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|In: Career Management|Last Updated:

We had company over the weekend. My youngest daughter and new son-in-law (a phrase I’m still getting used to) came to visit, which meant taking time out to write a new KJR just wasn’t going to happen.

So instead, enjoy this oldie but very, very goodie (in my not very humble opinion, at least). I’ll be back live next week.

– Bob

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Dear Bob,

I know this is a rather odd question, but I need your help with ManagementSpeak. No, it’s not translating it, it’s me translating to it!

I’ve been told that although I speak very well to and/or with end-users, I need to work more on talking with upper management. Three different managers have suggested this, so for the sake of my career and IS survival, I’m taking them seriously.

I’m pretty sure the very thing my manager wants is what you lampoon in your columns. Do you have any suggestions on learning how to translate into ManagementSpeak instead of your normal practice of translating from it? Just as important, can you tell me how to not snicker while I’m doing it?

Dancing around issues and trying to put a positive spin on everything, even when they are potential issues that need to be addressed, seems rather hypocritical. However, in the interest of my career, I have to at least try to overcome this particular “weakness.” Any suggestions, thoughts, or comments would be greatly appreciated.

– Talkin’ Trash in Tennessee

Dear Talkin’,

Here are a few suggestions that may help out. They may sound cynical, but they’re intended to help you be more persuasive, not manipulative. Use them with restraint, or you’ll go home every day feeling like you need a shower.

Rule #1: Never say “no.” You can present alternatives and estimate costs. You can explain that you don’t have the authority to say “yes” on your own. You can “see what the committee thinks about it.” “No” wrecks your image.

Rule #2: Never argue. “I think you’re wrong” just entrenches your opponent. If possible, make your own idea sound like a simple modification to your opponent’s moronic notion. If that isn’t possible, you can usually get away with, “I used to think the exact same thing. Then I ran across a book by Irving Slobodkin, and it made an interesting point.” That way you aren’t arguing — it’s Slobodkin who’s arguing.

Rule #3: Never present an idea as new or original. “I’ve read that some other companies are doing this [this being your great idea] when they’ve found themselves in this situation,” is far better. Why? First, new ideas are risky; “others are doing it” reduces the hazard. Second, nobody inside your company is allowed to be an expert. Why? That would make them better than the rest of us — who do you think you are, anyway? By quoting the experts rather than presenting yourself as one, you maintain the appearance of humility.

Rule #4: Find the upside. There are, after all, no problems, only opportunities. To avoid the cliche, make it a question: “How can we turn this to our advantage?” Many problems really are opportunities in disguise. Most are solvable challenges when faced with the right attitude but disasters when faced with the wrong one. (Don’t be asinine, though. The atmosphere gets icky when managers say brainless things like, “Don’t think of it as being unemployed and unable to feed your family. Think of it as an opportunity to broaden your horizons.”)

Understanding why you should follow these rules should help you keep a straight face and stay inside the fine line that separates diplomacy from stupidity on the one side and simple deception on the other.

Management has a lot in common with chess strategy. Each move you make has more at stake than achieving a single objective. Each should help you build a strong position as well. That means your speech should enhance relationships and alliance while avoiding the creation of antagonism or antagonists.

If all you want is to be right all the time, fine — just forget about your management aspirations. Being right is for staff. Leadership roles require you to be effective as well. Among the many skills this requires is the ability to present intrinsically unpleasant notions in ways that make them seem palatable.

Think of it this way: Somebody once figured out how to make raw oysters sound like a delicacy, not a pile of slimy goo. Sometimes, when you’re leading people, you have to achieve the same, seemingly insurmountable goal or nothing good will ever happen.

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|In: Leadership|Last Updated:

“American managers are stupid,” my correspondent offered, by way of explaining why so many ignore his perspectives.

I decided not to ask whether he meant that (1) all Americans are stupid and, by the laws of object inheritance and the transitive law of algebra, American managers, being Americans, are stupid; (2) American managers are stupider than the average American; or (3) it’s Sturgeon’s Law in action: 90% of everyone are stupid and that includes American managers.

To the best of my knowledge nobody has ever surveyed American managerial IQs to determine whether the mean is less than, greater than, or equal to 100 — IQ’s definitional IQ average. Also, IQ is a badly flawed metric.

Meanwhile, the American managers I’ve personally worked with have in general been a brighter than average lot. While employee dissatisfaction with management is both widespread and deserved, I’m pretty sure it isn’t because they are, as a class, dopes.

Which somehow or other brings us to this week’s topic.

Many companies conduct employee satisfaction surveys. Some are better than others, but I’ve yet to see any that move beyond warm fuzzies to the only metrics that matter in a market economy.

The KJR alternative: ask employees to express their satisfaction or dissatisfaction financially.

It will take only four questions:

Question #1: What percentage of your total compensation would you be willing to give up in exchange for a better manager?

Question #2: What is it about your manager that led to your answer to Question #1?

Question #3: What percentage of your total compensation would you be willing to give up in exchange for working in a better company?

Question #4: What is it about this company that led to your answer to Question #3?

Yes, yes, I know. The answers to questions 2 and 4 couldn’t be automatically tabulated, at least, not the first time you administer the survey. But which is more important — automated tabulation or useful information?

Even if you only ask questions #1 and #3, just knowing how much money employees would be willing to give up in exchange for a better work environment would give business leaders at all levels a lot to chew on.

Starting with this question: Does it matter?

It ought to matter a lot. It’s widely recognized that the best employees are at least twice as effective as average ones, and the gap is probably much wider than that.

The best employees are also the most mobile. Add to this another general-purpose factoid: Replacing a good employee costs the equivalent of about a year of compensation, counting recruiting costs, the costs of bringing new employees up to speed on their responsibilities, and the overall loss of team effectiveness as teams adjust to changes in their membership.

Do the math and it should be clear that losing your best employees is an expensive proposition.

And yet, I often run into companies whose employees privately tell me are utter meat grinders — horrible places to work. They have high employee turnover, as we’d predict, and yet they make so much money so quickly they have a hard time figuring out what to do with it all, and have over spans of decades.

How is this possible? The short answer is, beats me. The longer answer is nothing but speculation: The same management characteristics that make these companies bad places to work somehow make them resilient in the face of high employee turnover rates.

Take, for example, micromanagement. I’ve yet to hear anyone say they like being micromanaged. But whatever their flaws, micromanagers do know how to do the work they’re micromanaging. If they didn’t they couldn’t micromanage. And because they’re able to do the work, micromanagers can pick up the slack when an employee leaves.

Of course, picking up the slack adds pressure and workload, making the micromanager even less pleasant to work for.

Let the process play out for a few cycles and what you’ll get, I think, is a department staffed by mediocrities who can’t easily find better employment, run by managers for whom micromanagement is integral to how their department’s work gets done.

It’s a stable configuration. As long as the company does something else well enough to make it competitive in its marketplace, there are no forces in play to drive change and plenty in play to keep it as it is.

My guess is that similar dynamics govern other forms of stable, bad management.

If you’re one of the offending managers, please don’t take this as an endorsement of your management style. Explanation doesn’t equal approval.

And in any event, I’m just speculating. Maybe one of KJR’s more enlightened constituents has a better theory?

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