Bad conditions that can beat good managers

Here’s a story of three anonymous managers with an average work experience of 25 years. Angie is a human resources director at a conglomerate. Her problem is their average 20 percent attrition rate for the last three years. Their time and talent are wasted on cyclical hiring to replace resignees.

She hired a recruitment consultant, which caused them to incur additional expenses. Another issue is the quality of hires recommended by the consultant. They discovered that some new hires were the consultant’s friends and distant blood relatives. So, she’s back to zero.

Next is Bernie, a Six Sigma black belt and the operations manager of a manufacturing plant. Two years ago, he had no clue how to solve their product defects, which amounted to an average loss of $23,000 every year. He used complex statistical tools to define and eliminate the root causes of their problem without success.

He borrowed my kaizen eight-step action template and reduced their losses to $15,000.

Another manager, Charlie who appears younger than his biological age of 43 is the head of a bank’s total quality department. They have recurring mistakes happening in one of their important transactions with customers. Instead of hiring a consultant to help them, he invented a funny “rain dance” and dances to its tune every time he’s taking a hot shower.

It’s absurd, but who cares? I gave him the benefit of the doubt. He claimed he solved the problem without hiring a consultant. I smiled at Charlie and asked if the Hawaiian hula could be more potent.

Root causes

I analyzed their cases and discovered the same root causes that I’ve documented with the help of my clients decades back. They include – bad management style, bad system and bad situations that are causing them to commit mistakes. Many times, all three causes could happen simultaneously to an inexperienced manager.

But, Angie, Bernie and Charlie are not inexperienced managers. Based on their individual stories sent by email, Angie was intelligent enough to know that about 70 percent of their line executives are dictators to their direct reports whose ideas are routinely thrashed. They believe that being receptive to people is often misinterpreted as a sign of weakness.

That’s a classic case of a bad style of management. It was confirmed by the result of a recent anonymous employee morale survey that shocked top management. They’re paying their people with the highest rate in their industry. And yet, the result was a baffling high turnover rate.

I told Angie to do the following: First, share the survey results with all line executives.

Second, determine the management culprits with the greatest number of resignations. Talk to them one-on-one to ensure secrecy. Third, organize a leadership course that would help all line executives change their ways. Focus on how they should conduct casual engagement dialogues.

Next to share was Bernie and his defective products. I told him to consider mistake-proofing and build quality from within. He’s fifty percent knowledgeable but at a loss on how to build quality from within. I told him not to wait for the inspectors at the end of the line to catch the defects.

All workers must have the responsibility of preventing defects every step of the way. He gave me a quizzical look the first time we had an online chat. I realized they have a complicated work system that was started 23 years ago. So, that’s a system issue.

Next was Charlie, the rain dancer who told me about the bad feedback he received from HR. He was told he’s not a good listener. Every time a worker comes to see him at his desk, he continues reading some reports from his laptop without making an effort to have eye contact with people – a critical element in active listening.

“He’s rude and a fake manager. How could he encourage people to talk to him respectfully?” say two of his talkative workers. Analyzing Charlie’s problem, I asked about the layout of his workstation. He has a four-by-four-meter cubicle framed by a glass enclosure without a door.

When people see him from a distance, he waves back to acknowledge them. Charlie is in a comfortable situation that he doesn’t want to leave his cubicle. I told him: “You should invite your worker to a private meeting room where you can’t be disturbed.” It’s the situation that makes him bad.

Problem managers

In conclusion, when we hear stories about certain management problems, the first thing to do is to define their root cause or causes, which could be one or all of the following: bad management style, bad system or bad situation. Avoid blaming management for everything, even if you know me as someone who believes that – “problem workers are created by problem managers.”

That rule is not absolute. We’ll come out only with a verdict on a case-to-case basis if a problem manager doesn’t know what’s hitting them. So, rather than tearing your hair about bad results, reflect on Albert Einstein’s advice: “If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions.”

Let’s improve on that – “by thinking first about its root causes.” There’s nothing more convincing than having an honest root cause analysis with the help of people you don’t like.

Rey Elbo is a quality and productivity improvement enthusiast. Email your management concerns to [email protected] or via https://reyelbo.com. Anonymity is guaranteed.