Remote Manager? 3 Things You Shouldn’t Do, and Some Better Ideas

Like we’ll always think of babies born during lockdown as “Covid Kids”, I’m something of a “Covid Manager”, having started an entry-level job in 2019 and experiencing the transformation of becoming a manager in the crucible of the pandemic. As I was spreading my wings, I saw and tried many things that did not always translate well into our new reality. During this time, I was lucky enough to work for some managers that were willing to try new things and adjust how they approached management, but I learned just as much from the managers that weren’t prepared to evolve. 

Don’t: Rely on Employee Monitoring Software

Admittedly, this is a pet peeve of mine and has earned a place of honor atop the list of “Don’ts”. Employee monitoring software promises to capture and report every click and keystroke on your employees’ computers, regardless of location. With names like “Staffcop” and “Controlio”, it’s no wonder employees might be insulted by these software, if they’re even aware that they’re being monitored by them. 

As quickly as these software appear and get patched, Reddit and other sites are filled with threads about how to trick them, so the most dedicated slackers will always fly under the radar. Beyond the practicalities of shelling out ~$100+ per license of a software that might get circumvented, keystrokes and clicks and time spent on “distracting activities” gives you very little information about an employee’s holistic productivity. Even in positions where number and frequency of keystrokes are central (think entry-level data entry), productivity should be measured by the desired outcomes of the role. Those outcomes should be clearly defined upon hiring, and updated as necessary.  

Productivity looks different for everyone, but employee monitoring software sets up the same set of incentives for all. The 15 minutes without clicks or keystrokes in the middle of the day is likely not theft of company time so much as someone’s brain unwinding a snag in a coding problem or the wording of a difficult email to a client. If employee monitoring software replaces any part of management, it is the part where you stand behind your employees all day and stare at them while they work, which I would argue is not good management in any scenario. 

Instead: Implement Regular Check Ins

While virtual over-the-shoulder hovering is very much discouraged, the office practice of walking to an employee’s desk and asking, “How’s it going?” is something worth replicating virtually, whether it be over chat or video, with groups or individually on a regular basis. If an employee is missing deadlines, failing to respond to chats/emails, etc. it’s worth investigating not just how they are spending their time, but if they think they are currently spending their time well and still failing to meet outcomes. 

If they are already aware they are not spending their time productively, it may be due to issues in their personal life or a symptom of some other kind of burnout, which employee monitoring software fails to capture. If they aren’t aware, you have the opportunity to find out where the disconnect is happening and correct it. Are they being overloaded with irrelevant work by another manager that misunderstands the employee’s role? Such a situation would make the employee appear productive according to monitoring software, which is why it’s important to evaluate whether your team is meeting their goals and why or why not. You know, management! 

Don’t: Have Meetings for Meetings’ Sake

Employee software is not a substitute for any part of your role as a manager, neither are meetings. There is value in regular face time as a team, but a meeting where everyone glances around the Zoom calm while you say, “Well, does anyone have anything to cover?” Even if someone does have something to cover, they’re unlikely to want to jump in and extend the necessary evil that is a virtual meeting while their coworkers are secretly hoping to get their half hour back. 

Like everything else in your workplace, each meeting should have a specific purpose and intention. That means ending it early if the purpose is accomplished, planning for more time if it’s not, and keeping the discussion to that topic even if it’s tempting to cover something adjacent. 

Starting on time (within reason) is also important--you can almost see people’s sense of purpose draining from their faces as “Let’s give everyone a few minutes to join,” hits the ten minute mark. A good rule of thumb I’ve learned is the 10% rule: you should start a meeting after no more than 10% has passed, and it should also not go over by more than that amount. For example, a 30-minute meeting starting at 11:00AM should be on the road and on topic by 11:03AM, and should be fully wrapped up no later than 11:33AM. This accounts for the difference in pace between a 15-minute standup meeting and an hour-long department cross-training, and gives everyone a consistent expectation to follow. 

Recurring meetings are a common villain of this rule. While a weekly check in with a vendor makes a lot of sense when you’re onboarding them, the truth is that you may not (and hopefully won’t) have issues to discuss with them that often, but when you need to talk to them, you probably really need to talk to them. Luckily, we have the technology to solve (or at least mitigate) this conundrum. 

Instead: Leverage Running Agendas

This is but one possible solution to the slog that recurring meetings can become, but it’s one of my favorites and one that I find is often underutilized. A running agenda can simply be a Google Doc with the date of the next meeting on top and bullet points to cover underneath, with a log of past meetings getting pushed down as more are added. There are any number of features that could be added, like a spot for the person who added the bullet point to include their name. The general idea of a running agenda is that it is shared with everyone attending the meeting, and anyone can add items to cover in the next meeting. 

The advantages of a running agenda are plentiful. It gives everyone a chance to add topics (think issues with a vendor’s product) as they encounter them throughout the week, rather than trying to recall them while everyone is staring at each other on Zoom. It also gives the participants in the meeting time to think about and/or gather information about the items on the agenda before the call, hopefully preventing a string of questions answered simply by, “Let me look into that and get back to you next time.” The log of past bullet points also serves as a short summary for participants who weren’t able to make the meeting. And last, but certainly not least, if the agenda remains empty, it is a clear signal that the meeting can be canceled. 

