Mani MasoodToday business leaders are meant to be close to their teams, how close they actually are depends on their management style.
Granted, the head honcho of a company employing 15,000 people can’t know them all personally regardless of his management style but you might hope that anyone with people management responsibilities might know something of those that report to them.
Well, as someone once said, we live in hope and die in despair. You might have some sympathy with the gloomy sentiment considering some of the following.
Before you ask, these are all real-life situations, to protect the innocent all names have been changed, characters combined and events compressed. Certain episodes are imaginative recreation, and those episodes are not intended to portray actual events..
The human touch
“Hey Jake, how’s it going”
“huh, it’s Jack. I’m fine thanks Al”
“sorry about that, lot on my mind, who’re you reporting to these days?”
“hmm, you. I moved into your team 3 weeks back”
“hell, I really need to find time for us to get together and get to know each other – plus I’d like to find out what’s happening in your area”
“aaa, we met a couple of days back Al. I gave you a 15 minute overview of my area”
“Really? Wow, how time flies. Must dash – I’ll call you soon for a get together”
“oookay, bye Al”
“See ya Jake”.
A great holiday
Sometimes though, absent-minded leaders can be a blessing.
Take Rob. He was flown across the ocean to Turin in Italy to work on a 2-day urgent project.
At the end of it, the boss of the Turin operation asked him to stay on for a little extra time to work on another quick but urgent project. Rob agreed having cleared it with his US boss.
The following morning, he went into the office to discover to his confusion that the guy at the top had flown off that very morning on vacation and he always made a point of not taking his cell with him. The family vacation was sacred and not to be disturbed.
Checking with the deputy and his US home base, he found nobody had a clue what this other work was but everyone agreed he should stay down there “just in case” the guy phoned in.
So, for the next week he sat around doing nothing but using the opportunity to drift around Turin having a good explore.
A week later, the boss returned. Seeing Rob, he rushed up to introduce himself and asked who Rob was.
Rob tried to discretely point out that they’d already met and only a week ago he’d asked him to stay on for another job.
“Did I? Are you sure? I can’t remember why but it’s very expensive having overseas staff here so I think you should go back as soon as possible”.
Here’s how not to do it
Another member of the management elite decided to have a crack-down on what he termed “careless errors”.
Calling in one of his team leaders, we’ll call her Jan, he’d pulled out three examples of reported errors.
“Jan, look at these examples of poor quality control, for example, the figures on these invoices are wrong. This is elementary stuff that should have been picked-up don’t you agree?”
“Yes, certainly”
“What can you do in future to stop these errors happening again?”
“Nothing”
“What? Why not?”
“Well, they’re all invoicing errors”
“So what?”
“I’m not in charge of invoicing and never have been. That’s Tim’s area – he’s reported to you for about 12 months now. I’m responsible for dealing with customer product queries”.
She took some comfort though from the fact her boss at least got her name right.
I’m in full control
One CFO gave a brilliant corporation-wide overview of his departmental people, structure and his plans for reorganization – including the installation of new systems.
The quality of the materials was exemplary and the guy was a naturally gifted public speaker. He noticed though that one of his senior accountants was frantically making ‘cut it’ gestures but couldn’t see why.
At the end, his senior team rushed up to point out:
- one of the key people on his organization chart had left the company a full three weeks previously;
- he’d indicated a decision relating to the purchase of a major software system when in fact, the decision had been to go with one of their competitors;
- his reorganization budget allocation summary didn’t actually add up correctly (not a great sign from a CFO);
- he’d misspelled the surname of the Chief Exec;
- worst of all, one screen he’d obviously borrowed from another company and had forgotten to remove their name from the page banner at the top.
Apart from that though, it was a great in-touch presentation!
Not just for a laugh
Ok, some of the above things are maybe hilarious but there’s a serious point underneath. Just how do some people get their jobs and then keep them?
Mani
