In my last blog, I described a project where the people on the project were treated rather terribly. The top leadership were insensitive to people’s needs, incredible hours were being worked, and when it was done, the leadership thought a cookie (literally) and a thank you note were adequate compensation for the heartache implementing the system caused among the employees.
Fast forward five years. Because so much customization had been done to the previous system, the cost to upgrade it was prohibitive. The decision was made to spend that money in creating a new system entirely. We will leave the wisdom of replacing a five year old system to others to debate, but suffice it to say, the staff was not happy to hear this. In this particular organization, which had a long tenured staff, there were many people who remembered the first implementation and the personal chaos that ensued.
Some lessons had been learned from the first project, as told to me by several of the key people on the project. They wanted to be more realistic about time frames, and they were. Feedback was more welcomed than the first project, where giving you opinion could result in punishment or dismissal. Buffers had been put into place in case there was a delay in the project, where few had existed before.
Still, not all lessons had been learned. As the project grew nearer and nearer to the completion date, people were once again told they may have to work extra hours for weeks on end in order to meet the deadline. Once again there were people who would come in at 8 am and not leave until 10 pm every weekday. The rush-rush-rush mentality began creeping into the mindsets of managers, all driven by the head of the company, who publicly promised that he would resign if the project didn’t launch on time.
One vignette, I believe, illustrates this well. In one department, the manager, who was also a chief project manager on this endeavor, would hold a weekly status on how things were going. While she had an overall view of the project, her subordinates in her department were responsible for testing the product to see if it worked properly, and report if it did not. When she announced what the testing times would be, she received feedback from her team that the timeline was too tight, and that they could not do all the testing necessary along with doing their regular jobs of keeping the old system running. The manager’s response? “Well, you’ll just have to work nights and weekends then. Can’t you see how important this project is?”
This was reiterated in a more professional way by the same manager at an ‘all hands’ meeting held right before the Christmas holidays. Addressing a group of over 100 people, this manager said that she realized it was the holidays, but they needed to keep on track, so ‘we might ask you to put in some extra hours’. This was not well received by people who had already been doubling the amount of hours they usually worked.
In talking with this manager’s staff, it became apparent that this manager was a workaholic, and being such, didn’t see what was wrong with people putting in extra hours. She failed to see that others weren’t workaholics, and was trying to appeal to them on a level which didn’t hold any significance for them. Rather, being veterans of the previous project, they wanted as little as possible to do with the project, as they remembered the scars from five years ago.
The lesson from this project is that a good manager needs to find the significance for their employees in order to have engagement. He or she needs to find the way to have people decide they want to put in the extra hours, or go the extra mile, especially if the manager is handicapped in this by ghosts from projects past. A good manager will be filling that reservoir of good will every day, so when he or she needs to draw from it, they can. Failing that, they need to find a way to respect their people. Saying, “Well, you will need to work evenings and weekends” is not finding that respect. That is bossing people around.
While the old joke that goes, “We have a great incentive plan here. Work and get paid.” holds appeal to some managers, they will never get the traction that a manager who realizes their people are primary can get. That manager will have a better quality product, better quality team, and people who will walk through fire for them.
I tell you, when they are done with this, there better not just be cookies.
The Good Management Blog 