Tag Archives: Leadership Advice

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.

Proper Filenames are Critical to Proper Business Etiquette

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Sometimes You Have to be a Prick to Those Outside of Your Company

 

I just received the March 2009 purchase report from one of our company’s 50+ vendors who provide such recaps. This particular vendor chose to name the file MyCompanyMarch.xls. By “MyCompanyMarch,” I mean he put the name of my company and the month in the filename… and nothing else. I could scream. What in the world was he thinking? Clearly, he was not.

 

Imagine if all of the vendors we dealt with used the same filename nomenclature as this self-centered simpleton. If that were the case, I’d have more than fifty files on my laptop all named MyCompanyMarch.xls. Now imagine if we’d been doing business with these fifty-odd companies for a number of years; I could potentially have hundreds of files all named MyCompanyMarch.xls. Suppose I needed to find the March 2006 recap from Vendor Z; could I easily locate this file? Of course it would be cumbersome, because this vendor wasn’t thinking of the audience when he named his file, just himself.

 

Yeah, But the Vendor Can Find the File

 

When this vendor peruses through his files, he’ll easily spot the one he sent me this week. The data will be at his fingertips and he can look like a hero to anyone who asks him to retrieve it. He named the file for himself, not me. Of course, if he plans to keep his job longer than 12 months he should add the year to his filenames. Though I doubt he’ll still be employed next April. On the off chance he is, I wonder if his March 2010 recap to me will be named MyCompanyMarch2010.xls. Probably not; it’s likely that someone this unthinking will never bother to change the way they do something as meaningless as naming files.

 

(Of course, naming files is not meaningless. I just wrote that to see if you were paying attention.)


 

Using Proper Filenames is Critical to Maintaining a Free Society

 

Filenames on your computer, whether they are monthly recaps for your customers or your resume for a prospective employer, should reflect not only what you want to know about the file, but more importantly, what the intended audience wants to know about the file. Here are some examples of bad filenames (all of which I have received) and better alternatives:

 

  • Bad filename: MyResume.doc. Good filename: Smith.John.Resume.doc.
  • Bad filename: CustomerNameMonth.xls. Good filename: VendorName.CustomerName.Description.MMYYYY.xls (for example: AcmeWidgets.WidgetRetailer.OrderHistory.032009.xls).
  • Bad filename: CustomerNameProposal.ppt. Good filename VendorName.CustomerName.Proposal.MMYYY.ppt.

 

Is There a Leadership Lesson Here?

 

Not everything on AskTheManager.com comes with a leadership lesson. Sometimes, we just like to rant. Though it’s a little bit of stretch, we do think there is something leaders can learn from this.

 

Jimmy Dugan was a good leader. Despite his alcoholism and apathy, he was able to get the most out of his team. And although his team lost the AAPGL Championship (of course he was missing his best player, Dottie Hinson), his leadership helped turn a bunch of girls into accomplished ballplayers… not an easy task, even in a fictional world.

 

The next time you’re faced with a vendor, an applicant or a prospective vendor-partner who provides you with a file that includes an inconsiderate or idiotic filename, you need to take a deep breath and a page out of Jimmy Dugan’s book. I suggest using Jimmy’s words of wisdom that he provided to right fielder Evelyn Gardner: “Start using your head. That’s the lump that’s three feet above your ass.”

 

Sometimes you have to be a prick.

The Tazie Effect – Turning Life’s Defining Moments Into Personal and Professional Greatness

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TheManager’s Leadership Book Review

In what may become a regular feature of AskTheManager.com, we tackle the sometimes thankless task of reviewing the work of a published author. While you could argue that we’ve provided book reviews in the past with our Ten Best Leadership Books or our Ten Best Decision Making Books lists, this time it’s different… this time it’s about a single book: whether we love it or hate it, you’ll know where we stand.

The Tazie Effect, by Heather Whittaker

The first thing you realize when you are about to crack open The Tazie Effect is its incredible lack of girth. Just 66 pages separate the beginning of the first chapter and the end of the last – and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Too often leadership books are written for the glorification of the writer, not the education of the reader. The Tazie Effect focuses concisely on nine specific areas where leaders can develop their craft. More pages would be unnecessary.

