Managing up Dave's BossMonday, October 30, 2006Last month, I wrote a post about Dave's boss. If you want to get a feel for the way Dave's boss manages, you can read that post here. After reading my "Managing Up" post, Dave commented on some of the techniques he has used to manage his boss. I thought they were insightful and so I have dedicated another post to "Dave's Boss." Dave's boss is stereotypical in many ways. The tactics Dave developed are useful for many of you that live out there in the corporate jungle. Dave says he is doing much better with his boss now that he has figured out some of his boss's "tricks." Dave has been watching his boss's behavior and noticing patterns. It is imperative that we all observe our managers one on one, in meetings, and in more social settings. We need to get the whole picture. In order to manage our bosses, we must take the time to understand them and see what makes them tick. One of the "tricks" Dave has observed is a very common. The trick is simply intimidation. Dave's boss accomplishes this by spewing out a lot of questions. He is trying his best to fluster Dave, catch him off guard. Dave calls it "fishing." I like this term, because it describes what his boss is trying to accomplish ultimately. His boss really wants to know that things are going as planned and so he goes on a fishing trip. The catch here (no pun intended) is to make sure the employee doesn't know that he is showing up on the scope in the fishing boat. There are many subtle ways good managers can get information from their employees. It should never be intrusive. Dave's boss lets Dave know that he on a fishing trip. He is just waiting for a strong bite. Dave says that his boss tries to get him to say something that he can jump on and run. It is like getting the fish hooked and then letting out enough line to wear the fish out. When Dave's boss gets a response he does not like, he pulls the fish up out of the water and throws him in the boat. What has Dave learned? Like smart fish, he just nibbles a little here and there, but doesn't get hooked. Dave controls the information that he gives to his boss. He still addressed the boss's questions, but without all the detail that is ultimately used against him. Dave is also leveraging the strength of his own spine. As Dave puts it "I have been standing up to him more when he brings out the steamroller." Isn't that a great image? The result is effective. His boss has had little to no opportunity to hook him and wear him down. Dave doesn't bite now. His boss still gets in some jabs, but the verbally abusive attacks have almost disappeared. Dave's final comments are so true. He said "I know in my case, managing up is difficult, but indeed required. " I couldn't say it any better. When a boss is difficult, managing up is not easy, but it is always required. Even if you work for the model manager, it may not be very difficult, but it is still required! posted at 10/30/2006 05:00:00 PM | 2 comments links to this post |
More about Managing UpSunday, October 29, 2006Sorry I have not posted recently. I spent the last week wrestling with shoulder and neck pain. The drugs that my doctor prescribed kept me from having any real coherent thoughts. I go back to the orthopedic guy on Tuesday to see how the MRI looks. Enough about my cervical problems. I received some good comments on my previous post about managing your boss or what is known as "managing up." Anonymous wrote: "Good managers use their resources to make better informed decisions. It is important for employees to manage upward and to engage management in healthy dialogues. When an employee understands the thought process that went into make a decision or participates in the decision process, it helps the employee 'buy into' the vision and work towards the goal." This is an excellent point. People do not embrace decisions that are made in a vacuum. People need to feel like they were part of the process; their ideas heard and validated. Another reader, Allen wrote: "This is a great point. It is also important to point out to stay positive about it. When your boss makes a decision that goes against what you expected or believed what was right for the company, do you take it to mean that your boss is an idiot or do you use it as a way to recalibrate? To recalibrate, after your boss makes a decision that you didn't expect you should be asking yourself questions: 1. Is it because he has access to more information or can see more of the picture? 2. Did I not give my boss enough information to make the correct decision? 3. Is it not the right time, is it not for the right reasons, or the right cost to make this decision? If you are of the my boss is an idiot mindset and you use that as an excuse to undermine them, you are hurting yourself more than your boss. If they are an idiot, most likely everyone else knows it as well - and all you do by pointing it out or trying to make your boss look bad is to make yourself undesirable by other managers in your company. Why would a manager want an employee like that working for them? Wouldn't they rather someone who is able to get good work done without making others look bad? That said, if this truly is the right decision to make, there are many ways to force your boss to make the right decision without undermining him..." Allen drives home an important point. I agree with his approach to recalibrate. Even if your boss is an idiot, you cannot act on your own opinion - even if it is shared among colleagues. You become part of the problem. The most important point Allen drives home is the act of "undermining" your boss. You can never be successful by undermining someone in authority. It is a bad reflection on you ultimately. You do not influence your boss in a positive way by tearing him down. Thanks for the posts! posted at 10/29/2006 05:32:00 PM | 0 comments links to this post |
