Distance Should Raise Concerns

Proximity matters.  Particularly when it comes to communication and control within a corporation.  A subordinate in the office next door is much easier to manage than one in an office on the other side of the world.  Your distant subordinates – particularly those with a broad span of control – need plenty of additional contact.

Perspectives of a Subordinate

I’ve worked both near to and far from my bosses over the years, and I can say without qualification that I was much more diligent in carrying out their wishes when I was nearby.  There are a couple of reasons for this:

  1. Close proximity allowed me to better understand my boss’s mind.  I grasped the political implications of my decisions, what he was trying to accomplish, and generally had a tighter bond with him when his office was next to mine.
  2. Distance permitted me to rely more on my own decisions – a situation I preferred, even if it wasn’t always in my best interests.  Like a race horse with the bit between his teeth, when left alone I quickly developed an aversion to relying on anything other than my own judgment.

One of my many bosses was, for a year, located in the office adjacent to mine.  We had lunch together almost every day.  I found myself frequently redirecting my efforts in support of whatever objective he was currently striving for.  I became a valuable and useful subordinate under those conditions.  My utility to the company at large was less clear and highly dependent on my boss’s ability to direct me productively.

Then I moved a thousand miles away, and took another position – although one still reporting to the same boss.  The dynamic changed dramatically.  Even though I liked and respected this particular boss, the distance meant I was suddenly “out of sight, out of mind.”  I found myself making lots of my own decisions, most often without even discussing it with the boss.

Ultimately, when I decided to leave the company, I conducted my job search in secret.  My boss, who would have undoubtedly helped me, was no longer close enough (physically and emotionally) for me to entrust with this most confidential and sensitive of tasks.

Other than the distance and frequency of interaction, little had changed yet the relationship was completely… different.

Video Conferencing isn’t Enough

Through trial and error, I’ve discovered there is no substitute for close, frequent, face-to-face contact when dealing with your bosses and subordinates.  In general, I prefer my direct reports to be as physically close by as possible.

Of course, this isn’t always possible.  When you have a subordinate responsible for a remote location or territory it is often impossible for them to co-located with you.  In those cases, there is a “hierarchy of contact” that you should pay close attention to.

  1. Face-to-face contact is by far the most effective for managing your subordinates.  I’ve found that casual time spent together (meals, trips, etc.) is at least as productive as hard-core meetings and discussions.  Don’t skimp on this, even though it may be expensive and/or inconvenient.
  2. Videoconferences are a distant second.  While you can “see” each other, the ability to read subtle cues such as body language and facial expressions simply isn’t there.  The commitment to the communication simply isn’t the same – how many times have you seen someone in a videoconference working on something that isn’t a topic of discussion?
  3. Almost as good as videoconferences are phone calls.  You can likely call much more frequently than you can videoconference.  Frequent phone calls are the backbone of most distance relationships.
  4. Emails, texts, and other written electronic communications are almost worthless when it comes to managing your subordinates.  These methods are usually completely impersonal, and are easily “misinterpreted,” delegated, or outright ignored.

When you have a remote subordinate, you should plan to have regular and frequent contact.  The weaker your personal relationship, the newer the employee, or the more headstrong the subordinate, the more you should bump up the quantity of contact.

One of my remotely located subordinates was charged with transforming a foundering business.  Unfortunately, I was spread too thin to maintain close contact with him, and his decisions became increasingly… unsound.  His excuses for continuing performance problems multiplied.  Eventually, it became clear that he business was getting worse, rather than better.  I discovered the subordinate had his own agenda for the business’s rehabilitation, one that weren’t likely to lead anywhere I wanted things to go.  I had to fire him despite the fact that he SHOULD have been the perfect guy to fix the thing.

The Burden is on Both of You

Is it the boss’s responsibility to make sure the challenges of distance are overcome?  Or should it be the subordinate’s burden?

In my opinion, the challenge falls on the shoulders of both of you.

As a boss, you want your people to succeed, and you need them to support your efforts.  It is in your best interest to devote considerable time to maintaining a tight relationship.  Distant employees are one of your biggest points of vulnerability.

As a subordinate, you’re at risk of career derailment when you are out of sync with your boss.  Even if you value your independence.  Even if you don’t like him or her.

I once had a boss I loathed working for – his fake and insincere behavior, his interfering in the simplest of decisions, his armchair quarterbacking – these were only a few of his deplorable characteristics.  That dislike, combines with my predilection to make my own decisions and live with the consequences, meant we rarely talked.  And while I wasn’t a long way from his desk (20 miles or so) it was a challenge for me to communicate with him, to say the least.

Eventually, I found myself the subject of criticism for not doing so.  (Note, he did little to nothing to facilitate communication – apparently, he didn’t think of it as his responsibility.)  It became so bad that the lack of understanding became a serious threat to my career.

So I changed things.  Physically.  I took a second office in the same building where he worked and spent one day a week working from that location.  It gave me enough opportunity for casual interaction that I was (temporarily) able to break my own bad habit.

Conclusion

Distance is a challenging factor in building and maintaining business relationships, and no place is it a bigger problem that between bosses and their subordinates.  When faced with physical separation, take the lead to increase contact no matter which end of relationship you occupy.  Only by intentionally offsetting the detrimental effects of distance can you insure your relationship stays on track.  30.4

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If you are intrigued by the ideas presented in my blog posts, check out some of my other writing.

Novels:  LEVERAGE, INCENTIVIZE, DELIVERABLES, HEIR APPARENT, and PURSUING OTHER OPPORTUNITIES.

Non-Fiction:  NAVIGATING CORPORATE POLITICS

 To the right is the cover for DELIVERABLES.  This novel features a senior manager approached by government officials to spy on his employer, complete with a story about how a "deal" they are negotiating might put critical technical secrets into the hands of enemies of the United States.  Of course, everything is not exactly as it seems....

 My novels are based on extensions of 27 years of personal experiences as a senior manager in public corporations.

Primping a Pig of a Project

It happens.  At some point in your management career, someone is going to try to maneuver you into doing something risky, ill-advised, or just plain stupid.

And the most likely tool for this manipulation is a project’s cleverly manipulated financial analysis.

I’ve seen it done with cost reductions, new product development projects, capital expenditures, expansion projects, and even acquisitions.  A prudent manager is well advised to be on the lookout for examples of the “primped pig” when they review project proposals

What are they really trying to do?

I’ve observed two distinct underlying motivations for this type of game-playing:

  1. The manipulator has an agenda.
  2. The manipulator really believes in the project, but can’t get it to “pencil out.”

Usually, but not always, those engaging in the first type of project manipulation have some ulterior political motive.  I’ve seen instances where short-timers (specifically, those who will soon be promoted or transferred) use project analysis manipulation as a way to pad their track record.  The thinking is that they will never be taken to task for launching a project that is doomed to failure, as the disaster will likely be blamed on “bad implementation” by their successor.

In one example, a senior executive (soon to be promoted) advocated an absurdly high valuation for a company he wanted to acquire.  At the time, the prevailing opinion was he would soon become my boss.  Unfortunately for me, the deal’s most outrageous assumptions laid with a portion of the company that would be mine to manage if the transaction was closed.  If I hadn’t challenged him, I likely would have been saddled with a business with vastly over-inflated expectations and little hope of placing the blame where it belonged when those expectations failed to materialize.

Another flavor of “agenda” is when the primary advocate wants to embarrass a competitor or enemy.  This can be accomplished by saddling the target with unrealistic or unreasonable performance expectations, while making the balance of the project readily achievable.  While doing this requires a lot of plotting, I’ve repeatedly seen it done on large projects.  In those situations, one particular person has inadequate budget or resources to accomplish their assigned part of the total project, and rather than questioning the original plan, blame is typically placed on the person who didn’t deliver what was “promised.”

More common, however, are situations where the manipulator is “just trying to make the project work on paper.”  Usually, these projects are the ones that intuitively seem to make sense, but when the spreadsheets are built and the numbers are run, look like a poor idea.  I’ve seen many instances of “assumption massaging,” where a mediocre or even bad project suddenly looks good in the spreadsheet.

A particularly notable example was a new plant proposal originally suggested by the CEO.  In principle, the new facility cleaned up a messy situation where assets and costs were shared between two different divisions.  Unfortunately, assumptions in the financial analysis had to be adjusted to the point that there wasn’t any hope of actually delivering what was being promised.  I’ve often wondered if the CEO participated in the “adjusting” process, or if his subordinates simply realized the way to play this particular game was to give him what he wanted.  If the latter explanation is correct, he sure didn’t look at the final analysis very closely!

How do you spot The Pig?

There is no substitute for closely studying any and all project proposals.  I know it can be tempting to skim through a twenty-five page project proposal, and even more tempting to avoid the details when they look daunting.  But just because the person making the proposal appears to have treated every aspect of the project, there can still be gross errors of the type you will only uncover by being extremely thorough.

Here are some generalized steps that should help you avoid trouble:

  1. Read through the project and identify every assumption being made.  Put them in a list and then make your own estimate of high, low,  and most likely outcomes.  If you find too many of the project’s assumptions are wildly favorable, there is likely some serious “shading” going on.
  2. Have a couple other people you trust read the proposal looking for the same thing mentioned above.  Compare notes.
  3. Try not to let the decision swing on a single assumption, but instead continuously keep in mind entire proposal.  I’ve seen managers zero in on an obviously incorrect assumption that, once fixed, doesn’t change the outcome of the analysis.  In many of those instances, they still miss half a dozen other overly optimistic assumptions that will never all come true.
  4. If you’re going to rely on backup plans to cover for the project’s greatest risks, then subject the backup plan to the same level of scrutiny as the base project.  What are the assumptions, costs, and when will you realistically pull the trigger to execute the back-up?  Financially model a realistic scenario.
  5. Make sure “downside” scenarios really represent the downside, rather than just minor variations of a few key assumptions.
  6. Look at the proposer’s track record.  If they’ve got a history of being over optimistic on assumptions, expect that to continue.
  7. In your largest and most critical projects – the ones that could sink your career – get independent, outside eyes on the proposal.

I wish I could say I was wildly successful by implementing these precautions, but that wouldn’t be true.  While I occasionally employed a few, I was often suckered into approving projects with fluffy assumptions and unrealistic returns.  Making mistakes was at least as much about me falling in love with the project concept as it was failing to find the project’s weak points.

Eventually, it caught up to me – a particularly critical new plant proposal and an acquisition, both with plenty of high-risk assumptions built in, hit the skids at the same time.  Had I been more objective while evaluating the proposals, I probably wouldn’t have completed either one of them.  Instead, I let emotion and a well-crafted spreadsheet sway me.  I ended up paying for those mistakes with my job.

Conclusion:

A high degree of career and performance risk is wrapped up in project proposals, and a prudent manager brings his/her best game to the evaluation of such proposals.  It is critical to identify key risks, and look at the project holistically and objectively, rather than falling in love with it and letting emotions carry the day.  30.3

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To the right is the cover for INCENTIVIZE.  This novel is about a U.S. based mining company, and criminal activity that the protagonist (a woman by the name of Julia McCoy) uncovers at the firm's Ethiopian subsidiary.  Her discover sets in motion a series of events that include, kidnapping, murder, and terrorism in the Horn of Africa.

My novels are based on extensions of my 27 years of personal experience as a senior manager in public corporations.  Most were inspired by real events.

New Hires and How to Increase Your Odds of Making a Good One

I’ve blogged on the subject of deceptive job candidates in the past, most recently a year ago in a post titled “Why Job Candidates Lie.”  The bottom line:  When interviewing, candidates have a vested interest in convincing you they are everything you are looking for.

The problem is that they rarely really are.  Whether they lack certain skills or capabilities critical to the position, or they have other, negative behaviors that will prevent them from succeeding, they do their best to appear to be your ideal candidate.  As a result, there are going to be times when a candidate is hired who doesn’t have what it takes to be successful.

