Do Business Well

Occasionally, every manager must use his or her authority to take over a difficult situation without explanation or discussion. At such times, pulling rank is not only acceptable, but necessary. Dr. Leland Forst, a vice president at the New York City office of the management consulting firm, A.T. Kearney, suggests scenarios when this arbitrary use of power may be called for:

• When you alone can save the day. “Sometimes the manager has information, know-how or authority that the employee lacks,” says Forst.

Example: A subordinate is making a presentation to a client group and you see them becoming uneasy or antagonistic. By virtue of your relationship with the client, your knowledge of confidential information, or just your position (people are generally less inclined to challenge a senior person), you can override the employee and steer things back on course. Continue Reading »

1 Comment »

In an attempt to encourage more communication with her staff, a manager institutes a policy of taking a different employee to lunch each week. She also makes it a point to make the rounds every couple of days for informal chats. After a while she finds that employees are canceling their lunch dates. She also discovers that they find her visits intrusive and artificial.

In order to review the status of ongoing projects, keep everyone informed, and provide a forum where employees can speak their minds, a department head schedules daily 9:00 a.m. meetings. After the first week, attendance declines.

An administrator who advocates participative management sends employees a detailed questionnaire designed to elicit suggestions for improvement and announces a series of follow-up meetings. Employees respond with an “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” attitude, and their response level is very low. Continue Reading »

5 Comments »

A network documentary once showed in poignant detail how forced separation from the companies to which they had devoted their most productive years had affected several managers. For some, the effect was disastrous—a loss of confidence, of identity, even of belief in the system that could permit this to happen. Each had worked hard and well for his or her company. “How could they do this to me?” was the question that each, in his or her own way, asked.

One response to this question was given by Lord Edward Thurlow, an English jurist and statesman of the 18th century who asked, “Did you ever expect a corporation to have a conscience, when it has no soul to be damned, and no body to be kicked?”

While it is true that corporations work best when they appreciate the human potential of their employees, it is also true that people are, on the corporate books, a cost variable of paramount importance. Without the ability to control such costs, no corporation could survive. And though the managers of some corporations do it more gracefully or logically than others, in the end, the necessity to maintain itself in the marketplace by controlling the size and cost of its work force is an essential function of all corporations. Continue Reading »

3 Comments »

Despite laws and company policies prohibiting age discrimination, employers are sometimes unwilling to hire older managers or even consider interviewing them. They erroneously believe that experienced managers are too costly, too set in their ways or too inflexible to work well in today’s lean and mean business environment.

If you’re unhappy in your present job or suspect that you will soon be in the job market, however, don’t allow the possibility of prejudice to negatively influence your efforts to find a position. Plenty of employers are looking for experienced professionals. It’s up to you to convince them that you’re a good catch. Here are some pointers to follow: Continue Reading »

6 Comments »

Mergers can be tough, as any employee who has survived one can testify. James C. Cabrera, president of the outplacement-counseling firm of Drake Beam Morin Inc., in New York City, and contributor to The Merger/Acquisition Consultant newsletter, finds that, even for employees who keep their jobs, anxiety remains high. He says that with a merger a new entity suddenly exists which is unfamiliar to everyone. Things are turned upside down, and the three basic things all employees feel entitled to know—what is expected of them, how their performance will be measured and how they will be rewarded—become unanswered questions. For a time—and it may be a long time—there may simply be no answers.

In this sort of reorganization, you and your employees are likely to be left hanging, wondering whether your positions will be eliminated, restructured or combined; whether you will be demoted, promoted or asked to relocate. Continue Reading »

3 Comments »

A Sniper Can Hurt Your Operation

Your office manager is really furious. He’s just found out that the bookkeeper has been making insulting remarks about him behind his back. “Ever since I became her supervisor, she’s resented me—probably because I don’t let her get away with sloppy work. But I really think this is outrageous. What are you going to do about it?”

Here is one of those situations you wish would go away by itself. Personality clashes do occur and sometimes straighten themselves out with time. But this one seems to call for your intervention.

Here are some steps you might take:

• Verify the incident. When a report reaches you third-hand, you need to confront the source: “It’s come to my attention that you’ve been making insulting remarks about your supervisor behind his back. Is this true?”

Continue Reading »

2 Comments »

In any group of employees, you’re bound to find some who don’t hesitate to speak their minds, even if their opinions are unpopular.

This is not inherently good or bad. But you need to learn to distinguish between well-intentioned objections, which contain valid insights, and ill-meant dissent, which tends only to stir up conflict. You must find a place for the former and authority to defuse the latter. Some suggestions:

• Look for patterns. Not everyone who states a divergent viewpoint is really trying to cause trouble in the workplace. “Employees tend to build histories of conduct based on consistent intentions,” observes Dr. Ralph H. Kilmann, a professor of business administration at the University of Pittsburgh and author of Beyond The Quick Fix. When someone establishes a track record for taking issue with company policy, that record usually shows a pattern in the way it is expressed.

Continue Reading »

3 Comments »

Jim Welbach is feeling a bit frustrated these days. He has managed to find room in his budget to hire one extra person in his marketing operation, which means that he has been able to promote one of his staffers, Jane Loudin, to the post of Assistant Marketing Director—on a provisional basis. She will now oversee much of the advertising copy and press releases that Welbach formerly supervised—thus freeing him up for larger projects with his boss, the company’s executive VP.

It all sounds reasonable and workable, but like so many plans that look good on an organizational chart, this one has run into a few snags. It seems that the staffers who now write the ad copy and press releases, and who were not offered the job, are not acting in a cooperative fashion with their new supervisor. There are disagreements, arguments about work, the content of the copy, whose ideas get precedence and imagined or not-so-imagined slights, followed by recriminations. Continue Reading »

3 Comments »

Whistle-blowers—employees who believe their organizations are engaged in illegal, dangerous or unethical conduct and speak out about it—occupy a peculiar niche in America. On the one hand, the public applauds their courage. On the other, it stands quietly by as the whistle- blowers are punished and ostracized for their revelations.

• Allan McDonald and Roger Boisjoly, engineers at Morton Thiokol, testified about serious technical flaws in the space shuttle Challenger and were promptly transferred to menial jobs.
• Herbert Rosenblum, an official of New York’s Human Resources Administration, revealed that 14,000 people who had died or moved away were still on the city’s Medicaid rolls. His reward: demotion and a pay cut.
• Several years ago, Charles Atchison, a quality control engineer at a Texas nuclear power plant, brought numerous safety infractions to the attention of a regulatory board. He was fired and blackballed.

Continue Reading »

4 Comments »

You work when, where and how you like.

Traditional’ business is highly regulated. You work a 45-hour week. You have to be at work during the ‘core’ hours, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. You have to travel to work and consequently live within reasonable distance of your employment. None of these principles apply to network marketing. You can work as many hours per week as you wish, when you wish, and you can live where you want to. There is tremendous flexibility.

You are committed to developing lifelong relationships.

Network marketing hinges around giving behaviouf Traditional behaviour focuses on taking. How concerned is the car salesman really that the customer gets a good deal and becomes a lifelong customer? While management mayespouse this ideal, many sales people are concerned solely with getting the order and making commission rather than in ensuring the customer’s complete satisfaction. Continue Reading »

3 Comments »