You Need to Manage Your BossTuesday, October 24, 2006Often when someone is telling me about the problems they have with their boss, I tell them that they need to manage up. The usual response is "What is managing up?" I explain that we are all managers, whether we have the official title or not. Often I get a puzzled look, followed by the question. "What do you mean we are all managers? I have no one reporting to me." Unless you run your own show, you have a boss and believe it or not, he needs to be managed. As managers, we think we know a lot, but truth be told we really don't. We depend on everyone who works for us. We tell our employees how things work, what should be done, how to do things, when to do things, why we have to do things, etc. When we start to think we know everything, it is time for us to be managed. We need you to tell us we a re wrong. It is really okay to tell your boss that you "think" he is wrong. I emphasize think because you never want to tell your boss he is wrong. Most bosses aren't mature enough to handle brutal honesty. It hurts their finely tuned ego. What if your boss tells you to do something that you know is wrong? Do you do it? No. You have a responsibility to tell your boss that you feel what he is asking you to do is wrong. You will get one of two responses, both of which depend on the maturity and emotional intelligence of your boss. A good boss will thank you for sharing your concerns whether they agree or disagree with you. He may still ask you to do it; however, it should not be something unethical or something that forces you to compromise your values. You have to decide whether you feel you can do it. If not, you have to be tough and even risk your job. Get HR involved if you need to. Bosses hate when HR gets involved. A bad boss will invalidate your concerns and probably try to insult your intelligence. He will tell you to do it or else... It may seem counter-intuitive, but your response should be the same for the good boss or the bad boss. As a boss, I have been wrong many times. I continue to make mistakes. I am human. If you work for someone who feels he is never wrong, you have a boss that is challenging, if not impossible to manage up. That does not give you the excuse not to do it. You just have to work harder. Tomorrow I will talk about some specific things that you can do. posted at 10/24/2006 12:59:00 PM | 4 comments links to this post |
Record Number of Visitors on Boss DayTuesday, October 17, 2006On National Boss Day, The Blogging Boss had a record number of visitors. I queried my stats page and started to look at what people were searching for when they landed on my site. I thought I would share some of them with some annotations. what to say on boss day things to say on bosses day bosses day things to say things to say to your boss on bosses day positive boss day comments comments on national bosses day happy bosses day saying happy boss day saying things to say on bosses' day boss' day comments e-mails for bosses day I found these interesting. I think people feel obligated to say something on Boss Day. If it ain't natural, don't say anything. I hope I never hear any happy boss day sayings. Emails? If you are going to say something, don't do it in email. Do you send your mother an email on her birthday? bosses' day, celebrate if absent This is peculiar. I wonder who was absent, the boss or the employee. If it was the employee, they are really serious about this Boss day thing. office space boss' day card I liked this one. I wrote about receiving an "Office Space" gift. Obviously, someone was looking for a gift that would put this day into the right perspective. national boss day man gifts what to get your boss for boss' day things to get your boss on boss day Gifts? I joked about this in my post several weeks ago. There seems to be a market for boss day gifts. Maybe I should sell some from my site. Don't worry about gifts. Take your boss out to lunch at his favorite place. things to do for bosses day national boss day what to do what to do for national boss day Okay, if you have to google for ideas, whatever you come up with is contrived. If you can't think about what to do, don't bother. quotes for boss day This one is interesting. I wonder if their boss got a quote or two. Finally, my favorite: happy boss' day! from your favorite employee ecard Now here is an employee who really knows where they stand! I like it. posted at 10/17/2006 07:00:00 PM | 5 comments links to this post |