An ounce of prevention

Of course you should do everything you can to screen out unsuitable candidates.  I’ve found the following tools to be useful in this respect:

  1. Personality profiles and similar tools, where the “right answer” isn’t obvious.
  2. Extensive reference checks (not just those provided, but from other, more independent sources).  This is my favorite preventative hiring measure.
  3. Interviews by multiple managers, all with veto power over the candidate.
  4. Gut feel – when something doesn’t seem to add up, best to move on to another candidate.

When I look back over the bad hires I made during my career, there were usually warning signs that the candidate had “problems.”  A telling characteristic brought out in a personality profile.  A reference check that was tepid, or worse.  A manager that didn’t like the candidate, but couldn’t put a finger on the deficiency.  A personal feeling that there was something “not right” about the candidate.

The problem is that some of my best hires also had “red flags.”  If I’d always tossed out every candidate with a concern, I would have found it tough to hire anyone.  Not to mention that I would have missed some of the best hires of my career.

It’s important to strike the right balance.  In a recent hiring situation, I ended up rejecting a candidate who made it all the way through the interview and evaluation process because her references pegged her as a chronic attendance problem.  Major red flat.

The candidate I ultimately hired had a couple of red flags as well – most notably a hard-to-believe story about why she left her last job.  In that case, I decided to ignore the concern and move forward with the hire.  While there were a few surprises, the decision turned out to be a sound one.

Maybe I was good in that situation, keeping the winner and dropping the loser.  But more likely, I was just lucky.

A pound of back-up planning

Face it, you’re going to make some mistakes when hiring.  Even the most perceptive hiring managers, search firms, and HR professionals still manage to screw up (of course, the candidates themselves do their best to make the process as difficult as possible) a portion of the time.

The best way I’ve found to handle the situation is to have an implementable back up plan waiting in the wings.

For example, I recently hired a new manager for a critical position but knew exactly what I would do if he failed.  I had an former employee lined up to cover half of his job responsibilities, and could bring in a temp to handle the rest.  It would have been messy and a pain in the backside, but I knew what to do.  As people often say – no one is irreplaceable.

Having a back-up plan made it a lot easier for me to be objective about the new hire as his performance and capabilities were slowly revealed.  Yes, there were some surprises, but none that were so severe that I wanted to give up on the candidate.

That hasn’t always been the case.

In different example, within a few weeks of the start date the new hire committed an act so heinous that I couldn’t keep him.  In that case, my back up plan was to utilize a “loaner” employee from the corporate staff.  While I hadn’t thought of this loaned executive as a realistic candidate for the job, he grew on me once he was temporarily handling the assignment and I ultimately hired him.

Try before you buy?

While it isn’t often that you can take a candidate for a “test drive” in a position, whenever possible, you should try to do so.  It’s one thing to fool people about your qualities for an hour during an interview and quite another to do so for weeks!

I’ve been able to employ this technique more often when the economy is weak and it is a “hirer’s market.”  In times of tight employment, the best candidates would likely not accept a test period.

Conclusion

If you hire more than a handful of people, you’re going to make errors.  It’s a fact.  While you should take proper and prudent screen steps, the best way to deal with potentially unsuitable candidates is to have a back-up plan ready to execute when the new hire doesn’t work out.  That will give you the confidence to identify and evaluate issues and problems right away, rather than waiting and hoping things somehow get better.  30.2

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To the right is the cover of LEVERAGE.  This novel explores the theft of sensitive DOD designs from a Minneapolis Tech Company, and the dangers associated with digging too deeply into the surrounding mystery.  Its sequel, PURSUING OTHER OPPORTUNITIES, is out now, and a third book in the series, OUTSOURCED, is in the works.

My novels are based on extensions of my 27 years of personal experience as a senior manager in public corporations.  Most were inspired by real events.

Acquiring Companies with “Illegal” Workers

There are people advocating for undocumented immigrants, people opposing illegal immigrants, and a vast desert of common ground exists between the two.  This blog post is not intended to take a position on the subject, instead focusing on the implications for companies and managers that acquire firms where illegal/undocumented immigrants work.

Estimates of illegal/undocumented immigrants in the United States hover around 11 million, and it is no secret that a reasonable percentage of them (probably a percentage in the same range as the general population) are employed somewhere.

The question is, where?

It’s mostly smaller employers

Popular media has illegal/undocumented workers taking jobs across the spectrum of American employment.  In this view, we would find such workers occupying the unskilled and lower paying jobs in large corporations, chain restaurants, small employers of all types, and as casual labor.

Where I’ve come across illegal/undocumented workers has pretty much uniformly been in smaller employers, ones where the owners are likely to fly under the radar of governmental and media scrutiny.

Having primarily worked for large corporations, I can state without reservation that (with few possible exceptions) they do not hire illegal/undocumented workers.  There is far too much for the company to lose through an ICE raid and the subsequent media circus than could ever be gained by utilizing such people.  E-verify makes checking a person’s legal status simple.  Large employers use the tools to protect themselves from this kind of risk.

Smaller employers often have a different view of risks and rewards.

It’s a willful act, not an accident

Any employer that is hiring someone with questionable legal status is doing so willfully, whether in support of their political beliefs, a result of personal compassion, or simply to fill jobs they can’t get otherwise seem to fill.

I have come across numerous illegal/undocumented workers in smaller manufacturing companies – ones where the firm is generally subject to limited governmental and media oversight.

When you’re involved in the acquisition of such a company, you need to protect yourself.  In some cases, doing so means the target company simply becomes “unacquirable.”

An acquisition disaster

While working for one of my more acquisitive employers, the company purchased a small manufacturing company in one of the mountain states of the western U.S.  At the time of acquisition (which was before I had responsibility for this particular business unit), the company discovered during due diligence that many of the employees of the acquisition target were illegal/undocumented.

The situation should have thrown up all kinds of red flags, but apparently it didn’t.  The strategy for dealing with this situation, as stated by my predecessor, was to keep the former owner of the company in place as an employee and saddle him with the responsibility of replacing all those employees we couldn’t keep.

This didn’t work.  At all.

The former owner only stuck around for a year.  During that time, he repeatedly delayed doing anything about the undocumented/illegal workers, stating that they had been loyal, hard-working people and he owed them “a chance” to “straighten out” their documents.

As you can probably guess, there was more going on here than just the opportunistic employment of “cheap” labor (which wasn’t any cheaper than typical wages in the local market, by the way).  This former owner believed the laws of the U.S. were simply wrong-minded, and he was doing his part to try to protect people that had been loyally committed to him when he needed them.

Eventually, we forced him to terminate the problematic workers.  Then the business fell apart.

Not only did we have to eliminate ninety percent of the workforce, the supervisors went as well.  Along with much of the manufacturing know-how.  The workers that were hired to replace those that departed were mostly of a very poor quality – attendance problems, disciplinary problems, substance abuse, and vastly less capable and hard-working than those they replaced.

The business slipped from modestly profitable to a painful money loser.

While all of the problems weren’t caused by the workforce replacement, it was the major contributor to the problem.

Headed for trouble

The prior example, as well as other experiences – both mine and others I observed – have convinced me that the presence of illegal/undocumented workers in an acquisition target is a prescription for trouble.

Generally, you should walk the other way if find a significant portion of the workforce in your target company is undocumented/illegal.

The challenge – how do you discover the truth?

Most sellers will not allow you to check employment files (which you should do) until after a deal is struck and you are in due diligence.  At that point, it is tempting to develop a coping strategy (like the one described above – make the former owner deal with it as an employee) – one that is often unworkable – and rationalize going forward with the deal rather than pulling the plug.

This is almost always a mistake.

I recommend assessing this risk as you tour the facilities.  If there are a significantly higher percentage of Hispanic workers than are present in the local labor pool, chances are some are illegal/undocumented.

Once you suspect there is a significant risk, I suggest dealing with this during negotiations.  Rather than asking the seller if any of the employees are illegal/undocumented, I would insert language into the contract that pushes financial consequences back onto the sellers if a significant proportion of the workforce must be terminated due to documentation concerns.  For instance, a significant holdback of purchase price that will be forfeited if more than 20% of the workforce must be replaced.

The truth will then come out.

A year delay

I employed this strategy on an acquisition I worked on in Texas.  While the sellers never admitted they were employing a significant number of undocumented/illegal workers, the pace of the deal slowed considerably as the company began solving the problem themselves one step at a time.

A year later, they managed to get the workforce composition to an acceptable level.  The deal could have then proceeded, except in the intervening time several other issues had come to light.

As I’ve opined in the past, time kills deals and this one was no exception.

Conclusion

When contemplating the acquisition of a small company in the United States, particularly one that has a significant proportion of its employees in low wage/skill jobs, there is always the risk of exposing yourself to a big problem with illegal/undocumented workers.

To manage this risk, you should evaluate the potential for problems during your personal tour of the facilities, protect yourself financially in the contract, and be prepared to walk away from the deal if due diligence uncovers any major problems.  30.1

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Shown here is the cover of NAVIGATING CORPORATE POLITICS my non-fiction primer on the nature of politics in large corporations, and the management of your career in such an environment.  This is my best selling book.  Chocked full of practical advice, I've had many managers and executives say they wished they'd read it early in their career.

My novels are based on extensions of my 27 years of personal experience as a senior manager in public corporations.  Most were inspired by real events.

The Vindictive Boss

Angry employees seeking their “pound of flesh” in the business environment are hardly new news.  But when the spiteful employee is the boss, or worse yet the ultimate boss, the CEO, things can get quite nasty.

Unbridled Power

“Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.” – Lord Acton from the play, MacBeth.

What makes the CEO’s vendetta particularly concerning is the ability he or she has to carry out their plans and schemes unfettered – financial ruin, murder, theft, framing for a crime.  While this is largely the stuff of fiction, there are very real instances of the abuse of power that occur on a daily basis in companies around the world.

The manager with the big mouth

While I served as a division president with one of my former employers, I had a subordinate spread an unfounded rumor about me.  The specific rumor – that I was being “given” a car by the company for every hundred employees I laid off – came at a particularly sensitive juncture.  At that time, we were making a particularly deep cut in employment because of an unexpectedly weak seasonal market for our product.  I also had recently taken delivery of a new car – albeit, one I’d ordered over a year before.

The circumstances made what was a ridiculous fabrication sound somewhat plausible, at least to some of the employees.

The situation made me angry.  Once I discovered where the story originated, I was even more angry.  In my heart I wanted revenge.

As a division president, I didn’t have the power of the CEO, but I did have quite a bit of latitude.  I could have easily fired this particular employee and no one would have batted an eye.  I could have claimed the firing was for cause – insubordination – and he wouldn’t have been able to argue.  I could have smeared his name in the local area with other employers, and done my best to make sure he had to leave town to find a job.  And while this last action might or might not have succeeded, it would have undoubtedly added plenty of stress and challenge to his life.

Tempted though I was, I did none of those things.  Instead, I had a message sent to my rumor-monger through his supervisor to simply “knock it off.”  Then I did my best to set my personal feelings aside and move on.

Not every senior manager would be so generous.

Tugging on Tiger Tails

At times I’ve found myself tempted to be a contrarian, going against my boss’s wishes.  Sometimes this is because I believe the boss is wrong, but more often it is simply a visceral reaction to being told what to do.  I knew I was pulling the “tiger’s tail,” but at the time I’m not sure I understood the potential consequences.

Taking this tact is extremely dangerous, particularly the higher up the ladder you go.  When your boss is the CEO, just looking at him cross-eyed can mess up your life in ways you’ve never even thought of.

Working “Off Hours”

A co-worker I spent a fair amount of time with at one employer had a habit of arriving to the office late, but staying at work until all hours of the night when needed.  This rubbed our mutual boss the wrong way, most likely because he wasn’t at the boss’s beck and call whenever needed.

“Rubbing the wrong way” became “constant irritation.”  Eventually this grew into anger.  When the employee made a less than stellar presentation to a board of directors committee, shortly thereafter he was fired.  Fortunately for him, the vindictiveness didn’t go beyond that.