Written with the belief that we can learn much about leadership from a six-pound blind dog who is called, among other things, Tazie Roo, The Tazie Effect attempts to weave solid leadership advice with examples about how this pooch lives her life. This, unfortunately, is where the book barks up the wrong tree. (Fortunately, this is the only place where it falters.) The connections between this little dog and the leadership advice doled out by Ms. Whittaker are tenuous at best. At worst, those who don’t love dogs the way the author does might be turned off by the amount of attention paid to and credit given this pup. In some ways it’s like the tail wagging the dog.




Stop Dogging this Book!

Okay, now let me throw the author a bone… Once I got past the precious Tazie Roo’s inability to teach me real leadership skills and simply read the material provided, I was impressed. Ms. Whittaker is clearly a gifted leader and a gifted writer, and her book deserves the attention it will surely receive.

Whittaker weaves in real world (human) leadership examples very well and provides lessons that any leader – young or old – can easily understand and incorporate into their work lives. Her words are well chosen and the advice she provides is solid. The Tazie Effect is void of unnecessary magic bullets, tips or tricks, and instead focuses on long term, life changing principles in the simplest form.

While The Tazie Effect is not the next One Minute Manager, I can see the value organizations will likely place on this book as a housebreaking tool for new managers and as a reinforcement of the skill sets of their senior leaders. (You can’t, obviously, teach an old dog new tricks.) It also seems likely that progressive companies could build their leadership development programs around its concepts, using the book as a cornerstone of their efforts.

The Recommendation

If you are a canine-loving leader who can’t resist speaking baby talk every time you come face-to-face with a four-legged friend, then this book is definitely for you. If you’re like most managers in the American workplace, and you’re more concerned about what happens to you than to some little dog, then this book is… still for you.

Let’s face it, with so much psychobabble BS passing itself off as leadership development; it’s nice to find a quick, effective read that meets the needs of its intended audience – even if they’re not all dog lovers. With that, I can confidently and doggedly recommend this book to anyone looking to improve their leadership skills.

(To order The Tazie Effect, visit Amazon.com.)

Salespeople Need More Leadership, Not More Technology

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Too Much Technology…

When working to help an underperforming business unit (in my real job) grow their revenues, I always discover instances where the unit has purchased some widget, gadget or other magic bullet designed to help them sell more.

Although well-meaning, the manager who made this purchase generally believed against all his or her own better judgment and experience that this solution would enjoy high adoption and utilization, and would deliver the desired results with little or no work required. Given a warm welcome by the sales team, this manager was certain that the worm would soon turn, and that the good times were just around the corner.

… Not Enough Reality

Usually between six hours and six months of the initial purchase, the manager believes they were taken. The widget does not perform as demonstrated. Their team is not selling any more (and maybe selling less) as a result of adding this technology and expense. What gives?

The truth is that while there are certainly technologies that have made a salesman’s job easier; sales still requires people to do work. Products that still involve salesmanship – cars, real estate, personal services, home repair – also require that those gifted with salesmanship work to leverage technology to their advantage.

Generally, these overbought and underutilized tools are CRM-related. CRM, it seems, is the greatest underutilized business technology “in use” today. In fact, we once discovered that one of our business units was paying for eight different, yet overlapping, CRM tools… and none of them was helping drive any incremental business.

CRM Does Not Mean What You Think

Twenty years ago, great salesmen used 3X5 cards and small plastic boxes as their CRM tools. They organized their prospects and were tenacious at follow up. They used these boxes and their day-timers to remind them to send letters and birthday cards, and to remember the names of a customer’s wife and children. Today, we expect technology to take the place of this tenacity – we expect that technology can replace people and process.

While a great CRM tool might help an organized person stay organized, it offers nothing for the disorganized. Likewise, CRM falls well short of getting lazy salespeople to care, or the sales laggards to do something (anything!). More often than not, bad salespeople spend an inordinate amount of time trying to game the system. (If they just used this time for good, rather than evil, they’d be superstars.)