Don’t: Forgo Fun and Team-building

Of course, I think very few teams intentionally deemphasize team building activities in a virtual or hybrid environment, but I also think many teams fail to make them fun. I’ll be the first to admit that this is profoundly challenging while working remotely, and I myself have hosted some real stinkers in the past. This is made more difficult by the fact that an event that might be a hit with one team would be a disaster with another, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth the investment of time, energy, and (yes) probably money. Humans are pack animals, not productivity machines. If you treat people like the latter, don't be surprised when they take their skills elsewhere and you’re stuck shelling out more money to replace them. 

While successful fun looks different in every team, there are a few bad places to start. The combination of mandatory and after hours should be avoided at all costs. If an event must be after hours, make it clear that while everyone is welcome, you understand that people have lives and commitments outside of work, and don’t penalize people (even subconsciously) that aren’t able to attend. By regularly having team-building events outside of regular work hours, you risk placing an unnecessary burden on people who are parents or caretakers, who volunteer in their free time, or who are just plain introverted and need to recharge after work. If you agree that team-building is a vital activity, then it should occur during work hours, when all other vital activities occur. 

Instead: Encourage Casual Conversations

The best way to start finding out what your team might enjoy is also fun in itself--casual, non-work conversations. These happen very naturally in an office, but can be very difficult to have in a remote setting. If your team members seem excited to go off on personal tangents during meetings, that’s probably a good sign that you need to facilitate some time for chit chat. 

As you can imagine, that’s easier said than done--try opening a Zoom call with, “Anyone do anything fun this weekend?” and let me know how it goes. I’m a big fan of “[Department] Office Hours” type calls: people from other teams can join if they have questions, but if they don’t, it’s a good place to let work talk fade into something funny that happened recently. Another favorite of mine is the virtual team lunch: have team members expense their favorite local takeout or delivery and eat together, because food is an easy topic of conversation that everyone has in common (“That looks good, what’s the place called you got it from?”). Regardless of your strategy, you’ll likely have to be the leader in keeping conversation going, but with practice, your employees will be more comfortable speaking up. 

Casual conversation doesn’t just have to happen in meetings either, and benefit from structure. Slack with its dedicated channels is excellent for this--channels about pets, favorite TV shows, or sharing music are a great way for people to learn about the non-work sides of their coworkers. Microsoft Teams and other software that functions differently may present some challenges, but I offer a suggestion that has been implemented in my department since before I started: the Daily Poll Question. Around the same time every day, the person assigned to that day will ask a question meant to get discussion going, with very few other limits. For example, “What’s the first album/CD that you owned?” and “What’s the best sandwich you’ve ever had?” created memorable discussions that lasted for hours, with people throwing in their contributions as their time permitted. A key here is that everyone on the team, from the Director to the entry-level Coordinators get their day to ask a question, which makes everyone more comfortable talking to one another. After all, it’s slightly harder to find someone intimidating when you know exactly how toasty they like their bagel. 

Facilitating conversations like these is a great way to find out what your team members have in common and what they don’t, which is the perfect starting point for creating team building events that are successful and actually fun. 

In The End

There are many ways we can adjust and improve how we approach management, but the common thread is this: everyone you work with is a multifaceted human being and not just a tiny square on Zoom, and that is a wonderful thing worth celebrating and leveraging.

Productive Pessimism

Productive Pessimism

              The manager sat across my desk from me, going through her list. The conversation was energetic, to the point of being heated.

              Her sentences began with phrases like, “Have you thought of. . .?”, and “Has anyone even checked on . . . ?”, or “What are we going to do if. . . ?”.

              As she went through her list, I listened and took some notes. She seemed a little stressed out as she left, and the intensity of the conversation made the silence afterward a little more noticeable.

              Within a couple of minutes, my sales manager, whose office was next door, came in.

              “Man,” he said. “I don’t know why you let her talk to you like that. You’re a Vice President!”

              “Yeah, the delivery might need some polish,” I replied, “but here’s the problem: She’s right.”

Optimism is Overrated

              I’ll admit it. I’m a reformed optimist. It’s in my nature that I tend to believe things will turn out fine, so that’s often my default reaction.

              Optimists are pleasant to be around, because they believe in and point to a future that looks good. Thinking about smooth sailing ahead makes us feel good and reduces our stress levels.

              Unfortunately, life – and business in particular – doesn’t work like that. Challenges are around every corner, and threats can come out of the blue. Optimism tells us that every single one of our plans will work, while rational consideration reveals that to be unlikely.

              I used to criticize my wife for being a pessimist. She always had a litany of things that could potentially go wrong, but after 30+ years of marriage I recognize that her “worrying” helped us plan solutions for what could possibly happen. Her insistence on making sure we had minimal debt whenever possible really minimized the stress that we felt when the waters got choppy.

              The biggest danger of optimism is that it prevents us from considering exactly what might happen, and if we don’t know what might happen, we can’t plan for it.

Productive Pessimism is Not Negativity

              “This sucks. Nothing f*cking works. It all just sucks.”

              I can still hear the echoes from a coworker from early in my career. We were trying to do something as audacious as creating newspaper advertisements with the new Macintosh computers that our company had purchased, and we had run into some roadblocks.

