Category Archives: Business Situations

Ever wonder how you should handle a particular business situation? Everything in Business Situations is indexed to help you find the assistance you need quickly and conveniently. Leadership Development, Management Training and Business Ethics (among other topics) are covered in this category.

How Does a Young Manager from the Outside Convince an Interviewer that He Can Lead?

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How Do You Convince an Interviewer That You Can Lead?

Recently, a reader posed a question after finding our article explaining how young managers can lead older subordinates. Because his question (posted below) required more than just a passing comment as a response, we decided to dedicate an entire post to properly address it.

Recently I interviewed for a leadership position in a big and reputable organization. The company is considering internal candidates also for the position. This position is likely to lead a huge team which also includes experienced and older team members, many of whom would’ve been interviewed for the same position. The interview panel felt that it would be a humongous challenge for me to lead such a team. Although the panel seemed satisfied with my professional exposure, they considered the people challenges to be the most difficult part of the job. In the subsequent round of interviews, what do you think my approach should be to the people management aspect? – Sourabh De in Mumbai, India

Great question, Sourabh. Our answer is going to assume that you’ve previously led a large team and/or subordinates with more experience. If neither of these is the case, you’ve got a tremendous uphill battle ahead of you. Companies – especially large, reputable ones – are exceedingly unlikely to gamble with important roles like the one you’ve described. If they rolled the dice and hired the untested from outside for key management positions they certainly wouldn’t be large or reputable for very long. While it is perfectly acceptable for these companies to promote an inexperienced top performer from within, it would be institutional suicide if they put unproven outsiders in important leadership roles.

Keep the Focus on the Interviewers, Not the Interviewee

As you are obviously neither untested nor inexperienced, you should still have a shot at the position. To help keep your focus on the task at hand, it’s important to understand there is a reason you are being interviewed in the first place. Certainly, we can assume there are no clear frontrunners currently employed with this company; because great companies don’t waste their people’s time assembling a panel to interview outsiders who have no chance of joining the team. We also have to assume, however, that your skill set is similar to at least a few of their current employees.

How will you stand out and convince them you are capable of leading their team?

The key for anyone attempting to join a new company is to make yourself seem indispensable without having to explain just how much they need you. Telling the interview panel why you’re more qualified than those they already employ makes you seem arrogant and seemingly questions their ability to organically grow talent. The trick is to get them to see you as crucial to their success all on their own.

This is accomplished by keeping the focus on those conducting the interview; and by you keeping quiet when possible. Just as there is a greater likelihood of being successful on a sales call when you let your prospect dominate the conversation, you stand a better chance of landing a job when you allow the interviewer to do most of the talking. People love to hear their own voice, and when you ask their opinions and genuinely listen to their answers with interest, they perceive you as much brighter and more likeable and qualified than if you spoke non-stop during the interview.

In your next interviews, be sure to ask well thought out questions and listen carefully to the responses. This will make you seem mature beyond your years, and may help them see you as the leader of their large team.


What Are Their Goals?

As you prepare your questions for your next round of interviews, it’s important to know as much as you can about the goals of the company and, especially, the individual needs of those on the interview panel. Do you have a “coach” or friend who works for this company? If so, ask them about the hot buttons of each member of the interview panel, and then fashion your questions so that you allow the interviewers to showcase their strengths and fully explain their desires. If you do not have a coach, then you’ll have to use what you already know about the panel to determine their wants.

Obviously, it’s easier if you’re dealing with a single interviewer, but the key to getting people to tell you their goals is to ask them. In cases where you’re dealing with an interviewer one-on-one, you could probe for goals during the interview by asking the right questions and paying attention to the responses. Posing questions such as “assuming you hire me for the position, how will you know if I am successful?” may allow you some insight into whether the interviewer expects only mediocre results from the role or genuinely believes it could chart the future for the company. It also helps the interviewer picture you in the role (this is critical).

Play To Your Strengths

Because we can assume there are no insiders who are truly frontrunners for the position, it’s time to identify your unique strengths and play to them. Without sounding arrogant, you’ll want to align your strengths with the needs of the company and of the interviewers.