Because of this, CRM tools are the biggest rip-off in business today. Too many business owners and business leaders have spent too much to equip their teams with expensive tools to manage customer databases, only to have the great procrastinators (salespeople) destroy real progress by failing to complete even very simple steps. I am convinced that you could take away any underperforming business unit’s CRM tools and provide that same sales team with index cards and pens, with the end result being better sales numbers than are realized today.

While the acronym CRM (which stands for Customer Relationship Management) is meant to describe the means a company or salesperson uses to manage their customer relationships, the onslaught of underutilized tools led us to coin the memorable (if not a bit hokey) phrase “Crutches Require Muscle” so those purchasing new CRM software would understand that assembly is required and magic bullets are not included.


As sales leaders, our goal has to be to make certain that everyone and anyone on the sales side understands that you cannot successfully manage customer relationships without work – hard, sometimes tedious work.

Crutches Require Muscle: Two Real Life Examples

Next week, my family will have an invisible fence installed in our home. We own a couple of small dogs, and these little buggers have figured out how to burrow under our traditional fence. After coming home too many times to notes on our door that read “Your dogs got out again. We have them at our house,” we’ve decided to spend a few bucks on shock collars and electric barriers to keep our pets (and neighbors) safe.

Because this is the first time we’ve ever had to purchase something like this, we sent price quote requests (via email) to seven local invisible fence companies who operated websites. These seven are using technology (the Internet, email and CRM) to their advantage, we figured, so we expected quick and complete responses.

Long story short, we received three automatic responses (43%) to our inquiries and only one of the original seven (14%) bothered to personally follow up with a price. We heard nothing from four companies (57%). This is pathetic, of course, because these seven companies are spending thousands each year on technology designed to capture more business, yet only one of the seven bothered to add people and process to the mix in an attempt to gain our business. The other six likely believe that their websites and CRM tools are magic bullets designed to deliver millions into their bank accounts with little or no work.

Can you guess which of the seven companies is installing our invisible fence next week?

Sylvan Learning Centers Need to Learn Something Themselves

CRM real life example number two: On a recent Thursday afternoon, one of our sons (we have three) brought home a mid-term “D” in English. We were shocked, scared and mortified for two reasons: 1) none of our sons has ever delivered anything below a B+; and 2) the boy speaks English, doesn’t he?

In our momentary horror, we were convinced that the best thing for this likely slacker was for him to get professional help (clearly his teachers, and especially his parents, were doing a poor job). We immediately sought an afterschool tutoring program that could release this young man from the dark side and make him our son once again.

A quick Google search yielded a sponsored link to Sylvan Learning Centers – hey, I’ve heard of them – so I submitted an online request to have my local Sylvan office contact me with pricing and other information. I was clearly desperate in my initial plea. Not surprisingly, the CRM tool used by Sylvan immediately fired off an automatic response that gave me confidence: My boy will read again, I cried. Here is the reassuring auto-response I received:

Thank you for your spending time with Sylvan’s website today. Whether your child needs to improve a report card, get ahead in math, end homework struggles or prepare for college, Sylvan can help.

Please keep this e-mail for your records; below is the contact information for your local Sylvan Learning Center:

Your local Sylvan is located at: (followed by the local center’s various contact info)

Visit your local Sylvan’s website often; you’ll find information about news and events, hours of operation and if they offer live, online tutoring from the comfort of home. You may want to even bookmark it!

Thank you again for visiting Sylvan’s website. We look forward to serving your family in the near future.

Your friends at Sylvan Learning®.

Awkward first sentence aside, I was convinced that my son was not going to have to ride the short bus after all.

Sylvan is on the Case

I heard nothing from my local Sylvan center the next day (Friday), though I was not concerned. Surely, they are so busy turning around the lives of so many children that they’re just a little behind in checking their emails.

At exactly 1:29 AM Saturday morning I received the following email (names and locations changed to protect the guilty):

I’m John Doe, Center Director from your Anytown center. Thank you for contacting us regarding your child’s learning needs. Your recent inquiry has been marked for our immediate attention, and one of my staff members will be contacting you shortly. If you have a preferred method for contacting you, please reply to this email with your preferred contact information. We look forward to talking with you soon.

Wishing you and your student success,

John Doe

Center Director

I was starting to get concerned, because they certainly must think we are all a family of morons if they believe they can fool us into thinking someone is sitting at our local Sylvan center sending out emails just after the bars close.

