As you can tell from my lack of posting lately, life and work have been beyond busy. I did, however, have a chance to check out a great little management book by Nick McCormick called Lead Well and Prosper. Although the book was little in size, it was full of great management information.
The main theme of the book focuses on humanizing your management style and treating your people well in order to get the most out of them. The chapters are broken down into very digestible bits and covers topics like adopting a serving attitude, embracing the idea of teaching others, listening well, sharing information, and generally focusing on “doing the right thing”. It might sound very simple, but these are all things that many current (and future) managers could benefit from. In my experience, it’s simple tips and tricks like the ones covered in this book that can be the most useful in the real world.
Beyond the various lessons in each chapter, I really liked the way the book broke the content into hyper digestable bits. The fact that you can read the entire book in approximately 30 minutes makes it a valuable addition to any “new manager” training package. I’ll definitely be keeping it handy and sharing it with others around the office…
The good folks over at 37Signals have just posted a great blog entry focused on the evils of building a team of work-a-holics. I’m sure a lot of us have been there, and I’m the first to put a stop to building a culture based on 14+hr days as the norm.
1. Workaholics may well say that they enjoy those 14 hour days week after week, but despite their claims, working like that all month, all the time is not going to be sustainable. When the burnout crash comes, and it will, it’ll hit all the harder and according to Murphy at the least convenient time.
2. People who are workaholics are likely to attempt to fix problems by throwing sheer hours at the problem. If you’re dealing with people working with anything creatively that’s a deadbeat way to get great work done.
3. People who always work late makes the people who don’t feel inadequate for merely working reasonable hours. That’ll lead to guilt, misery, and poor morale. Worse, it’ll lead to ass-in-seat mentality where people will “stay late” out of obligation, but not really be productive.
4. If all you do is work, your value judgements are unlikely to be sound. Making good calls on “is it worth it?” is absolutely critical to great work. Missing out on life in general to put more hours in at the office screams “misguided values”.
5. Working with interesting people is more interesting than just working. If all you got going for your life is work, work, work, the good team-gelling lunches are going to be some pretty boring straight shop talk. Yawn. I’d much rather hear more about your whittling project, your last trek, how your garden is doing, or when you’ll get your flight certificate.
In my mind, you really want your team to work normal, reasonable hours so they can go home and have lives. That balance is critical to being a well rounded human. Additionally, there are times when a little extra effort is needed and it’s those RARE times that you want your team to step up and genuinely put forth the extra effort since it is a rare thing. The best teams I’ve worked on are balanced ones.
What’s your take on work-a-holics?
Since this blog focuses a lot on finding and retaining talent, I have to agree with Seth Godin’s article about focusing HR on talent rather than the mundane.
Microsoft and Google both have a very healthy focus on finding and recruiting Talent. McDonald’s recently announced that they want to hire people who smile more. The first strategy works, the second won’t. Talent is too smart to stay long at a company that wants it to be a cog in a machine. Great companies want and need talent, but they have to work for it.
The old fashion ideas that HR is more clerical than functional and helpful are out dated. Over the last few years I’ve worked to find individuals in my HR organization who can help focus us on talent. As with anything you’ll need to think a little differently, but those who can find and retain a strong pool of talented contributers will be able to weather almost any challenge.