Note from Art: this is my first stab at what I intend to be an on-going leadership case study serial chronicling the lives and times of some rather interesting characters. Any resemblance to individuals living, dead or otherwise (?) is most likely not accidental. If you are reading this and it feels like I’m talking about you or your workplace, we’ll, it’s always possible.
Readers, the purpose here is to get you to chime in and offer our characters some advice. My tone is light by design, but these types of situations are very real. I hope that you relax, share a few thoughts on coping with some tough and often irrational issues that have just enough truth in them to make our skin crawl when we see them on our favorite “Office” sitcom or laugh at them in a Dilbert cartoon.
Welcome to Rick’s world, where the sole mission of every manager in this production facility (one of many around the country for Mega Inc.), is to minimize the crap storms from corporate and keep the colorful and all-powerful Rick safe for yet another year.
Rick has been in charge of this facility for over a decade, and while the sign hanging on the building says one thing, everyone knows that this location is Rick, Inc. Rick rules both with velvet gloves and an iron fist, and sometimes the iron fist is covered in velvet.
For Rick’s staff, Alan the plant manager, Jose, the sales manager, Susan the h.r. manager (and triple agent) and Erica, the customer service manager, their sole goal is to keep Rick in his office looking at reports with pretty numbers. Once Rick hits the floor and starts barking orders, the system breaks down into chaos. And while we all know that stuff happens during the course of the day, the group (minus Susan, the triple agent), have a near blood pact to control and contain disasters, lest Rick get wind of things and emerge from his office with his red face shouting, “What the *&^^% is going on around here.”
Depending upon the severity of the situation, the &^^% might sound more like, $%^$$ ^&%% #$%%^^. It’s easy to read Rick’s annoyance based on his adjective count. During the plant disaster last year, the staff is convinced that he set a world record for stringing together the longest list of curse words and colorful phrases in recorded history.
Yep. Should Rick get wind of a problem, a crap storm usually involves a fair amount of yelling and screaming followed by an emergency meeting in Rick’s very comfortable office and a few hours of rhetorical questions about “how did this happen?”
Alan, Jose and Erica take the heat, explain and re-explain the situation while Susan digs for the dirt. “Rick, this is unconscionable. Someone should be fired.”
Rick nods at Susan, recognizing that she is a triple agent, simultaneously reporting to him, allegedly working with the management team and reporting back to the Dark One…the head of H.R. at corporate. “We’ll come to that,” he responds to Susan, with every intention of never, ever coming to that point. Yep, Rick’s perspective is that you “keep the crap storm contained” and we can manage it here. Let it run out of control and get back to corporate, it’s outside of Rick’s World and all bets are off.
The meeting wraps up with Rick barking out orders…a few of which make no sense or at least contradict each other. The group, sans Susan, who is imploring Rick to write someone up, meets out on the production floor and sorts through the orders trying to determine how best not to screw the place up beyond repair by following Rick literally. Of course, it’s a fine line, because Rick has selective memory and you just don’t want him remembering the one thing that you thought was so ridiculous that you opted to ignore it.
To the newcomer, these meetings might seem pretty rugged and unprofessional, but to the staff, they recognize them as part of the process of managing Rick. Rick has survived for so long in this tough company by delivering acceptable numbers in good years and bad, that over time, the team begins to empathize with the need to keep Rick in good shape and in charge. He’s on occasion a benevolent dictator, and after a few years of working around him, you realize that job 1 in the facility is to deliver on things that please Rick.
While the above description might make Rick out to be a bad guy, he’s really not. He has a good business sense for running his facility and he’s proven it by surviving in a dog-eat-dog corporate environment. His bark is usually worse than his bite, although not always. He’s fun to talk to one on one….has a lot of interesting, hobbies and he rails at the news and politicians as much as he does his staff.
Today:
While this particular day had been quiet, Rick emerged from his office beet red and spewing a four-alarm litany of creative curse-words. Susan grabbed her notepad with a smile and Alan, Jose and Erica looked at each other, took a collective deep breath and started the march into Rick’s office.
Discussion Prompters:
- If you’ve worked for “Rick” before, what’s your survival strategy? What should Rick’s staff do to balance carrying out their jobs and surviving in Rick’s World?
- Rick is an unconventional and old-school, command and control leader. Does this make him a bad leader? Remember, he gets results and so far, we’re not hearing that his staff members don’t like him.
- What’s the best way to neutralize a “Susan” type character?
- Anything else that jumps to your mind about the case!
I would recommend that Rick, start dealing with the problems he sees within the company directly with the managers and not sharing his anger with explosions seen by all those in the company. I would recommend that he make his direct managers (Jose, Susan and Erica) understand that his explosions are not acceptable and that he is actually looking for ways to improve the performance of the company. Rick needs to gain control over his emotions and provide an environment where his reports feel comfortable approaching him with their own concepts for problem solving and how to improve successes instead of only coming to him with solutions they know he will approve.
Rick’s rambling of orders and selective memory provides an environment that is really not safe for anyone. If Rick were to write down his direct orders and forced to review them before they were implemented, the environment would probably be less threatening, more relaxed and Rick might learn how irrational he is.
Rick offers my way or the highway philosophy and this probably prevents his employees from sharing their innovative ideas. His employees most likely feel powerless because of his constant practice of looking over their shoulders and the requirement that they must get his approval on any decisions.
To empower his employees, spark innovation and create more efficient practices Rick must allow for his employees to see that he has confidence in them. By sharing the corporate philosophy and his belief that each and every employee has selected because the company felt they could contribute to the success, Rick would create an emotional connection between the employees and their involvement with the company.
Very entertaining! After reading the post, I saw elements of my work situation.
I think it’s typical that a higher level boss loses touch with the day to day operations, but somehow feels he must still control them. This is where I see the boss in the corner office having very little clue what’s happening on the floor, and on those occasions where he steps out, he makes changes, pronouncements and lots of extra work for the lower level manager, who must sort it out and find a way to get it right.
I’d like to see Rick asking his direct reports for regular updates on what’s happening on the floor. But Rick needs to demonstrate a high confidence level in the way the managers are handling things. Managers should touch on issues and describe how they intend to handle them. Rick should give the managers opinions a lot of weight, but be prepared to step in if something doesn’t sound right.
If Rick and his direct reports had open communication and a trusting relationship, then surprises (and therefore outbursts) would be rare, and Susan would no longer have the power to drive a wedge between them.