The Illusion of Hard Work

Maybe I've mentioned it before, but for some reason, bosses do not consider starting earlier than normal as putting in 'extra time'. Have you run into that? So far, in many decades at several companies, I've not found one manager that actually realizes that if you start a 1/2 hour earlier and leave on time, that you've put in overtime.

When I was working at a major medical manufacturer, all of upper management (department managers, directors and executives) had a curious work pattern. Not all of them, but the majority performed this ritualistic work 'dance' on a daily basis. I call it the Illusion of Hard Work. No matter what the normal starting time for employees, management would drag in somewhere between 9 and 10. The first order of business would be to grab their coffee and head into a meeting to chit-chat with their fellow managers. As lunchtime approached, the more 'diligent' would suddenly find that their employees needed to do some 'important' job before they took lunch. Managerial lunches were of the hour to hour and a half variety so that they would get back just in time to demand a lot of information from their employees before they could leave for the day. In a typical company, if you do personal stuff during work, it's considered stealing from the company. However, if the company requires unpaid overtime, that's good business, despite the fact that they are stealing from you.

Now the manager stays after quitting hours. Note that he's done very little so far. He stays to 7, 8 o'clock. Note that one of the reasons this happens is that the manager can A) demand stuff be done before you leave and B)Make you feel guilty if you leave on time.

If the company is lucky, the manager actually does accomplish some work in the afternoon/evening hours. However, as you can guess, the total amount of actual work can be counted in minutes. The manager then goes home to complain how hard he works. The next day the dance begins again.

Bag Lady Mentality

Have you ever noticed the homeless and watch what they do? Consider the Bag Lady. Here is someone who walks down the street with all of her possessions in a bag or shopping card. As she passes by anything that looks interesting or looks valuable, she grabs it out of the gutter and puts it in her cart or bag. Think about it, this is the way that most executives run their company. In those time when there isn't any easy growth to be found for their company, executives search everywhere to pick a few scraps out of the gutters of their business. As a comparison, the Bag Lady never gets out of the gutter from what she finds, so the business never gets out of the doldrums with penny-pinching attitudes. In short, you can't remain a World-Class company with a bag lady mentality. When you constantly trim the edges off of something, it gets smaller and smaller. Even businesses. When executive bonuses are threatened by a flat or declining economy, businesses shed people, services and pretty much all dignity. It's the bag lady mentality that accounts for the decline of customer service and product quality. When a company is World-Class, it does not have to make rules for employees to be nice and helpful to customers. Proper treatment of the customer is, by the time a company is truly world-class, ingrained and part of the company 'fabric'. When the company begins to trim the fabric, those tasks that used to be done by the so-called 'unnecessary' people begin to be delayed and even dropped. Employees, who want to see the company succeed begin to take on more and more tasks. This is called an increase in productivity. It's temporary, however, because without proper 'feeding' of the company, the employees begin to feel like their efforts are useless and update their resumes. At this point, the good workers find work elsewhere and the dregs are left. Even if some good employees are loyal enough to stay, the attitude sours.

It bears repeating: Businesses are like crops. You have to properly invest in a company, even in flat and declining economies, for there to be any growth. If you consider the farmer, what does he do the year after a bad crop? He plants MORE. By comparison, most US businesses eat their seed corn. Think about it!