More than anything Sourabh, it’s important to present your strengths in a way that ensures those doing the interviewing that you will be an asset because 1) you are an expert at gaining trust and assimilating a new team quickly; 2) you excel at leading large groups; and 3) you are especially adept at leading older subordinates.

The best way I’ve found to give interviewers a sense that you possess these qualities is to identify these as potential pitfalls for whomever they choose. Whether they ask you directly or not, you should find the opportunity to state that the major challenges (as you see them) for the successful candidate are points 1, 2, and 3 above; making certain to provide examples when you 1) quickly gained trust; 2) excelled at leading a large group; and 3) you successfully and joyfully led older subordinates.

Stay Positive

Above all else, stay positive. This company certainly doesn’t want someone in the role who is going to hurt the morale of the team or undermine the authority of their peers. A negative attitude, even if it’s toward a competing candidate, will make you seem disingenuous.

Although you’re certain that you are the best person for the position (or you have no business getting this far in the interview process), you must avoid comparisons that paint the other candidates (either individually or collectively) as unqualified. In their minds, the interview panel has assembled a diverse group of highly talented people; any of whom might be a perfect fit. If you acknowledge this with a positive attitude and highlight where you will be able to overcome the major obstacles, you stand a much better chance of landing the role.

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Best of luck and please let us know how it turns out.

Leaders Don’t Get Too Caught Up In The Details

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Low Hanging Fruit and the Cost of Perfection

Imagine a small airplane flying low over a crowd at a baseball game. The door of the plane opens and a smiling man appears with a large sack. He turns the sack over just as the plane flies over the bleachers and millions of dollars in various denominations begin to flutter down to the amazed crowd below. The plane makes a dozen more passes, and each time the man empties sacks of bills onto the crowd.

Now imagine you are in this crowd and you see hundreds, fifties, twenties, tens, fives and ones all floating toward your waiting hands. As the bills come within reach, you feel compelled to collect only the fives and ones because you know they’ll be easy to spend and they’ll work in most vending machines. Additionally, you decide to straighten each bill as it reaches your hand and you arrange all bills in sequential order by serial number and denomination as you collect them.

Of course, these decisions hinder your ability to gather the maximum amount of money, but you really want to make sure these dollars are perfectly displayed in your wallet once the money shower subsides.


Crazy? Probably, but managers in businesses of all shapes and sizes make similar decisions every day. While rationale people would grab every bill just as fast as possible, managers locked into some strange quest for flawlessness worry too much about perfection and not enough about the goal – costing their companies millions in actual losses and even more in lost productivity.

 

Leaders Grab the Low Hanging Fruit

 

Often in sales we talk about Low Hanging Fruit (LHF). This overused phrase refers to the sales that are so easy to make you just have to walk up to the great sales tree, reach up and pick the customer of your choice. This phrase is so hackneyed and misunderstood that it nearly cracked the Top Ten in our list of the 25 Most Annoying Business Phrases of All Time.

 

The concept of LHF in sales came about because inexperienced salespeople would often pass up the sure thing only to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to close a sale that would eventually yield them less commission. In leadership, LHF refers to the opportunities that take little effort. These opportunities are often not glamorous, causing unfocused managers to chase shinier objects (leaving the LHF to rot on the vine).

 

Leaders, of course, maintain the goal in the forefront of their minds. This keeps them focused and allows them the wisdom to grab the Low Hanging Fruit; and to avoid the traps of shiny objects and the ill-advised pursuit of perfection. Leaders do what is best for the company and not just what feels best at the time or makes them appear to be in control.

 

Perfection is a Joke, and it Costs Too Much

 

I once worked with someone who was put in charge of overseeing the migration of the company’s website from provider X to provider Z. While X had done a fine job with the site, the company just felt it was time to change. No biggie, this happens. Unfortunately, my colleague got so caught up in how every page of the new website looked (she argued for weeks about shades of blue that were indistinguishable to the naked eye), that the designers at provider Z left out major functionality that would have converted twice as many visitors. Additionally, the new website performed poorly with search engines like Google because my colleague was too busy picking just the right images to notice that the content was incorrect.

 

A leader who was focused on the goal would have known that search visibility and conversion were the primary objectives of the website, and that there were no secondary objectives. This leader would have looked at the opportunity to build the site correctly as Low Hanging Fruit and would never have been caught up in unimportant details like Cornflower blue v. Dodger blue.

