Introduction, Part Three: First, Do No Harm

Once upon a time, Roger went to work for a man named Max whom Roger quickly realized did almost nothing.

Max talked fluently about teamwork and about never being afraid of hard work, but never did any himself.

Max did, however, listen patiently and kindly to employees' woes, and he did give excellent advice.

He did not help them work, but he helped them find and use the tools they needed to do the work themselves.

When faced with a roadblock in productivity, Max would ask an employee to find out how to fix it.  When the employee came back with an answer, he would listen, then tell the employee to go ahead and try that.  If the trial failed, he would listen to the employee explain how and why it had failed, then let him try again.  If the attempt succeeded, Max gathered all the troops together, described in cheerful, false detail how HE had helped the employee to solve the problem, then praised the employee in that public venue.

Max - let's reiterate here - never did a moment's actual work.  He never even wrote the mandatory annual performance reviews for his employees; he told them to write them, and sent them back if they weren't sufficiently laudatory.  Then he added a few more flattering words, and signed them.  In corporate meetings, he described in glowing terms what his section had accomplished, taking some credit for himself, but then giving all the remainder of the credit to his employees, by name, in those public venues. 

For many years, this is how Max worked.  Doing nothing, taking some credit he didn't deserve, then spreading all the rest of the credit around. He was promoted, then promoted, then promoted again.  Some day, Roger suspected, Max would be promoted to a job where he would HAVE to do something.  But he was such a likable guy that this worried rather than pleased Roger.

Life goes on, but sometimes it doesn't.  One day, Max dropped dead at work.

One of Roger's first thoughts upon hearing the news had to do with how ironic it was that Max had died in the office, since he had never actually done any work there.  But over the years since Max's death Roger met and re-met others who had worked for him.  All of them had been through Max's catch-and-release praise process; not a single one of them expressed anything but sadness for the loss.

He had been a pretty good boss, in fact, as far as they were concerned - especially compared to others they had worked for before and since.  He had been kind, patient, supportive, and had given a lot of credit where it was due.  In the long run, it didn't matter that he had never even filled out a time card if he could get someone else to do it.  He had at least done no harm.

This may seem like damning with faint praise, but  Roger knows now - if he didn't know then - that in most organizations this might be the best that an employee will ever find:  a boss who is kind, is patient, does not stab employees in the back,  does not interfere with them doing their best, and only steals part of the credit.

RIP indeed.

Introduction, Part Two: It Only Takes Once to Assure The Employee Loyalty You Deserve

Once upon a time, on a Monday morning long ago, a young woman started a new job.  Like all new transferees, she was tense, happy, worried, eager to learn, to do well, to impress her new boss, to succeed.

During a walk through the office, the boss showed her the large walk-in vault which held the most valuable items.  He handed her the combination and invited her to open it.

The young woman had learned about vaults in a three-hour class, four weeks before.  She had learned about several different types of combination locks, all of which operate differently.  In the same class, she had learned how to re-set a combination and how to repair a stuck or broken lock.  Four weeks before.  In three hours.

She studied the huge, black, silent dial.  She looked at the numbers.  The new boss, the man she was desperate to impress, stepped back, crossed his arms, and said nothing.

So she tried the combination.  Right first, or left?  She didn't remember so she tried one way.  When that didn't work, she tried the other.  No luck.  Maybe there should be two rotations between numbers instead of only one.  No.  Maybe two, then one.  Nothing.  The door remained stubbornly closed.

The young woman began to perspire.  She wiped her hand on her new uniform skirt, the skirt she had pressed early this morning with such care, with such hope and excitement, and tried again.

No.

She realized, very suddenly, that she might cry.  Then she stole a glance, just a quick sideways flick of the eye, at her new boss.

On his face she saw a knowing, sarcastic smile.

At that moment, although she didn't recognize it until much later, she thought, "You son of a bitch.  Some day I'll get you for this."

She never forgot that experience.  She never forgot how she felt that day.  She never liked her boss, and never trusted him.  She never went a step out of her way to make him look good.  It took ten years, but she got him.

Introduction, Part One: You Are What You Hire What You Believe

Joe once worked in a long-established factory in an East Coast city.  One of his responsibilities was new employee orientation.  For months he struggled to introduce trainees to the basics of their work:  what the factory made and how those products were used, how to use simple instruments, how to make quality products, how to safeguard their health and fingers around serious metal-working equipment.

Joe's work was a bit frustrating, mostly because the new employees were - how can Joe put this delicately - truly stupid.  Now, you will see this blog carry on later about how wrong it can be to make assumptions about anyone's intelligence from his or her appearance, but this was a different thing.  These folks were lovely people - kind, generous, funny, eager to work - but absolutely bovine in education and intelligence.  They did not know basic arithmetic, let alone fractions or decimals - bits of knowledge essential to the correct setup and operation of the equipment they had been hired to run.  Teaching them simple addition and then the long division they would have to be able to do rapidly in their heads, began to take up more and more of Joe's (and therefore the company's and the employees') time, to the detriment of getting the products out the door.

Men and women who had worked in this factory for decades were baffled:  they were responsible for providing the on-the-job portion of new employees' training, and found it almost impossible.  Foremen and superintendents asked, "Is THIS the best I can get?  Jeepers!"  Management shook its head and sighed, and did nothing further.

In his puzzlement, Joe finally went to the human resources manager to ask why these folks were being hired.  That manager told him, with fierce sincerity, "Factory work is cruel and dehumanizing.  This place is one of the pits of hell.  Intelligent, clever, ambitious people do not want to work in this ugly, noisy, dangerous place, getting their hands dirty.  So I hire what I can get."

Joe trekked back to report to the foremen and superintendents, who shook their heads.  Management sighed and did nothing further.  And Joe himself could hardly complain, when they wouldn't, about hiring practices that favored the extremely-hard-to-employ.

Flash forward a couple of months.  The human resources manager left.  Her replacement was a woman who found the factory fascinating and the products beautiful.  Suddenly the new hires coming to orientation were intelligent, clever and ambitious people who loved to work with their hands, and get dirty.  And yes, they could already do long division in their heads, thank you very much, and what a nifty set of instruments we get to work with!   How does this one work, Joe, and what does it do?  Ah, I see.  What about this one?  Cool, got it.  When do I start?  What else can I learn?

Did productivity and quality suddenly improve overnight?  This isn't a fairy tale so the answer is no.  But several different foremen lost that haunted look.  Joe actually saw - for the first time in a long time - superintendents engaged in intense three-way conversations with one of these new workers and one of the very old timers, with all interlocutors looking deeply interested and satisfied.  Senior workers realized that they could pass on all that they knew and their accumulated wisdom would be safe with newer workers who could explain what they did, and why they did it that way - and could present well-reasoned arguments for tweaking the system.

Life for everyone got a tick better.  All because of what one person who never set foot on the shop floor did and did not believe.

And the moral of this story is --- Oh, come on.  You tell me!