Although I responded to this email with very specific needs, no one on Mr. Doe’s staff ever bothered to respond, though I did receive the following automatic email on the following Monday afternoon:

I hope one of my staff members from Anytown Sylvan center was able to resolve your questions or concerns. Please reply to this email if you still have outstanding items you would like to discuss, and we will contact you as soon as possible. Thank you for your interest in Sylvan.

Wishing you and your student success,

John Doe

Center Director

I responded to this email immediately, and have yet to hear anything from them. It’s now been over a month.

As frustrating as this process was, it forced me to help my son with his English, and he is now back to a solid B – not great, but also not summer school material.

How to Guarantee Utilization

How much revenue could Sylvan have realized from my family over the next 10 years? If they were successful in helping this son with his English grades, would we not use them to help our other sons improve something? In my estimation, this local Sylvan center lost a minimum of $10,000. If you multiply that by the hundreds of other potential customers with similar experiences you begin to get into some real money.

The issues in these two real life examples are not caused by bad CRM tools, rather these instances point to a sales leadership void within these organizations. Without leadership, these organizations have too much technology. Case in point: if none of these businesses attempted to employ CRM tools, I would have been forced to call them, and chances are they might have answered the phone.

What can a leader do to guarantee utilization of tools designed to help an organization close more sales and drive more revenue? Accountability.

It’s a cliché, but your team will truly respect what you inspect. (By the way, we generally hate sayings like this, because people assume they’re true simply because they rhyme. “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit” could have just as easily been “if you killed your ex-wife, you’re gonna do life.”) Inspecting the daily inputs and outputs of your salespeople, and then holding them accountable for employing the designated processes for prospecting and managing customer relationships, can change everything virtually overnight.

The truth is that most salespeople are lazy. They expend more energy avoiding work than they would have to use if they just completed tasks as designed.

Salespeople need more leadership, not more technology.

 

The Great Necession: Leading in Tough Economic Times

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It’s not a Recession, It’s a Necession

Anyone bothering to pay attention to what’s happening with consumer spending in the current recession can note one trend: that is, even those consumers who are likely to be unaffected by the economic downturn are helping fuel the recession because they’ve gone into wallet lockdown. They’ve declared that we are in the Great Necession of 2009.

While one could argue that in a free market no job is ever really safe, 92% of Americans who want a job, have a job. Moreover, most of those same 92% are likely to have little disruption to their income streams over the foreseeable future.

So why does the housing market continue to tank and why are new car sales sitting at their lowest levels in decades? People have been scared into a Necession.

Forget for a moment that the credit markets have tightened; there aren’t any tire-kickers on dealer lots or looky-loos at the Sunday open houses to apply for credit. Why? Because no one in their right mind is going to buy a new car or house until they need to buy one.

How do you know we’re in a Necession?

Traditional large discretionary purchases (like cars, boats, vacation homes) are based on emotion and impulse, not on necessity. Cars, for example, are built to last for a decade or more, yet many Americans habitually traded in their cars every 18 to 36 months. This is what fueled more than 16 million new car purchases a year as recently as 2006. (Read our related post on the auto industry here.) We’re now at half that amount; and because of the Great Necession of 2009, we predict the auto industry won’t see the 16 million mark again before 2020. People just don’t need to buy a new car, regardless of the availability of credit, and now they know that.

The economic realities of today have taught those of us who’ve lost jobs and those of us with good jobs that we need to live within our means. One colleague recently told me he will never again have a monthly financial commitment (he called it his “monthly nut”) greater than he can cover working for minimum wage. I believe him. His spending paradigm has been forever shifted from one of excess to one of “necess.” He is a New Era Necessionist, helping fuel the Great Necession.

How to Lead in a Necession




The unfortunate reality of being in a Necession is that even when the credit markets relax and the layoffs subside, retail spending will not return for a very long time. Consumer confidence may return, but consumer spending – that is, spending like drunken sailors on shore leave – will not. The generation that lives through the Great Necession will be much like the one that lived through the Great Depression: they will change their habits forever for fear of a return to bad times.