              I remember being excited – remember my natural optimism – because we were working with what seemed like the future of publishing. Jim was a really smart guy, and I was also excited about the opportunity to work with someone that intelligent. But he was negative. So negative. He sucked the life out of the room.

              Negativity is a perspective that highlights challenges and holds them up as evidence of inevitable failure. It’s emotionally draining, and it can be a self-fulfilling prophesy. Leaders who allow their team to sink into negativity, or worse, engage in negativity themselves, are unlikely to guide their team to success. Negativity limits your ability to imagine solutions.

              Productive Pessimism highlights challenges the way headlights shine a light on obstacles in the road. If you can’t see it, you can’t avoid it.  

Productive Pessimism is Not Complaining

              As a member of my son’s Boy Scout Troop Committee, I often accompanied the troop on campouts. On one occasion, I heard a scout complaining about how it frequently rained when we planned campouts. He complained that his raincoat was at the bottom of his backpack, his socks were wet, and the snacks he brought were soaked.

              I couldn’t help getting involved. “Did you look at the forecast before we left?” I asked.

              “Yeah,” he said. “And I said, ‘Of course it’s going to rain because we’re going camping’”.

              “Did you pack extra socks in a zipper bag?” I asked.

              “No”

              “Did you put your snacks in a waterproof container?”

              “No”

              “And you packed your raincoat at the bottom of your backpack?” I asked, incredulously.

              “Actually, my mom packed my backpack,” he said.

              “Piece of advice,” I said, “Don’t complain to your mom about how she packed your backpack. She might actually kill you.”

              Complaints are a way to highlight challenges, unfortunate circumstances or disappointments and place them squarely in the responsibility of someone else. Anyone else.

              The Productive Pessimist highlights challenges ahead and then owns them. The productive pessimist in an organization might not have the authority to address all of the challenges they see, so they tend to bring them to higher levels of leadership. The challenge for the leader is to see a productive pessimist as key to the organization’s success and take their concerns seriously.

Productive Pessimism is About Action

              Productive Pessimism was very useful in the newspaper business. Where success is measured in minutes rather than in hours or days, surprises are not welcome. What’s more, no one wants a 2:00 a.m. phone call asking, “What should we do?”

              Fortunately, I had a team of productive pessimists who thought through the potential challenges and pitfalls and often had a response at the ready when things went sideways. Reconfigure the press, move the product to a different inserter, label it off-line. Backup plans were always in place, because “You never know what might happen.”

              Productive Pessimism is about action. That’s what separates it from optimism, negativism, or complaining. It shines the light to see the obstacle in the road, and turns the wheel.

              The Supply Chain discipline has what they call a risk register, but in Operations we tend to think that good plans will result in good results. While that sounds good, a dose of pessimism might be in order.

              So let her, or him, or them, talk to you that way. They might just be right.  

Clear Expectations

My cell phone rang at 4:30 a.m. It was my boss, back in the Washington D.C area. “Are you not coming in today?” he asked.

“No, I’m in Phoenix,” I answered sleepily.

“Why are you in Phoenix?”

“You told me to help them straighten out their production issues. I’ve been in the plant all night, and just got back to the hotel half an hour ago,” I said.

“Not a bad idea. Will you be in tomorrow?” he asked.

“Yep, taking the red-eye back tonight, so I should be in the office normal time,” I said.

He closed with, “See you then. Get some sleep,” which I certainly did.

Clear expectations are the heart of the manager-employee relationship. It’s a two-way street: people complete tasks and take on responsibilities, and in exchange their employer compensates them. The compensation part is generally pretty clear, but the expectations of exactly what is expected from the employee in return can be more fuzzy. 

Employees have a basic right to know that they are doing what is expected of them, and to be able to go home each day feeling satisfied that they were successful.

Start At The Beginning:

“What are you looking for?” was my first question. I had been approached by a recruiter about a company looking for a senior operations leader. In addition to the face value of the question, I also wanted to see how they answered the question. If the answer was vague or made up on the spot, it would be a short conversation.

Clear expectations start before the manager-employee relationship even begins. Every job opening is an opportunity to clearly define the expectations of the position, whether it’s replacing a prior employee or a newly-created role. Time spent articulating expectations will improve the odds of future success of the employee, and it can also speed up the recruiting process by quickly screening out unsuitable applicants.

Goal Setting:

I had the opportunity to direct a large manufacturing facility expansion, with a 30 month timeline and an $85 million budget. The budget and timeline were the overall goals, but the success of the project hinged on hundreds of smaller goals. I printed out the Gantt chart for my office wall just to illustrate the scope of the project, and it stretched seven feet high, with nearly a thousand individual steps.

It’s obvious that with a project of this magnitude that each step – each goal – had precedence that needed be completed first. In other words, the resources had to be in place for the goal to be met.

This concept should be applied to all goals, whether that’s production plans, sales quotas, or professional development plans. With the goal in mind, managers have a responsibility to make certain that the resources needed to reach that goal are provided. Otherwise we might as well be throwing darts at a “goal setting dart board”.  As a manager of mine once said, ‘hope is not a plan.”

For goal setting to be considered clear expectations, it should be collaborative. The manager and the employee can look at business requirements, resources and capabilities to come up with a goal. This doesn’t mean the goals will always be easy to reach, but the manager and the employee should come away from the process with the confidence that the goal can be achieved.