 

The Devil is in the Details

 

In today’s business world there is no room for perfection. Those lucky enough to still have a job are likely carrying the weight of several laid-off coworkers. True leaders understand this and do everything they can to maximize the ROI of their activities and decisions. They do not get caught up in colors or sequential bill stacking when the future of the company is at stake. As bad as it may sound to the dilettante managers, leaders understand that good enough is sometimes good enough.

 

Gaming and Cheating in Business – Why Companies Always Lose When They Cut Corners

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The Short Term or the Long Term

I’m often asked by young managers whether a given decision should be made for the short-term or the long-term well-being of a company; and I always give the same answer: both. No matter what the issue is, the ultimate decision should weigh the pros, cons and consequences over both the long and short terms.

That is not to say that I think that both are equally important – on the contrary – there is no doubt that the long-term health of a company is always more important than the company’s short-term health. Always. Always. Always. And, before you argue that without short-term strength a company will not have a long term; I’ll concede that you are right… and that you just proved my point.

Short-Term Health v. Long-Term Health

While the argument for short-term health versus long-term health may rage in your office, the truth is that no decisions ever really come down to an either/or – it is not a simple dichotomy. Sound company decisions always weigh long-term health against some potential short-term gain or loss. For example: do we take the gain today knowing that we will lose something (but not everything) in the future?

A decision made in favor of a company’s short-term viability so that this same company can be around in the future is indeed a decision made for both the short and long term. I would argue, in fact, that the company’s long-term health was likely the primary deciding factor in choosing the short-term strategy. You simply cannot make short-term decisions that disregard the company’s long-term well-being and expect to be in business in the future.

Short-Term Health v. Short-Term Wealth

Is it short-term health or short-term wealth you seek? Before you tell me that the two are never mutually exclusive, let’s ask the former executives of Lehman Brothers.

Because nearly all of us are paid more on the short-term outcomes we drive for our companies rather than what we provide over the long term, it is easy to see why some companies will game and cheat to maximize short-term revenue at the sake of long-term viability.

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

We’ve previously shared this Upton Sinclair quote and it is as fitting in this context as it was in earlier posts. Why would middle managers even begin to try and understand the importance of a company’s long-term viability when 99% of their compensation is related to the short term? We should not be surprised, then, that many companies – and even whole industries – routinely mortgage their futures for the sake of a few dollars today. (Mortgage indeed.)




Gamers and Cheaters – Hall of Shame

While there are a number of industries that routinely cut corners to drive a few short-term dollars to their bottom lines (the banking and casual dining industries come to mind immediately), we decided to focus the remainder of this article on two specific industries that habitually game and cheat, and still don’t get it.

The first industry is known in the automotive business as “Third Party Lead Aggregators.” Basically, these companies acquire contact information from consumers who are reportedly in the market for a car, then sell these as leads to automotive dealers.

Because the aggregators sell leads at a fixed price to car dealers, though purchase the leads from their affiliates and the open market at variable prices, the push to achieve a suitable margin (in the short term) means that the aggregators must purchase a significant number of lower priced, lower quality leads to mix in with a few higher priced, higher quality leads. While this behavior results in greater short-term profits, it comes with an increase in customer churn and a reduction of long-term loyalty.

Think of it as watering down the lobster bisque. In the short term you make more money, though over the long run people stop coming to your restaurant.

What About Watering Down the Herbicide?

There’s actually an acceptable practice in business for cheating and gaming one’s customers known as the Least Noticeable Difference (LND). This is a product strategy that involves improving gross margin via minute degradations to the size or ingredient quality of a product. The key is to ensure that the quality or size is reduced just enough so that most consumers will never notice.

The other cheating industry we wish to highlight is one that seems to thrive on making LND changes (on a weekly basis). Welcome to the lawn service business. This industry is dominated by national players like TruGreen ChemLawn, Scott’s and ServiceMagic; but also populated by countless local players with such creative and fun names as Grasshopper Lawn Service and Bizzy Bee Lawn Care.

