Stupid Management Tricks

No, Virginia, there is no customer service

2011-05-07T18:02:00.005-04:00

It used to be that the whole idea of technical support was to make sure your customers were happy with your product and service so that they would remain your customer.

These days, technical support is usually 'augmented' (or entirely replaced) with internet FAQs.

In theory, this all makes a lot of sense. In practice, the customer is the loser.

I have come to the conclusion that most companies have a 'bag-lady' mentality. You've seen bag-ladies on the street. They either carry large bags or have a shopping cart full of their possessions so that they can keep an eye on every single thing. They even sleep with the stuff. This is the mentality of most senior management in Corporate America. They will tell you to your face that Quality and Customer Service is important. But only if they don't have to spend any money on it. Most Quality and Lean Programs fail just for that reason. Senior management will not commit to the dollars required.

This also results in the reduction of support personnel, cheap hires and information-free websites, that is, websites free from any kind of information. Forums were originally created so that users could modify their equipment and use it in non-standard ways, or for the makers of free stuff (applications, programs, operating systems, etc) could provide a level of technical support.

Senior management, of course, viewed technical support websites and forums and salivated. Think Cheap, Cheap, Cheap. And, for the most part, that's what they got. They got technical support personnel that know less about their products than the customers, so they provided 'expert' systems. They never realized that expert systems need to be used by people who know how to search. So they put FAQs on a website. Of course the FAQs only covered the barest minimum of problems, usually identical to the half page of troubleshooting at the back of the manual. "Unit does not turn on" Solution: "Plug unit into AC outlet."

In the past, I was able to rely on Cox Communications for excellent customer service. However, somewhere along the line, things deteriorated. Below is the story of how I got a very simple question answered. Management should be ashamed.

How to annoy your customers – HDTV version

Our lone HDTV set is in the basement so that we can watch while on the treadmill. The problem is that sometimes you have to really crank up the volume to hear the audio while running on the treadmill. So I decided to find out how to turn on the Closed Captioning.

This should be simple. So I thought.

Any HDTV system is not simple. In my case, I have to turn on 3 items: The TV, the cable box and the audio system. That plus I have two DVD/VHS players, so there are five remotes sitting around. And, no matter what the cable company tells you, they don’t give you a ‘universal’ remote. They give you a remote that will control some of the options of each device. For example, the universal cable remote will not be able to access the TV’s input switching. You’ll need to use the TV remote for that.

Well, for closed captioning, that’s what I did, reached for the TV remote. It had a nice CCD button. This was real easy. So I thought. The TV gave me a nice ‘denied’ icon and in the menu, Closed Captioning was grayed out.

So I went to the TV manual. There was plenty on how to turn CCD on and change the options, but no word on what is happening when the option doesn’t seem to work.

I got on the internet to find out what was wrong with my brand of TV. I had bought an Insignia. The price was right and I have no complaints on the picture. However, in this case, their ‘FAQs’ were useless. I went to the forum and thank God, I did not have to register or else this episode of ‘Customer Support Follies’ would still be longer. At the forum, I discovered that, if I had a cable box, the CCD was through the cable box, not the TV.

Then this should be easy, thought I as I grabbed the ‘universal’ cable remote. So I thought.

After spending about 10 minutes fooling with the remote, which did not have a CCD button, I was no closer to getting CCD. So now I go off and try to find another manual. The only manual, or rather piece of shiny plasticized paper, that comes with the cable box is how to hook it up. In English and Spanish. The remote has a manual. However there is not one word on CCD.

Back to the internet.

My cable company, Cox, is very fond of telling you over and over again that you can access their website and get answers to your questions. I’ve heard that thousands of times while on hold with their tech support. Still, I try the website first.

I started out by searching under ‘How to’. I got 84 results. The first result which had a 53% relevance (the next were all in the single digits), was the basic instructions on how to connect your box to the TV. It had neither the word ‘closed’ nor the word ‘caption’ in it. So much for relevance.

I switch to searching from the 'How-to's' to ‘All’. I got the same exact results.

If you’ve been keeping track, I have wasted about 20 minutes so far.

With the website obviously useless, I dial technical support. I don’t ever do this lightly because you have to fight your way through the voice response system before you can get to real person you can actually ask questions.