The Bad Project

In my final example, I watched as the CEO presided over a six-year development project.  The project, admittedly complex, was a new product for a new market, one that would utilize existing equipment capacity in our factories.

The prospect was seductive.  If it worked, we would provide a new alternative to customers and would facilitate getting them to the next generation of their product.

Unfortunately, however, it never came to pass.  The design, though clever, was simply too expensive.

I had the dubious honor of shutting the project down.

After it was all over, and the dust settled, the two people directly responsible for managing the project set up their own company and tried to launch a similar product into the market.

That made my boss angry.  Really, really angry.

I saw an opportunity to license the patents we’d developed during our six years of fruitless development to the new company and possibly recover some of our expenses.

My boss, on the other hand, had other priorities.

He vowed that he would NEVER agree to anything that would help the pair in ANY way.  He held them responsible for “stringing him along” for six long years, and was, quite frankly, vindictive.  No logical argument could penetrate his position.

Conclusion

Never underestimate the impact of alienating your boss, particularly if he or she is high on the corporate ladder.  29.4

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If you are intrigued by the ideas presented in my blog posts, check out some of my other writing.  

Novels: LEVERAGE, INCENTIVIZE, DELIVERABLES, HEIR APPARENT, and now PURSUING OTHER OPPORTUNITIES.

Non-Fiction:  NAVIGATING CORPORATE POLITICS

 This is the cover of my latest novel, PURSUING OTHER OPPORTUNITIES, released on April 21, 2014.  This story marks the return of LEVERAGE characters Mark Carson and Cathy Chin, now going by the name of Matt and Sandy Lively and on the run from the FBI.  The pair are working for a remote British Columbia lodge specializing in Corporate adventure/retreats for senior executives.  When the Redhouse Consulting retreat goes horribly wrong, Matt finds himself pursuing kidnappers through the wilderness, while Sandy simultaneously tries to fend off an inquisitive police detective and an aggressive lodge owner.

My novels are based on extensions of 27 years of personal experience as a senior manager in public corporations.

Preconceived Notions

“I love it when the facts match up with my preconceived notions.”

This was said by one of my bosses many years ago.  He was a wise and observant student of human nature, and I’ve pondered the meaning of his words many times.  It contains a little nugget of cynical wisdom that, if kept in the forefront of the mind, can save us from making some of our biggest mistakes in business and life in general.

Human nature?

We all seem to construct models of how the world really works.  This becomes the basis for our preconceived notions.  They come out of our experiences, what we observe or hear from the lives of others, what we read, and even what we watch on television.  They can consist of aspirations, as well as caveats from our own personal school of hard knocks.  We carry this model around in our heads as we go about our daily tasks, and it provides small bits of guidance to us on a daily basis.

“Never back down from a challenge.”  “There is no free lunch.”  “Work before pleasure.”  These are examples of a few pieces of my personal preconceived notions.  And yes, a lot of them are idioms and clichés that ring seem “true” to me.

Models and Reality

Our model often becomes our measuring stick – e.g. this bad thing happened because Fred ignored my rule.  We compare what we see and observe on a daily basis using our model.  It helps us make sense of a large, confusing world.

Of course, our preconceived notions are imperfect, not working all (or sometimes, not even a majority) of the time.  We handle the resulting dissonance by filtering.  We ignore, or even actively battle against, those things which seem to conflict with our model of reality.  On the other hand, we readily grab onto and incorporate experiences that are consistent with our preconceived notions.

Hence, my former boss’s quip.

Business Impacts

A portion of every person’s preconceived notions deal with their professional life.  These become a subset of rules of thumb and understandings that govern how we believe things work (or don’t work) in the workplace.  You may have noticed this when dealing with co-workers – Harry believes you must inform your manager of any problem immediately upon its first appearance, while Susie holds information close to the chest, only revealing it when forced to.

Two different people, two different models.  Conflicting preconceived notions can easily exist within a single company.

The culture of the organization consists of those elements of a person’s world model that are more-or-less shared across the entity.  While there are still some allowable variations, they are far narrower than we would find in the population at large.  When someone “doesn’t fit the culture” you can bet it is because a component of their preconceived notions conflicts with an important element that is shared across the company.  In some cases the person adapts.  In others, they can’t and eventually separate.

Stickiness

While our preconceived notions aren’t static, and we are always incorporating new bits of information in them that shape our understanding of the world, a reversal of an important tenet is difficult.  Damned difficult.  We tend to hang onto erroneous or self-destructive conclusions far longer than logic would dictate in an attempt to avoid the uncomfortable sensation that occurs when we are forced to re-evaluate.

Which is why people tend to learn and grow faster when conditions are adverse – they are forced into learning and adaptation, rather than being allowed to comfortably relax in an environment where they feel they already have it “figured out.”

The project that wouldn’t die

One company I worked for had a complex project that seemed to take on a life of its own.  The project was a new product for a new market (according to my preconceived notions, a red flag), but it held the potential to change the way business was done in the associated industry.  If it worked.

The problem was there was plenty of evidence it wasn’t going to succeed.

Tepid response from customers, assertions about costs that simply didn’t make sense, an impossibly complicated product certification process, these things all should have been ringing bells in people’s heads that success was highly unlikely.  As a result, the project was on life support from an early stage.

But senior management at this companybought into the “change the game” aspect of the strategy.  It had been employed several times throughout the company’s history to great effect, and the key decision makers wanted it to be true.  Their preconceived notion was the industry in question was ripe for a revolution and the company’s idea would be the one that fired the first shot.

Six years into the development process with little concrete to show for it, I heard a couple of our most senior managers describe the project as a “drug” that they kept coming back to despite it being highly unlikely that the effort would succeed.

Millions of dollars went down the drain before the project was ultimately abandoned.

What was happened was a classic clash between senior management’s preconceived notions and the reality of the market and industry.  The decision makers latched onto every bit of positive reinforcement, and minimized, outright ignored, or explained away every piece of contrary data.  I’m convinced that if the potential to enter the market with the “game changing” element hadn’t been present, the project never would have been attempted.

Conclusion

Becoming committed to a viewpoint, a position, or a rule-of-thumb can blind you to the facts.  Painful though it may be, it is important for us to re-examine and rethink the underlying assumptions that drive our decision making.  We need to actively search for data that contradicts our closely held beliefs and preconceived notions, continuously testing our world model to make sure it is correct and fresh.

Or we can just wait for the negative consequences of blindly adhering to our preconceived notions, and absorb those lessons when reality slaps us in the face.  29.3

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 To the right is the cover for HEIR APPARENT.   In this tale, someone is killing corporate leaders in Kansas City.  But who?  The police and FBI pursue a "serial killer" theory, leaving Joel Smith and Evangelina Sikes to examine other motives.  As the pair zero in on the perpetrator, they put their own lives at risk.  There are multiple suspects and enough clues for the reader to identify the killer in this classic whodunnit set in a corporate crucible.

My novels are based on extensions of 27 years of personal experience as a senior manager in public corporations.

Wishing doesn’t make it Real

But you’d be surprised how often project justifications contain wishes rather than solidly researched facts and conservative assumptions.

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I’ve seen it in acquisitions, in capital projects, in new product proposals, heck sometimes even in cost reductions.  Managers and professionals get sucked in by a project’s “sexiness” or their passionate need for the project to “work,” and manipulate the analysis to support their desires.  Quite often they end up getting what they want, weaving a story that is both exciting and convincing.

The problem comes when it is time for the rubber to meet the road – the road isn’t straight like it was expected to be, and the rubber is paper-thin.

Want and Need

Human beings are an interesting combination of emotion and rationality.  We react to many of the things we encounter on a daily basis at a visceral level, relying on already established synaptic pathways to guide rapid decisions.   While that is probably a pretty good survival tool, it doesn’t serve us well when it comes to major, long-term decisions.  We try to reduce this influence by substituting reasoned thought and analysis for instinct and gut feel.

Yet it still creeps in.  I’ve repeatedly seen the most senior executives fall in love with a proposal, and fall for whatever argument supports it.  I’ve done it myself.

Not giving in to your emotions requires self-discipline and self-awareness.  It requires a commitment to delving deeply for the truth (or the major risks, or the faulty assumptions).  It requires recognizing that no matter how fervently you want something to be true, no matter how desperately you need it to be a workable answer, you have to rely on facts and reality to make your decision.

Human beings seem to have a tough time accepting this.

An Unproven Process

One of my bigger career failings was the proposal, approval, and construction of a new factory which I expected to be a leap forward in operational productivity for my employer.  The project turned into a disaster when the new process proposed as the centerpiece of the factory couldn’t be made to work as advertised.

This business made a wide array of infrastructure products ranging in size from small to large.  My employer had a highly automated process to make the small products, one that gave them a significant competitive advantage in the marketplace.  I feverishly wanted to bring those same advantages to the medium-sized products.

Unfortunately some of the processes we used on the small products couldn’t scale up.  I asked one of my engineers to develop a proposal for alternate processes that would give us similar productivity.  As originally envisioned, we would spend several years engaged in process development before ever proposing a full scale plant.

When an opportunity to avoid an new investment in conventional capacity arose, I couldn’t resist pushing the project forward.  Despite the risks, I’d fallen in love with the concept and convinced myself it would all “work out.”

Of course, it didn’t work out at all.  Not like I’d hoped.  The project fell far behind schedule as major problems with the new process arose.  Even when these were (partially) solved, the production rates fell far below what had originally been envisioned.  The plant became a failure, and contributed significantly to me losing my job.

The Wishes of Others

Potentially as damaging as falling in love with your own ill-conceived project, is inheriting someone else’s.  I’ve blogged extensively about the need to do a rigorous evaluation of projects you are inheriting – most recently in How to Handle a Hot Potato, and Doing your own "due diligence."  Suffice it to say, you almost can’t be too careful – or too critical – when you first are handed someone else’s project.

You have a significant, although short-term, advantage when inheriting a project – for a while you should be free of the emotional attachment to it that it’s “parents” may feel.  At that moment, you are in the best position to make an objective evaluation.

Politically, the situation may be quite different.  It may be painfully difficult to raise concerns and objections as  you will be “goring someone’s ox.”  But you must do it, otherwise the project becomes “yours” in the minds of your senior management.

The New Plant

I inherited a project for a new plant when initially coming into new job.  This particular project was built on a number of “excessively favorable” assumptions the totality of which wouldn’t have all come to pass in a century.

I scrubbed the project, realizing fairly quickly that I had a looming disaster on my hands.  Unfortunately for me, my boss was the one behind the original proposal.  That made raising objections difficult.  So I trickled my objections out over time, raising concerns as they were about to begin to impact the results.

It was an imperfect solution.  My protests were given some credence, but in the end, I couldn’t escape the poor results that came about as a result of the flawed project.

Conclusion

If a project sounds too good to be true, it undoubtedly is.  Follow up your suspicions with hard digging and research.  When you find problems you must speak up, otherwise you’ll end up owning them.

If you are the author of the project, do what you can to divorce yourself from your emotional attachment to the proposal.  Be objective.  Gather other opinions.  Have someone else evaluate the project before you submit it – preferable someone with an objective, outsider’s perspective – and have them specifically look for wishful thinking.  29.2

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To the right is the cover for DELIVERABLES.  This novel features a senior manager approached by government officials to spy on his employer, complete with a story about how a "deal" they are negotiating might put critical technical secrets into the hands of enemies of the United States.  Of course, everything is not exactly as it seems....

My novels are based on extensions of 27 years of personal experiences as a senior manager in public corporations.

How to Handle a Hot Potato

Hot Potato projects, every organization seems to have them.  And just like a literal hot potato, you want to avoid catching one if possible.

Audiobook version of Incentivize

Audiobook version of Incentivize

An experienced corporate politician once told me, “success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan.”  Hot potato projects are the ones that most people in the organization recognize as a pending failure.  The politically savvy try to avoid them.

Are all hot potato projects disasters in the making?  Not always, but more often than not, they are poor bets to place, offering more downside risk than the potential for success and reward.

