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rule six:

I’ve seen lots of managers who seemed to be really burdened by the task of managing. They just appear to not like being around other people. Apparently someone forced them or tricked them into the job. Or maybe they were just lured by the big bucks and the trappings of power.

Imagine being forced to be a circus clown. Some occupations should only be filled by volunteers, not draftees. A positive attitude and an optimistic outlook are things you need to have if you are going to be a good manager. Faking it won’t work.

Pulitzer Prize winning author Frank McCourt, discussing his career as a New York City schoolteacher, said that an uneasy relationship with his students improved dramatically when he stopped wearing the teacher mask "and started being honest with the students. Not for any moral or philosophical reason, but because they could see right through me."

Luckily, some organizations have recognized that you don’t necessarily promote the best salesperson to be the sales manager. If she’s interested in managing, it might be a great move, for her and the company. But, she may be taking the post because she’s looking for advancement, and management is the only way to advance. In that case, disaster is likely.

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Progressive organizations try to provide non-manager tracks for people to advance without being forced into a bad fit. The company loses twice if in order to get recognition a great engineer has to become a bad manager.

But back to good managers. You have to enjoy the people you supervise. You have to see the good in each of them. You need to recognize and respect their individuality. And with a little luck and some effort on your part (see Rules One through Five) the respect will be mutual. That’s when things get really fun

Spend time with your staff, occasionally in appropriate after-work events, but predominately on the job. Expect a lot from them. Make them stretch. Ask for their advice. If you do your job right, you should have to be constantly growing and learning just to keep ahead of them.

Of course, you don’t need to literally be ahead of them. It would be wasted effort for you to know as much about each job as the person doing it everyday. That’s not your job. Your job is to facilitate. Make sure that your staff has the resources it needs. Understand where your group fits in the big picture. Help your staff see the big picture. Look for ways your group can increase its contribution to the organization’s objectives.

-- One media conglomerate employee’s answer when asked in an employee satisfaction survey "What do you like the most about your job?"

Promote communication and team effort. Promote learning and teaching. Promote understanding, or at least tolerance.

Growth and change are a constant in most businesses. Change is more difficult for some people than others. In a multiple-shift setting, there is always some tension between the different crews. The shifts tend to develop their own personalities.

A pending influx of new equipment was a source of excitement for the night shift. It would mean learning new things and changing the old routines. The day staff dreaded the change. It would mean learning new things and changing the old routines.

One Thursday morning the day staff arrived to find that many of the work areas had been rearranged to facilitate the new equipment. They were furious. They hadn’t been consulted. (I hadn’t been either.) How dare these rookies on night shift make this unilateral decision?

Well, lucky for me, I had just been to the dentist the day before.

I have this image of dental assistants who used to just stand next to the chair and hand tools to the dentist, and maybe operate that suction thing. Now, on some visits, my dentist’s assistant has her hands in my mouth more than the dentist does, taking impressions, fitting crowns and all kinds of stuff.

At one point, when no one’s hands were in my mouth, I asked the assistant what things she was allowed to do. The answer was short and sweet: anything that can be undone.

Don’t sweat the small stuff. If the night shift’s stab at redesign turned out to have missed the mark, then we move the furniture back the way it was, or someone can come up with a better option.

The stuff that really needs your energy is getting every employee to be proud of your company’s product, and proud of their role in producing it.

Patrick grumbled as he approached my table. He was extremely frustrated.

He’d had a project sort of dumped on him by default. He has the talent to pull it off. And he’s the kind of guy who doesn’t often say no when he’s asked to do something. And there was nobody else to do it.

The project involved his small department and the departments preceding and following his in the production cycle. He put hours and hours into setting up the software, figuring out how to match the software’s capabilities to his company’s needs, and then spent more hours doing one-on-one training in all three departments. He’d clearly done his part and more.

But after three weeks, he was pulling his hair out. People were just not following the carefully laid out procedures that Patrick had set-up. It wasn’t that they couldn’t understand the procedures. Everybody was doing it right most of the time. If someone had a mental lapse and skipped one of the steps or did something wrong, Patrick would patiently show them what they did wrong. They’d then do it right for awhile and then start screwing up again.

Patrick asked rhetorically, how can you get people to pay attention to their work? How do you get people to care about their jobs enough for them to want to do things right?