The only remedy for leaders is to instill confidence. You must reek of confidence when dealing with your acquaintances, your employees and your customers. (It certainly doesn’t help when the media seeks a negative slant to every story – but great leaders know to control what they can control, and to limit the influence of that which they cannot.)

People are simply not productive when they fear their jobs are in jeopardy. Lacking confidence, otherwise sane managers can literally become paranoid – rendering them ineffective. The rumor mill – fueled by negative thoughts and doomsday predictions from the rank and file – runs rampant. Job dissatisfaction from an uncertain future begets customer dissatisfaction; while customer dissatisfaction begets even lower sales, leading to a further erosion of employee confidence.

It’s our job as leaders to keep all of this from happening. So let’s agree on few easy paradigm shifts:

  1. The times are challenging, but our future looks great. Believe this and live this, then use this as a standard reply to anyone (especially employees and customers) enquiring about your business.
  2. The best part about a recession is the thinning of the herd. You need to believe this and live this, as well. Feel free to speak to your employees in these terms and let them know you appreciate their hard work, because it is their hard work that will help them and everyone else at your company keep their jobs.
  3. We cannot wish our way back to prosperity. Too often we see managers looking for magic pills to solve a crisis. The truth is that anything worthwhile takes hard work – otherwise, everyone could do it. You need to gain a solid commitment to best practices from everyone in order to save your company.
  4. Sales cures all ills. While it was this very saying that partially got us into this mess (we didn’t realize we had bad leaders, because times were good and revenues were growing), returning our teams to a “selling culture” is one of the quickest ways to right any ship. Unfortunately, many businesses have focused too heavily on cost-cutting and not enough on the fundamentals of selling. Get your teams back to basics: focus on selling activities, not results, so that when the market turns, your team will get more than their share.

 

Top Ten Resume Tips for Managers

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The Top 10 Resume Tips for Out-of-Work Leaders

One of our loyal readers sent us an email this week that included their resume. As has likely happened to someone you know, this manager got caught up in the current economic turmoil and their position was eliminated. No notice. No severance. No clear prospects.

Since it’s too late to council our reader to adopt the absolutely necessary survival trait known as networking, we thought we’d dissect his resume (confidentially) and deliver him (and you) our Top 10 Resume Tips:

  1. Filename – Quick, take a look at the resume on your computer. Is it called “myresume.doc,” “SalesManagerResume.doc,” or simply “resume.doc?” Do you have any sense of your audience? I can guarantee that the hiring manager doesn’t want to download 50 resumes all titled “myresume.doc.” Believe it or not, it becomes hard to find the one you’re looking for when all the files are called the same thing. Additionally, when you name your resume file based on job title (like SalesManagerResume.doc), the hiring manager knows you’re probably fibbing a little because you likely have other versions that you send to other job openings (like OpsManagerResume.doc). There’s only one recommended filename structure for all resumes and here it is: Lastname.Firstname.Resume.doc. Your resume file will stand out because of its clarity to, and consideration for, the hiring manager.
  2. Software – Two words: Microsoft Word. Okay folks? While using some cheap Word knockoff is probably fine for an entry-level salesperson resume, your manager resume will look absolutely bush league if it arrives via any format other than Word. If you simply cannot afford the $80 to buy Microsoft Word, then create your resume in Word Perfect or Open Office or whatever other word processing software you can get your hands on, and “print” the document as a PDF. There are literally thousands of free PDF creators available. Start by looking here.


