

It's Never the Employee - petethomas
http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/its-never-the-employee/

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illumin8
I manage a team, and I have to disagree with this article. It is often the
employee. For example, I have a client that is going live tonight. Their
environment consists of 14 Linux boxes that all need apps deployed, chroot
jails setup, monitoring and deployment scripts written or modified, etc. I
assigned it to one of my engineers weeks ago, but he works so slowly that most
work isn't completed yet. Yesterday, the day before go live, I had to take it
over and completed 90% of the work in a single long day.

It's not that he isn't trained... These are basic Linux engineer tasks. It's
that he works so slowly, and has to ask so many questions "how did you want me
to create the user accounts?" - "I don't know, with useradd, perhaps?" Then 2
weeks later, I say "the client is asking if they can login to their boxes now;
are their user accounts created yet?" - "I'll get to that today, he replies."

You might think that I must have hired him, so it's my fault if he works too
slowly and asks too many questions, or makes too many mistakes to be of much
use. Unfortunately I didn't hire him.

The bottom line is that a lot of employees are just poor performers, and when
someone that does good work at a high rate of speed can do it better
themselves, in less time, they're going to do it.

~~~
michaelochurch
He's in that job because someone hired him. Either he was hired way out of his
depth (not your fault, but not his) or he was decent when hired but is so
burnt out that he needs direction on simple tasks that he would otherwise be
able to figure out on his own.

What the OP describes is the micromanagement death spiral. Manager controls
employee at an insulting level of detail, sucking all autonomy out of the job,
and infantilizing him. Employee becomes disengaged and shows symptoms of mild
depression, including taking too long and needing too much assistance on
simple tasks. This impels the manager to ratchet up the micromanagement even
further. This is actually a mild, sub-clinical mental illness pattern--
anxiety/OCD traits for the manager, depressive behaviors for the employee.
Whose fault is it? Both sides are to blame.

------
furyg3
I've recently come across this even in the non-profit world. The organization
has grown rapidly, and had a large degree of success, primarily due to the
entrepreneurship of the director. He dives in, get things done, and has an
amazing ability to keep track of details.

But now the org is big enough that this doesn't really work anymore. It's not
one guy with three hats who needs clear direction, it's professionals in their
fields doing what they know how to do. The website guy knows how to find a new
host, the researcher how to plan a research project. Getting involved,
especially when they _already_ have a manager, is beyond micro-management.

It's hard for those with an entrepreneurial spirit to switch roles, though. I
completely understand the mentality that pushes you to get a grip on
everything... but your employees _also_ want to have a grip on everything that
they do.

------
shrikant
_Most of [the entrepreneurs] described themselves in similar terms: impatient,
short on focus, easily frustrated, likely to jump in and solve a problem
rather than count on the employee to do it._

I manage a team in my day job, and I still feel like this a lot of the time my
team is delivering (even when they're doing a good job). I wonder what that
says about me..?

~~~
F_J_H
It says you're probably deluded... :-)

Seriously, I thought the same at one time...until I did a 360. Turns out the
team could have been performing a lot better, and that some people were really
frustrated.

~~~
reverend_gonzo
a 180?

a 360 would put you right back where you started.

~~~
hrktb
360 is the name for peer feedback. At least at yahoo, but might be different
for the gp.

~~~
allwein
It's a standard term.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/360-degree_feedback>

------
michaelochurch
Here's the issue: employee productivity generally falls into four categories:
multipliers, adders, subtracters, and dividers. Adders are the "vital force"
of the company who "do the work" from a ground-floor perspective, multipliers
are managers and tool-builders who make others _more_ productive. Subtracters
are the harmlessly unproductive people who don't bother any one but produce
less than their salary merits-- they should be mentored and turned into
adders, if possible. Dividers are the vampires (severely incompetent
programmers, bad managers) who make other people _less_ productive and destroy
companies. Fire them.

A lot of these entrepreneurs were great at being adders and decided to start
businesses in order to capture more of their value-added. The problem is that,
once you're a manager, you cannot help but have major effects on other
peoples' productivity and can therefore only be a multiplier or a divider. If
you're a micromanager, you're going to end up a divider. These
entrepreneurs/managers need to transition from an "adder" context to a
"multiplier" context. Unfortunately, this transition is difficult and painful
because it requires "letting go" of detailed control; you make more money and
have power, but you're support staff as much as you're a "boss".

As much as I find his suggestions impractical for the rank-and-file average
people, I think a lot of neophyte managers need to read Tim Ferris's _Four
Hour Work Week_. Their goal should be to enable others' productivity and make
themselves mostly unnecessary (as managers). This means they have to trust
their subordinates to do good work. Most will, a few won't-- and when the
latter happens, tough decisions need to be made (can he be trained? Or do we
need to fire him?) But starting from the assumption of "I'm the only person
who can do things right around here" is going to lead to failure: the best
people leave, the middling people degrade-- when you manage people like
children, that's what they become-- and the incompetents don't get found out
(and trained or fired) because the managerial meddling makes it impossible to
differentiate who is capable and who is not.

~~~
pesiflage
This poster, MichaelOChurch, is IMHO, a major divider. We are in the process
of completely throwing out the last two years of his work as unusable.

