The Ghosting of Emily

Emily opened her texting app and selected the group thread she had looked at so many times over the past couple of weeks. Though she knew almost every word on that thread, she re-read many of the messages her team had sent over the past few months. It was more than a work discussion. They joked, talked about their private lives, and interacted like friends.

That was until a couple of weeks ago when the layoffs came. Emily and her co-worker Harold were laid off from the company while their manager and the manager’s manager kept their positions. It was then the group texting, and all communication from the two managers, suddenly stopped. There were no check-ins, no inquiries about how she was doing, or any kind of message whatsoever. If there was a professional form of ghosting, this was it. The only person who had kept in touch with her from her team was Harold, who checked in with her on a regular basis to see how she was coping.

Though she had received dozens of messages from co-workers expressing how much they would miss her and offers of assistance for the asking, it still saddened Emily that two people she considered friends had completely dropped her from their lives without explanation and without cause. She guessed she misread all the friendly banter and non-work conversations.

Shaking off that disappointment, she looked at all the messages she received, and all the kind words said in those messages. With practiced movements, she brought up a menu on the text app, paused for a moment, and replied ‘yes’ to the question on the screen, ‘Do you want to delete this thread?’ She then sent a message to Harold seeing how he was doing with his job search.

How many times have you heard executives of companies say, “You are not just an employee here. You are family.” Many job seekers and employees know those to be only words, but when management is given the opportunity to prove those words true, do they? Or, do they follow the safer and easier path, making sure they avoid anger and sadness by avoiding the person who only a short time ago they were interacting with on a daily basis? How is that treating people like family?

Or are they just words in a recruiting folder, an employee manual, or on a group text thread?

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Implementing a Change

Harry dejectedly walked out of his annual review. It would be another year where his work was considered exemplary, but that he would not be getting a promotion. The reason this year was that he was not ‘strategic’ enough in his work, thus could not be promoted to a position where strategy was more important.

He was not the only one to receive this message. His colleague, Maise, was also told the same thing. While they both received a raise and would be bonus eligible, there would be no movement in the organization for them, at least for another year. They both suspected that next year would be another reason, or maybe the same reason, why no promotion would be forthcoming.

The reason for this pronouncement from their manager seemed almost ironic. Harry and Maise were the go-to people in the department when some strategy needed to be implemented. They knew where to start, where in the company to get the right people, had the right contacts, and knew how to make the plans reality. Their work had directly contributed to the department’s success and even to promotions for some of their reporting chain. Their successes had only bred more assignments where they were always teetering on being overworked. There were times during the year where they were asked why there were delays in their schedule, a point which was brought up during the reviews. The strategists did not want to hear that they simply had too much work. Didn’t they realize the department’s plans needed to go forward?!

Their morale low and feeling discouraged, they opened their separate projects and began what they seemed destined to do for the foreseeable future. They prepared their status updates and continued their work.

We laud the strategists. They are the movers and shapers of the company. They come up with the big ideas that drive the firm into the next few years. We revere their abilities to see into the future and navigate the ship for greater success and profits, at least it is hoped.

The one thing that always seems to be missing in that reverence is that without the implementers, the strategy is simply a piece of paper. Without the know-how, contacts, and expertise of those who bring the strategy for life, there is no forward movement and no glorious future. There are no back slaps in the executive suite and handshakes all around for another success. There are fewer promotions for a strategy well executed.

But we don’t see it that way. We see the implementers as something less. We see the implementers as not worthy of promotion because, well, they aren’t strategizing, are they? No, they can’t seem to get out of the drudgery of being concerned with the little things, the mundane, the ordinary. They need to think bigger!

Yet, what do you do with the implementers? Give them more to implement! They are so good at it, aren’t they? Just hand it to them, get some updates, and report the success. Or report the issues with the project and how you had to swoop in to save it, showing the implementers are just not ready yet to join the upper ranks. Either way the argument for the lower ranks to stay exactly where they are is justified, at least to your own mind.

It’s time we changed the conversation. It’s also time we changed the attitudes. A company can’t run with everyone deciding where to sail the ship and nobody taking the wheel. Those who implement are as crucial to the viability of a company as those who strategize. They should not be treated as undeserving of promotion simply because they have a different skillset, one that the company cannot do without.

