Sunday, November 28, 2010

Execution and Consistency

We could be referring to lethal injection or just the process of getting things done. We could also be referring to the viscosity of a liquid or the regularity with which something is accomplished in a particular manner. Really, we are just discussing the frightening lack of both general execution and consistency in meeting standards. Things like distributing the payroll budget, writing work schedules by the due date, and holding communication meetings seem simple. Not so. Whether I work with 90 locations or 16, you would think that these expectations are akin to lethal injection. Even more interesting, the vast number of excuses provided for not doing these things. My favorites include: I was waiting for a budget increase, schedules are done and I'll review them next week, and we communicated, I left them all notes somewhere on the desk. What will it take to get folks to do what is expected and do it regularly? One way is the "informational meeting" held every week for managers that aren't meeting standards, usually held after they have worked a full shift that day. Another is the "training call", held every week for those not meeting expectations usually held at an inconvenient time of day. These meetings or calls include a fun shout out section, where there is an opportunity to explain why we suck and how we will suck less next week. For the bosses trying to fix the execution and consistency issues, it is like the show "Grounded for Life". We are on punishment until our teams learn how to do their job correctly or accrue enough documentation to be invited to become a valued customer. I welcome any input that would increase the time to effectiveness for these efforts. It would be nice to get the viscosity closer to cake than batter.

Saturday, November 20, 2010

Variety

Too much work and not enough play makes the manager a dull girl. Well, in my case, more demanding and likely to act out of frustration. Last week, the 12 to 14 hour days did not result in a sense of accomplishment. Instead, they revealed that the team still isn't doing basic compliance to standards and seasonal business makes them feel they have an excuse to fail in this area. There will be two extra trips now to find out how many more locations have failed to maintain their records to expectations. The spontaneous promotions to run seasonal locations are a level on the high maintenance scale that is unfathomable. Those folks thought they were ready to run a full location and they can't seem to make a decision on their own. Well, you can see why this is called variety, because I haven't had enough to talk about something else. Thankfully, my spouse steppped in to make things better. We went to the symphony and enjoyed the Carmina Barana. This is a Cantata that was by Orff, who adapted 24 poems out of 5,000 that were written in a monastery in the 1300s to adapt to choral/orchestral presentation. These are not your standard monastic poetry with some baudy and drunken stories thrown in the mix. Most of it is in Latin with some German for good measure. It was amazing to hear in person. That was Friday. Saturday was date night and it was time for Hockey. We enjoyed a good game, but it was the opposing team that played well. Our guys didn't hold their lanes and their passing was really bad. It was tough to watch. I personally have decided that those two guys weren't tripped, instead they stood on our players' sticks. At least one of them was called for diving. Now it is time to finish knitting my nieces Christmas gift, since I spent 4 hours on employee issues, new hires and expense reports on a Saturday. If any of you think that this time should have been spent working on Saturday, you need more variety. Tell me what your variety is.

Friday, November 12, 2010

Marriage Guide for Field Managers

It has taken a lot of time and frustration to figure out how to keep a marriage together, while travelling extensively for work. Here are some of the learnings that we have adopted to make things work. Please keep in mind that the spouse has to participate to make this work.

1. If I say I will leave work in 1/2 an hour, I'm lying whether I intended to or not.
2. If it looks like I control my schedule, remember that 1,000 other people are in charge. You will need to get them onboard to have dinner with me every night by 7pm. Get real, you won't have dinner with me every night, let alone by 7pm.
4. Living closer to my territory won't get me home earlier, but my boss appreciates that extra stuff I get done.
5. The great pay goes with the crappy hours and travel; remember to enjoy the nice house while you are waiting to guilt me out about the travel and hours.
6. I married you before I married my job, so please understand that polygamy is stressful, while remembering that you will always be my first.
7. With a job like this there is virtually no chance that I have time for an affair, so assume I am cheating on you with my job. Hate the job, not the worker.
8. In the end, I do the job because I like it, but I do you because I love you.
9. When all else fails, have a quarterly melt down that leads to make up sex. This ensures that we both get sex once a quarter.

If this guide is not helping create a sense of security in being a married field manager. Try being one or the other. After 19 years married and 6 in the field, we are really getting good at following the rules.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Choice

All things cycle and circle. Are you doing the hokie pokie and clapping your hands? Or are you a carnival pony strapped to a spindle bearing your burden as you walk in circles for the joy of others? Let's not even talk about the pony's view on that ride. Unlike the pony, you have freedom of choice. No one controls what you think without your consent. Decide to be in charge of you and practice until you get it right. "Never underestimate your power to change yourself; never overestimate your power to change others."

