Kicking Ass @ Work: Words to Kick Ass By
This week, I’m sharing my favorite work sayings, beginning with…
If everyone owns it, no one owns it
This one happens whenever you have multiple owners for a single project or employee. Dotted-line reports, anyone? What inevitably happens with shared ownership is that everyone fights over the fun stuff and thinks someone else is doing the shit work. When I’m in these situations, I do a kick off call, list out the tasks and assign owners/deadlines. Saves everyone a lot of hurt feelings and finger-pointing later on.
Three kinds of employees
It goes like this: There are three kinds of employees: angels, assholes and zombies. Of these, which do you think is the worst?
Assholes, right?
Wrong. Assholes you know to fire, angels you know to promote. It’s the zombies that kill you. They’re never moving fast enough to get shit done. You have to aim a shotgun at their heads to do anything, and then they only lumber along into their task. Once the bare minimum is complete, they stand around going ‘uhhhhh’ until the next gun is at their temple. It’s no fun. In my experience, the best solution here is to hire angels. 90% of employee management is hiring someone who’s smart and motivated, I don’t care about job skill (a smart and motivated person will pick that up anyway).
Now, if you inherit a zombie (by moving into to manage a set team or whatever) there’s not much you can do but ride it out until you can find a subtle way to kill them. They move too quickly when the gun is at their heads, so this usually means restructuring their job so they aren’t in it anymore. It sucks, but it is what it is. Zombies are your biggest liability.
There are exceptions, of course. Sometimes you can move a zombie into a role where they become an angel. Other times, they’re just so damned much fun to work with that it’s worth keeping them around. My favorite kind of zombie, actually.
The Monkey Tree
When I got my first direct report, my father-in-law poured me a shot and said ‘Welcome to the Monkey Tree.’
“What’s a monkey tree?” I asked.
“Imagine there’s a tree full of monkeys,” he said. “The monkeys at the top of the tree look down and what do they see? A bunch of monkeys working hard away. The monkeys at the bottom of the tree look up and what do they see? A bunch of assholes.”
The point is this. Once you get into management, you’re going to be an asshole. God knows I was. You forget to thank people, set out dumb projects, the works. In other words, you’re human. The trick is not to be everybody’s friend or manager, but their leader. Set objectives, get resources and move out of the way of the angels (see saying above.) Which leads to another saying…
Do you want to be liked or respected?
I suppose it’s a little obvious, but it’s true. Whenever I am in a meeting and the not-liked vibe comes through, I ask myself the question: “Am I being an asshole?” If the answer is no, then the next question is: “Am I here to be liked or respected?” Most times when others gripe, it’s because you’re pushing them. If you’re pushing them for something that is best for the business, then keep pushing.
Torture the data enough, it will confess to anything.
It really will. The only way around this (sort of) is to designate someone as the ‘single source of truth’ and follow the same conventions in pulling and analyzing data.
Some data is better than no data.
No data analysis is perfect. People will point out all the whack-a-doo scenarios where your data is flawed. And in truth, I have never worked for a company where folks have said ‘Wow, we are really happy with our accurate analyses.’ Still, if you get some data, at least you can make some assumptions based on that data and test them out. This is always an eye-opener. We are never, ever inside our target customer’s heads as much as we think they are. Decisions made on some data are always better. And better, in a lot of ways, is the most we can hope for.
Like how I pontificate about kicking ass at work?
Check out these articles…
Tips for Working Parents
How to tell who’s aligned with whom
3 Strikes and I Call Your Manager
Rule of the 3 Ps
Get anyone to back to fuck off
Work means never having to say ‘I’m sorry’
The single biggest red flag of all time
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