If the conversation won’t change, then it is incumbent of those who strategize to take those skills and teach them to others. That is going to require sacrifice. It will require less work upon the implementers so they can learn to strategize. It will mean a lower chance of success because you have invested in the career of another human being. It will mean courage to explain that to your executives.

All that will take a different kind of strategy. One that will keep good people with the company and your bench strength filled. The question is, do you have the fortitude to be the implementer of that?

Love Me or Get Fired!

It was a big task, but Barbara thought she was up to it. She has proposed to create a whole new system from scratch, though there were plenty of vendor alternatives on the market. No, this was going to be her baby, her inspiration, and her legacy. This system was going to be built.

There was very little input from others about this system. Yes, there were a few focus groups asking what end-users would like to see in the system. Unfortunately, there weren’t any focus groups for those who really used the current system about what they really needed. Thus, when the first iteration of the system was unveiled, there were more than a few questions and more than a few criticisms leveled at the effort.

Stung by this, Barbara vigorously defended the system, leveling accusations at those who criticized the system as ‘hater of innovation’ or ‘not giving the system a chance’. When the critics brought up key functionality that the system did not possess, Barbara would counter that they really didn’t need that functionality and were just looking for things to criticize. When other said maybe they shouldn’t use the system, but stay with the legacy system, Barbara doubled down on her defense of the system and refused to even acknowledge those concerns.

In her own organization, Barbara mandated only support for the system. She did not want to hear about the shortcomings and ordered her direct reports to vigorously defend the system against any stakeholders who might dare to level criticism. For those direct reports who did come to her with concerns about the viability of the product, Barbara had a unique strategy. She threatened to fire them.

It wasn’t an outright threat, as Barbara knew that might warrant HR coming to visit her and investigate. Instead, she would usually say that she didn’t think anyone who wasn’t a ‘team player’ had a place in her organizations, and that the employee better think long and hard if they wanted to level any criticisms against the system. For the majority of her direct reports, that bought their silence rather well, though they still had serious reservations about the system. Barbara could live with that.

One of the most difficult part of being a leader is shuttling your ego to one side and listening to ideas contrary to your own. Even more difficult is admitting that you might not be correct about a course of action you have taken. None of us enjoys admitting that, nor having to reverse course and suffer the backlash that will ensue.

It is also one of the most critical parts of being a leader. If your ego can’t take that kind of examination of your actions, then you don’t have a right to be sitting in that leadership chair. If your reaction to being told you might be wrong is to immediately threaten termination to an employee for being ‘disloyal’, then you should vacate that position immediately, as now you have demonstrated that you care more about yourself than your company or your employees.

We all make mistakes. It is how we learn from them and go forward that defines us. If your reaction to hearing about possible mistakes is to find any and all ways of silencing those who told you, then you don’t deserve a position where you are allowed to make any decisions at all.

The Lessons of a Pizza Lunch

The group chatted affably over the slices of pizza. It was a scene they all were familiar with. They were asked to join upper management in the conference room to bid farewell to a co-worker who was going to another job. The speeches were made about how the person would be missed and thanking them for their contributions over the years. The employees would then be invited to have some pizza and mingle.

It was all very nice, but all very familiar. For some of the employees, this was a well-worn ritual that happened well too often. For those who had been there some amount of time, their estimate was that around 75% of the company had their pizza lunch or equivalent. Even for those who were not in the company a long time, they saw an inordinate amount of pizza.

Each time it was the same. The same reasons would be given. It’s the economy. It’s the nature of the business. People just don’t want to stay around and grow with the company anymore.

The truth was a bit different. People would have stayed if there was growth with the company. Sadly, except for a few, there wasn’t. The position you were hired at was the level you stayed at. The duties you were hired to do were the duties you always did. There was no growing, no stretching, no innovation. Even when some would suggest something to grow themselves, the answer was usually in the negative. There wasn’t money for that or the person wasn’t experienced enough for that, or it would take away from their more important duties. Eventually people became frustrated or bored and looked elsewhere. Then there was pizza.