You can’t blame this group for cheating. All of their customers live in nice homes and hire someone else to cut their lawns and kill their weeds – i.e., they’re not really paying attention. Additionally, much of the work in this industry involves spraying a clear liquid on grass; the results of which are not realized for weeks. Who wouldn’t be tempted to cheat and water down the herbicide?

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Over the last few weeks the crab grass began to spread (again) in our yard. As we seem to have to do every few months, we called our lawn service to complain. What did they do? The same thing they always do: They apologized profusely, blamed it on the “increase in rain” and promised to come out “tomorrow and treat the lawn again, for free.”

“Not good enough,” I replied. “You’re fired.”

While most of their customers are probably fooled by their reactionary customer service and gladly allow them to continue, we simply could not reward this gaming and cheating behavior any longer. The truth is they simply don’t use enough herbicide during their weekly treatments to be effective, and they know it. They’ve watered it down to maximize their margins and they’re crossing their fingers that you’ll never notice. If you do, they simply apologize and “give” you an immediate treatment for “free.” What they’re actually giving you in this one-time treatment is something they should have been giving you all along: Quality.

LNDs: No One Can Eat Just One

Used once, an LND strategy can be an effective way to make a nice short term improvement to profits. Unfortunately we generally assume (incorrectly) that we will make these changes only when most customers will likely never notice. Like crack cocaine or Lay’s Potato Chips, we sometimes become so addicted to making these LNDs that we can’t stop until it’s too late. Our customers have left us and they’re not coming back.

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Make no mistake, we’re not naïve. We understand that there are plenty of business gamers and cheaters who are successfully pulling the wool over the eyes of their gullible customers every day – and have done so for years. Whether it’s from collusion or a lack of competition in their industry, these businesses have (so far) been able to operate in a vacuum; living high on the hog via a long series of short-term decisions.

Odds are that this cannot last; that the customers will revolt or a new competitor will enter the fray offering real value. Whatever happens, rest assured that it will indeed happen, and that by the time the gamers and cheaters realize it, it will likely be too late. (At least that’s what we hope.)

Some People Should Be Allowed To Quit – Coughlin’s Law Can Always Take Over

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Coughlin’s Law: Bury the Dead

People leave, let’s get over it. Gone are the days when a man arrives for work in the factory two days after his high school graduation and leaves forty years later with a gold watch. The American career path hasn’t included this scenario since before Lyndon Johnson took office. Over the last 40 years, American workers and American businesses have had an arrangement: Every man for himself.

For some reason, the most senior leaders of my company just don’t understand this.

We recently had an executive announce he was moving on; he no longer felt like there was a “fit” for him in our organization. He held no ill will for the company, but recent changes just made it difficult for him to continue in his capacity. In reality, he was doing what was best for him and the company. Besides, his employment was always, by law, considered to be “at-will.”

Our senior leadership was immediately filled with a strange hatred for this “traitor.” Like Bo Schembechler uttering that “a Michigan Man will coach Michigan” when then Michigan basketball coach Bill Frieder was talking to Arizona State in 1989, and Bo swiftly fired him (assistant coach Steve Fisher took over and won the national championship that season), our senior leadership began to treat this previously invaluable executive as some sort of leper. He became persona non grata overnight.

There ain’t no good guys, there ain’t no bad guys. There’s only you and me and we just disagree. – Dave Mason

The Company Owes You Nothing

It’s important to note that my company’s leadership has eliminated more than one thousand jobs over the last fifteen months amid the current recession. This doesn’t make them villains; they did this in the best interest of the shareholders. This, you see, is their duty.


The one thousand plus newly unemployed soles may not like it, but the company owed them nothing. There was no contract between the parties that guaranteed a lifetime of employment. There couldn’t be; not if we want businesses to succeed and create jobs and pay taxes. (It’s important to note that nearly every one of those who were laid off received severance packages better than that which they were due. The company did right by these employees.)

You Owe the Company Nothing

Just as your at-will employment can be terminated by the company for no cause, you have the right to walk when you want. You owe them nothing. The minute you begin to think differently, it’s time for you to consider a career change.

While on the payroll – and especially when you’re in a leadership position – you owe your company your best efforts, which include leading with integrity. If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know that your integrity is critical to delivering great leadership. A duplicitous heart lacks integrity, and you have to be dedicated to your company’s well-being if you expect to be taken seriously as a leader.