Happy Boss DayMonday, October 16, 2006For all of you bosses out there, I hope you are having a great Boss Day. It is rainy and cool here. It is also a Monday. Not a great day to be celebrating. It took everything in me to actually start working today. Two cups of stiff coffee, a bowl of whole grain cereal, and the lack of any real reason "not to work" worked harmoniously to get me kick started. Reflecting back on my day, I wonder if it was worth it. I was not overly productive today. It is still raining and it is still cool. I did have a good work-out in the gym. Well, I guess that made it all worth it. Next time, I feel this way, I am staying in bed, boss holiday or not. Bosses should get the day off for the holiday. Now that would be a holiday worth celebrating! posted at 10/16/2006 05:00:00 PM | 0 comments links to this post |
Accountability - GoalsFriday, October 13, 2006Hopefully you have set goals this year. We only have a little more than two months left in the year. Have you evaluated your goals and do you know how well you are doing? Yesterday I shared the results of one of my goals. I am still working on a post to talk about the results of another goal. It occurred to me that I never mentioned accountability. To whom are you accountable for meeting YOUR goals? If you do not have someone, it is time. posted at 10/13/2006 06:00:00 PM | 0 comments links to this post |
How Am I Doing on My 2006 Goals?Thursday, October 12, 2006It is time to be transparent. Back on January 7th I wrote a post concerning goal setting. You can read it in the January archives. In January, I set a goal of establishing a second stream of income. The goal has three levels by which I can measure performance. The first level is to meet the goal. The second level is what I call a stretch goal. The third level is really stretching. Here are the three distinct levels that I assigned to my goal at the beginning of the year. 1) Identify and create income from one additional source. 2) Start making $50 per month and end up making $500 a month by the end of the year. 3) Create two streams of income. Start making $50 per month, ending the year with an additional $20,000 My results as of October 12, 2006: I have reached this goal. I am at level 1. My additional stream of income takes more time to build monthly income than I had originally projected. My income is steadily increasing and I expect it to rise exponentially throughout next year. It is a completely automated stream of income and requires almost no time to manage. I won’t hit level 2 ($500 a month) by the end of the year with this stream of income; however, I may be able to double it by the end of next year. I am pleased with my progress. As I set my goals for next year, I will be able to set my levels more accurately. I now know what it takes to increase the revenue being produced by this stream. I didn’t even know what the stream would be in January. I am looking at a second stream of income now. I will not reach the level three goal unless I get really lucky; however, I am on course to be earning more money each and every month. What have I learned that has been most profound? Do not get derailed or give up too early. Many times throughout the year I was ready to throw the towel in. I was not seeing the progress that I desired. My wife encouraged me to keep doing what I was doing and stay focused. Two months ago I saw the income rise threefold per month. The income is increasing and I now know that I must stay the course. On Friday, I will share the results of another goal. How are you doing with your goals? posted at 10/12/2006 08:00:00 AM | 1 comments links to this post |
Thomas Moore and Norman Vincent PeopleWednesday, October 11, 2006Every Wednesday I pick out some of the better motivational quotes I can find. There are a lot and many fall flat. It takes some digging before I find several that I want to share with you. Thomas Moore was a monk and Norman Vincent Peale was a controversial preacher. Both men have great motivational quotes. Both men were not afraid to swim upstream and face their adversaries. They are both fascinating men and I encourage you to read more about them. "The spirit is fascinated by the future, wants to know the meaning of everything, and would like to stretch, if not break altogether, the laws of nature through technology or prayer. It is full of ideals and ambition, and is a necessary, rewarding, and inspiring aspect of human life. The soul is...embedded in the details of ordinary, everyday experience. In the spirit we try to transcend our humanity; in the soul, we try to enter our humanity fully and realize it completely." - Thomas Moore "Practice hope. As hopefulness becomes a habit, you can achieve a permanently happy spirit." -Norman Vincent Peale posted at 10/11/2006 08:00:00 AM | 1 comments links to this post |