The conversation died down and people drifted back to their desks, most of the pizza left untouched. There were some grumbles about that from those paid for the pizza. Why hold these gatherings when people weren’t eating? The answer was simpler than that. People weren’t eating because they had no appetite for yet another pizza party.

Much of management and leadership is asking the right questions. When there is a path being beaten out the door, an inattentive manager will make excuses. A good manager will ask, “What is causing this outflux?” An excellent manager will ask, “What can I do to stop this outflux?” If employees are very, very lucky, that question be followed up with, “Am I doing something to cause that outflux?”

A good manager sees a problem and immediately begins to try to solve it, not make excuses about why it’s happening. They don’t default to well-worn excuses of the economy or the industry. They look first to their actions or inactions, and ask themselves some hard questions…ones in which they may not like the answers. They then take actions to solve the problem, even if it means some sacrifice on their part. It’s a difficult path, but the one that is most rewarding.

If they do it right, they find themselves not having to pay for so many pizza lunches.

The Project: What’s In a Name?

This is the first in a set of articles detailing some of the management behaviors that took place while a certain department was working on a very labor-intensive project.  This won’t be detailing the project specifically, but how management handled the stresses on the department resulting from the project.

The department was several weeks into the work on the project, and the strain was showing on everyone.  People were working insane hours trying to get their project work done while getting their regular jobs done as well. People putting in 50 to 80 hours a week was becoming typical, and there was no end in sight.  Nights, weekends, and holidays were being taken up by project work, as were the notes from supervisors as to why a certain regular work task wasn’t done.  The silent reaction to that kind of demand was usually, “You are kidding, right?”

Many looked to the office of Sarah.  Claiming she was ‘swamped’, she had not volunteered to take any burden off of anyone regarding the project, though she had hired a temp or two for some of the tasks.  While the staff was appreciative of the temps work, they also looked skeptically as Sarah’s claim, as they were all swamped with work even before the project.  Now they were simply overloaded.

In the midst of this, Sarah had decided what her major area of focus was going to be.  She needed a new title.  Claiming her present title didn’t sufficiently convey the importance of her role, she had gone on a campaign of trying to change her title to something more appropriate.  As the machinery of this involved some of the systems that she was in charge of, she would appropriate some of the time of the people of the department to make this happen.  It didn’t seem to matter to her that her people were already beyond their capacity.  This was important to Sarah, as it would give her the title she so well deserved.

So, it came as no real surprise when a member of her department, involved in getting testing done before the deadline later that day, opened her mailbox to see a note from Sarah designated as high priority.  Opening it, they saw all the approvals necessary for the title change had come through and that Sarah had to have it officially put into the system right away, or, in Sarah speak, by end of day.

Dutifully, the employee of the department closed the testing they were doing, opened up another system, and entered the information to officially change Sarah’s title.  After saving that information, the employee looked at the clock and saw that, with the time used for that ‘high priority’ task, they would now have to stay late, again, to finish the testing for the day.  Otherwise, they risked a note from their supervisor or from Sarah herself scolding them for not getting this done, causing someone to call her and ask why the testing wasn’t done, and suggesting they really needed to manage their time better.

“Yep”, the employee thought to them self, “I now feel so much more respect for Sarah now that she has this new title.”  The employee looked to Sarah’s office.  She had decided to leave for the day, probably claiming that she deserved the time off for all the work she had done that day.

The Unexpected Response

Arnold was in a panic.  Things weren’t going the way he had planned them, and he wasn’t happy about it in the least.  If all had gone as he had manipulated, he would have had Vince exactly where he needed him, things going just as he wanted, and the near future looking good.  Unfortunately, Vince had thrown his plans into such disarray that he didn’t know what do to next.

Arnold used to be Vince’s department head.  Since taking the job, Arnold had relied upon Vince and his colleagues to look good to the client.  Arnold’s clients would ask for a solution, which Vince or one of his colleague would work hard to provide.  They were then mandated to hand it in to Arnold, who would take it to the client, take credit for it, and then reap all the praise for the great work.

