Unfettered Blather

Über-thinker Kathy Sierra has a great post about Knocking the Exuberance out of your employees. She basically highlights the paradox between what upper management says they want in their employees and what middle management actually ends up hiring.

In the consulting practice you encounter a variety of corporate cultures, but one truth is universal, most of the employees are drones. If they don’t start out as drones they become that way over time. This is because you are influenced by your environment, and if you’re environment is to hang out with a bunch of drones all the time then eventually you’ll become a drone to.

I’ve seen this happen countless times, sometimes to other consultants. A consultant who has been at a client for more than six months will start to display signs of the client’s corporate culture. If the client employees have a tendency to take two hour lunches, some of the consultants will start to do the same. If the client calls meetings for every little thing, the consultant will start suggesting new meetings to deal with problems rather than just fixing them. That is why I think consultants should not be on-site for more than a year at a time. We’re supposed to be the thinkers, the energetic workers, the innovators, the outsiders. Over time we become just like everyone else. Oddly, because I try so hard to resist the urge to become like the client’s drones I have found myself with conversion offers to full-time status at two of the three clients I’ve worked for. This is in spite of constant conflicts and refusal to go along with the status quo. I know that given enough time though, even I will succumb.

I have stayed with my present employer for nearly three years simply because they do not seek to squash my enthusiasm but actively encourage me to be creative. I’m good at working through difficult relationships, I’m good at finding the root causes of problems, I’m good at finding creative solutions, and I never ever give up until the job is done or the problem is fixed. The reason I have these attributes is because I have a real zeal for my job and my role.

People who challenge the status quo are good for a company, but they also make their supervisors and managers very uncomfortable. Generally what I have found is that the Vice Presidents (who are any good anyway) and up like these people when they attend meetings because someone who wants to do something better or find a better solution to an ongoing problem is someone who is going to increase the value of the company. Middle management tends to not like these people because if they are challenging how things are run it makes it look like the middle manager is being inefficient or perhaps incompetent.

Of course all upper management was middle management at one point, so you have to wonder why the change in attitude. I think it’s the difference between parents and grandparents. My children will do things that mortify me but Dad thinks it’s cute. Nevermind that had I done the same things as a child I would have been in for a whuppin’. I suspect the same holds true for the strata of managers and the relationship with line employees.

The solution is not simple because it challenges decades of entrenched corporate culture. The solution is that managers need to do less management and more leadership. Leadership is saying your database expert gets to make database decisions without the manager looking over their shoulder. Leadership says that when two employees don’t like each other you deal with the conflict rather than letting it simmer. Leadership says that when a top performer turns into a lazy slacker you try to find what went wrong instead of simply terminating their employment. Management is easy, leadership is hard. Management is not mutually exclusive from leadership. If you are a leader you also have to manage. Just because you are a manager does not mean you are a leader.

People who are led will make their own decisions, take their own initiative, and will have to be reined in every so often to make sure they stay focused and on task. Leadership does not say you let your people run free and do whatever they please. Leadership is giving your people enough freedom to do their jobs, but also giving them enough guidance that everyone is working towards a common goal. Management says you keep a firm hand on the reins because it is better to go slowly in a straight line than ever deviate from the path no matter how tempting.

Creativity, independence, and passion for work are not bad attributes in employees. They are challenging attributes for managers though, especially managers who were drones themselves. My advice is that if you don’t want to be a drone, if you don’t want to just sit in your comfortable cube in your comfortable job and don’t like boredom then it’s time to find a company or career that allows you to be an effective employee.

After all, finding a job as a drone is hardly a challenge.

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