Do Annual Performance Evaluations Really Help an Employee?Monday, October 09, 2006I have been wrestling with performance evaluations for years. They have changed very little. No matter if a company is small or large; evaluations follow the same arcane formula. Sometimes they are tied into annual salary increases, so the better your evaluation, the bigger the raise the following year. Is this a model that really benefits an employee as much companies tout? Or, is it a clever way to control expense under the guise of "performance pay." There are some things to think about. Here is the typical scenario. It is the end of the fiscal year and HR is hounding managers to turn in performance evaluations by a certain date. Managers often do not schedule adequate time to perform the reviews with their employees. They become somewhat like a mechanical exercise fraught with incomplete information and errors. For some managers, it is a time when they feel empowered to dump on an employee. After an entire year of no feedback, the employee learns that his performance has been less than acceptable. Even though the employee thought he was doing above average, the manager spews out isolated examples of less than perfect performance. The result: the employee leaves the evaluation angry, frustrated and shocked. They have every right to be angry, even if the manager's assessment of their performance was accurate. The manager failed in his responsibility to constantly communicate throughout the year, leaving no surprises for the end of the year. If a manager does not spend enough time with each evaluation, the result is always less than optimal. This assumes you can have an optimal experience being evaluated using the typical "situation, action, result" model. Using this model, the manager needs to give examples supporting the rating they assigned to each of the key job responsibilities. These examples should describe a situation that supports the rating, the action the employee took to address the situation, and the result. Some evaluation systems allow the employee to perform their own evaluation first. In this scenario, the manager must take input from the employee and incorporate it into his own evaluation of the employee’s performance. This requires some negotiation between employee and manager. How many employees are that self-aware? Many times, the manager takes the self-evaluation and hacks away at it until it is unrecognizable. There is also the problem of objectivity versus subjectivity. I have seen more evaluations that are subjective, rather than objective. It takes considerably more time to be objective. You need empirical data. That data must be collected throughout the year. Most managers say they are too busy. So, if we are too busy to spend the time necessary to give an employee a fair and objective performance evaluation, should we be doing them at all? For HR, a final score can be used to determine the percentage increase in salary for the next year. They also have a document that can be filed and used in any legal disputes. HR likes documentation. Is there really value for the employee? What have you experienced? posted at 10/09/2006 08:00:00 AM | 0 comments links to this post |
Bad Management?Saturday, October 07, 2006One of my readers posed an interesting question. This is the question in his words: "What is the cause of bad management?" At first I chuckled to myself. It seemed like such a simple question, so I thought it deserved a simple answer. My first reaction was "bad management comes from bad management." As I thought about this question more I realized this is an oversimplified answer. I have to convey the real reason a company has bad management. Companies have bad managers. You are probably thinking, "That's not the most profound statement." Think about it. If your manager is a real doozie, then his manager is also culpable. Why would he keep a bad manager? Why would he subject people to someone who can’t manage himself out of a paper bag? If this manager protects the dysfunctional manager, he himself is dysfunctional. It is not acceptable for a good manager to allow one of his managers to continue to manage poorly. If you start to go up the line, manager by manager, I bet you will see a pattern. Companies that have a poor management team overall have a weak leader. It's a lot like dysfunctional families. Companies that have weak executive leadership will always have weak managers throughout the organization. I am not suggesting that all of them are weak, but it is a pervasive problem. It is like weeds in a garden, choking out the good management. Leadership starts at the top. If you wonder why your company has "bad management" look at the folks at the top. Do they make good decisions? Do they understand the business? Are they ethical? The best companies I have worked for had excellent executive leadership. posted at 10/07/2006 08:00:00 PM | 0 comments links to this post |
Project DebtThursday, October 05, 2006In the wonderful and somewhat absurd world of software development, there lives a methodology used by some that far exceeds most. It is known as Agile Software development or sometimes XP (Extreme Programming). Enough tech talk. This methodology has a concept called "Project Debt." Project Debt is simply all of the things that have accumulated during the course of a project that have not been completed. It is very much like consumer debt. You are getting something now with the understanding that you will have to pay later. You might be getting a new feature in a software program now, but delaying fixing a problem in a current feature. Over time projects accumulate debt. During most of my career, project debt has not even been acknowledged; therefore; it never existed. We went to great lengths to hide this debt. Like credit card debt, if you stay in denial about the amount you still owe, you eventually seek for debt relief services. Projects are not much different. If you ignore the problems for long enough, you will need project debt management. More often than not, managing project debt is done late in the project, often after