In Vince’s case, Arnold added a bit extra to that formula.  On a regular basis, Arnold would criticize Vince for one thing or another, demeaning his knowledge, running down his experience, and basically making Vince feel like he was lucky Arnold didn’t fire him and that Vince was fortunate to still have a job.  This was Arnold’s way of ensuring that Vince stayed worked for him, and not seeking a better job or asking for a raise or promotion.

The whole system began to unravel when the company they worked for underwent massive downsizing and restructuring.  Within a two year span, thousands of the employees were either downsized or their business unit sold to another company.  It was a bloodbath, in no uncertain terms, and caused Arnold’s self-preservation instincts to jump into high gear.

The latest ‘restructuring’ was being announced, and though Vince no longer worked directly for Arnold, his work was integral to Arnold’s sterling reputation with his clients.  As the rest of Vince’s colleagues had already been laid off, Arnold relied upon Vince more than ever.

So, in order to keep this good thing going, Arnold announced to Vince that he was going to ‘save’ him from the latest round of layoffs.  The latest restructuring gave Arnold two employees, and he was going to make sure that Vince received one of those slots.  Vince greeted this with less enthusiasm than Arnold expected, but he accepted the offer.

A week later, after the application deadline for all the ‘restructured’ spots was over, Arnold came to Vince and told him he could no longer consider him for that position.  He used the old excuse of, ‘you don’t have the skills necessary’, though offered no explanation why he didn’t know this a week and a half ago.  In reality, Arnold had been told in no uncertain terms that, if Vince took the position, he could no longer do the work for Arnold that had made him look so good.  As this was the only reason why Arnold wanted Vince in the position, he quickly reversed course.

Realizing where this placed his gravy train, Arnold approached Vince and told him that he was going to fight to have Vince placed on a new team.  What Vince replied with threw Arnold into a tailspin.  Vince’s reply? “No, you won’t.”

If this had been a Hollywood film, Vince would have had a wonderful speech about how Arnold had finally gone too far with his lies, deceptions, manipulations, and other acts.  Instead, he simply said, “You didn’t want me the first time.  I don’t want to be part of yours or any other team in the company any longer.”  He further admonished Arnold not to try to get him on any other team.

Arnold was dumbfounded.  He had worked so long manipulating those around him to his own advantage.  He thought he had Vince convinced that he was so worthless that only Arnold’s kindness and largess was saving him. Apparently, he had underestimated Vince’s resilience, as well as his tolerance for the nearly inhuman way he and his colleagues had been treated by Arnold’s peers.

A few days later, Arnold came back to Vince to offer him another ‘solution’.  Vince could come back as a contractor!  Vince looked at Arnold and asked, “If I don’t want to be part of this place as an employee, why would I want to be part of it as a contractor?”

In the end, Vince was laid off from the company, and Arnold didn’t even wish him well on his way out. He found a position soon after, but kept in touch with some of his former colleagues.  From them he learned that, within six months, Arnold’s reputation with his clients was in tatters.  He was no longer working miracles, and his clients weren’t happy about that.  The two people he had hired for the spots under him, one of them his good friend, weren’t working out, and his life was miserable.  Vince, still healing from the abuses heaped upon him at the company, reacted with muted recognition, and got back to work at his new job.

The picture above is from an old cartoon character, Popeye the Sailor.  One of Popeye’s famous lines was, when he had enough, “That’s all I can stand; I can’t stand no more”. If your way of keeping your good people is to threaten, manipulate, criticize, and make them feel altogether lucky to have a job, be prepared to be surprised.  Each employee, like Vince, will have their Popeye moment and decide that living with the abuse is no longer the way they want to exist.  They will then do something surprising that you never expected, because your own ego won’t allow you to believe anyone but you is pulling the strings.

And, when that employee leaves, and you are left scrambling to have to fill some very big shoes, remember Popeye.  Remember as well that, if you simply treated your employees with respect and courtesy, everyone succeeds.  If you don’t, only your employees will emerge stronger at the finish.

Elephant? What Elephant?