Other Duties As Assigned:

While working for a corporate division president, it was a real privilege to occasionally be included on trips on the corporate jet.

On one trip, I was sitting toward the front of the cabin reading the newspaper when a piece of cauliflower hit the page, nearly knocking it out of my hands. I looked around and saw my boss with his glass held up. “I’m going to need another cocktail,” he said. “Remember, ‘other duties as assigned’ includes flight attendant duties.” As I headed back to get his empty glass, I took requests from the other three passengers. I knew it was a pretty cool opportunity for a twenty-something guy, and I was happy to play flight attendant.

Clear expectations are not inflexible. Being clear isn’t limiting, in fact it’s quite the opposite. If the initial instructions are clear, then it’s easy to see what isn’t included. My boss didn’t assume I would refill his cocktail. He knew that it was outside of what was expected of me on a daily basis, so he clarified the updated expectation. With cauliflower.

Feedback:

Most companies that I’ve worked for have had some kind of review process. Some processes are better than others, but one thing they all have in common is that nothing on the review should come as a surprise to the employee.

I experienced a surprise once while sitting with a VP and going over my own annual appraisal. The comment, “Tony can be overbearing and intimidating to his subordinates” came out of the blue. I was particularly surprised because I had gone to great lengths to create a collaborative team. I quickly guessed that the comment had come from my art director who chafed at my insistence on expense control in her department. When I asked the VP if she could give me an example of a time when I had been overbearing or intimidating, she had a blank look and said, “no”. Not helpful.

Feedback needs to be more than just annual, and wherever possible it needs to be objective. Dashboards are a helpful tool that can automate the process to the point that employees are getting near real-time feedback.

Positive feedback that is specific an genuine is a great motivator and a sense of pride. It’s important for all of us to have our hard work recognized. Negative feedback can, if handled correctly, have the same effect. Instead of saying, “Bob, you’re not hitting your goals. You’d better turn it around or I’m going to have to make a change,” try saying, “Bob, you’re not hitting your goals. I’m concerned about you. Let’s look at what’s keeping you from being successful, and how I can help.”

Equity of Expectations:

One day I had a top performing employee pull me aside as I walked through the production floor. When the conversation starts with, “I really don’t want to complain. . .”, I’m immediately 100% focused because something interesting will follow.

“I don’t mind getting all of these jobs done,” he said, “but it’s a little irritating that while I’m doing it that fat f*uck over there does half the work and gets away with it just because he’s been here 20 years.”

While the root cause in this case was the company owner’s impractically high sense of loyalty, the incident highlighted that uneven expectations are not invisible. A manager needs to make sure to not keep lowering expectations to the point where underperformers can finally meet them. It can cause significant damage to the team, and can hurt a manager’s credibility.

Get It In Writing:

When a machine operator position opened up in one of our production departments, we looked internally and promoted an internal candidate. This guy – after a brief jail stint – had obviously been working hard to turn his life around, and this move would put him on a good trajectory.  

At that point the company’s “Old Joe” training method was still in place, so he was assigned to the best operator to show him the ropes of his new role.

Six months later, I followed up with his manager about why he wasn’t fully capable of running the equipment on his own. I discovered that he had not been given a written training plan, and that no milestones had been established. I felt terrible that this had happened on my watch, so I helped the manager – who was new to his position as well – develop training plans with specific milestones to be reached.

Expectations that aren’t written down are by definition unclear. Written expectations are still capable of being misinterpreted, but that’s an opportunity to reword them for additional clarity.

Clear expectations improve performance, reduce stress, and can minimize turnover. And maybe just prevent a 4:30 a.m. phone call.

Sharp Tools

I’ve always loved to cook. Recently I’ve had the opportunity to help out in a restaurant kitchen, which is really exciting for me, like a sports fan getting to practice with the Yankees. It struck me very quickly that I’m in an environment where sharp tools are literally important. Sharp knives mean productivity because you can dice an onion in a flash. Sharp knives mean safety, because a dull knife can easily slip and injure the user. Sharp knives are a source of pride, and the sign of a true professional. Literally.

              In the larger context, Sharp Tools are anything that prevents frustration in the workplace. I’ll break this down to some finer detail, but frustration is the key. Any place in the process that produces frustration is an opportunity for sharpening.

Equipment that Works:

              Much like kitchen knives, the most basic sharp tool is equipment that works. Managers owe their teams equipment that works, whether that’s a CNC router, a delivery vehicle, or a network printer. From my experience, that’s easier said than done.

              In one newspaper plant that I ran, we utilized a lot of plastic strapping machines to strap bundles of newspapers. This last step in the process, that should have been simple, was the most frustrating. The strapping machines were well used, with millions of straps on each one. They were prone to jams, which wasted both time and materials. Unfortunately, capital was not available to replace the strapping machines, so we reconfigured our workflow to allow one or two machines to be taken out of the process at all times so our maintenance tech could replace parts and bring them back to a less frustrating condition.

              It wasn’t an optimal solution, but it was the best we could do at the time. I know that it didn’t remove all of the frustration, but doing something is always better than doing nothing.

Maintenance:

              Maintenance must get done. Whether it’s manufacturing equipment, fleet equipment, or computer networks, the investment in maintenance has to be made. If pressure for expense reductions starts to focus on maintenance activities, it’s time for the manager to go to bat, and possibly stick their neck out a little to make sure it gets done in a timely manner.

