Archive for the 'Work' Category

Going down to Bisbee

Tuesday, May 5th, 2009

What do you do when you’ve been laid off and are waiting to start your next job? Hit the road Jack. We recently took advantage of a short hiatus for Val and spent a few delightful days in Southeastern Arizona. I had to have a book along and was fortunate to find Going back to Bisbee by Richard Shelton. We more or less traced the authors route while gaining historical and natural tidbits from his book. The drive from Phoenix to Tuscon is flat out ugly, but from scenic state route 83 onwards is a treat.

We stopped by several wineries in Sonoita. Quite a contrast to Sonoma/Napa of course but this wide open range land on gently rolling hills surrounded by bedrock mountains is just as pretty in it’s own way. Full size pics are available from links on each pic page. sonoitavineyards

In Bisbee we stayed at a funky restored miners shack called The Sleepy Dog Guest House. This was the first road trip for Maynard, the funky stub-legged dog whose been with us for about 6 months now. We spent a good deal of time hiking the hills north of the old town as well as the hills and stairways in town. The miners homes were built on terraces interconnected by a complex network of concrete steps. It’s still tricky to navigate among some of the vacation homes clustered about the hills. Makes you wonder how people get the bigger stuff moved about.

Here’s a bit of what the house we stayed in looks like:

sleepydogentry2sleepydogentrysleepydogkitchensleepydogsleepydoginterior1bisbeechillmorninglight

I’ve scattered some pics through the gallery in my “unorganized by event or place” fashion. You’ll find a couple of fun macros and some graffiti. Plus an art car shot and one of the long stairways to nowhere. Most notably to our family, I’ve included the first online shots of Maynard, who’s turned out to be a real cool fool of a dog. Here he is doing Rin Tin Tin on the lookout for the ghost of Geronimo…
rintintinmaynardtintin
Ain’t that cute. Gotta love it man, yep.

And the night sky is freaking incredible down there :-)

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Tips regarding basic management of employees

Wednesday, January 30th, 2008

Speaking from 29 years within a large corporate structure that has changed hands and flavors multiple times. These are my top tips for people who manage others directly. If this helps one person to avoid demotivating one employee I’ll consider the time taken to post well spent. :-) But I dream…

  • Play by the rules – or don’t expect your employees to play by yours. Upper-most management communicates their “vision” via complex and obscure sets of rules for which they lack the lower organizational structure to implement properly or measure honestly. It often seems to lower-most managers that their own manager is simply looking for you to fill in the corp-speak blanks after the fact (because your “real” job is taking care of the monthly bottom line). Fall into this routine and you’re certain to alienate your direct reports and loose their respect. You can’t play a different game, the game of trying to appear that you’re acting as a buffer between your workers and upper management’s wacky incomprehensible vision. Your job is to understand that vision and translate it meaningfully to your workers in a way that communicates your willingness to work in everyone’s best interest. This doesn’t mean that you endlessly regurgitate ridiculous buzzwords and acronyms. Rather, you make it obvious to your workers that you’ve taken the time to understand them yourself and you’re set to enable everyone to succeed.
  • Make setting aside regular time to meet one on one with your direct reports your top priority. These are the people that are buttering your bread, the people who make you look good or bad, the people who make or break success, the bottom line. Doing this will enable you to maintain a real understanding of the state of your business processes from everyones perspective and is the equivalent of routine maintenance, an oil change for your business. It also tunes up attitudes and fosters continual improvement. Meet in a quiet place free from interruption. Take notes, keep them, action them, follow up at each meeting. If you’ve got fewer than a dozen direct reports you should spend at least a half hour per month meeting with each one. If you’ve got more than a dozen and less than fifty make that a half hour per quarter (yes that’s up to 6 hours of your time each week talking directly with each of your 50 people). If you’ve got more than fifty you must fight the good fight with your own manager. Mileage may vary depending on your business. At my spouses workplace the rule is a maximum of fifteen employees per manager (who meets one hour every two weeks with each front line employee).
  • Don’t assume that anyone is happy with a daily grind – “they just want to be left alone to do their job” is a false assumption. People by nature want change for the good. They only fall into the daily grind after they’ve been exposed repeatedly to managers who aren’t working for them. Even experienced workers who have risen to the top of their pay grade years ago appreciate professional growth. It’s your job to give them a line of sight to growth possibilities and encourage them. Mentor, motivate, monitor, and continually ask those workers to do the same for their less experienced peers.
  • Don’t speak to the lowest common denominator during group meetings. Speaking down tells everyone that you’ve made assumptions about them all and you’re not likely to really listen to any of them. Instead, speak as though they are all top performers who have your ultimate respect, even when the employee you’re about to fire for poor performance is in the audience.
  • Continually and publicly reward and praise. Teach your workers by example how to do the same. Don’t less this falter as it typically does during the busiest and most stressful times, when sincere praise is needed most. Praise in front of the employees friends and family if you can.
  • Hold your fellow managers accountable as equal team members. It’s not a competition. You’re all in it together. Listen to each other and consider the impact of each others decisions. Don’t toss the ball over the wall, you know it’ll be tossed back and that game of catch continues until the ball is dropped and the organization suffers.
  • Gruntle that disgruntled worker. Yeah, I know gruntle isn’t a word, but it should be. If someone seems continually unhappy with work take the time to find out why. Maybe they’re experiencing trying times with life outside of work, having health issues etc. but you’ve got to investigate and not simply write them off. Are there wrongs to be righted? Why? Does the person feel like they’re not being listened to? Why? It’s often said that people don’t quit their jobs, they quit their managers. Give that person a sincere effort to understand and resolve whatever work issues are going on and you’ll likely earn loyalty and respect while salvaging an investment in time and experience shared by company and employee.
  • Don’t divvy up the merit pool before the reviews are written. There’s no objectivity without up front documentation of the facts. No one can possibly know or remember what every employee did nine months ago. Involve employees in the process throughout the year or merit is reduced to a personality/popularity contest. See “Playing by the rules” above.
  • Communicate. Take time to listen and to respond thoughtfully. Don’t allow employee satisfaction surveys be the only path that a worker has to your ears. Don’t assume that your front line workers aren’t interested in town halls etc. from corporate leadership. Some of your people want to know what’s going on outside of the immediate world so that they can advance.

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