What can you do?

Avoidance should be your first hot potato strategy.  If people are hesitant to take on a project, there is probably a good reason.  Your initial instinct should be to avoid the project by dodging it, refusing it, or just being “too busy.”

Of course, avoidance isn’t always possible.  The second line of defense is to alter the project to make it more likely to succeed, or to appreciably reduce the consequences of failure.  This can be done by redefining what “success” means, managing down expectations, or by giving plenty of warnings as to the project’s problems and risks.

If neither of these strategies work, try to get rid of the project.  You can do this by shuffling it off to someone else, much in the same way you were stuck with it in the first place.  One way to make that happen is to get involved in something more important than the hot potato, and then make the point that you won’t have time to do both.

Killing the project is another way to manage a hot potato.  This can be tough in many cases as the reason the project has survived as long as it has is because there is some senior sponsor that can’t or won’t accept “no” as an answer.  The best way to fight this type of battle is to focus on facts and try to leave the aspirations and hopes of the sponsor out of you arguments.  Even the most unreasonable boss, when confronted with the facts, will admit wanting something to work doesn’t mean it can or will.

If none of the above tactics work, the only thing you are left with is to apply full effort to try to bring the project to successful conclusion, despite whatever long odds you are facing.  While no amount of hard work will change the laws of nature, sometimes people can accomplish amazing things when they put everything they have into a difficult job.

A little Mixology

Early in my career, I was stuck with a hot potato project.  One of our customers had an automotive air conditioning system design (from a competitor, no less) that wasn’t performing well, and wanted help developing a solution.  It seemed that warm and cold air weren’t mixing properly and the temperature was coming out of the outlets unacceptably stratified.

While on the surface this shouldn’t have been particularly difficult fix, with the constraints imposed – no change in major components, geometry, or cooling performance with minimal cost impact – it became nearly impossible.  The project bounced around from engineer to engineer until it eventually landed on my desk.

At that time, I had no idea that this was likely a dead end, and I failed to understand the political implications of accepting the challenge and failing.  So I took it on.

Fortunately, through the dint of hard work and a little luck, I came up with an air baffle that could be added to the present design.  Surprisingly, it actually worked.  It did, in the opinion of the customer’s staff, cost too much.  The customer did, however, get a solution and saw what it would take to solve the problem.  As a result the hot potato project was resolved, and I could at least declare it a “tie” if not an outright victory.  Of course, since it wasn’t our product to begin with, it earned me absolutely nothing with my own management team.

It was only afterward that I realized I’d taken a huge risk by agreeing to the project, and there was essentially no reward for succeeding.

In that instance, I was lucky.  What I probably should have done was to come up with a way to toss the hot potato, just like everyone else had done.

New Market plus New Product equals Big Problems

Much later in my career, I inherited a development project that had been making the rounds among members of senior management.  I think I was the fourth or fifth “father” by the time it was sent my direction.  I suspected the project was about to become an “orphan.”

By this point in my career, I realized that any development project that had been around six years with five leaders was probably a lost cause.  My boss was the project’s sponsor, however, and there was no way I was going to avoid the project, alter the definition of success, or readily dump it.

As a result, I set out to determine once and for all if the project had any possible chance of commercial success.

It took a year of pushing on the right buttons and asking lots of questions, but in the end it became obvious the project would never succeed because it represented a threat, or at the minimum an unnecessary problem, to the key decision makers that would have to specify it.

That was when I killed the project.

A year is a long time to hold onto a hot potato, and my fingers were (figuratively) singed a bit by this one.  Given the situation I was thrust into, however, I thought I handled it fairly well.

Conclusion

Hot Potato projects are hot for a reason.  You should avoid catching one if at all possible, and if you find one in your hands, you should get rid of it at the earliest possible opportunity.  29.1

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To the right is the cover for INCENTIVIZE.   This novel is about a U.S. based mining company, and criminal activity that the protagonist (a woman by the name of Julia McCoy) uncovers at the firm's Ethiopian subsidiary.  Her discover sets in motion a series of events that include, kidnapping, murder, and terrorism in the Horn of Africa.

My novels are based on extensions of 27 years of personal experiences as a senior manager in public corporations.

Horsetrading in Negotiations

(Note:  This is my final post in a short series dealing with Labor Unions.)

The business world is full of principles, many of them existing primarily in the heads of those that spout them.  These often take the form of an “I’ll never, such as:  ”I’ll never…

…do a deal in country x.

…hire a salesperson that doesn’t have a degree.

…give in on an employee’s vacation demands.

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Over my career, I’ve found that most of these pronouncements (with the exception of those that draw a moral or legal line) do little for you.  They tend to codify informal rules of thumb that were often acquired at the school of hard knocks and may have limited general validity.

Such pronouncements can be quite constraining, causing you to take foolish, ineffective, or even destructive positions and cling to them beyond all reason.

I’ll never buy one of those vans.

In my youth (I grew up during the 60’s and 70’s) vans had a reputation for being hippie-mobiles used by people my father generally didn’t approve of.  Throughout my youth, I heard him say how he would “never buy one of those vans” or how he “didn’t understand why anyone would want one of ‘those things.’”

Once mini-vans came into vogue, it was clearly an excellent choice for mom and dad.  Dad’s old pronouncements, however, prevented him from seriously considering one for a long time.  When he did finally purchase a mini-van, my brother and I both repeatedly reminded him how he was “never” going to purchase one.

His position was probably reasonable for him at the time he articulated it, but by avoiding the pronouncement he would have felt much more freedom to reverse his position once circumstances changed.

Principles and Unions

One of the places I’ve seen positions pronounced, and then deeply reinforced, is where they relate to unions and the interplay between union and management.  Some of the classics I’ve heard include:

  • We’ll never allow a union here, we’ll fight to the death.
  • If they (the union) strikes, we’ll break them with salaried workers and eventually move production somewhere else.
  • We will never give in to their demand for (fill in the blank).

Although I’ve never sat through discussions on the union’s side, I’m sure similar discussions go on there as well.

What ends up happening is these pronouncements become positions set in stone, and tend to drive the relationship into conflict when it is unnecessary.

A ditch to die in

I got myself into a pretty deep hole with both the union and my own superiors when I fired an employee for sleeping on the job.  Without getting into the gory details, the employee in question had finished his “quota” for the shift and wandered off to find a quiet corner to get some shut-eye.  When I found him, I immediately terminated his employment.  My thought was simple – “No one who works for me is going to sleep while on the clock.”

My bosses (who were wiser) were almost immediately ready to settle the situation and let the employee back, but I was unwilling to back down.  Eventually, we ended up dealing with a grievance and a long negotiation process which took the situation out of my hands.  In the end, the outcome ended up being pretty much what my boss proposed in the beginning – reinstatement after a week off without pay.

I was lucky my stubbornness didn’t have a negative impact on my career.

Remove the emotion

The best way to avoid this problem is to avoid making pronouncements in the first place.

Sometimes, however, that isn’t possible either because you’ve already staked out a position, or because someone else has done it for you.

If you’re already stuck with hardened positions, your next step is to try to reduce the issue to a common denominator.  One of the most effective ways to do this is to analyze what the principle is worth in terms of dollars and cents.  It’s amazing how readily you can introduce flexibility when you ask – “How much of a pay decrease would the union need to offer in order to convince you to consider that extra week of vacation.”  Once the discussion goes this direction, it isn’t difficult to get the value close to what it’s really worth to the company, rather than just based on someone’s personal principles.

Another alternative is to use a surrogate negotiator, one who isn’t locked into any principled position.  I’ve used this tactic in legal disputes on several occasions when I felt like my personal beliefs, reputation, or interests seemed threatened by what the other party was demanding.  It has worked well during negotiations, as well, as long as the person with the principled position can manage to keep themselves out of the thick of the negotiating.

Horsetrading

Many of the interactions between union and management come down to negotiation and compromise.  The ability to get to an agreement by somehow pushing aside entrenched positions is critical to success.  The only way I’ve ever seen this effectively done is to bring all elements of the negotiation back to a common value (usually money), and trade to get as much of what you want as you can manage.

Conclusion

Find a way to check your principles and pronouncements at the door and come to your negotiations prepared to swap value for value.  In this way, negotiations can be made much simpler and more straightforward than what is typically experienced.

Sometimes it is the only way to reach an agreement or avert a disaster.  28.4

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To the right is the cover of LEVERAGE.   This novel explores the theft of sensitive DOD designs from a Minneapolis Tech Company, and the dangers associated with digging too deeply into the surrounding mystery.  It's sequel, PURSUING OTHER OPPORTUNITIES, is out now, and a third book in the series, OUTSOURCED, is in the works.

My novels are based on extensions of my 27 years of personal experience as a senior manager in public corporations.  Most were inspired by real events.

The Walk-Away Option

Many years ago I took a course on negotiations, one that over the years has served me very well.  We spent quite a bit of time talking about a very popular style of negotiation known as the win-win type.  Win-win is an attractive option for discovering clever ways to increase the overall value of the deal.  It also instructs the negotiator how to avoid limiting chances for reaching agreement by building “fortresses” around principle-based positions.

Cover of my latest novel:  Pursuing Other Opportunities

Cover of my latest novel:  Pursuing Other Opportunities

When it works, it is a great way to go.

In practice, however, I’ve run into many more “winner-takes-all” types of negotiations.  This style of negotiation takes a different mindset and a different approach than win-win.

And unfortunately, I’ve learned the hard way that when “win-win” meets “winner-takes-all” in a negotiation, the latter almost always ends up doing better.

A different set of tools

Winner-takes-all negotiating is hardcore.  Unlike win-win, which relies on flexibility, creativity, and the ability to come up with trade-offs that increase the size of the pie, winner-takes-all is about figuring out how to effectively push for what you want by taking it from the other party.

The first step in any negotiation is to figure out what kind of discussion you are having.  While many negotiations could be handled as win-win, both sides have to be willing to go that direction for it to work.  As soon as one party starts down the path of winner-takes-all, you’re most likely going keep going in that direction.

To handle winner-takes-all negotiations effectively, here are a few of the tactics I’ve seen work well over the years.

  1. Keep your cards close to the chest.  When the other side knows what you value, they are likely to try to extract a higher price when giving it to you (this is exactly the opposite of how win-win works.)
  2. Do your homework.  While you should try to hide how you value the elements of the deal, you need to understand and expose the values to the other party.  In a winner-takes-all negotiation, information is power, and you want the power scales tipped in your favor.
  3. Know your bottom line.  What is the your walk-away position, where it is better for you to have no deal than the one on the table.  Have contingency plans that are ready to roll if talks break down or don’t achieve your minimum acceptable outcome.  At a minimum this will give you negotiating leverage, and in the worst case you have a workable alternative to a negotiated settlement.
  4. Use time to your advantage.  The person in the greatest hurry usually ends up with the worst deal.  Be prepared to temporarily suspend the discussions if things aren’t going your way.
  5. Employ a proxy negotiator and DON’T let him know your bottom line.  You’re likely to get a better deal when the person negotiating for you keeps pushing because they don’t know where your goal line is located.
  6. Make yourself scarce.  A corollary to rule 5 – the harder it is to get your reaction and concession, the more likely you are to claim concessions from the other side.
  7. Argue strongly, pontificate, even threaten, but try to avoid taking entrenched positions (of the “I’ll never give in on this” type.)  This is also needed for successful win-win negotiating.  Building a fortress around a position often leads to a walk-away, even when both sides could have been satisfied by a compromise.
  8. Consider the long term, but keep your eye on the short term.  If you will have an ongoing relationship with the other side of the negotiation, you might want to temper your tactics a bit, but generally if you are in a winner-takes-all discussion, you need to focus on winning.

Example #1

I learned the value of using proxies a number of years ago in a negotiation for an acquisition – one that failed to positively conclude.  I was the lead negotiator in discussions for an international JV, one which would involve a very complex deal with an Israeli firm.  After several tough visits and negotiating sessions, I had what I thought would be a killer deal.  I took it to my boss, and he roundly rejected it, critiquing several of the deal elements.

