Dropping Keys

Posts tagged management

Back when I was a manager, I tried (and hopefully succeeded more often than not) to communicate positively with my team, be encouraging, and generally be helpful. I took the “remove obstacles so they could get the job done” approach.

I also did a lot of reading and tried to model my behaviour on good management examples that I came across.

Boy do I wish I had come across Edward “Tiger Mike” Davis at the time. He was the CEO of Tiger Oil Company back in the 70’s, and his memos to staff are absolutely epic.

Letters Of Note has the whole set so I recommend you checking them out, but here are a few highlights:

Idle conversation and gossip in this office among employees will result in immediate termination.
Don’t talk about other people and other things in this office.
DO YOUR JOBS AND KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT!

I swear, but since I am the owner of this company, that is my privilege, and this privilege is not to be interpreted as the same for any employee. That differentiates me from you, and I want to keep it that way. There will be absolutely no swearing, by any employee, male or female, in this office, ever.

We do not pay starvation wages, and there are some people left in this world who want to work. I am not fond of hippies, long-hairs, dope fiends or alcoholics. I suggest each and every person in a supervisory category (from driller up to me) eliminate these people.

Do not speak to me when you see me. If I want to to speak to you, I will do so. I want to save my throat. I don’t want to ruin it by saying hello to all of you sons-of-bitches.

Any employee who does not want to adhere to the items mentioned above can quit. If any of you think I will go out of business because I can’t hire help, get out, and I will hire the people to do the work. I don’t need a job - you people are the ones who need to get with it.
There is one thing that differentiates me from my employees. I am a known son-of-a-bitch, and I care to remain that way.

I think you get the idea. Definitely go read the whole collection of memos. I think we can all learn a lot from this great man.

My wife and I have a thing for Portland. I don’t know what it is exactly, but we love it there and usually go a few times a year without the kids for some R&R (the tax free shopping doesn’t hurt either).

Usually we do the Priceline game, but this last time we decided to splurge a bit and stayed at The Nines hotel. (Since we are cheap, by splurge I mean drop $110/night on Hotwire instead of $60-80 on Priceline). We loved The Nines by the way. It will probably be our default Portland stay from now on.

Since I am an extreme morning person and my wife is not, usually the way our trips go is I will wake up early in the morning and then, not wanting to disturb her, I will go for a walk or go hang out in the hotel lobby to read.

On our latest stay, the first morning I was in the lobby reading Linchpin, and noticed a hotel employee walking through the lobby on her way somewhere. All of a sudden she stopped, and I watched what she was up to.

She went into the little sitting area you see in the photo and adjusted the green chair. One of its’ legs had gone off the carpet. She straightened the chair, then went on her way doing whatever it was she was heading off to do.

I found this pretty remarkable for a few reasons. First of all, I was sitting right near the chair and didn’t even notice anything wrong with it. Obviously she saw something “off” and corrected it.

Second, as a guest, even if I had chosen that chair to sit, it would have taken me zero effort to move it up to the carpet. I wouldn’t have thought “This is the worst hotel ever!”, but still in the back of my mind something would have been “off”.

Third, as far as I could tell it wasn’t her job to be working the lobby. She was just passing through. However, she saw something that would cause her guests discomfort (a chair with one leg off the carpet), and stopped to correct it.

It’s difficult enough to get employees to do what they are supposed to be doing, let alone the little extra things that can make a big difference to your customers. Whoever manages The Nines has obviously figured out how to do it.

Some of you might know that at the end of March, I left my Director position at a division of a very large company.

It brought to mind Mark Suster’s excellent post How to Quit Your Job.

Mark’s post is about startups (and is from the perspective of the startup hiring someone away), but it made me think about the way that I left and how it relates/differs to Mark’s post.

Some relevant things about my situation that will frame what I’m going to write here:

• I had been at the company for 7 years
• I started on the front lines of my department and worked my way up to lead it
• When I started, it was a small Vancouver company, and it had been bought out and merged into a 55,000 person global organization
• I was (and still am) close personal friends with my boss, who started in her new position at the same time that I was leaving mine
• I was (and still am) close personal friends with many people who reported to me (that’s a subject for another post)
• My “right hand woman” who had been with me since the beginning also left at around the same time
• I was not leaving for another job (also a subject for another post)

You Gave How Much Notice?

It was two-and-a-half months notice between when I first told my new boss that I was leaving, and my final day.

Yes, you read that correctly - I gave two and a half months’ notice.

There are a number of reasons for my decision here, not all of them I need to go into, but it essentially came down to:

• Loyalty to my friend/boss
• Loyalty to my awesome employees
• Large companies can take a long time to move on personnel issues, and I wanted to make sure there was time to sort out my replacement
• We wanted to reduce the impact of having multiple people leave at once
• My role and department had a lot of moving parts and I wanted to make sure everything was transitioned properly
• There were some transition things going on anyways that I wanted to see through

Give An Inch….

Here is what Mark says about giving extended notice:

Nothing good has ever come out of a potential employee staying longer at their previous company. It’s more time that they can be flipped into staying. They’re always guilted into staying longer than they should.

Mark’s insight is quite interesting and, in my experience at various companies, very true.

In my own case here, the longer I was there during those two months, the more reasons were presented by the organization for why I should stay. On their face they were all absolutely valid reasons, and the longer the “notice period” went on, the more valid they seemed.

Would I Do It Again?

Would I give an almost 3 month notice again? Probably not. All the reasons I gave for my extended notice were absolutely valid and everything worked out fine, but there is just something “weird” about that period between when your leaving becomes public knowledge and you actually leave.

When it is the normal 2 weeks notice it is fine, but when you start talking months you are in a pretty difficult situation, especially when you have staff.

I was just lucky that my team was awesome and they didn’t make it too hard, but it certainly could have gone the other way.

Explaining Why You Are Leaving

Mark is pretty unequivocal that you should never, ever, get into why you are leaving. You should just say you are leaving for “personal reasons” and leave it at that:

The most common mistakes people make is telling their employer why they were >unhappy. This accomplishes nothing.
Only two outcomes – 1) they’re bitter about the things you told them needed to >improve. […]
2) They use what you’re unhappy about as a means to convince you to stay. […]
So my script for employees is to say, “I’m leaving for personal reasons. I loved my time at YourCo. I learned so much. I grew. I build fantastic friends and I’ll always be part of the alumni club. But it was just time for me to move on to another opportunity. It wasn’t YourCo. It was me. I was ready for the change.

I totally agree that you need to be very, very careful what you say when you are leaving.

I knew someone who exited his job by leaving a 6 page report on everything that was wrong in the company. That is definitely not advisable.

Having said that, I think that a lot of it depends on your position, influence, and your reasons for leaving.

It is possible to leave and recommend some areas for improvement. You are not helping the people you are “leaving behind” if you leave with big elephants standing there in the room.

It is possible (I believe) to leave while giving “helpful suggestions” if they are tactful, without blame (or names), and done in the spirit of suggesting improvement rather than complaining.

It is an art though, so if you are not the sort of person that is good at walking that particular tightrope, stick with Mark’s advice. You can never go wrong with “personal reasons”.

So, how about you. Any good leaving your job stories? Agree? Disagree? I’d love to hear your thoughts.