First I had to ignore the prompt for Spanish. Then I had to punch a number to tell them I had an account. Then I had to punch in my 10 digit phone number. Since I have two accounts, I now had to punch in the 16 digit account number. Then I’m asked for the last 4 digits of my social security number or the four digit PIN. Now finally they ask me if I have questions on my bill, want new service, etc, until I get to punch in the number for tech support, which obviously should be the last possible selection. Now I have to punch a number to tell them it’s tech support for TV. Luckily this one is the first selection. This gets me into the next voice response system – tech support! After hearing that channel 9 is having technical difficulties, listening to how resetting my cable cox can solve almost all of my problems, I hit the number so that they won’t reset my cable box.

I’ve now been on the phone ten minutes and am still fighting my way through the menu system. But I’m stubborn. Of course I’ve convinced that the first live person I’m connected to, will know nothing, but I glory in the struggle!

Now the voice response system asks me to ‘say’ what my problem is. I tell it ‘I want to turn on closed captioning.’ There is a long pause. Similar to the long pause you get from customer support people when they realize that you actually want them to help you. Isn’t it amazing how close to reality the voice response system is getting?

The system, now confused that I don’t want a canned response, responds with a list of problems it understands. The last option (of course it’s the last one) is ‘I have another problem’. This finally prompts the system to say it will transfer me to an ‘agent’.

I’m now up to almost 15 minutes and not quite there yet.

I have to listen again as to how my problem could have easily been solved by going to the website then finally I get an agent. His speech is slow and his tone is lazy. I have a bad feeling about this.

But wait, we’re not home free yet! For security purposes I have to:

1 – Give him my ten digit telephone number.

2 – Since I have two accounts, I have to give him the 16 digit account number.

3 – Now I have to verify my first and last name.

4 – I have to verify my address.

5 – I have to give him the last four digits of my social security number or the four digit pin.

Sorry about the delay, he says.

Now we are at the 20 minute mark and I finally get to ask my question. But, as anyone knows, I’m just beginning the struggle.

“How do I turn on closed captioning?” I ask. Just what I expect now happens. He tells me he’s happy to tell me that if I hold on for a moment. In other words, He has no clue and needs to ask somebody.

After a short time, he comes back and tells me all I have to do is hit the ‘settings’ button on the remote. Been there done that. When I tell him all I get is instructions on how to use the Info button, he argues with me. He keeps asking me if I have the Cox remote. Is it the silver Cox remote?

“Yeah it’s the Cox remote, it has ‘COX’ at the bottom in blue letters!” I respond.

“I’m watching television right now and I get closed captioning by pressing the settings button,” he says.

Sorry buddy, but I wasn’t born yesterday. I read him off exactly what is on the screen and tell him it’s an HD box, it must be different.

So I’m on hold again. While on hold, I play with the control again and find out I can access the Closed Caption Option by hitting the Menu button twice. I don’t ask me why I tried that, except that talking to tech support makes you really desperate.

He comes back on the line to tell me what I just found out but I blurt it out first. I do that because although I can access the Closed Captioning, I can’t turn it on and make it stick, it keeps switching back to off.

He makes a series of nonsensical noises that was supposed to pass for help. One thing is obvious, he has no idea what I’m seeing or doing. I narrate what I’m doing as he again departs to ask for help. Do you see the pattern here?

When he gets back, I’ve figured it out. Apparently you can’t just turn on the Closed Captioning and exit the menu. You have to go back two levels, then exit. This is the true definition of user-unfriendly. Now, of course, I have another problem. The captions are now in the center of the screen. I ask about this and again, I’m on hold and he’s off asking for help.

I change a few channels and find out that the position of the captions varies from channel to channel and sometimes scene to scene.

The ‘tech support’ person comes back on and tells me the first relevant piece of information I’ve heard from him. Apparently the close captioning is done by a third party and Cox has no control over the position. He tells me to change channels and see what happens. Been there, done that. I had really seriously considered hanging up on him before he came back. I was nice, however, and thanked him for his help and got off the line.

Total time: Over an hour. Just to find out how to turn on CCD. And I virtually did it all myself. I had had the wild thought that calling tech support would be a shortcut.

The Illusion of Hard Work

2011-03-20T16:18:00.003-04:00

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

2011-03-20T15:54:00.003-04:00

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!