That said, the minute you’re ready to go, you need to go, and you need not look back. It’s just sad that the alleged mature leaders in your company will likely treat you as someone taking part in some strange industrial espionage ritual.

Why Can’t Life Imitate Art?

Bryan Brown’s Doug Coughlin said it best in 1988’s Cocktail: “Coughlin’s Law: Bury the dead. They stink up the joint.” Companies and leaders need to figure this out and get over the natural turnover that occurs in American business today. People leave, it doesn’t make them the enemy. It does, however, make you look like an ass when you overreact to it.

Sales 101 – Stop “Venting” and Start Selling!

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Are You Venting or Just Making Excuses?

A colleague recently posted a rant about the quality of the leads she was handling on an automotive industry social network. As a part of her diatribe on her most recent batch of Internet sales leads, she gave some great examples of just how bad the leads really were. Her examples proved that some of the leads (certainly her examples) were indeed crap with a capital C.

In case you’re feeling like you should be the next one to go online and rant, read on…

Venting can be cathartic, and for those of us in your shoes, we know your vent will probably be warranted. After you’re finished venting, however, be sure you’re factoring in the percentages. Once you do this, you’ll likely find that things are much better than you imagined.

Like my colleague’s, yours will probably be a rhetorical venting, but I can’t help but provide a little advice. I’m hopeful you take this in the right light, as the following is the same advice I would give to any sales manager who expresses similar dissatisfaction in the quality of their leads:

“Failures” in the Sports World

  • You should know that the most successful hitter in Major League Baseball history was Ted Williams. In 1941, Williams maintained a .406 batting average. Since then, no MLB hitter has been able to break .400. This means that in the last 68 years, every batter in baseball has failed more than 60% of the time. Are they all failures? Of course not.

  • More recently, Derek Jeter of the Yankees won the Silver Slugger award in 2008 and was an All Star for the 9th time in his career. Should Jeter waste time venting about the 70% of the at-bats he had last year where he failed to get a hit? Of course not.

  • Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player of all time, yet his NBA career shooting percentage is just .497. He missed more shots than he made! Is MJ a failure? Of course not.


A traditional team in my industry handling Internet customers closes about 10% of their leads, a very good Internet sales team can consistently close above 18%, while a great team generally closes above 25% of all leads. This means that even the great teams fail to close 7.5 out of every 10 leads they receive. Wow, those guys are either complete failures or those leads must really stink!

Do the Leads Stink or Does the Team?

Of course, neither statement is true. A team closing 25% of their leads consistently is on the top of their game… and the leads they’re working are of the same quality you’re working.

The truth is that with proper lead counts, a great process and a dedication to that process, any team can be successful closing sales leads.

I’ve always believed you can vent about the bad leads or you can sell the good ones.

Stop Whining and Start Selling

While I’m not sure how my colleague took the advice above, it could be worse. I could have simply recited Blake’s words from Glengarry Glen Ross: “The leads are weak. F***ing leads are weak? You’re weak.”

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We can always find reasons we cannot succeed… they’re called excuses. It’s time to stop whining and start selling.

Email Etiquette for Message Importance – When “Importance: High” = “Don’t Waste Your Time”

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Quick, Read This Email… Now!

Today I received another in a long line of email messages from a certain vendor touting their newest and greatest product improvement. This email, like all of its predecessors, arrived in my Outlook inbox as a message of High Importance. Because I receive just one in five hundred messages marked “Importance: High,” I generally give these more than a quick glance when they arrive.

Imagine my surprise when I noticed a subject line this morning that read **Special Sneak Peek: (Vendor Name Omitted) New Guided Search**. I thought, “Wow, this is big news! You made an enhancement to your website that will have little to no effect on me or my business, and you sent me the details in a message marked High Importance. Congratulations! I now like you even less than I did five minutes ago.”

The Email Who Cried Wolf

No need to rehash this as a new millennium version of the famous fable attributed to Aesop, except to say that with each email of miniscule importance sent by this vendor that masquerades as a critical Top Secret UMBRA message, I lose more interest in reading anything they send… anything.

In fact, it’s become so bad that I now treat all of their messages akin to how one would treat the proclamations of a ten-year old who brags about what a big boy he is every time he makes “doody in the toy-toy.” We get it, congratulations; you pooped.