Well, having never met a rhetorical question that I didn’t like, I proceeded to craft a rhetorical answer for him on the spot.

There are only two ways to get people to do what you want them to do. The first is to use rewards; giving them or withholding them. You can offer to pay $10 per hour for producing ten widgets per hour. You hire Fred, Bob, John, and Chris. Three of them produce at the required rate of ten widgets per hour. Bob averages nine per hour, so you fire him and look for someone who will produce ten per hour. You hire Jack, who ends up producing only 8.5 widgets per hour. You send him packing. And you look for a replacement for Jack.

Meanwhile, John, who is a nervous kind of guy, is scared to death that he’s going to fall behind and get canned. His health deteriorates and he misses a lot of days.

Fred figures out that he can produce fifteen widgets an hour. But he knows he’ll get paid the same for ten as for fifteen, so he works for awhile and then goofs off for awhile. Chris likes to hang with Fred. But when he does, he can’t make his quota. But you haven’t replaced Jack yet, so you keep paying him $10 for eight widgets. Fred thinks this is totally unfair. He quits and goes to Ajax Widget and gets $14 an hour for fifteen widgets.

You hire Don who understands the ten-widget deal. He works fast, but often breaks a small set screw on his widgets. He finds that if you force the broken screw back on, nobody notices until weeks or months later, and Don’s able to meet his quota.

And on and on with thousands of variations.

If the relationship is based on carrots and sticks, then that’s how it goes. The employee figures out the basics of the deal and then proceeds to explore the boundaries and exploit any loopholes.

There is a second way to get people to do what you want them to do. The primary motivating factor for the owner or the president of your company should also be the prime motivator for you and your staff.

No, not money, pride. The owner will do anything necessary to establish and maintain the company’s reputation. Poor-quality products and services reflect directly on the owner.

Beam Me Up Scotty

You have to be so excited by your vision that people can’t wait to come in and try to achieve it with you. I don’t care whether it’s a small project or it’s running a big company, your people have got to want to stay with you and want to go the extra mile. You have to have people excited about what you are doing, because going to work is not just about getting paid.

-- Carol Bartz, Chairman, President, and CEO of Autodesk, Inc., from Lessons from the Top: the Search for America’s Best Leaders, by Thomas J. Neff and James M. Citrin.

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It’s popular for business gurus and mental health professionals to talk about the concept of ownership. Without resorting to any scientific research, I can walk down my street and pretty accurately guess which homes are rental properties and which are owner-occupied. But there are always some renters who keep their yards looking good, don’t throw loud parties on weeknights, and don’t have several junk cars in their driveway. They’re being responsible neighbors, or in other words "acting like owners."

Do you talk about the company’s products as "our" widgets? When talking with friends do you refer to your employer as "my company"? Are you proud of the products and services your company provides?

The easiest way to make employees act like owners is to make them owners, using profit sharing, stock options, or other financial arrangements.

But let’s assume that you are not yet in a position where you can make those kinds of things happen. There are still plenty of things you can do that will help your staff see their work product as a reflection of themselves.

Make sure you cover the basics. All employees should be given the grand tour, not just their areas, but as much of the company as you can get away with showing them. Show them where the widget goes in the final assembly or what the buyers use them for.

Share as much of the big picture as you can. Invite your boss to talk to your staff about the future direction of the company. At your staff meetings, talk about trends in your industry or the history of your company.

You should also periodically hold an "open house" where the staff gets to bring in family members for a tour. Work is such a major part of our lives; we can’t leave our families in the dark about where we go and what we do with our days.

Find ways to expose "back shop" staff to customers. Everybody should get a look at the place where the rubber meets the road. Try to give employees a chance to listen in or go along on sales calls.

Be as open as you can about financial information. What’s a typical selling price of that widget that I spent the last six minutes making? How much does that machine that I sit at all day cost? And of course, how is "our company" doing?

Whether or not your employees actually have some form of stock ownership; they have a huge stake in the company’s performance. You don’t want them to "just do their jobs." They have so much more to contribute than ten widgets per hour.

Fred could show the others how he’s able to produce fifteen widgets per hour. Don could recommend redesigning that vulnerable set screw. John got an idea during a conversation with his uncle that could open a whole new market for those widgets.

A company full of proud owners means a healthier, happier, more productive, more profitable team. No more sticks; carrots all around.

© Copyright 1999, 2000 by Wayne Bonekemper