  3. Borrow Liberally – Why reinvent the wheel? Smart leaders are efficient and they don’t waste precious hours recreating what has already been invented elsewhere. Go online, search for resume samples, then start reading and lifting those phrases and sentences that best describe you and your abilities. Don’t lie – integrity matters – but certainly be smart enough to let someone else articulate what you really want to say about your experiences. Better yet, use your last $12 and buy a book with sample resumes and better resume tips than you’ll ever get from some crummy management blog. We highly recommend Jay Block’s 101 Best Resumes.
  4. Cover Letter – Yes, you include one. Again, if you’re applying for an entry-level gig, this is less important. The higher up you go, however, the more critical it is to have a great cover letter. Use the same tips we delivered here for your resume that you use for your cover letter. And just like that great resume, we recommend if you want a great cover letter you should invest a few bucks in a good book. Not surprisingly, we recommend Block’s 101 Best Cover Letters. If your cover letter is included in the body of an email, please remember to avoid our common email typos detailed here.
  5. Watch Your Formatting, and Check Spelling and Grammar – Yikes, we’re embarrassed to even have to write that, but we counted no less than four glaring typos and half a dozen grammatical errors in this manager’s resume. Ouch. Hard to hire someone to lead others when they appear to be unable to manage themselves. When we speak about formatting, we’re referring to how your resume lays out on a page. If you find yourself using tabs and spaces to format your paragraphs then STOP. While your resume might look great on your screen, it will likely open up as a jumbled mess on the other end. The reason this occurs is because you cannot guarantee that the hiring manager is using the same version of Word that you are using. Additionally, if you use an odd font because it looks cool, that font could be very well rendered as Courier on the other end, screwing up your beautiful formatting. The bottom line: format properly and use a standard font. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, hire a professional resume service. It might be the best $200 you ever invested.
  6. Aim High – While it’s often true that companies who are hiring leaders want to get more than they pay for, it’s especially true in a down economy. If your resume aims too low, that’s where you’ll surely end up. If you aim high, both with your resume objectives (yes, you include these) and with your description of past duties, you stand a much better chance of landing high. Be sure to make yourself and your ambitions sound as important as possible – keeping everything accurate, of course.
  7. Titles Matter More than Responsibilities – It’s sad, but true. If you were a VP at your last job, chances are you’ll be a VP on your next job. If your title was manager, you’ll likely be a manager when you land your next gig. We’re giving you this little piece of advice not to have you lie on your resume, but rather to make sure you clearly express your title in words that relay the importance of the position. Quick tip: Adding words like “division” can make a title seem more important, while allowing you to keep your integrity. For example, if you were a manager in the widgets group at ABC Company, you could list your title one of two ways: Manager, ABC Company or Widgets Division Manager, ABC Company. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather hire the latter than the former.
  8. Quantify Your Accomplishments – You didn’t “grow sales” at your last job, you “improved operating revenue by 33%.” You didn’t “cut costs,” you “discovered and enacted operational efficiencies that led to a 17% decrease in year-over-year operating expenses.” Numbers are easy to understand and will help your accomplishments stand out.
  9. Use Commanding Language – As you can read in Tip #8, there are both weak and strong ways to say anything. Use a thesaurus (quick tip: In Microsoft Word you can right-click on any word and see synonyms) to ensure you use the most powerful terms you can to describe your accomplishments. (We’re not going to bore you with a list of weak and strong words – you are a leader, after all.)
  10. References Available Upon Request – Never, ever include references on your resume if you are vying for a leadership position. Lists of references unnecessarily lengthen your resume. Additionally, you stand the chance of alienating your audience if one of your references is disliked by the hiring manager. In case you do happen to know Jack Welch – and he wants to vouch for you – ask him to write a brief letter (or, better yet, you write a letter on his behalf and ask him to sign it). You can always include these letters with your cover letter and resume.

While there are thousands of other great resume tips we could share, too many of them are too granular for a site like AskTheManager. If you can get these Top 10 Resume Tips down, you’ll be well on your way toward finding a great new career.

While we don’t often ask for advice from our readers, we’d love for you to share your resume tips with others by posting a comment below.

Young Owner, Old Manager: Who Wins in the End?

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Questions… we get Questions

One of our readers, Anant, posted the following after reading our article from August 2008 titled The First Time Manager Dilemma, How Do You Gain Respect?:

hi, i am facing a similar problem as mentioned above with one of my older employees, the only difference is that i am the owner of my company.

Last year i joined my father’s company after finishing my engineering and have started to handle the correspondence and marketing of the company.

Initially i thought because i was a new, they treated me as like a new kid on the block and would probably fade out once i am long enough with the organization.

Most of them did change, apart from our general manager. He still thinks he is an authority over me. I didn’t mind his reactions till the time recently when my father had gone out for an industrial trip. He had asked me to get some work done before he comes, which were like level 1 jobs and could easily be done on the phone/personally meeting, nothing laborious. Its been almost 3 days since i told him and he has still not been able to complete the task. Apart from this whenever i tell him something he looks at me, giving me that expression “why is he telling me? who is he to tell me?”