It’s not just egocentric vendors who misuse the High Importance selection in Outlook, though it does seem to be solely the province of the unintelligent and unsophisticated. Ever get the High Importance email on Tuesday afternoon sent to everyone at your company reminding you that the office refrigerator will be cleaned out promptly at 5:00 PM on Friday? Chances are your CEO didn’t send it.

You Don’t Sell Plasma

Out of every 500 High Importance emails I receive, about ten truly require my immediate attention – and none of these ten ever originates from a vendor. Here’s a quick email etiquette tip: if you’re a vendor who does not sell plasma, stop acting like you sell plasma. The more you try to make your customers care about your (fill in the blank), the less they care.

High Importance status should exist solely for those emails that require both immediate attention and for which there will be negative consequences if they do not receive immediate attention. If your email merely requires that the recipients read and respond, write “RESPONSE REQUIRED” in the subject line. Likewise, if your message requires that recipients take an action based on the email, try placing “ACTION REQUIRED” in the subject line.

What About Tagging Something “Low Importance?”

Here’s a bonus to those vendors who don’t understand basic email marketing rules, and who mark their outbound sales messages as “Importance: Low.” Likely you tagged these emails as having Low Importance out of some misguided consideration for your recipient. Congratulations, your emails are ending up in SPAM filters all across the Web. Quick tip: never mark any email as having Low Importance. If the email is truly of Low Importance, don’t send it.

For that matter, if the message only highlights some unimportant feature enhancement of your website, don’t send that email either.

Stop the Madness – Social Networking is not a Panacea

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You’re Not Ready for Social Networking

A colleague who operates a retail franchise asked me my thoughts about incorporating social networking into his Internet sales efforts. Currently, he tracks about 35% of his sales directly to customers who first contacted his store via the Internet.

As I explained to my colleague (without trying to sound like a killjoy) I have no doubt that franchisees can and do sell their wares using Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. The question, however, should not be “How do I use social networking to drive sales?” but rather “Am I ready to use social networking to drive sales?” For 99% of the franchised retail locations out there, the answer is that you’re just not ready.

“Internet sales” (let’s not call it Internet marketing just yet) is an evolution. Think of your Internet sales approach as a “crawl-walk-run” strategy and determine where your store is using this scale. For example, if you’re not closing 20% of the leads generated by your website, then you’re still crawling. Put some processes and training in place to make sure you’re selling all of the low-funnel buyers before spending hours maintaining a Facebook page to possibly attract high-funnel browsers.

I Think I Can Fly

Social networking, you see, is in the flying stage of the crawl-walk-run continuum, because it takes roughly 100 times the effort to generate one sale as a good old fashioned salesman following a good old fashioned process working a good old fashioned lead. The ROI is just not there. Spending time managing a company MySpace account without successfully managing the leads and calls you’re already getting is like skipping first, second and third base on your way to home. It’s just not a homerun if you don’t touch all the bases.


I gave him a few examples to help him determine where his store was on the crawl-walk-run continuum:

You’re still crawling if:

  • You don’t have a written, clearly defined Internet sales process that includes at least 90 days of follow-up;
  • You’re not actively managing your store’s online reputation; and
  • You don’t currently collect 99% of customer email addresses in your store.

You’re just walking if:

  • You’re not logging at least 90% of your inbound sales calls in your CRM tool for future follow-up;
  • You’re not sending monthly, targeted email messages to your database (and I’m not talking about an e-newsletter here); and
  • You don’t have a clearly defined SEO strategy that includes managing your presence on the local searches.

You might be running if:

  • You’re consistently closing 20% of your Internet leads and phone ups;
  • You employ an effective SEM strategy; and
  • You’ve exhausted all the traditional leads sources available to you and you are actively seeking new ways to drive customers into your store.

But Twitter is Cool

The sad truth to all of this is that the cool stuff you can do on the Internet in the retail business, like social networking, is useless to an Internet sales department that has failed to do the heavy lifting first. We all want to do what’s new and glamorous, but there are no magic bullets in sales – it all takes work and 99% of that work is not glamorous.