While I’m not sure my boss actually knew his bottom line, I was positive I didn’t know it.  In response to his rejection, I went back to the other side, and – low and behold – I was able to extract additional concessions.  Up until that moment, I had been under the impression that the Israeli firm was stretched to the limit when proposing the original deal.  I was wrong.

Unfortunately, the revised deal was again rejected by my boss.  After that, the deal fell apart.  This points out a pitfall to be avoided in winner-takes-all negotiations – going back to the well too many times and thus wearing out the other side’s patience.  While making time an ally and going into “delay mode” might have allowed me to squeeze out a few more concessions, the outright refusal by my boss frustrated the other side to the point that they decided to simply walk away from the project.

Example #2

In a labor union negotiation, my chief objective was to get the union on the same medical plan that my other, non-union plants.  We decided to keep this objective secret from the other side, and instead focus discussions as much as possible on other issues.  At the same time, our investigation into the union’s priorities told us the most important objective for the other side was the establishment of a 401K.  Another secret from my side was we were about to agree to provide this benefit to all of our facilities.

During negotiations, we traded the 401K for the medical concession we needed, and managed to wrangle a smaller than expected wage increase, as well.  In a win-win negotiation (which, in my experience, union contract negotiations rarely are) I’m certain we would have gotten less for our concession.

Of course, our position was helped considerably by having a contingency plan should the negotiations not achieve our walk-away position.  We let those plans leak to the union so they knew we were prepared to meet any threatened strike with an alternative.

Conclusion

While win-win negotiating is a valuable technique, and one you should have in your skill set, winner-takes-all is more common in business and the style of negotiating you should focus on the most.  Preparation is the key to successfully winning such negotiations, and skills and techniques make a considerable difference in the quality of the outcome.  In an important negotiation, make sure to be ready to employ all the tools at tactics at your disposal.  28.3


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If you are intrigued by the ideas presented in my blog posts, check out some of my other writing.  

Novels: LEVERAGE, INCENTIVIZE, DELIVERABLES, HEIR APPARENT, and now PURSUING OTHER OPPORTUNITIES.

Non-Fiction:  NAVIGATING CORPORATE POLITICS

Below is a montage of my published books.  The four to the left are Novels, all in the "Corporate Thriller" genre.  The book on the right is a non-fiction work which provides a framework that managers and executives can use to think about and utilize corporate politics.

The books (both eBook and paperback) can be purchased from my website.  Just click on the image and follow the link to your preferred supplier and format.

My novels are based on extensions of my 27 years of personal experience as a senior manager in public corporations.  Most were inspired by real events.

Getting the Union you Deserve

In my previous post, Fearing Unions, I pointed out that the character of various labor unions range from “modestly helpful” to downright “paralyzing.”

Why do you have the type and character of union that you’ve got?  What happened that dictated the relationship you inherited was cooperative or pugilistic?

In a word:  History.

The past matters

Investment firms warn that “past performance is not a guarantee of future results.”  When it comes to company-union relations, however, the past dictates almost everything.

One of the unions I had more than a passing familiarity with was the United Auto Workers.  The union began organizing automobile factories in the 1930s.  At that time, the auto companies had grown to gargantuan size, and management became completely disconnected from their workers.  Favoritism, an incendiary issue in the organizing of many unions, ran rampant.  Supervisors were perceived as doling out favors to their pals like they were candy.  During some of the initial organizing strikes, the companies used every means available to fight against their workers including things like mass firings, intimidation, and calling in the police to act as their thuggish proxies.

The relationship started poorly, and has stayed that way to this day.  Hardly a big surprise.

After many years of attempted rapprochement, after strikes and “work to rule” actions that crippled various plants and firms, after bankruptcies and decades of shrinking and retrenchment, the dynamics of the relationship have changed little.

One could argue that the auto companies have the types of unions they deserved – planted with distrust and malice and still full of that, today.

In a contra-example, I once had responsibility for a plant in California that was also unionized.  Years earlier, the organizing drive had been weak, but management didn’t vehemently oppose it.  The main concern of the employees at the time of organizing was safety, and after the union was voted in, management worked with the union to establish a first-class safety program.  Relationships started positively, and were cooperative for the most part, with the two sides  coming to loggerheads only on rare occasions.

One could easily ask why this company ended up with a union at all – possibly management could have successfully fended off the organizing drive.  But with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, the outcome they achieved was better than engaging in a pitched battle at the time of organizing – one that could have gone either way.

By the time I was managing this facility, I was convinced that with a little encouragement we could have, convinced the employees to decertify the union.  I didn’t see any reason to do so, however, knowing that any change to the delicate balance that existed at the site might easily lead to a less desirable outcome.

It can change, but usually only for the worse.

I have observed only one instance of a relatively passive union becoming active.  This occurred when the shop floor came to be dominated by a particularly problematic manager, and senior executives backed-up that manager despite the fact that the he was clearly a major issue.

While relations up to that point had been fairly cordial, this “ditch to die in” became the “straw” that broke the trust of employees in their management team.

Although I haven’t been involved in the business for a number of years, I’m confident the relationship still carries scars from that incident.

Want to keep a union out?

No sane manager wants a union.  But what do you do to prevent getting one?

Pay attention to the concerns of your employees.  Period.

While doing so may seem tedious and petty to a senior executive (Who wants to worry about details like:  who gets overtime, how are promotions and lateral moves handled, or why the vacation application process is unfair), they aren’t small issues, at all.  These concerns are the things that drive everyday life on the shop floor.  If you think they are unimportant or beneath you, you’re setting yourself up for a bad surprise.

Unfair or inequitable treatment by supervisors is a particular flashpoint.  You should put measures and policies in place to make sure your supervisors are not giving their favorites unfair advantages.  Then verify that your supervisors are in compliance.  And do so more often than “once in a blue moon.”

Yes, I know, sometimes the “favorites” deserve to be treated better because they do more, risk more, or work harder/smarter, but it doesn’t matter.  If the average employee doesn’t understand and agree that the treatment is reasonable, it is a mistake.

What if there is an organizing drive?

Many so-called experts will have you fight to the death to keep a union out, using all means at your disposal (and possibly a few that technically aren’t) to oppose the union.  While I believe management should present their case for why a union isn’t necessary, the dirtier tactics should be avoided.  You have to realistically acknowledge that you may end up with the union whether you like it or not, and the circumstances surrounding its birth will hang around the neck of the organization like an albatross for decades to come.

Better to start off things without maximizing quantity of bile generated in the process.

Yikes, I’ve already got a union.

See my prior post on this subject titled Fearing Unions.  Having a union isn’t a guarantee of failure or even of continuous, hampering conflict – at least if you’re fortunate, that is.

Even if the relationship is a disaster, you’re options are limited.  Best get them in focus quickly, and make the best decisions about your future that you can.

I want to get rid of my union.

Why bother?  If the union is weak enough that you can convince the employees to decertify it, then how much trouble is it causing you, really?  Sometimes it is better to let sleeping dogs lie, rather than taking actions that may cause them to wake up and bite you.

Conclusion

If you’re a manufacturing executive in today’s world, your chances are probably better than fifty-fifty that you’ll never have to deal with a union.  But just because you aren’t stuck with one doesn’t mean you can ignore the behaviors and concerns that cause employees to organize.  Remember, if you’re regime gives birth to a union, it will certainly be the one you deserve.  28.2


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Shown here is the cover of NAVIGATING CORPORATE POLITICS  my non-fiction primer on the nature of politics in large corporations, and the management of your career in such an environment.  This is my best selling book.  Chocked full of practical advice, I've had many managers and executives say they wished they'd read it early in their career.

My novels are based on extensions of my 27 years of personal experience as a senior manager in public corporations.  Most were inspired by real events.

Fearing Unions

I’ve worked at two companies that had labor unions, each having multiple labor unions at various sites, and my experiences have been mixed.  I also worked at a company that was so strongly opposed to unions that they wouldn’t complete an acquisition if it meant bring in a labor union, nor would they allow a union to organize at any of their facilities – using every means possible to oppose the unionization drive, and moving the facility off shore if it was successful.  That reaction was over-the-top.

While you might manage to avoid dealing with unions throughout your entire career, being afraid of them is a bit extreme.  Various approaches exist for handling unions if you find yourself dealing with one in your job.

Why unions?

In short, because they are effective.  Unions shift the balance of power in the management-employee relationship, putting more control in the hands of the employee.  And it’s not difficult to understand why management opposes them – they end up with less power and control.

The difference was clear at one of my union-infested employers.  There the unionized plants definitely had higher wages and more generous benefits than the non-unionized plants.  But there were downsides.  In the unionized plants, the relationship between management and the workforce took on a different tenor ranging from suspicious watchfulness to outright militaristic.  There were instances where non-union plants were granted things by management that were withheld from the unionized plants, the plan being to get some kind of “concession” from the union during the next negotiation.

Unions are at least as bureaucratic as management, often more so.  Their leaders are typically elected by popular vote rather than earning them based on ability.  Leaders can range from passive to highly belligerent.  Like most politicians, it seemed to me that the candidates promising to deliver the largest concessions from management are the ones that are elected.  The dynamic results in a bias toward demanding, hard-nosed horse trading.

Are they bad?  Are the good?  I think they can be either.  A lot of the content of a particular union’s character comes from what happened at its inception, and the profile of their leaders.  Was there blatant management unfairness, and plenty of reason for distrust when organization occurred?  Are leaders table-banging hard-heads, or reasonable negotiators looking for a fair compromise?

WARNING -- Blatantly Commercial Content.

My latest novel (PURSUING OTHER OPPORTUNITIES) does not deal with labor unions, but it does contain some amusing profiles of senior executives under stress and behaving badly.  A paperback version and a Kindle version are both available.

Don’t panic

If you’re in management (an assumption that consistently runs throughout my blog posts), you shouldn’t be alarmed at the prospect of working with a union.  While I’ve run into contentious, obstructive, relationships, I’ve also experienced instances where the union was actually helpful.  In one such situation the union was a major driver in improving safety in the plant, which benefited both employee and employer.  And they weren’t unreasonable to work with during contract negotiations.  In fact, when the rare disagreement came up at that particular facility, the union often functioned as a conduit of communication between senior management and the shop floor.

Of course, there are plenty of examples of the exact opposite.  Situations where the union was unreasonable, inflexible, or just plain pugilistic.

Take your time evaluating the situation.  Enter the relationship with an open mind and study the history of labor relations at the site.  Understand the reason the union exists in the first place.  Become acquainted with the union’s leadership.  Maybe you’ll find a helpful partner.

More likely, however, there will be many more added headaches than benefits.  In one company, the relationship between union and management had become so oppositional that virtually every action in the workplace was reduced to detailed rules (yes, it was in the automotive industry).  These rules became a huge barrier to improvement, and effectively throttled the company over time.

A chance for rapprochement?

If you’re stuck with one of those toxic, conflict-laden, labor-management relationships, don’t kid yourself into believing that you can “fix it.”  In my experience, it is an easy matter to destroy trust, and nearly impossible to repair it.  Under the best of circumstances it takes years, if not decades.

The company I described above with the rigid rules once launched a major initiative to “partner” with the union.  It didn’t work.  Despite immense patience and an honest desire by management to “change things” with the union, the history of suspicion and bad blood was too much to overcome.  Instead of bringing the parties closer together, the union pretended to “play nice” for a period, systematically claiming new concessions from management and giving on nothing.

The company eventually ended in bankruptcy, its value virtually picked clean by the unionized employees.

If you find yourself with a bad company-union situation, your choices are to gut it out, matching fire with fire, or get out.  Examples of management-led improved relations are quite rare.  While you might get lucky and succeed in pulling off a transformation, you certainly shouldn’t count on it.

Conclusion

It is no surprise that companies abhor labor unions – far too many of them obstruct management and gouge excessive amounts of value from shareholders.  But you shouldn’t jump to the conclusion that all unions are bad for management or for the company.