implementation. Neither time is good. Like a consumer buried in debt, the project is headed for bankruptcy. What I really admire about XP is that the creators of the methodology recognized that project debt was real. They built into the process a way to proactively deal with this debt. Some software teams will keep track of project debt by taping each item to the wall of the Project Manager's wall. You see the debt; you cannot ignore it. We can't ever really run away from debt. If we do, we run the risk of becoming hopelessly derailed and feeling like a failure. If you are on a project right now, suggest to your team that you make a list of all of the debt in your project. Even if it is a mountain of debt, start to address each item. You will be surprised how much you can do when you stop pretending the debt doesn't exist. posted at 10/05/2006 08:00:00 AM | 0 comments links to this post |
Wednesday's QuotesWednesday, October 04, 2006"The significant problems we face cannot be resolved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." - Albert Einstein "Where there is no vision, the people perish." - Proverbs 29:18 "Look at that word blame. It's just a coincidence that the last two letters spell the word me. But that coincidence is worth thinking about. Other people or unfortunate circumstances may have caused you to feel pain, but only you control whether you allow that pain to go on. If you want those feelings to go away, you have to say: It's up to me." - Arthur Freeman posted at 10/04/2006 08:00:00 AM | 0 comments links to this post |
Downsized Into UnemploymentTuesday, October 03, 2006I was having a beer with two friends last week. We all worked for the same company a number of years ago. Rob, was a consultant that I had hired; however Mike and I were employees for this large, well known telecommunications company. Rob, being a consultant has adapted to the ups and downs of IT consulting. He is resourceful and his skills broad. Consulting is hard-wired into his soul. Mike and I were caught in a losing battle to keep our internal consulting organization viable. The CIO was new and so were we. We had only worked for the company for less than a year before the Trade Towers fell and the telecommunication industry was about to be hit by the 9 billion dollar blow caused by Mr. Ebbers, the guy who ran and sunk Worldcom. Mr. Ebbers is in jail now, it has been five years since 9/11, and four years since I first learned that our new 22 million dollar office was going to close. I had many software developers that were going to lose their jobs in a matter of months. It was just a little before Christmas; perfect timing. Since I was in management I saw the handwriting on the wall about 8 months before the final decision was made. I traveled to the corporate headquarters trying to make our group more financially attractive to the company, particularly to the CIO. He didn’t like our new center. It was like a fly on his back; another thing he had to constantly deal with. Our office was hundreds of miles from the corporate office and the silos and kingdoms were strong. It was hard to gain any traction and make our group relevant. We had talented people. They came from all over the country, many from India and China. When the words "workforce reduction" echoed throughout the office that December, it became a place of somber expressions and internalized pain. I could see the fear in the eyes of the guys that had an H1B visa to work in this country. They had to become employed in ten days or they would receive a one way plane ticket back to their home country. Their dream of becoming a citizen seemed all but lost. The good news is that we helped the H1B visa employees find other jobs. I do not know of a single software developer that had to leave the country immediately. Some chose to leave on their own volition months after. We were in the post "dot com bubble" period. Jobs were scarce and salaries were dropping after increasing on the average of 11% a year. Mike, my ex-co-worker at the local Irish pub looked at me with that same expression I had seen on so many faces of the employees who were losing their jobs years ago. He said, "You know, Eric, I am still not over that experience of losing my job." "Really?" I said. I was a bit surprised. He has a good job at a large Health Care company. "Yeah" Mike continued. "My company is going through a merger and.. well I am not sure if my job is going to survive. I don’t want to go through that experience again." I understood Mike's pain. The fear of losing your job in corporate America is a constant unconscious emotion. There is no job security. It is just a fact of life in the 21st century. Gone are the days of employee and employer loyalty. We all work "at will" knowing we can leave or lose our jobs at any time. Corporate downsizing or rightsizing is a part of our corporate life. Mike is tired of the cycle of being the victim of the latest downsizing. His job is might be traded for better stock performance for the investors. It is reality. It is something that continues to drive me towards passive income and alternate streams of income. Ulitmately, being in control of our own destiny is a place that we all need to be. posted at 10/03/2006 08:00:00 PM | 0 comments links to this post |
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