This is not to say that social networking can’t have a huge impact on a brand, because it can. As I explained to my colleague, leave the bulk of the social networking to the manufacturer (the owners of the brand) until you’ve successfully harvested the low hanging fruit for your store.

Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss – Dealing with Your New Boss

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How Do You Deal With a New Boss?

One of our regular readers – and someone who asked our advice very early on in the legacy that has become AskTheManager.com – AngelCakes from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan recently provided us with both an update on her management career and a new dilemma.

When we first heard from AC, she had just been promoted to a supervisory position in a retail shop and was facing substantial apathy and even antipathy from her charges. Not being one to quit in the face of such adversity, she turned to the Web for answers and stumbled upon AskTheManager.com. Desperate for advice, she gave us a shot at helping her cope with her new situation. (To read the advice we provided AC about her dilemma as a new manager, see our August 14 post.)

Back for more abuse, AC sent us the following this week:

I just wanted to send you the next challenge in the never-ending life that is retail management. But not without a little update first. Let me first add that the childishness of my store is no more. The resources that you gave me have left a huge impression in my memory and I practice what you preach every day. My staff has converted themselves into a well-oiled machine. They seek out the greater good and the bigger picture and that’s when everyone gets along the worlds a better place. The store itself has been running at full speed with a 25% increase in sales year-to-date (which is fantastic considering how “financially unstable” the world claims to be). All has been calm on the home front, and I have felt nothing but enthusiastic about the future and our successes and I strive to push the bar every day.
Until now I have not come to this mountain and I think that it is going to be my biggest challenge to date: Welcome the New Regional!

Most recently there has been a major rift in the tide at my supervisors’ level and they transferred my previous regional supervisor to the east coast, hired outside of the company a man with 35 years experience in the jewelry business, and made him the new regional supervisor. Needless to say the practices that my new regional demonstrates compared to my old one are dramatic and have everyone running for the hills and looking for new jobs. Demanding? Yes. Extremely high expectations? Yes. Respect and value for his new employees? No.

His reputation goes without saying that his employees are just numbers: that they are a dime a dozen and are expendable. He is overseeing every little thing that we as managers are doing, including hiring our own staff. I can understand his obsessive nature over sales and trying to make a good impression to his superiors, but he has taken almost any freedom that we have and are starting to find resentment in him because of it. Tomorrow he is flying in to oversee my hiring of a manager from another company to work for our store that I was extremely excited about until he said that I wasn’t allowed to hire him until “he met him first.” I feel like he is doing my job for me instead of letting me do the job that I was entrusted with. I also feel that he is hovering over my shoulder too much and that it is putting unnecessary pressure on me and my staff. Instead of over-boasting like every other manager is doing to catch his attention, how can I address the situation with my new boss and still make a good impression and respect his position? – AngelCakes, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

Well AC, in the immortal words of The Who: Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. While Roger Daltrey and gang weren’t thinking of the retail clothing business when they wrote that song, it fits the advice we have for you on how to deal with your latest issues.

Let us pause, however, to congratulate you on making the most of a bad situation. Given your quick and successful transition from frustrated newbie to seasoned leader means you are no quitter. Your most recent description of your team’s dynamics would make Patrick Lencioni proud. I wish we could take the credit for the transformation you’ve made, but the fact remains that all the advice in the world is meaningless without execution. And you clearly executed (a 25% sales increase is phenomenal in any economy). Nice job, AC!

Now, back to your current dilemma…

The ABCs of Job Satisfaction

When you write about the others who are “running for the hills” because of the new regional supervisor, we are not surprised. Beyond the obvious issue that some of these might be immature managers who simply cannot deal with change, it sounds like your new regional manager is clearly violating the ABCs of Job Satisfaction.

While on the surface most people believe that salary is the greatest indicator of job satisfaction, the truth is that Autonomy, Benefit and Challenge (the AskTheManager.com ABCs of Job Satisfaction) are greater predictors of one’s contentment with one’s employment than any other factors. Let’s discuss these in reverse order.

Challenge

Without some level of challenge, any job can become boring and commonplace. As humans, we need varying degrees of intellectual and/or competitive challenges on our jobs to keep us stimulated and engaged.