              For an organization in the direct mail business, getting the product to the Post Office on time is non-negotiable. That’s why my transportation supervisor had multiple levels of backups for drivers, including me as VP of Operations. One cold winter morning I got a call that, between illnesses and planned PTO, he was out of drivers. I quickly headed in, loaded the truck and hit the road.

              After about an hour on the road, the truck cab was still freezing. I called and asked, “What’s going on with the heater in this truck? I’m freezing my butt off!” The supervisor said, “Yeah, it’s scheduled to go in and get fixed tomorrow.” Ultimately it had been my responsibility to make sure this got done, so frozen toes were a logical consequence for me as the senior manager.

              One more note about maintenance: If it’s not on your schedule, it’s not getting done. Even if the checklists are getting checked, if it’s not scheduled it’s not getting done.  Take my word for it. There’s always a list of things to do, and if you don’t schedule it, maintenance will fall to the bottom.

Safety Guards:

              It primarily applies to manufacturing, but safety guards have to be in place. OSHA regulations are pretty clear about this, but it’s easy for people to get in a hurry after a repair and jump back into production without putting guards back in place. However, it can quickly turn into a source of frustration.

              A good friend of mine took over production operations in a plant where his predecessor had allowed most of the safety guards to be removed. Bob put this at the top of his priority list, but on his second day on the job the company received an OSHA complaint – likely from Bob’s predecessor – that the company was operating without guards in place. One of Bob’s first tasks was to grab a shovel and dig through the snow banks behind the building and locate the missing guards.

Environment:

              The physical environment of the workplace means a lot, but can be easily overlooked by busy managers and cost-controlling executives.

              While it’s not necessary to provide a Taj-Mahal work environment, there are a couple of basics that go a long way: Lighting and clean bathrooms.

              Lighting, and natural light if possible, is a small thing that managers can address that will have an outsized impact. Lighting needs to be appropriate – every office doesn’t need to be lit like a surgical theater – but change those burnt out bulbs and fix the broken fixtures. It’s worth it to prevent having employees use the word “dungeon”.

              In his book Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain said, “I won’t eat in a restaurant with filthy bathrooms. They let you see the bathrooms. If the restaurant can’t be bothered to replace the puck in the urinal or keep the toilets and floors clean, then just imagine what their refrigerators and workspaces look like”.

The same is actually true about all businesses, not just restaurants. If management doesn’t value their employees enough to make sure that the bathrooms are clean, that sends a very negative message.

In the newspaper business, it was traditional for newspaper publishers to have private bathrooms, and it even became a bit of a status symbol. If a bathroom is that important to highly paid senior executives, just imagine how important they are to the rest of the company.

Training:

According to a 2021 survey by Lorman , nearly 59% of employees said that they had no workplace training and that most of their skills were self-taught. And this isn’t just rank and file employees: 43% of managers who have been in their role for less than a year say they’ve had no training

              With the amazing variety of resources available, particularly online, these numbers are staggering. While companies and managers may feel like they are providing training, employee perception is that they’re not, and in the workplace, perception is reality.

              One way to sharpen the training tool is to move to organized training versus the traditional “Old Joe” method. “Old Joe’s been doing this job for a long time, and he’s really good at it. Go over and stand by him and you’ll learn what to do.”

              There are two ways that Old Joe generates frustration. First, the employee has very little idea of what they’re supposed to learn, how quickly they’re supposed to learn it, and how they’ll know when they’re trained. Second, being good at completing tasks is a different skill set than training others how to complete the task.

              Organized training doesn’t imply a full-blown classroom-style learning academy, but a training outline, some training materials, and the proper training resources. The proper training resources might be Dan, the third-best operator who’s patient and communicates well.

              Training gaps like these don’t just exist at the operator level. When I took over operations for a company with a well-built and fairly complex ERP system, the extent of my orientation to the system was, “Here’s your login and password. Because you’re an executive you have access to basically everything. Go in and poke around and see if you have any questions.” Seriously, that’s how it went. What could possibly go wrong?

              I eventually became comfortable with the system and was able to map some processes and create some training documents. However, my progress was months behind what it could have been, and as an executive that training gap cascaded down to the people actually doing the work.

              A key element of organized training is training materials. While I always encourage trainees to take notes during training, it’s important that they have at least some references they can go back to as they progress.

              An experienced operator was struggling with adjustments to a machine and asked me if it was possible to get a user’s manual so he could troubleshoot. As he asked the question, I could sense his frustration and his sense that this was an almost impossible request. After about five-minutes with Google, I was able to print out a user’s manual, punch the pages, and put it in a binder for him. I felt embarrassed that we didn’t already have a copy at the workstation, but it was an opportunity to sharpen the tool.

              Training also has to be time-bound. If after several months on the job, a Customer Service Representative can only enter the simplest of customer orders, there’s a training issue. Both the trainee and their manager need to be on the same page as to timing.

Clear Information:

              The information employees receive is the ultimate sharp tool. Between tools like Slack, Zoom, email, and dynamic information systems, we have more ways to provide information than ever before. And yet we still struggle.