It had become the new method of dealing with the abundant stress in the company.  It was the stress leave, and more and more employees had been taking it.  The latest was Ellen, who had finally had it with her new department leader.  The leader, who had risen in the ranks, often decided to sneak up on people to spy on what they were doing on their computer.  Her ‘my way or the highway’ approach to the work to be done had her staff doing tons of extra work in order to do things the way she wanted, even if it didn’t make sense.  She also arbitrarily changed their job responsibilities, adding travel or other duties, without talking with the staff first, and simply expecting them to accept these changes without question.

Ellen did what many staff members had been doing.  Seeing no recourse from Human Resources, she asked her doctor to write her out on a stress leave.  The doctor, seeing what was being done to Ellen, happily agreed.  She thus became one of the lengthening list of people who was taking advantage of this in order to find another job while having some income flowing.  Was it what she wanted to do?  No.  Like many of her colleagues, she wanted to come in to do the job she had at one time loved.  The fact that so many were taking this option showed there was a problem with who the company was promoting, not who the company was hiring to do the work.

What was Human Resources’ response to this growing trend?  Did they begin to investigate why this type of leave was rising rapidly?  Were they working with managers to try to improve their performance, especially at the executive level?  Were they identifying which behaviors were causing this?  No to all the above.  Human Resources only consultation with these managers was to tell them that the employee’s job was protected for six months.  After that, HR would help the manager fire the employee.  They did this with astonishing frequency, almost becoming effortless experts at it.

Thus Ellen became the latest person in another growing line:  employees released by the company because HR couldn’t be bothered to find out why the employee, who had been with the company 10 years, was now willing to be fired rather than come into the office.

It is a poor doctor that decides to treat the symptoms of a disease but make a conscious decision not to look for its root causes.  The same with a company’s HR department.  When their decision is to always support the manager, whether the manager is right or wrong, then they set the stage for employees to take any way they can to cope with the situation.

In other words, when you decide to ignore the elephant in the room, you can’t blame anyone else for having to clean up what the elephant leaves behind.

It’s Only Someone Else’s Money

It was company policy to refresh each employee’s computer every three years.  Sarah was no different, so when the call to renew her laptop came to the coordinator for the department, the coordinator approved a new laptop for her.  Soon enough, the IT department informed Sarah that they would be stopping by to install her new laptop.  That is when this whole thing began.

Sarah had decided she didn’t want the typical renewed laptop.  Oh no, that would not do for her.  Now, she had not told anyone this, but this is what she wanted.   What did she want?  Well, she wanted something different.  She wanted a laptop made by a company that has a fruit theme.  This didn’t bother the IT department, as they had two different types of fruit-themed laptops available for users.

But wait, Sarah said, she didn’t want either of them.  She wanted something special.  She wanted something that they didn’t regularly stock.  After consultation with IT, they came up with the fruit-themed laptop that she would accept.  This set the wheels turning for the coordinator for the department to spend a few hours having to fill out the proper forms for a special request, give the justification, and do the research for the price and possible vendor.  It then had to go through the Byzantine approval system.  Happily, he must have burned the right incense and incanted the right ritual, as the request went through.  Sarah was happy.

As part of the request, the coordinator was advised to make sure he ordered all the accessories for the computer at the same time.  Again, spending time researching all that Sarah would need, he added in all but one thing.  Would Sarah want a new monitor?

Her monitor at present was satisfactory for what she would use the fruit-themed laptop for, but the coordinator knew better.  This laptop wasn’t satisfying a huge business need.  No, it was satisfying an ego need, which Sarah was the latest victim of, having seen many of her peers succumb.   Because of that, he believed soon after the laptop arrived, she would want the same monitor that the other executives had.  The coordinator went to the fruit-themed vendor’s website, surfed for monitors, and found the one monitor they sold.  It was:

27″

It was:

$999

Bringing this to Sarah, the coordinator advised Sarah of her choices and the respective prices.  Sarah’s decision?  The $999 monitor, which the department would pay for.  Despite that the CFO, one of Sarah’s peers, told everyone in the department that it was everyone’s duty to avoid unnecessary expenditures, Sarah authorized the monitor for her…for $999.  It would take more incense, more rituals, and more paperwork to push it through.  Every time the coordinator would be asked why did someone need such a ridiculously expensive monitor, he would simply say that it was what Sarah wanted.  Having dealt with enough executives of the company and their expensive toys, the ordering department put the request through.

