Business sub plots

Probably the most difficult thing for any employee to handle is a manager who does not level with them.  You usually see it in two cases.  One is in large corporations where they are usually afraid to let you know where you stand since you might have an opportunity to question their inscrutable plans for you.

The second case is with immature managers who do not have the confidence to deal with employees one on one.  They end up going through some interesting contortions to keep from having to deal with their own insecurity and business situations that they just have not learned how to handle.

I managed to help several employees leave Apple Computer.    By far the easiest technique was to sit down and tell them the job was not working out for them, and to ask them if they felt changing some things would give them a chance to succeed or did they feel like it was time to move on to another job.  Every single employee that I talked to but one made the decision to go to another job.

Often asking an employee to move on, means they haven't been able to adapt to your environment or that you aren't smart enough to figure out how to use them.

I was reading in the paper today that one of the biggest problems in government is that policies are not decided by robust debate among near peers.  If it is a problem in government, it is an epidemic in business.  Usually when the CEO (or executive VP) makes a decision, his executive lieutenants fall all over themselves trying to associate themselves with the CEO's decision.  It often does not matter whether the decision is a good one or a bad one.  The important thing is that it is the CEO's or VP's decision, so everyone falls in line.

It's far better to have serious challenges to the CEO's ideas.  No CEO, no matter how much they think of themselves, is infallible.  The months they often waste in figuring out their own mistakes is a tribute to their unwillingness to have competent, strong people working around them.  It is much easier to have people who wouldn't consider anything but agreeing with the CEO's ideas. They will do anything to implement the CEOs ideas, no matter what the consequences.  Their loyalty is to the CEO not the company.

I'll never forget the time Apple's enterprise sale teams got sent off to peddle iMac kiosks to the enterprise.  Those who tried to question the plan did not have enough power, and those with enough power to challenge the idea were too far under the spell of the VP who had proposed the iMac kiosks.

The VP only lasted a short time, but the damage from his folly filled policies probably can still be seen years later at Apple.  Unfortunately Apple isn't the only company to have this problem.  You might also deduce from the Apple example that stock price isn't necessarily a measure of excellence in management.