              Every employee has a fundamental right to know that they did their job correctly, and that is entirely linked to the information they are given. That’s why the sharpness of this particular tool is extremely important.

              In the newspaper business, success or failure is determined by minutes, not hours or days. It wasn’t unheard of to get a call from a customer saying, “Your driver should have been here five minutes ago, where is he?”

              In that kind of environment, having clear information is critical.

              One night, a driver needed to deliver a special project to a publisher three hours away. It was in addition to their normal delivery, so the Production Planning team made thorough notes about it. They prepared a driver’s manifest that indicated that the special project would be on two pallets. However, when the driver arrived at the customer’s location, he discovered that the production team had split the delivery on to three pallets, and he had only taken two. A second driver had to make the six-hour round trip with the third pallet.

              Frustration. Wasted time. Wasted money. Poor customer experience.

              A simple process change prevented reoccurrence (1of 3, 2 of 3, etc.) although it really should have been in place before. However, since we as managers don’t have Superman’s ability to fly backwards around the Earth and turn back time, we have to correct the process failures when we see them.

              Another element of clear information is that it should be easy to find. Searching through piles of information to find what you need to do your job can be intensely frustrating.

              A customer in shared office space called one day to ask when their delivery would be arriving. This sent up a big red flag, because the delivery had been completed.

              The delivery driver had arrived at the customer’s office, and finding no one there, left the box by the office door. The driver returned to the location, contacted building security, and reviewed security footage and discovered another employee putting the box in a closet.

              The Account Manager for this customer came to me, clearly upset, because she had included a note with the job that the delivery should given to a person, and should not be left unattended.

              However, the note was added to the “Job Overview” section of the work instructions, and the delivery drivers only had access to the delivery instructions.

              Frustration. Wasted time. Wasted money. Poor customer experience.

              The final piece of clear information is that the information needs to be specific. The rule that “you shouldn’t have to solve a puzzle to do your job” is one that I recite frequently.

              In one example, a customer who normally ordered their product in cartons of 1,000 had an unusual order of 1,250 pieces. The order was packed in one carton of 1,000, and one carton of 250.

              The Account Manager for the account let us know that the customer was upset because of the way the product was packaged. She complained to me that, “the production people should know that they always have the same quantity in a carton, and that would be five cartons of 250. Can’t they do math?”

              This time I was the one who was frustrated, but I took it in stride and used it as an opportunity to sharpen the tool.

              Look at your tools, find where they’re lacking, and start sharpening. The result could be something delicious!

A Debt of Leadership

If you’re in my organization, I owe you effective leadership.

At one point in my career, I was leading a operations in a medium sized company that dealt directly with publishers within the company, as well as outside publishers.

One publication that we dealt with on a daily basis was particularly difficult. “They’re all just *ssholes,” was a pretty common refrain from my management team. The internal customer/supplier relationship was extremely negative, and communications were frequently unpleasant at many levels. 

The General Manager – we’ll call him “Jerry” to protect the guilty – was a jerk. He was untrustworthy, and frequently bad mouthed the company he worked for and the community he lived in, despite having been in his position for years.

It may not be surprising that Jerry’s publication underperformed and was eventually sold. My operation continued our relationship, but now as an outside vendor. Jerry was replaced by the new owners, but the vast majority of the staff stayed the same.

But everything changed. People who had been horrible to deal with only a few months prior were pleasant and cooperative. The entire relationship changed, and so did the financial results.

Everything hinges on leadership. I don’t think that’s too bold a statement, but there’s a lot crammed in to those four words. Everything, really? Yep, everything.

I’ve been studying leadership since my college days, which is more years than I’d like to admit. There’s been so much written about leadership, I may not be sharing anything new, but I’ll break down what my experience tells me are the most important elements. I’ve got a pretty good idea of what good leadership looks like, and a very good idea of what non-leadership looks like.

I say “non-leadership” because the opposite of good leadership is not bad leadership, it’s the lack of leadership.

I break my experience with leadership down into these five points:

1)      Lead from the front. Be an example.

2)      Communicate and practice active listening.

3)      Be honest.

4)      Focus on the success of the team, not the success of the leader.

5)      Work toward the future, for the team and for the individual team members.

Lead from the Front

While working at the plant that was the headquarters of a division of Gannett Co., I had the opportunity to be part of a leadership team headed by the division president. Despite his wide-ranging responsibilities, he attended the weekly operations meetings that were run by the VP of Operations. What made these meetings unique was that they included the night shift, so they were held at 6:00 a.m. every Wednesday.

As Director of Analysis, I had to produce weekly reports showing performance versus goals, to include the production runs that had completed an hour prior to the meeting. I remember running down the hallway with photocopies of charts and graphs under my arm, because I knew the senior managers would not be late.

The fact that a division President and Vice President were willing to be there before the sun came up spoke volumes. They didn’t expect the night shift staff to bend to their schedule.  They leveraged the resources of the company (including me) to help the production team succeed. They showed their respect for the people doing the work by being there for them. Not quarterly or monthly, but every Wednesday.

Another important part of leading from the front is that you cannot delegate leadership. Many years ago I worked for a business owner who, although he knew the importance of leadership, hired people to be leaders rather than taking on the role himself. He ended up very frustrated. Leadership just doesn’t work like that.