Helping the company be fiscally responsible could wait for another day.  Sarah needed her monitor that could be viewed by the International Space Station.  The coordinator sat back, resumed work on his standard laptop, viewing his standard screen, and got on with his day.

Got Bad News? Let’s Ignore It!

It had been a bad year for Sarah’s department.  The company didn’t win a best places to work award, which Sarah was in charge of applying for, in two years straight years.  The staff had some very critical things to say about the services her department had provided.  Her performance ratings still had some serious issues, with her department not being a safe to say environment among the top items.

At a staff meeting on this, Sarah announced she had come up with a unique way of dealing with all this ‘bad news’.  She was simply going to ignore it all.  There would be no work to improve the situation, no going forward plans, and no focus groups.  She was simply going to pretend they didn’t exist.  She would close her eyes and they would all float away.

The staff, upon hearing this, simply nodded blandly. They were not surprised, as they knew Sarah.  Nothing was ever her fault.  Someone else was always to blame.  There was never a hint of introspection.  She would find someone to blame and then go from there.  In this case, she couldn’t, so it made sense to them that her fall back position was to simply ignore the existence of the problem, and then dare anyone to bring them up once she had made her decision.  Nobody would, as they enjoyed paying their mortgages.

When we are small children, we believe that if we pull the covers over our head, we will be protected from the monsters under the bed.  As we grow up, we learn that there are not monsters under the bed, but there are some uglier and more dangerous monsters in the world.  We also learn that we need to not hide under the covers, but rather face our monsters.  Legitimate criticism, if we learn from it, makes us stronger and better.

Leaders can’t afford to have their heads under the covers fearing the monsters under the bed.  They can’t just say they are going to ignore the criticisms, while readily dishing out criticisms about others.  It’s not the sexiest part of leadership, but a crucial part of it.  Too bad some just can’t get out from under the covers.

Failure is an Orphan

The annual meeting to discuss the latest engagement scores was held by Sarah, with about typical results.  Some scores went up, some went down, and some stayed the same.  That wasn’t news.  As any employee who had watched this dance for several years knew, the focus of the meeting, and the major entertainment, was how the scores would be spun.  This year was no different in that aspect.

You had to listen more closely this year for the entertainment, however, as it was subtle, but it was there.  It wasn’t in what was said about why the scores were what they were, but in the different explanations for the scores.  For any scores that were good, or had shown improvement, Sarah and her supporters immediately complimented each other on how well ‘the department’ did.  However, for any scores that had shown a decline, the story was quite different.  For each one of those, the explanation was that ‘the company’s’ scores on these areas must be represented by the data, not the department’s.  In other words, any poor scores were not reflective of the department, but rather that the company’s poor scores were dragging that number down.  Thus, it was not the department’s fault the numbers were low.  They could then be blithely ignored and have no concerns whatsoever given to them.

This see-saw effect happened throughout the meeting.  It was obvious that any good scores were reflective of the department, and that any bad scores were the result of everyone else dragging down what would have been stellar numbers for the department.  This flexible interpretation made Sarah and her supporters feel good and walk out of the meeting assured that they were doing a wonderful job.

There is an old saying that success has many parents, but failure is an orphan.  In this case, failure did have a parent, but it turned out to be dubious lineage.  Sarah and her supporters didn’t know who the parent was, but it was obvious it wasn’t them.  This finger pointing would allow them to escape any critical review of themselves for another year.

A good leader is one who accepts both the good and the bad news.  That leader than engages in critical reflection of that bad news and why it happened, and what can be done to turn it around.  That leader does not push it to the side, blaming everyone else for it, but uses it to grow.  The result is a better leader and a better situation for those they lead.

If the only mental exercise you get is to figure out a way to blame others for your own bad news, then I congratulate you.  You are a master of the spin.

I cannot congratulate you for being a good leader, though, for you have a long way to go before that title is bestowed upon you.