The challenges created by your new boss, unfortunately, do not equate to the kind of challenging work environment that’s been known to arouse creativity and motivate individuals. In fact, by taking away your ability to make certain decisions, he has effectively removed many of the most challenging aspects of a manager’s job.

Benefit

When we speak about the benefit of your job, we’re not talking about dental coverage. Instead, we are referring to your ability to understand and connect your efforts with the benefit enjoyed by your company. A sales manager, for example, can easily see the results of her efforts; although a factory worker who is tasked with attaching widget X1298TWHQ to gadget G7JJN23 cannot. The factory worker is but a cog, while the sales manager is driving noticeable value. Additionally, the sales manager enjoys a more clearly defined report card; one that displays for all to see the level of benefit enjoyed by the company because of her efforts.

Lucky for you, your new boss won’t be able to effectively remove your ability to see the benefit of what you deliver. Of course, he could make life so miserable that you become passive-aggressive and end up not wanting to drive value.

Autonomy

The level of autonomy granted any employee is the single greatest indicator of job satisfaction. Simply put: where a worker feels like they are the master of their own domain, that worker is less likely to be unhappy with their job. Once our work is second-guessed by our supervisors (or once we have to ask permission for everything) we are ready to jump ship. It’s amazing how quickly this can alter one’s perception of their workplace: Take away someone’s autonomy and you take away their freedom.

This is where your new boss is having the most negative impact on your job satisfaction; and the primary reason you are uneasy and your peers are exiting faster than rats departing a sinking ship. By removing your ability to make decisions he is also removing your commitment to success. Sadly, it was this commitment to success that brought you this far.


Okay, But How Do I Deal With Him?

AC, (by our interpretation of your message) you are seeking both the return of your autonomy and some level of respect from your new supervisor. Let’s deal with the latter, first.

Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss

We’re going to assume that you and your old boss shared some healthy level of mutual respect, and that both of you were highly competent professionals (and both of you knew this fact about the other). We’re also going to assume that your old boss was generous in his/her granting of autonomy. Your old boss granted this autonomy because of your competence and his/her respect of you.

So what’s changed?

You are still highly competent; though your new boss either doesn’t know it or doesn’t care. Don’t worry – if he wants to succeed and grow with your company – he soon will. Gaining his respect, of course, will require a little more work.

First, no matter how distasteful it may be, you must respect him. You have to go out of your way to see the good in what he’s trying to accomplish and genuinely respect him. Respecting him requires that you suppress negative feelings, live (temporarily) with his micromanagement style and, in effect, kill him with kindness. Distrustful managers (it’s an understatement to say that your current supervisor is distrustful) have a difficult time respecting even those they consider competent. They will often, however, respect those who respect them.

Second, admire him without becoming a sycophant. Find a way to like the guy without kissing his ass. Distrustful managers especially have a difficult time respecting those they consider brownnosers.

In other words, treat your new boss the same as the old boss: with respect and admiration. (Even if this fails to sway the guy, you’ll find working with him will become more tolerable due to a psychological phenomenon known as cognitive dissonance – you’ll actually be forced to like the guy by your subconscious mind.)

What if Nothing Works?

Although we seem to be batting 1.000 with our advice to you AC, we have been known to be wrong before. If showing genuine respect and admiration for this micromanager fails to make him give you some leeway and focus his overbearing style on less fortunate managers, you needn’t panic. These situations are generally very short-lived. They may seem like an eternity when you’re trapped in the middle, but rest assured that no one can successfully micromanage multiple locations over the long term.

Because the stores he supervises are scattered across a large area, he will not be able to maintain control over every aspect of every store. He will either cede control to competent, respectful leaders like you or he will implode and be driven from company by his inevitable failure.

What is Your Goal?

The bottom line for you is to ask yourself “what are my goals?” Once you understand your short- and long-term career objectives, ask yourself if you are more likely to attain these by staying and fighting through the current unpleasantness or if you will be better off somewhere else. Because your last supervisor seemed like an enlightened leader, it is likely that your company rewards that sort of behavior, and equally probable that your current supervisor will either change or wither. Of course, if you choose to stay and your last supervisor was more the exception than the rule in your company, you could be in for a very unsatisfactory time.

Either way, just being curious and seeking advice from others tells us that you’ll be an effective leader no matter where you choose to serve next.