Communication and Active Listening

Every organization that I’ve been a part of – even ones in the communication business – could benefit from improved communication. It’s universal.

Communication is one of the main ways that people measure their value in an organization, so a leader needs to prioritize their communication skills.

Today’s business environment has more ways to communicate than ever before, and a leader should communicate through the channel that works best for the recipient.

I had one machine operator on my team who would call me over as I walked by throughout the day and ask questions. Actually, he would wildly wave his hands above his head, because that was “The Signal”. Sometimes the questions were serious: “How does holiday pay work if it falls on my normal day off?” and sometimes they were less so: “If you could be one character from the original A Team, which one would you be?” But I always had time, and that’s how we communicated.

At the same time, I had another operator in a nearly identical role who mainly communicated with me through Zoom messages. That worked too.

An important part of communication as a leader is active listening. Eye contact and visual cues such as nodding in response to points made are parts of active listening.

One of my favorite techniques for active listening is to summarize back to the listener the points they’ve just made. “So what I’m hearing you say is that the job information you’re getting from Customer Service is frequently inaccurate, and if we don’t address it soon you’re going to lose your sh*t and go off on someone. Is that correct?”

Honesty

Leaders often find themselves with confidential information, so by honesty I’m not talking about sharing everything you know. Sticking to the truth – both the good and the bad – shows respect for the people you lead. And don’t try to spin. Everyone hates that. It makes you look unaware or untrustworthy, and both of those are bad.

One company I was at was going through a rough financial patch, and an employee asked me, “Are we doing OK as a company?” It would have been easy to say, “Sure everything’s fine,” but that wouldn’t be honest. I said, “No, not really. But here’s what we’re doing to fix that. . .”

Did I risk that employee getting nervous and looking for another job? Yes. But if she later found out that I hadn’t been honest with her, my ability to lead her would have taken a big hit.

Honesty with a dose of humility is also very helpful. When I make a mistake as a leader, I make sure that the team knows that I own mistake, and I am working to improve. In one instance, I initiated a process change and failed to communicate the change in advance to some of the team members. I felt terrible about it, and I explained the situation to the whole team at our weekly meeting. People who are allowed to make mistakes and honestly own them will innovate, making the whole team stronger.

Focus on the Success of the Team, not the Leader

This one seems like it should be a no-brainer for a leader, but unfortunately, I’ve seen too many times when it wasn’t.

I had a manger who worked for me in an online fulfillment role who would take on the easiest projects that came into his department and hand off the difficult projects to his team. He also had a habit of bragging about the fact that, even as manager, he was the most productive member of his team.

When this situation was brought to my attention, I coached him on how he should be leading his team. When my follow up showed that he hadn’t changed, I ended up having to let him go because his lack of leadership was creating a toxic work environment.

Senior managers have a big responsibility here, because we create the incentives for the managers in our organizations.

Simon Sinek is one my favorite authors, and his book Leaders Eat Last is required reading (or listening) for the leaders on my teams. I’ll paraphrase here, but one of the points he makes in the book is “a leader’s value is measured by how much they are willing to sacrifice for the team.” When we structure incentives for leaders, we need to make sure that this is taken into account.

Work Toward the Future, for the Team and for the Team Members

Stressful work situations can suck people in pretty quickly and demoralize the whole team. The most obvious role of the leader is to help guide the team out of the stressful situation. However, it doesn’t stop there.

A leader needs to be focused on the future, and help guide the team to solutions that prevent the stressful situations in the future.

While I was running a newspaper operation, a key piece of equipment went down during the nightly production, throwing our schedule into chaos. While working through that, I mentioned to the department head that, “tomorrow we need to review all of the preventative maintenance plans to make sure we don’t have any more vulnerabilities like this,” and he just started laughing.

When I asked what was so funny about our preventive maintenance program (which was actually pretty good) he said, “It’s not that. I just think it’s funny that you think there’s going to be a tomorrow!”

Working for the future of the individual team members is a different process, but equally important. Most people assume that career development is their own responsibility, but a leader needs to be a part of that process.

A survey by Right Leadership notes that 82% of employees said they would be more engaged at work if they had regular conversations with their manager about career progression, while only 16% said they were having those conversations.

Talking with your team members about their career progression is another way to demonstrate their value as an individual. And it can’t be just talk. Leaders need to make sure their team members have opportunities to grow the skills they need to advance.

I once had a material handler who applied for a production planning position. She wasn’t qualified and didn’t get the position, but she and I talked about some skills she could work on to be qualified for the next opening. She worked hard to develop her skills, and won the job the next time we had an opening. In fact, she went on to run the department.

Everything hinges on leadership. Full stop.

What Do You Owe?

I sat in front of my new boss – who became my mentor – and received some words of advice. Although it was early in my career, I was going to report directly to a division president, so he took the time to set the tone for my future.

“A company is like a pyramid,” he said. “As you move up, every decision you make affects more and more people.” Makes sense, I thought, but he went further. “The way you conduct yourself, and how you make decisions will not only impact employees, but their families, their friends, their future co-workers, and a lot of people you’ll never meet or even know about.” Being a manager is a serious responsibility.

No matter the field or industry sector, managers make their living as a result of the work done by others. The more senior the position, the more he or she owes their success to other people’s work.

So what do we as managers owe in exchange?