Should you end up with a difficult union, you don’t have many options.  I personally think life is too short to mess with such a situation, but not everyone agrees.  If you’re going to stick it out, you should gird yourself for long-term trench warfare.  Such damaged relationships rarely improve, even with concerted efforts.  28.1

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This is the cover of my latest novel, PURSUING OTHER OPPORTUNITIES, released on April 21, 2014.  This story marks the return of LEVERAGE characters Mark Carson and Cathy Chin, now going by the name of Matt and Sandy Lively and on the run from the FBI.  The pair are working for a remote British Columbia lodge specializing in Corporate adventure/retreats for senior executives.  When the Redhouse Consulting retreat goes horribly wrong, Matt finds himself pursuing kidnappers through the wilderness, while Sandy simultaneously tries to fend off an inquisitive police detective and an aggressive lodge owner.

My novels are based on extensions of my 27 years of personal experience as a senior manager in public corporations.  Most were inspired by real events.

You own it!

When you come into a new position, assignment, or company, you typically inherit partially completed work.  Sometimes you get peaches, but more often it will be of the “rotten tomato” variety.  In fact, sometimes the ugliest or most defective projects were what chased the previous incumbent out of the job.

What to do

Somewhere between your first day in the position and the one year anniversary, the rotten work you inherited stops being “something imposed upon you,” and instead becomes “yours.”  The exact timeline depends on a number of factors, including the size and complexity of the challenge, the degree to which senior management was aware of its issues, and the culture of the organization.

While you likely won’t be able to completely avoid this situation, there are a number of steps you can take to protect yourself.  They include the following:

  1. Assess the project.
  2. Get concerns out in the open.
  3. Make sure management is aware of the challenges you are faced with.
  4. Get rid of anything that is already “Dead on Arrival.”
  5. Look for novel solutions.
  6. Work at it.  Hard.

I’ll go over each of these in turn.

Assess the project.

Evaluate the program, projects, or objectives you feel might trip you up.  This means going back to the original documentation and justifications, and trying to blow holes in them.  Look for the points of greatest risk or vulnerability.  Look for those critical assumptions that must be true for the project to work.  This can be tricky as you may not know whose “ox” you’re about to “gore.”

In one assignment, I inherited a train wreck of a project – one I could see was going to be a problem from my first day on the job.  Unfortunately, my boss was the primary author of the project’s justification.  I had to tiptoe through the errors and self-serving assumptions, trying to hit on the most important ones, particularly those that didn’t cast him in a bad light.

Get concerns out in the open.

If you go on record as having major misgivings about a project, you’ll have a better chance of being forgiven when stuff hits the fan.  But you’ve got to speak up.

A recent acquisition I inherited was an operational disaster.  It was clear to me from the moment of my first visit.  Instead of making that point clear to my boss, however, I drooled over what looked like an easy situation to improve upon.  Unfortunately, things didn’t work out the way I’d envisioned, and since I hadn’t laid any groundwork with higher management, the situation ended up reflecting poorly on me.

Make management aware of the challenges you face.

There’s a fine line between making higher management aware of risks and concerns, and whining.  I’d recommend handling this step with as light a touch as possible.  You don’t need to complain every time you are in front of your boss’ boss, but you can’t sweep concerns under the carpet, either.

One of my subordinates went way too far with this, and gave the impression that he was saying, “thank God I’ve arrived just in the nick of time to save the day.”  Because he overplayed his hand, he wasn’t cut any slack when his business went through a tough downcycle.

Get rid of anything that is already “Dead on Arrival.”

Give it away, kill it, put in on ice.  Do whatever you can to stop wasting energy and resources on a project or program that will never work.  It is much easier to put a bullet in a DOA project in the early days of your ownership.  The longer you wait, the more likely it is that senior management will wonder what you’ve been doing all this time.

One major project I inherited was clearly a mess, but whether it was salvageable was unclear.  I immediately set some tough cost and sales goals, and when neither were met, I pulled the plug on the project.  This particular effort had already injured several executives prior to it being assigned to me.  I was able to avoid any career injury as a result of quick action.

Look for novel solutions.

Find a new or better way to get the results you are after.  Or invent a new way to approach the project.  Just find something that hasn’t already been tried unsuccessfully.  Doing the same old thing and expecting different results really is the definition of insanity.  Or maybe stupidity.

In one assignment, I became aware that I’d inherited a completely unmanageable system of pricing.  Rather than trying to out-fence my distributors in one complex price negotiation after another – a system where the distributors had a natural advantage, we changed the game, going to a completely different method of pricing our product based on standard pricing with performance based discounts.  As a result, what had been a problem became a major success, allowing the company to expand margins without losing sales.

Work at it.  Hard.

If it’s difficult, risky, and not possible to shed, then you’d better pull out all the stops and work your tail off trying to make it a success.  You might, after all, actually succeed, pulling of a small miracle in the process.  Even if you don’t, effort usually counts for something.  Often it will help to partially mitigate any failure – at least in most corporate cultures.

Early in my career I had a chance to win a sale from a customer who honestly didn’t want to work with us.  I was persistent and worked every possible angle trying to get performance and cost right where they needed to be in order win the contract.

In the end, we managed to snag the contract and a couple of follow on ones as well.  The win was based more on how hard my team worked at it than actually defeating a competitor.  I learned then that hard work counts for something.  Sometimes, it is enough.

Conclusion

Inheriting a basket of bad programs and projects when you come into a new position has its definite challenges, but it doesn’t necessarily spell disaster.  If managed properly, you can discard the worst, and gain kudos for succeeding with the best bets.  27.3

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To the right is the cover for HEIR APPARENT.   In this tale, someone is killing corporate leaders in Kansas City.  But whom?  The police and FBI pursue a "serial killer" theory, leaving Joel Smith and Evangelina Sikes to examine other motives.  As the pair zero in on the perpetrator, they put their own lives at risk.  There are multiple suspects and enough clues for the reader to identify the killer in this classic whodunnit set in a corporate crucible.

My novels are based on extensions of 27 years of personal experience as a senior manager in public corporations.

Serving a Bad News Sandwich

Employees talk about shooting the messenger for a reason – because it happens with regularity in stressful business situations.  The reaction – which ranges from stoic acceptance to apoplectic – may be understandable, but it is typically counterproductive.  Negative reactions tend to stifle communication on tough subjects, reducing time and options for solving problems.

At some point, you will likely be called upon to deliver bad news.  If you’re a manager, I can guarantee you’ll have to deal with hearing it.  The question is:  How should both sides handle this stressful situation in a way that encourages the free flow of information and an early opportunity to solve issues?  And how can it be handled without the subordinate becoming injured in the process?

Exception Management

The numbers say it all.  Nearly every manager has multiple subordinates.  If the manager is above first line supervision, the subordinates go multiple layers deep.  Managers can’t know what is happening with all of their subordinates all of the time, at least not unless the subordinate’s jobs are quite repetitive and easily characterized by performance measures.  There simply isn’t enough time.

Managers normally cope with this situation through “exception management.”  They focus their time and attention on those items that are out of the ordinary.

Here’s a badly kept secret – a high percentage of these “exceptions” are problems.

Personnel conflicts, a project that is off track, results that miss (or will miss) expectations – these things are the daily trade of management.  Ever wonder why your manager seems grouchy?  Or depressed?  A large part of the typical manager’s day is spent dealing with challenges, many of them tough or messy.

A Predictable Reaction

Most managers can’t help but respond negatively to the constant stream of incoming problems, at least some of the time – it could be a grimace, or an eye-roll.  Or maybe a temper tantrum.

Employees, being highly observant of the boss’s behavior, notice all of this.  Most begin to recognize that their “bad news” is unwelcome.

As a result, they grow reluctant to provide it.

Some problems eventually resolve on their own, encouraging the delay of a discussion on the subject.  Many, however, fester and become progressively worse.  This increases the expected (and probable) negative boss reaction.  This produces a self-reinforcing avoidance reaction, where it becomes increasingly risky for the employee to reveal the problem.

Some employees will go out of their way to hide issues.  By the time these usually come to the surface, they are often unavoidable disasters.  As a manager, this reflects poorly on you, and is a behavior you must discourage.  But if you aren’t careful how you do this, you’ll drive issues even further underground.

Each manager is simultaneously a boss and a subordinate.  While the boss-part may want her subordinates to let her know about problems right away, she still might hide information from her superior.  Is this hypocrisy?  Do what I say, not what I do?

Maybe.  It is more likely, however, a rational reaction to expectations of a harsh response from above.

This is particularly true if her boss is likely to erupt over it.  Or to somehow punish her.

Up the Ladder

When I was a General Manager, I used to say “…by the time a problem reaches me, it is typically a large, stinking pile of poo that can’t easily be cleaned up.”  Almost without exception, if I’d learned of the problem sooner my options for solving it would have been broader and the task would have been simpler.

In one example, a new facility under construction developed major problems with throughput on a critical piece of equipment – one that would prevent the plant from achieving its rated productivity by a wide margin.  The manager in charge of the project kept assuring everyone that the issues were minor and would soon be resolved.  By the time the truth came to light, many of the alternate approaches were no longer viable.

Unintended Consequences

Even if a manager is non-punitive, and tries her best to mute her reaction to bad news, the reluctance to reveal problems will still be present.  Past experience – even if it comes from a different boss – is a powerful teacher, and a single negative incident probably takes at least a dozen positive ones to offset it.

So what’s a manager to do?

Embrace problems as learning opportunities, and welcome them?

Most of us can’t manage to do this, but at the least you must control your reactions.  Don’t get angry.  Don’t visibly disapprove.  And above all else, don’t try to attach a name to every problem or failure.  Get to the bottom of what caused the problem, but go extra-lite on the “who” question.

I often told people I wanted to discover the defects that allowed problem to occur, and to correct these things.  I was much less interested in knowing “who shot John.”

This won’t eliminate the general reluctance people have to bringing problems forward until they are nearly unsolvable.  But it will help.

It’s the Packaging

As an employee, it is best to bring problems forward as soon as you recognize they may have significant consequences.  Give your manager as much time as possible to help you deal with the issue.  If the situation successfully resolves, you’ll actually get more credit if the boss knows the problem actually existed in the first place – even if it was caused by an error on your part.

A former peer used to say he “…tried to get the boss in the boat with him, rather than letting him stand on the shore to throw rocks (at him, I assumed!)”  The only way to do this is to get the manager involved early, when there are still possible alternatives to fix or mitigate the situation.

When revealing problems, I used a technique I called the “bad news sandwich.”  This consists of talking about a success or accomplishment, then discussing the problem, and ending with another positive.  I visualized it as two slices of light, fluffy bread with a piece of rotten meat in the middle.  The bigger and more unappetizing the meat, the more bread is needed to choke it down.

Applied properly, the technique puts the problem in perspective.  It reminds the boss that not everything in your area of responsibility is “falling apart,” a point that is particularly important when the “meat” is grotesque, or when you have several “slices” to deliver.

Conclusion

Managing bad news is one of the most difficult things for both employees and managers to do well.

As an employee, your best chance of successfully handling bad news is to get it on the table early.  To make it more palatable, careful packaging when it is revealed may be necessary.

As a manager, your strategy should be to focus on the “how” not the “who” while also making sure you’re reactions are appropriate for the situation and reasonably controlled.  27.2

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To the right is the cover for DELIVERABLES.  This novel features a senior manager approached by government officials to spy on his employer, complete with a story about how a "deal" they are negotiating might put critical technical secrets into the hands of enemies of the United States.  Of course, everything is not exactly as it seems....

My novels are based on extensions of 27 years of personal experiences as a senior manager in public corporations.

Doing your own "due diligence"

Who do you trust?  What do you trust them with?  These are two key questions that senior managers grapple with on a daily basis.  Trust too little, and you’re severely hampering you productivity, making you into your own chokepoint.  You’ll smother subordinates, leading the better ones to quit, and take criticism from above because too little is happening too late.  Trust too much, and you risk letting things spin out of control as unqualified employees assume responsibilities they aren’t ready for and race along making one bad decision after another.