Longing can be a gift if it causes you to seek.

Monday, November 8, 2010

Free Roaming

No this isn't a cell phone offer. I wonder why people think it is better to let the chicken forage for food than it is to feed the silly thing nutrition you can appreciate when they produce an egg. The brain cavity of your average chicken is pretty small and there is a good chance they would eat dirt out of convenience. Look around you at work. Can you allow the group to run free or will you have some eating dirt and other junk? The analogies are endless. I explained to a receiving team today about the electronic bunny at the dog track and how they put this trick bunny on a rail and get the dogs to chase it. Then I described that my day at work was like the dogs. The company puts out a bunny and says chase it, then I chase until I get tired and the bunny disappears into a wall. This is a mere derivation of the moving target we have discussed before. The real fun is in the idea that they now have you running in circles chasing the same objective every time. I like it better when it is a free roaming target and I get to reload from time to time. If you are wondering what the point of this post might possibly be, explain to me the purpose of 10 conference calls in one day. If you can make that make sense, I'll connect the dots on this post for you.

Sunday, November 7, 2010

The Lost Art of Realism

Spend as much time as you would like blaming others for the feedback you receive, however, that feedback is their reality of you right now. When you receive a written warning, realistically, the company is unhappy with your job performance. Pay attention to the warning, instead of believing it will go away or it won't have a final consequence. The warnings are a requirement of today's litigious world to protect the company from their employees. The failure of your previous bosses to actually hold you to standards will not protect you from the one that intends to do it now. This is your livelihood and your responsibility to respond to the formal feedback from the company. It isn't a game that you want to lose due to lack of interest. A few posts ago, I said I would go out on my proverbial feet with my soul clearly intact. Don't leave in a jesters hat with only your incredulity to fuel your thoughts. If you prefer to gamble your job on the potential that someone won't follow through, good luck to you. There is one simple guarantee from me to you; your time for follow through is coming, stay frosty.

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Shock collars?

This message brought to you by the Ghost Writer while Marti combats the impending December holidays for control of the chaos called retail.
 
I often contemplate Marti's blog, "Lighting a Manager on Fire and Other Illustrative Training Techniques".  [Does the period go inside or outside of the quotes?  That's a story for another blog, I think.]  Trying to get every leader to behave in a manner coherent with goals and values is a challenge.  As an HR Leader, I try to help them understand to create that altogether, potentially overrated, "buy-in" perceived to be critical in creating coherence.
 
Then I contemplate the other side of this -- Shock Collars and Other Means for Controlling Employee Behavior.  When confronted with the inevitably "why" question when someone does something he or she shouldn't, I say, "Lack of appropriate use of shock collars in the workplace."  Really?  Why does anyone do anything?  Because he or she COULD!  There's no room in "could" for "should" or "should not", "trained" or "not trained", "told" or "not told".  It's just because the person could.
 
So the tried-and-true next question is, "How do we make the process so the person can not do that?"  Well, that's where having wonderfully creative, intelligent, and free-will humans on the payroll hurts repeatability and reproducibility.  If we make it impossible for humans to think and act, then aren't we really just turning them into something they aren't?  A wise math teacher in the, then dawning computer age, said, "Let computers do what computers do and let people do what people do.  Computers are incredibly fast and accurate, but really stupid -- they only do what humans tell them to at most levels.  Humans are slow, inaccurate, and very smart."  I agree with this wise soul.  So is the logical follow-up question, "How do we make it so a human doesn't have to do anything related to that at all?"  And this is where we see success until...
 
"Why did the human ignore what the computer said he or she was supposted to do?"  And we're right back to the beginning of "could" and getting rid of that pesky "human element" in the process.
 
Have you heard the story of the perfect staffing solution?  The perfect staff has two employees:  a person and a dog.  The person is there to feed the dog and repair anything that breaks.  The dog is there to bite the person if the dog isn't fed or the person tries to touch anything that's not broken.
 
Is the moral of the story, "It's all about consequences"?  "Could" is really predicated on the absence of real and present consequences.  Each person's idea of a real and present consequence varies, and sadly, most of us only think of the term "consequences" in the negative connotation.  In a recent employee policy conversation, a colleague said, "These are for the 3% of the population who really need managed.  The rest get it."  Hmmm... wow.  The logical implication of this is we spend 97% of our time managing 3% of the workforce, and most of us have heard this before.
 
So here's my new, radical idea, let's identify the 3%, put shock collars on them and quit wasting our time on policies, counseling, and mistake-proofs those 3% will ignore anyway.

 
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People Platform HR by Marti Nelson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.