This behavior of his has actually ticked me off. Kindly give me a solution to handle such kind of employee – Anant, February 8, 2009

Young man (I’m going to assume you’re a young man, as Anant means “bliss” in Hindi and is traditionally a male name), it’s time for you and your GM to face several tough realities:

  1. Every generation gets overtaken by the next;
  2. Youth is the only trait a manager cannot learn;
  3. You can attract more flies with honey than vinegar;
  4. Blood is thicker than water;
  5. Money is thicker than blood; and
  6. Your written communication skills are horrendous.

1. Every Generation Gets Overtaken by the Next

It’s the circle of life my friend: It’s exciting and great when you’re young; and it sucks when you’re old. Your father’s general manager is having a tough time facing this fact… that’s expected. Your job is to make sure that you maximize short and long term profits for your father, not to make the GM feel good about himself.

If he fails to grasp this fact, he should be shown the door.

That said, you and your father’s company might be better served if you followed the advice in point number three, below.




2. Youth is the Only Trait a Manager Cannot Learn

This fact is likely killing your GM from the inside out. It eats at him everyday, and his own fear of being replaced is going to force him to do one of two things: 1) seek other employment (not likely); or 2) go into passive-aggressive mode when dealing with you (highly likely).

Until you came along, the GM was your father’s right-hand man. Today, he sees you as the greatest threat to his existence (see point number one, above). Following the advice given in point number three might help make the situation more tolerable for you (and the GM). If it fails, it’s probably time to show him the door. (Do you see a pattern emerging?)

3. You Can Attract More Flies with Honey than Vinegar

Of course, you can attract the most flies with dog shit, but we’ll forget that for a moment, because it doesn’t really fit with this whole analogy.

I think the best way to introduce this concept is to have the great Dalton (Patrick Swayze) from Road House explain it:

All you have to do is follow three simple rules.

One: never underestimate your opponent. Expect the unexpected.

Two: take it outside. Never start anything inside the bar unless it’s absolutely necessary.

And three: be nice.

…until it’s time to not be nice.

Generally every human can figure out Dalton’s numbers one and two on their own. Dalton’s tip number three, “be nice,” takes some practice.

Anant, if you want to be nice, then it’s time to become “The New Anant.” The New Anant is a guy that loves everyone and everything. He smiles are everyone (especially his GM), and nothing ever gets him down. If you become The New Anant, you are going to be so nice to the general manager that people are going to think the two of you are dating. In fact, your father may become jealous of your relationship with the GM.

Seriously, If you want to get the most out of the general manager, you need to hang on his every word. You should ask his advice on every topic (where it makes sense) and you should strive to make him the hero at every turn. If you do everything in your power to make him look good, he will (usually) work hard to prove you right. At worst, you’ll have made it incredibly hard for him to treat you poorly – his subconscience won’t allow him to be an ass; just as your subconscience will drive you to eventually like and even respect him. (If nothing else, you’ll begin to see the world as he sees it, which will give you great insight into how to manage him better.)

If this fails, show him the door.

4. Blood is Thicker than Water

At the end of the day, you can always tell your father to fire him. After all, you’re blood and he’s just an employee. This strategy is great provided a) you are ready to lead the company as the new general manager; and b) this GM really wasn’t that effective.

5. Money is Thicker than Blood

This is where things get sticky for your dad. If the GM is strong and delivers value for the company – and the two of you cannot get along – then it’s time for Anant to find a new job.

Blood is pretty thick, but money is a whole lot thicker.

Face this reality right away and begin “working” for the GM if he’s any good. If he stinks, refer to number four, above.

6. Your Written Communication Skills are Horrendous

Seriously, Anant, I know you were writing informally when you posted a comment on this blog, but it’s important to always communicate clearly and correctly in business. Business associates (like the GM), subordinates, customers and leaders of other companies will respect you more if your written communication skills are always strong.