The obligations and Key Performance Indicators that we owe our employers are pretty easy to see and focus on. One year at annual review time, I asked my boss if, per company policy he wanted me to complete a self-evaluation. He asked, “Do you want to do a self-evaluation?”, to which I replied that I really didn’t. “Well, it really only matters what I think, doesn’t it?” he replied. And while he sounded like he was joking, I think he was mostly serious.  

The vast majority of individual contributors – and this is increasingly true with remote workers – don’t want a “supervisor” who looks over their shoulder, keeps them on task, and tells them how to perform their work. Sure, some people need that, but an expectation of a team oriented partnership is more the norm.

I think of my obligations to the people I’m managing as follows: Leadership, Sharp Tools, and Clear Expectations.

I’ll go into each of these in detail in the next few posts, but I’ll make my case for each of them here. Seems too simple? Let’s see.  

Leadership:

There’s been so much written about leadership that I won’t pretend to be an authority or an expert, but I’ve been there most of my life. If you’re in my organization, I owe you effective leadership. Full stop. First and foremost, even if I fail in any of the other areas, this one is non-negotiable.

If you’ve worked for a manager who isn’t a leader – and there are far too many examples – you know that it’s a dark and dismal existence, with no future except the promise of unpleasant surprises. You know what I’m talking about, I’m sure.

I once worked for a manager who wanted absolutely no bad news. He liked to talk about “polishing the turd”, or describing bad situations in as glowing terms as possible. When that didn’t work, he had a list of people to blame, and you just hoped it wasn’t your turn. My co-workers called it “your turn in the barrel,” a reference to rodeo cowboys distracting the bull. It sucked.

Everything hinges on leadership. Many challenges organizations face, whether that’s revenue, inefficiency, turnover, or client satisfaction are actually symptoms of a leadership deficiency.

I’ll unpack this more later, but leadership is really the only place you can start if you want your organization to be successful.  

Sharp Tools:

By “sharp tools” I don’t just mean kitchen knives, but yeah those too. Sharp Tools are the things that allow people to get their job done with a minimum amount of frustration.

Machines that work is an obvious place to start. Short-sighted managers will often resort to the duct tape model to keep things going, without understanding the organizational damage that they’re doing in the process.

The quality of the tools we provide is a measure of how we value the people doing the work.

I’ve always thought of this in an industrial setting, but when talking with a group of educators I saw the same reaction when they were talking about the curriculum they were told to use. They saw poorly designed curriculum as evidence of a school district administration that didn’t listen to them or value them as professionals. I found it even more interesting that the tools they were talking about were a six-figure investment that the administrators had recently rolled out.

Crappy tools are anything that breeds frustration.

There’s a big drawer on the Sharp Tools Toolbox that’s labeled “Clear and Accurate Information”. This tool is what allows an employee to go home at night with the confidence and satisfaction that they did the job right.

While clear and accurate information is important in co-located workplaces, it’s even more important in a remote work environment. Managers need to take extra care to guarantee that instructions and directions are clear to avoid hours spent working in the wrong direction. The best way to do that is to make sure everything is written down in a way that employees have access to it, even though that means more work for you as the manager. Well, that’s what you signed up for.

My experience providing clear information in the newspaper industry was very self-reinforcing. Although we had very streamlined processes and people knew their jobs well, there were always odd details that popped up.

Each day my team went through the instructions for the nightly production run to make sure everything was clear and understandable. Because they were caring, admirable human beings? Sure, but not only that. It was because they didn’t want to get a phone call at 2:00 a.m. to clarify a detail they had missed. It doesn’t take too many of those phone calls before you make sure the i’s are dotted and the t’s are crossed before you go home for the day.

Clear Expectations:

You have a job description, right? Doesn’t that tell you everything you need to know?

Admit it, you laughed a little at that one.

My favorite line on my job description was the one at the bottom that read, “Other Duties As Assigned”. It was sufficiently vague that any time some random new responsibility came up I was able to laugh and say, “Oh yeah, I guess that’s what that means.”

Clear expectations are the answer to a question you as a manager could ask each one of your employees, every day: “When you go home at night, open the adult beverage of your choice and plop down in your favorite chair, how do you know you did what you were supposed to do today?”

If the answer for your organization is “Well, I guess they haven’t fired me yet, so I must be doing it right”, then you have some work to do.

Goals are better than job descriptions. Although it may seem like working backwards, set goals as the start of the conversation. The next step is to ask, “How do we get there?”  If the answer is “that’s f*cking impossible”, it’s an opportunity to talk about why that might be the case, and what needs to change in order to make the goal attainable. If the answer is “no problem at all”, it’s an opportunity to talk about maybe shooting higher.

Of course, it would be nice if it were that straightforward. I had one teammate who, when I presented goals that I thought might be challenging would respond, “easy peasy”. Wow, I thought, this is great. Nothing to worry about. Nope. Pretty soon I came to realize that “easy peasy” was code for “that’s definitely not going to happen, ever, ever, ever.”

The important thing here is that clear expectations are a conversation, not a directive. Later I’ll dive into what that conversation looks like, because there’s no one-size solution here either.

So that’s my case for the three obligations we have to the people we manage. These simple-but-not-so-simple concepts need to be at the top of every manager’s to-do list every day.

The rest is just details.