Somewhere in between these two extremes are various points along the continuum of trust and delegation that are workable.  Depending on your personal style and the culture of the organization a lot of these can be made to work successfully.

But when it comes to major projects, initiatives, or strategies, you’d better “make sure” no matter how much you’re normally willing to trust others.

High Stakes

Many managers seem to struggle with separating the wheat from the chaff.  They seem to see delegation as an all or nothing game.  They lump subordinates into categories of trusted or untrusted, and apply that label to everything they are involved in.

Better managers recognize that they can delegate more when the stakes are low, and less when the stakes are high.

The best managers realize that there are a class of decisions that are so critical to the organization’s success or failure that nothing short of conducting their own, independent “due diligence” will be satisfactory.

The doomed factory

Late in my career, I came into a new job in the wake of a key decision to open a new factory.  It didn’t require any brilliance to realize that the quality of this decision was going to be a key determinant in my success or failure over the next several years.

By this time, I’d been around the block a few times.  Earlier in my career, I might have simply decided that this call had happened before my time, and my job was simply to make the best of it – good or bad.  Now, I realized that since my performance was going to be determined in light of this decision, I’d better understand its underlying assumptions, and the analysis that supported its justification.

I quickly realized the original project looked like one where the executive sponsor said to the financial staff:  “give me an analysis that supports opening this new factory.”  The analysis read like a poor work of fiction.  Even critical assumptions – such as productivity gains in the new facility – appeared to be pulled out of thin air.

Ultimately, I decided there was no way to succeed in the position without nuking this plan.  Unfortunately, my current boss was the sponsor, making that option virtually impossible.  I left a few months later.

Not always ideal

Theoretically, the best way to handle the above issue would have been to thoroughly review the justification for the factory BEFORE taking the job.  But that isn’t always practical.  In this case, the analysis was considered so “secret” that I had trouble getting my hands on a copy even after I was in the job.

For these absolutely critical decisions, however, there is no substitute for rolling up the sleeves and working through the analysis on your own.  Only then can you find the absurd assumptions, outright mistakes, or intentional subterfuge that will cause you great grief down the road.

IT Soup

Throughout my career, I’ve seen more senior exec wreck their careers over new IT systems, than over any other single issue.  Yes, IT systems are complicated, their implementations are highly technical, and the issues are not necessarily obvious when you start down the road of beginning a migration.

I’ve been through eight of these things over the years, and know that doing a thorough “due diligence” is absolutely critical to success.  Since I lacked the technical expertise to understand all the details, however, I employed an investigative strategy that has served me well on almost every project.  I begin with a very skeptical view of the justification, figuring the required costs and times will be much longer than expected, and the savings much less than expected, at least until someone can convince me otherwise.  I also employ independent, outside experts to conduct assessments at critical junctures.

While I can’t say they’ve all gone smoothly, I’ve never had a complete system meltdown, or caused the business to falter as a result of a new system conversion.

Not just for M&A work

Companies routinely conduct thorough reviews of acquisition candidates, including using outside experts, when a deal is proposed.  Why don’t we subject our major, critical internal decisions to the same level of scrutiny?

Because we are already assumed to be “experts?”  Because it can be slow and expensive?  Or is it because we might not want to hear the results?

New technology = high risk

One of my biggest managerial failures occurred when I placed a big and inadequately researched bet on a new technology.  I compounded this by relying on the wrong people to give me comfort that the technology would work.

In this case, I had (or could relatively easily acquire) the expertise needed to validate the assumptions surrounding this particular project.  Unfortunately, I was in too much of a hurry to actually do so.  Instead I relied upon the assurances from a subordinate – one whose past track record should have set off warning bells in my head – and a supplier who had his own agenda, one the project would serve quite nicely.

Had I personally checked out the technology, had I sorted through all the underlying assumptions to find those that were suspect, had I brought in outside experts to validate the proposal, I probably would have avoided what turned into a major disaster.

But I didn’t.  I was guilty of exactly the same thing I saw happen later with the doomed factory.

I wanted the analysis to be correct.  I kept pushing people to “sharpen their pencils” until I got the answer I wanted to see.

I only later realized I created a house of cards, putting my trust in those who didn’t deserve it, and failing to pressure test the proposal.

Conclusion

Trust is a tricky thing.  Too much of it or too little of it can both get you into trouble.  When the stakes are extremely high, however, there is no substitute for an open, questioning mind, and as objective an evaluation of the facts as can be had.  My preference is to perform that examination personally, supplemented by subject matter experts where my own knowledge falls short.

By performing your own due diligence in this way, you can avoid many of the disasters that can crater your career.  27.1

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To the right is the cover for INCENTIVIZE.   This novel is about a U.S. based mining company, and criminal activity that the protagonist (a woman by the name of Julia McCoy) uncovers at the firm's Ethiopian subsidiary.  Her discover sets in motion a series of events that include, kidnapping, murder, and terrorism in the Horn of Africa.

My novels are based on extensions of 27 years of personal experiences as a senior manager in public corporations.

Do what you believe is best, or what your boss expects?

Imagine the following scenario:

This is the original cover for my novel, LEVERAGE.

This is the original cover for my novel, LEVERAGE.

You have a new opening within your organization, a significant position that most of your subordinates would love to have.  You also have an internal candidate that you believe can do the job (based on a well-established track record.)

Unfortunately, you have another employee working for you, one your boss “found.”  This employee has shown middling performance and is located in a remote office.  This other employee is viewed by your boss as a “wunderkind,” a high potential person that he has worked with in the past and in whom he has supreme confidence.

When you discuss filling the job with your boss, he says your preferred candidate is “too inexperienced” and “not ready” for the job.  His fair-haired boy, on the other hand, is his favorite candidate.

Who do you promote?

You can win the battle, but lose the war.

This exact scenario was presented to me recently by an acquaintance.  She knows she can probably push hard enough to get her boss to accept her preferred candidate, but it will come at a price – second guessing, criticism of any mistake no matter how small, never being able to produce results that are good enough, etc.  Alternatively, she can simply take her boss’s recommended candidate.  Doing so will result in a difficult logistical situation, consternation (or worse) from the other team members, and quite possibly mediocre performance from the entire department.

Not an easy call.

There is a third alternative available as well, one where the job is effectively carved up, and each candidate is given a piece.  That might be a reasonable compromise, or it might simply be a delay in the inevitable.

A similar story.

During my career, I filled many key positions.  Usually I wasn’t interested in my boss’s input on who to put where, feeling like I knew the capabilities of the candidates better than anyone (yeah, I’m kinda stubborn like that).

In one particular instance, however, I shouldn’t have ignored his demands.

I was recruiting a senior manager to fill a position he once held.  It was a high pressure, critical role, but it had changed significantly from the day when my boss handled it.  The role had once been focused on “bagging elephants” (as in landing huge, one-off orders.)  It has become a managerial job where the incumbent had to handle hundreds of distributors, not to mention the operation of four factories and a distribution center.  The job had evolved.  And while opportunities for elephants hadn’t completely evaporated, they were on the way out.

My boss had a favorite candidate, a young man from one of our international factories.  While I was less enthralled with the man as a candidate for the job (he was, however, doing spectacularly well where he was), I decided to discuss the job with him.

I was relieved to discover he wouldn’t relocate at that time.  It was a deal breaker.  I asked him three times, just to be sure.

I then moved to my top candidate and offered him the job, which he eventually accepted.  I didn’t realize it at the time, but my boss felt this man was a poor fit.  And while the boss never came out and said it, I think much of his criticism was driven simply by the fact that the person I hired wasn’t the one he wanted for the job.

Things were quiet for a couple of years, and then I started to get hit with a series of criticisms about the manager I’d hired.  He wasn’t “salesy” enough.  He couldn’t land the big projects.  He wasn’t doing enough to develop new markets.  The incumbent and I huddled and tried to address each criticism with programs, projects, and efforts.  I thought we did a pretty good job covering the bases.

But the criticisms kept on coming, unabated.  I was getting hints that maybe I should consider a change.

Of course, all this was taking place in the midst of record sales and record profits in the business during each of those years.

A short time later, the foreign candidate announced he was “ready” to relocate.  That’s when the pressure really started to become intense.  The theme became “out with the old, in with the new.”  Except the “old” was doing a “bang up” job, at least in my estimation.

I searched for a compromise, offering a proposal to bring the boss’s man to headquarters in a different role.  That was deemed to be unacceptable.

Eventually, I was moved to a different job.  Within a few weeks, the swap was made.  While my job move was ostensibly a promotion, one could easily argue it was a lateral.  There was no question that it was a higher risk position.  I have never been able to get it out of my head that my move was at least partially motivated by the boss’s reaction to my stubbornness.

I’d won the battle, but definitely lost the war.

What to do?

The right answer to my acquaintance’s problem depends on three factors:

  1. How willing is her boss to allow her to make her own staffing decisions and hold her accountable for the results.
  2. What is the basis for the relationship between her boss and his favored candidate (Past performance?  Personal relationship?  Compromising pictures?)  How critical is taking care of this relationship to the boss?  No matter what, the pre-existing relationship pretty much assures the ending situation isn’t going to be very comfortable for my acquaintance.
  3. Is there any kind of compromise, a possible third alternative that makes sense to everyone, and meets their needs.  For example, can the job’s responsibilities be split between the two candidates?  Is there another role for the boss’s favorite?

Of course, my acquaintance should push for her preferred solution, but I wouldn’t recommend pushing too hard.  While tempting, it is usually a good idea to shy away from “third alternatives” because, in my experience, rather than satisfying everyone these types of compromises often make no one happy.

That leaves giving the boss what he’s asking for.

If she goes this direction, she should definitely register her reservations about the boss’s candidate and not let him forget it.  That way if there are performance issues, there is a ready-made scapegoat, but if things go well she will only be lightly criticized for being a doubter.

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To the right is the cover of LEVERAGE.   This novel explores the theft of sensitive DOD designs from a Minneapolis Tech Company, and the dangers associated with digging too deeply into the surrounding mystery.  It's sequel, PURSUING OTHER OPPORTUNITIES, should be released within the next 60 days.

My novels are based on extensions of my 27 years of personal experience as a senior manager in public corporations.  Most were inspired by real events.

Winning People Over

Some managers lead by carefully cultivating loyal followers, winning people over with logic, respect, and a shared vision of the future.  Others seem to rely on their formal authority, sometimes mixing in a dose of fear.  In my experience, both styles work, and it has never been completely obvious which is more effective.

Personal Style

I have always been in the “persuade them” camp as opposed to what I’ll call the “command them” style of management.  It’s because of my personality.  I’ve never been able to get beyond the “do unto others…” principle.  Since I always wanted someone to explain why we were doing something, I pretty much always tried to do the same for my team.  I always looked for an understanding of the end goal, and perhaps a reason to be excited about it.  As a result, I did my best to provide that to my subordinates.

In short, my personal style is largely dictated by looking at things through my own set of filters.  I try to provide what I would have wanted in any given situation.  By consistent application of this simple principle, I have been able to win over most of my subordinates, some of my peers, and even a few of my bosses.

I doubt the “command them” style operates the same way, but here direct experience with using the style fails me.  Based on what I’ve seen over the years, however, I hardly think “command them” leaders are actually following the “do unto others…” principle.  I doubt they prefer to have orders barked at them.  I doubt they would want their own bosses to subtly (or not-so-subtly) threaten them.  My best guess is this style comes out of a concept of “what leaders do” and they are emulating how they believe they are supposed to act.

After a time, it probably becomes second nature.  Much as my own personal style has.

The thing is, after years of observing leaders, I don’t think one style is inherently more effective or better than the other.  While they are at opposite ends of the spectrum, both seem to work.

An Environment of Fear

The organizational leadership principle in at one of my employers was formed around the “command them” principle.  The most senior managers were notoriously demanding, hard-nosed types that were pretty much guaranteed to challenge you on anything you said or did.

