Management Fail
In the American employment system, people are divided into two separate yet equally important groups: the managers who do stupid things, and the employees who suffer at their stupidity. These are their stories…
Once upon a time there was a girl named Lizzie. Lizzie had a full time Monday to Friday job, but she decided to take a side job doing some training work. As part of this job, Lizzie does two things: deliver one on one trainings on Saturdays to individuals, and give longer seminar type trainings to groups as her schedule allows.
Thursday, 4:00 PM
This week, Lizzie happens to be fortunate enough to have Thursday and Friday off from “regular” job. Then her phone rings…
“Hey, are you off work tomorrow?” her boss asks.
“Yes, why?”
“We want you to do a six hour training session tomorrow at 8AM.”
D’oh!
What you may not realize is that this was a new training program that had not been developed yet, so she also needed to create the materials for the training that night!
Crazy. But that’s not the big management fail.
Lizzie thinks, “wow, this is short notice, but I like the work and I like the company.”
She agrees to do it, does the prep work Thursday night, and spends her day off doing six hours of training.
Friday, 5:00 PM
Lizzie thinks, “wow that was a crazy 24 hours, but I got it done and it went really well. It kind of sucks that after that craziness I still have to work on Saturday, but at least I am only scheduled for one hour, from 10-11 AM.”
Saturday, 9:45 AM
Lizzie double checks her schedule online before heading in to work. It still says, “10-11 AM” only.
She thinks, “Cool, just one hour and then I can enjoy some of my weekend.”
Saturday, 10:00 AM
Lizzie arrives at work (a scant 15 minutes after double checking the schedule), and as soon as she walks in the door her boss says, “are you doing anything the rest of the day?”
Uh-oh. That’s always a loaded question. Sadly, she didn’t think quickly enough to lie.
“No. Why?”
“John called in sick. I need you to take his shifts.”
She looks at him. “You’re not asking me, are you? You’re telling me.”
“Yeah. I suppose I am.”
John was scheduled for 11-4, with a one hour break.
That’s right, Lizzie’s day went from one hour to six hours! With no notice! No prep! No consideration or apology!
Lizzie thinks, “This job sucks. This work sucks. This manager sucks.”
And that, my friends, is Management Fail!
I get it: Ding Happens. Someone calls in sick and then people have to scramble and sacrifice to cover. It sucks, but it’s a part of life.
However, there are good ways of dealing with those Dings, and there are bad ways.
The good ways lead to a team that feels appreciated and happy they were able to pull together and deal with a problem. The bad ways lead to resentment, anger, and a mass exodus.
This story was an example of the bad way of dealing with it. Here are four things you can learn from my Lizzie’s experience to help you avoid “Management Fail”:
Be Compassionate
People hate to deliver bad news (I know I do), and do it in many different ways:
- Some get overly apologetic.
- Others stay very factual land straightlaced.
- Some get all wishy washy and whiny.
- The best balance compassion and understanding with firmness.
- The worst, usually the insecure ones, work themselves up in advance and use anger or dominance to preempt what they believe will be a negative response.
The last one is a great strategy if you want to lose your best people. Otherwise, take it down a notch. Drop your defensiveness, have a little compassion, and be a human being.
Be Considerate
In this story, Lizzie checked her schedule online 15 minutes before she was supposed to be there. At that point, she was still listed as having just one appointment. It wasn’t until she got there that she was told she had to work an additional 5 hours.
I suppose it is possible that the person called in sick one minute before my friend got to work. It’s possible. It’s much more likely, in my humble opinion, that the call came in earlier and the manager just thought, “oh, Lizzie is coming in, I’ll just tell her when she gets here.”
That’s straight-up dumbassery.
Not giving any advance notice, via email or call, is a big fat Fail for four reasons:
- It gives no time to prepare – Lizzie thought she was working for only one hour. She didn’t take her wallet, or any food for lunch, or even a bottle of water (they oddly enough have no drinking water at this place). She only had a couple of bucks with which to try to get food on the one short break she had. No matter how short the notice was, a little advanced warning would have helped.
- It’s way out of proportion – It’s one thing to tack one extra hour onto someone’s five hour shift. It’s completely another to tack five hours onto a one hour shift. The first is a 20% increase in time. The second is a 500% increase! That requires at least the attempt of prior notification…
- It smacks of fear – Of course there is the possibility that the manager intentionally didn’t call because he was afraid that it would be easier for her to say “no” over the phone. Once she was there, it would be easier to force her into it. That kind of manipulation may garner some short terms gains, but it is a recipe for long term mistrust and dissent. It also means there is some deeper problem going on, either with the manager or the employee.
- It’s incredibly disrespectful – The manager couldn’t be bothered to pick up the phone and say, “John is sick, I need you to work five hours today.” People (bad managers especially) seem to forget that good communication is the first step towards building trust and good relationships. If your people don’t feel respected, they won’t stick around.
Don’t be an inconsiderate, disrespectful, fearful dumbass. Give as much notice as you can, even if it’s only a tiny bit.
Be Thankful
So at the end of this, were they effusive in their thanks? Nope. Just a simple, “see you next week.” Oh wait, I forgot: after giving her only 16 hours notice to prep and deliver 6 hours of training and then giving her no notice that her one hour shift had become six, they then on Sunday sent an email announcing a staff meeting the next evening, off hours, and she was, “strongly encouraged to attend”!
Manage.
Ment.
Fail!
One of the years I was on the the board of my local speakers association chapter, my friend and fellow speaker Steve Coscia was the President. He summed up his presidential strategy succinctly:
Find great people, and thank them often..
Those simple seven words are a better management strategy than most of what you see out there.
What tickles me about this situation is that when she interviewed for the position, the people at the company told her she was overqualified for the job! But she likes that type of work and wanted to do it, so they hired her. Now they have someone who they admit they are lucky to have, but do they take any of the simple steps to appreciate and keep her? Nope.
You might be thinking, well if she’s overqualified then maybe the manager is used to treating the regular staff that way. If so, I say two things to you:
- A little consideration, respect, and thanks are good strategies regardless of the employee
- If a manager can’t distinguish between how they need to interact with different employees, then they have no business being a manager (or need some serious training)
There may be a lot of nuance that goes into being an excellent manager. But it starts with simply not being a dumbass manager, and that starts with those three things:
- Be Compassionate
- Be Considerate
- Be Thankful
If you do nothing else but those three things, you will be well ahead of the management failing herd…
How about you? What example of Management Fail do you have in your past? I would love to hear about them in the comments section below!
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About
By Avish Parashar. As the world's only Motivational Improviser, Avish uses techniques from the world of improv comedy to engage, entertain, and educate audiences on ideas around change, creativity, and motivation. Connect with Avish on Google+