Hi all,
Today’s motivation comes from Peter Drucker on Leadership:
“Management is doing things right, leadership is doing the right things.”
— Peter F. Drucker: writer and management consultant
Many times, I have been a witness to different styles of leadership and management. I have seen managers macro manage to a point where they have no idea what really occurs in their operation. I’ve seen micro mangers, who seem to enjoy watching every move their workers make from the moment they clock in until they leave the premises for the day. I’ve seen good managers and I’ve see bad. I’ve also seen some management styles that can’t even be defined!
As I write this, I work in a very dismal workplace. I have management that seem to have no idea of what is occurring among myself and my co-workers. For example, one of my co-workers fell ill and never once did upper management even make it a point to visit her in the hospital until I raised a fuss. In seeing after this former co-worker, management was doing the right thing. Even though she no longer works with us, she is still a part of our family if you will. When she worked with us, she gave her all and did her work. She brought a lot of joy to those who know her and made our patrons feel wonderful. For that, all she got was ignored by those who should be seeing about her. In addition, one of my co-workers offered to start a convalescence committee in which she would be willing to visit sick co-workers and organize card signings. Yet, management isn’t responding to her but they’re willing to start a committee to have a party. What’s more important here…partying with your workforce or taking care of your people in their time of need?
Another problem I’m having at work is the style of my upper manager. Whenever something goes wrong, instead of targeting the person or persons that are doing wrong, he needs to target everyone, thereby wasting our time and making us feel incompetent. He tends to believe that one bad apple will spoil the whole bunch. In my years of working, whenever I or one of my co-workers does something wrong, that person is called into the office, not the entire team! Yet, as my mother says, this is working for someone.
When you find yourself in a management capacity, doing what’s right for the employees, clients/customers, and the organization should always be at the top of anyone’s list. The problem in this country today is no one can find a way to create this balance without sacrificing one for the other. I’ve never understood why there needs to be such a set up. For example, Ford Motor Co. is in the process of streamlining its company to survive. Instead of trying to figure out what’s wrong with the organization and working to make a stronger and better company, it decides to layoff some workers in an effort to save money. Yet, I’m willing to bet you that the employees aren’t the problem. I think the problem lays in the attitudes of its customers. Ford Co. seems to be ignoring its customers by not reaching out to them to discover the problems. Note to Ford: things have changed since the days of the Model T!
I’ve been in situations in which an organization is having cash flow problems and instead of trying to figure out where the hole is and why more money is going out than coming in, letting people go and forgoing some of its services to the public seems to be the solution. Yet, in the solution, more problems are created. No one seems to care about the why. Doing the right thing isn’t an option nor is it a solution.
Are you in management? Are you responsible for making critical decisions on behalf of your employer? Do you own a company or a business? If so, when problems arise, always be ready to act and not react. Always be willing to do not only the right things but in addition, do things right. Be a leader and not just someone who’s collecting a paycheck regardless of your position. Always realize at the end of the day, the bottom line isn’t that paycheck or the profit margin…its the people that are responsible for those things: your customers and your employees.
I discovered your homepage by coincidence.
Very interesting posts and well written.
I will put your site on my blogroll.
By: Sue Massey on July 28, 2008
at 7:00 pm
Hello,
Enjoy your blog and posts. Very thoughtful sharing.
Sorry to hear about your management types and working environment. That’s a tough place to go.
As a “management type”, I totally understand the questions and the frustration you express. I often express them myself wondering how it is that my peers make decisions that cause you to scratch your head. I don’t know why this is so. What makes it more difficult is that most of the “management types” I work with are generally decent and thoughtful people.
I think at the end of the day, we’re all human and we don’t always do the right thing because frankly it’s really hard to. In addition, some (most?) “management types” act as if there’s an invisible force field between “management” and “staff”. This may be due to the fact that most “management types” need to spend more time with “management peers” so being clueless of others/situations is a natural development. No question that the more removed I am from daily operations, the feeling of being “out of touch” or worse, “out of control” gets worse. However, the nature of the job is such that to manage properly, you’re going to have to give up the day-to-day stuff and delegate to others.
Management is tough. What recently happened to me is that as part of a operating company’s management board, we needed to make some calls on business strategy. Some of those calls didn’t go our way which resulted in our company’s not meeting business targets. During an open session between staff and management, one staff asked management essentially that our poor strategic calls were the reason for the employees not receiving a bonus. Ouch, that was a kick in the gut.
In hindsight, it’s easy to say that. But at the time, looking back, most of us were trying to make the right calls during the difficult business environment. But it didn’t turn out that way. Were we responsible? Yes, we set the strategy and made some tactical decisions. Could we have executed better? Certainly. Improved our decision making? Probably in hindsight, a 20-20 science, but we had what we thought were all the information and made the call.
End the day, I try to learn from this and work hard to prevent it from happening. I suspect that one day, it’ll happen again but not necessarily through fault of “management”.
Cheers,
By: Lui Sieh on August 1, 2008
at 5:47 am