I can remember experiencing a sense of nausea every time I contemplated going to corporate headquarters for a meeting, a review, or (the worst) a strategy session.  When my team held their annual strategy planning meeting, I told subordinates that it “…wasn’t a question of whether the Chairman would, at some point during the day, be standing up, fists balled at his side, veins bulging out of his neck, as he shouted how stupid we were.”  The only question of importance embedded in the event:  Was the cause of the blow-up trivial or substantive?

It was a hell of a way to live, one that eventually drove me out of the company.  Furthermore, there is no doubt in my mind that I was completely incapable of managing people in the same fashion as senior managers in this company did.  Even if my life depended on it.  It was simply too distant from my natural style.

But it definitely made me work really, really hard.  It was with a sense of impending doom I would make sure every element of my strategies, plans, results and the like, were correct, thoroughly understood, and properly reflected in the numerical results of the business.

And while there was a pretty regular exodus of talent from this corporation, the firm had put in place a development process to bring on board new talent so they hardly missed a beat when someone departed.

Kinder and Gentler

My subsequent employer was at the other end of the spectrum.  They were far inside the “persuade them” camp, and there was plenty of “rah-rah” talk about the future of the company and the enduring value of our products.  And there was more understanding granted when it came to circumstances beyond management’s control.

Overall, it was a much more pleasant environment to work in, although this style seemed to inspire a lot more political games-playing.  In general, I liked it better there – at least partially because I was able to employ my own personal style of management without feeling like it was at odds with the way the corporation was run, and partially because it wasn’t as anxiety-producing.

The problem was, I don’t think I worked as hard when there.  Without fear driving me, I wasn’t as likely to push myself beyond my limits.  I wasn’t as likely to accomplish something extraordinary.

And there was a small contingent of malcontents and cynics that were never going to buy into what the CEO was selling.  In the other company, these people were either absent or so far underground as to be invisible.

Which way is better?

Over the long haul, both these companies were quite successful.  Typing this today, I’m not sure I could say which one produced better financial results, despite the fact that they were vastly different.

But I know which one I preferred – the “persuade them” paradigm.

My advice to people on this subject – recognize your natural style, and seek an organization that mirrors it.  You’ll feel more comfortable in your daily interactions in such an environment.  If you’re a mis-matched, start looking for alternatives that will reduce the sense of fear and frustration you may be feeling.

And finally, recognize that success can come in a vast array of leadership environments.  26.3

Other Recent Posts:

If you are intrigued by the ideas presented in my blog posts, check out some of my other writing.  Novels: LEVERAGE, INCENTIVIZE, DELIVERABLES and HEIR APPARENT.  Coming soon -- PURSUING OTHER OPPORTUNITIES

Non-Fiction:  NAVIGATING CORPORATE POLITICS

Below is a montage of my published books.  The four to the left are Novels, all in the "Corporate Thriller" genre.  The book on the right is a non-fiction work which provides a framework that managers and executives can use to think about and utilize corporate politics.

The books (both eBook and paperback) can be purchased from my website.  Just click on the image and follow the link to your preferred supplier and format.

My novels are based on extensions of my 27 years of personal experience as a senior manager in public corporations.  Most were inspired by real events.

What if there is no Third Alternative?

When faced with a choice between “bad” and “worse,” I always found myself looking for a third alternative.  Over time, I came to realize that an important part of strategy was finding a way to “win” when the only alternatives seemed to guarantee you were going to “lose.”

Many years ago, I remember walking into the office of my VP of Engineering and seeing “Good, Fast, Cheap:  Pick 2” written in the upper right corner of his chalk board.  While clever, it was a maxim I simply couldn’t accept.  Instead I found myself looking for tools, tricks, and alternate approaches that would allow us to capture all three at once.

It’s a “Strategy Thing”

Being able to tease alternatives out of seemingly nothing is a strategist’s skill.  One of my former bosses was particularly good at it, capable of looking at any issue or problem from multiple perspectives and coming up with an alternative that at least minimized the damage.

I remember one incident where I was dealing with the need to take away territory from a particularly stubborn distributor (never an easy problem to solve), and after a few minutes of thought came up with a clever way to convince the distributor to accept our demands.

This boss was particularly gifted when it came to finding third alternatives, and I made it a point to study how he did it.  Seeing the problem from all perspectives is an important element, but there is also an intuitive leap that not everyone is capable of making.  Fortunately, I was able to perform that part of the technique, and eventually I, too, became skilled in developing third alternatives.  I consider this ability to be an essential skill for anyone that wants to claim the title of “strategist.”

Is there always a way?

Some may argue there is always a winning alternative, but I haven’t found that to be the case.

When confronted with several years of excess inventory at one of my manufacturing plants, I couldn’t come up with a way to disguise, sell, convert, or otherwise dispose of the inventory in a pain-free fashion.  Ultimately, the decision came down to a choice between fessing up to the problem, or lying about it.  I took my lumps and didn’t look back.

In another example, I inherited a capital project where the justification was a complete work of fiction.  I couldn’t come up with any way to make that particular “sow’s ear” into a “silk purse.”  In the end, I had to tell the boss that there was simply no way the financials would look anything like the original project.  While I felt like I’d somehow “failed,” in retrospect I realize there was simply no way out of this problem – one that wasn’t even my own creation.

Is it really that bad, or is it just me?

One of the tougher things for many strategists to do is to recognize when it is time to give up looking for that magical third alternative, and simply make a decision.  I’ve noticed this seems to be particularly true for those that are skilled at finding alternatives.  It’s as if they assume that by delaying the decision, something will come up that will provide a better outcome.

Maybe it will, but most of the time things are likely to fester and become worse the problem drags on.

The same gifted boss who helped me out of my distribution conundrum, sat on a decision to kill a problem-ridden product development project for years.  In fact, he bounced management ownership of the project from one executive to another, almost certainly in the vain hope that a new set of eyes would result in “something” to save the day.

Some things are simply bad ideas, however.

Once I was assigned to the project, it took me less than a month to recognize the hopelessness of the situation and kill the project.

Conclusion

Spotting alternative approaches to difficult problems is a hallmark of a skilled strategist.  You have to be able to recognize, however, when to throw in the towel and deal with the reality of your situation rather than pining away for a miracle.

Develop your ability to come up with alternative solutions by watching an expert in action.  In time, you’ll begin to grasp how to look at situations from different perspectives.

But don’t put bad situations on hold in the hope that something will “come up.”  Better to pick from your bad choices, and get on with life.  26.2

Other Recent Posts:

If you are intrigued by the ideas presented in my blog posts, check out some of my other writing.  Novels: LEVERAGE, INCENTIVIZE, DELIVERABLES and HEIR APPARENT.  Coming soon -- PURSUING OTHER OPPORTUNITIES

Non-Fiction:  NAVIGATING CORPORATE POLITICS

Shown here is the cover of NAVIGATING CORPORATE POLITICS  my non-fiction primer on the nature of politics in large corporations, and the management of your career in such an environment.  This is my best selling book.  Chocked full of practical advice, I've had many managers and executives say they wished they'd read it early in their career.

My novels are based on extensions of my 27 years of personal experience as a senior manager in public corporations.  Most were inspired by real events.

Open Hostility

Open Hostility

Most employees, despite how they might feel, keep their negative thoughts about their boss and/or their employer under wraps.  When an employee decides to go openly hostile, separation is just a matter of time.

Grousing

Human beings are a dissatisfied lot, most of them finding things to criticize even when their job is generally pretty good.  They complain about fairness, expecting their employer to achieve a degree of evenhandedness that even their parents couldn’t achieve.  They carp about the “stupid” decisions their boss makes, not appreciating how the imposition of resource and time constraints make optimizing every choice an impossibility.

Mostly, these criticisms are communicated in quiet whispers or, better yet, saved for the nightly dinner table at home.

Every once in a while, however, an employee will take them public in the workplace.

A new car?

During a particularly stressful time period – I was in the midst of laying off employees due to a particularly steep seasonal decline in the business I was managing – I took delivery of a new car.  The car was a little extravagant, a bright red convertible, of the type that demanded to be noticed.  Timing was hardly ideal, but the car had been ordered during a substantially better time and I’d been waiting for delivery for nearly a year.

A short time afterward, a trusted employee informed me that there was a “new rumor” running around divisional headquarters – for every fifty people I laid off, the company would buy me a new car.

I initially wrote the comment off as a clever quip, deciding it just “blowing off steam” and probably came out of frustration over the layoffs.  But the story wouldn’t go away, and after a while it seemed to be gaining in credibility (people will believe almost anything if it’s bad).  It didn’t take much effort to trace the “rumor” back to one particular employee.  He was, in fact, fervently and loudly repeating the “story” to anyone that would listen.

I’m not sure what I did to anger this particular person.  Not sure exactly what inspired his little “campaign.”  Perhaps it was simply having a ready audience of frustrated peers that were wearied by the layoff process, and one in front of whom he could look shrewd and bold.  Or maybe I laid off his best friend.  Whatever the reason, he was not holding back.

A few weeks later I found out he was quitting.  To take a job with our biggest competitor.  In the same role he had in our company, one that had access to sensitive strategic information.  A short time later, I also discovered he had taken a substantial amount of company proprietary information with him.

That cast the story in a new light.

When the car rumor was offered, he had undoubtedly already made his decision to leave.  Possibly, he was already interviewing with the competitor.  It emboldened him, and changed the normal calculus that would have otherwise offered enough discouraged to suppress his outrageous behavior.

Actively Disengaged

Later in my career, I became familiar with a way of classifying employees into three groups – Engaged, Disengaged, and Actively Di-engaged.  This was accomplished with a survey tool, but understanding the categories, a manager could do a pretty good job of categorizing just based on observations.  Of course, the final category is the worst – those employees that are actually working against management.

There are actively disengaged employees in pretty much every organization of size.  Between 10 and 30 percent, in fact.

Why don’t they leave?

Employees become actively disengaged for several reasons.  They may actually work for a terrible boss (employees join companies and leave bosses – a commonly taught management rubric).  The “deal” they expected from the company may have somehow unfavorably changed during the course of their employment.  Or, in many cases, disengagement comes from inside the dissatisfied employee themselves – they would likely not be happy anywhere.

For whatever reason, active disengagement is the signal that company and employee should part company.  So why don’t these employees leave voluntarily?

Actually, there are many reasons.  They might not have other accessible opportunities.  They may be extremely risk averse, and not want to trade bad for what might turn out to be worse.  They may even think their agitation will change things for the better.

As a manager, it is important to do what you can to find such people and encourage them to move on – sometimes with a boot in the backside, depending on how outrageous their behavior has become.

Openly hostile employees have a large, negative impact on the business.  They complain to their peers, and anyone else that will listen, bringing them down.  They undermine the company’s initiatives.  They take up an inordinate amount of management time.  They even drive good people away.

What to do?

As a manager, you need to be on the lookout for the actively disengaged.  Experience has taught me that attempting to rehabilitate these employees is almost always a waste of time.  Instead, you should encourage them to find new opportunities.  If they are unwilling to depart on their own, don’t hesitate to fire them.  The fewer hostile employees on your roster, the more likely you are to successfully get your objectives accomplished, and the more likely you are to have a close-knit, high performing team.  26.1

Other Recent Posts:

This is a B&W version of the cover of my new, and soon to be released novel, PURSUING OTHER OPPORTUNITIES.  This story marks the return of LEVERAGE characters Mark Carson and Cathy Chin, now going by the name of Matt and Sandy Lively and on the run from the FBI.  The pair are working for a remote British Columbia lodge specializing in Corporate adventure/retreats for senior executives.  When the Redhouse Consulting retreat goes horribly wrong, Matt finds himself pursuing kidnappers through the wilderness, while Sandy simultaneously tries to fend off an inquisitive police detective and an aggressive lodge owner.

My novels are based on extensions of my 27 years of personal experience as a senior manager in public corporations.  Most were inspired by real events.