How can we get workers to understand that what happens inside should stay inside?

—Cathy from Cupertino, California

Cathy:

This is a new question about a very old problem that just about every organization struggles with. In fact, The Management Guy remembers working at a newspaper where the bald baboon of an editor was driven absolutely bonkers by internal information getting leaked to the competition. So he sent a nasty and threatening memo to the staff warning of dire consequences for anyone caught doing so. Of course, his nasty memo got faxed to the competition no more than 10 minutes after he sent it out—from the fax machine right outside his office, no less.

This illustrates a critical point: For better or worse, workers respond to the tone set by the managers above them. No organization likes internal information getting leaked, but if you want it to stop, you need the top managers to treat everyone like adults and give them a business case for why they need to stop.

In fact, there is another Cupertino company that is struggling with this very problem: Yahoo. New CEO Carol Bartz recently sent out a memo venting about a lot of things, but specifically griping about someone “forwarding her first company-wide email to some blogs,” according to The Wall Street Journal. She wrote that the person who did that should step forward and resign, but failing that, “maybe we should have a weekly bounty on such people. I will throw in the first thousand dollars.”

I know Carol Bartz has a lot to deal with at Yahoo given the mess she was left by founder Jerry Yang (a people-challenged executive if there ever was one), but putting a bounty on the heads of workers who leak internal information is really old school and reminiscent of Nixon’s attempt to plug leaks in the White House by forming the “plumbers” unit. We all know how well that turned out.

I’d advise your executives—and other execs, like Carol Bartz—to resist the urge to punish or offer a bounty on the heads of blabbermouths. Instead, spend a little time educating the workforce on the dangers of leaking internal business information. Talk to them about company secrets and why they need to remain secret. And most of all, ask for their help in knowing the information boundaries. I guarantee that if you do this instead of playing “Wanted: Dead or Alive,” you’ll have a lot fewer leaks and a lot more employees willing to help you make it happen.

—The Management Guy

Get my latest blog updates and workforce management news by following me on Twitter.