The good news is that you already form strong ideas, you just need to put them into a written form properly. Start by writing everything in Microsoft Word first, then running the spelling and grammar checkers before you send any correspondence. Next, you may want to read our posts covering email etiquette. There might be some overall business writing tips you can take from these.

It sounds like you’re well on your way to becoming a great business leader: you’ve clearly identified the major hurdles in your business and you’ve sought advice on how to rectify them – that takes guts and shows your leadership – congratulations. Please keep us posted, we’re dying to know how things work out for you.

 

The Death of Data-Based Decision Making

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Why Does My Industry Refuse to Use Data?

True story – of course, whenever anyone says or writes this it generally means that everything else they’ve ever told you is BS – anyway, true story: a highly compensated colleague wrote to a group of fellow highly compensated colleagues and asked “does anyone have any data on whether this widget produces results?”

The emailed responses from two of his highly compensated colleagues were shocking:

  • “I understand they’ve shown good results in Orlando and Tampa.”
  • “This widget really moves the needle in Dallas.”

These were their complete responses. Did I miss something? Where is the data?

This brief exchange of emails is merely a sample of what’s happening in my industry (and probably happening in other industries, though I don’t have any data to back up this claim): We’ve decided that actual data is unimportant.

This is sad, especially as technology has provided us easy, quick and painless avenues to gather data about nearly every aspect of our business. Gathering data and making data-based decisions (AKA: using business intelligence reports) should be one of the greatest benefits of technology we enjoy, yet we still rely heavily on gut feelings and opinions to determine where we spend our money, whom we hire, and what initiatives we pursue.

Data vs. Opinion

Having had my fill of opinion-based decision making where good data is available, I challenged the two highly compensated colleagues to send me some proof to back up their claims about the effectiveness of this particular widget:

“Sounds great, can you send me the data to back this up?” I replied, and waited.

And waited, and waited, and waited. After two days of waiting, I sent a follow-up email copying their direct supervisors:

“I know the Northeast Region really wants to get moving on this widget, and they’re excited to hear about the results you’re seeing in your markets. Can you send me some data that can prove the ROI? We’re struggling to show good numbers everywhere else with this widget and some good results would help save the project.” I wrote, and waited.

Amazingly, with their bosses copied and everyone on high alert to justify expenses, I received the following two messages from the highly compensated colleagues within 30 minutes:

  • “When we looked at the data, it seems it was inconclusive in Dallas. We’re thinking of canceling it.”
  • “Nobody in Orlando or Tampa could prove it works, but they’re sure it was helping sales. They’re going to measure the results this month and then make a decision.”




One claimed they examined the data (Dallas) and one still relied on opinion for now (Tampa/Orlando), but promised to examine the data next month. In the meantime, we’ve potentially wasted more than $100,000 over the past year because no one bothered to look at the data. This was just one product covering a small part of our business. What would we find if we stopped allowing opinions and held everyone to a “just the facts” dictum? Scary…

Data-Based Decisions are Easy

Our industry is one that has had to be pulled (kicking and screaming) into accepting that the Web is an important marketing channel. Now that we’re there, we refuse to demand data, information or business intelligence to help us make decisions. We rely on our collective gut, because our gut was good enough ten years ago, so it’s good enough today.

It’s a shame, really, because using only your gut to make decisions might appear to save you time. While using your gut to make a decision keeps you from having to gather data, it also requires that you continually reconsider the decision: using additional time to determine if you made the correct assessment. When you use your gut, you spend additional time second-, third- and fourth-guessing yourself. You are never certain you made the best decision.

When you use data, like an ROI report, you can quickly and easily decide to eliminate the low ROI widgets and increase your usage of the high ROI widgets. Then, you can put the data away until the next set of numbers (quarterly, monthly, weekly) becomes available. Give these new numbers a “once over” to validate you made a great decision last time or use these numbers to tweak your earlier decision, and move on. Nothing could be easier.

You Were Hired for Your Gut

The best part about using data to help you make decisions is that the data will never care if you also sneak in your opinion here and there. In fact, if not for your gut, your company could just hire a computer to do your job. It is precisely your experiences, history and opinions that make you a valuable commodity. You begin to lose your value, however, as soon as you fail to utilize all the tools (including data) made available to you to do your job.