Courage

2011-01-15T06:25:00.003-05:00

There was a time, and you have to be old to remember it, when a company was a team working toward a goal. There was a time when all shared the effort and all shared the results. Wow, have times changed. As management bemoans the fact that employees are no longer dedicated to the company, all they have to do is look in the mirror to see the reason.

We've covered a lot of ground in examining the aberrant behavior of people warped by the experience of management and one overwhelmingly dominant characteristic is that of projection. Projection is a term used in psychological research to describe the situation where a person, consciously or unconsciously 'projects' what they believe onto another person or persons. Racial or other prejudice is one such example. You see a lot of it when liberals brand those who don't think like them (and that's a whole subject of deviant psychology) as uncaring, hate-mongers, etc. The clearest example is someone who hates another person 'because he/she hates me.' In other words, a person justifies bad behavior by turning around and blaming it on someone else.

You can see now where management, especially upper management gets a lot of it's ideas. And a lot of projection gets mixed in with lack of trust. Most management realizes it can't trust itself (think Sarbanes/Oxley), projects it onto the workforce. That is why feces occurs.

One of the clearest examples of how wrong management thinking can go wrong is, surprisingly enough, snow. Or rather, plant closings due to snow.

I went to a college that subscribed to the co-op plan, where you went to school half the year and the other half you worked in your chosen field. This particular winter quarter I was working at the company that I would eventually join when I graduated.

We arrived that day at work to a snow storm and the snow continued to fall. Management made the right decision and sent everyone home at 11 am. By that time the parking lot was so bad, that we were pushing cars out of snowbanks to get them moving. Leaving that day was a physically arduous task. HOWEVER, by 1 pm, the snow stopped, the sun came out and began melting the snow. By the next day, the snow was gone.

Need I ask you to guess what happened next? Yep, management never, ever again sent people home 'officially' due to bad weather. And I mean NEVER. You would think that they'd have some compassion on their employees and open later. But...no. They'd been burned once. They had lost a half-day of productivity and they weren't going to lose that again! Yes, it is as ridiculous as it sounds. These days management has come up with an explanation for their policy that abdicates all responsibility from them and adds a tool to their arsenal of punishment against their employees: They tell their employees to use their judgment on whether to come in or not.

Think about it! Now management doesn't have to make any decision on bad weather, and if some employees take personal time to take a half-day or day off due to fears about the weather, they can use that against them at their reviews! It's a management Win-Win! First, they don't have to do their job by making a decision, then they can use the results to reduce costs. That is good business!

All hyperbole aside, this is management at it's shoddiest. They hold the threat of low/no raise over a person's head so that they have to drive through some of the worst conditions, risking injury, damage or life just so that they don't have to possibly be wrong. In plain words, it's cowardice.

The current place that I work has a 'snow phone' that we can call to see if the plant is open or closed due to weather. Since I've worked there, over 8 years, the message has never, NEVER, changed. We are always open for business as usual. This past week we had a 29 inch blizzard. The message did not change.

Stupid cowards.

Beware the ISO 9000

2010-04-25T09:01:00.006-04:00

My last two posts (rants) expressed my concern over lousy customer service. Customer service isn't rocket science. You need to remember one thing: Don't treat the customer like an idiot. It's amazing how difficult a rule that is to follow. But you must remember, more than any other department, management hires the cheapest labor for customer service and hopes they get lucky.

Somewhere along the line, you've heard of ISO 9000 or ISO 9001, etc. Most companies push this as some endorsement of quality. Guess what? It ain't. In fact, despite the altruistic aims of the ISO levels, it actually guarantees the reverse, given the low grade management prevalent in the US of A. ISO 9000 is an audit that confirms that all your processes, that is, everything the company does, is documented. You can probably see where this is going. When every process is documented to the highest degree, ipso facto, you can hire any idiot to do the job, because it's all there, right? Wrong! Beware ISO 9000. It is based on the fact that repetitive motion is quality. I know a lot of people that do the same thing over and over again and it's still pretty stupid. ISO 9000 does not make any value judgements about a company's processes, it merely confirms that they are documented. A process could say to take a large foam clue bat and whack the customer and that would be perfectly fine to ISO 9000.

I am not a welcome person into any 'quality' procedure. Never will be. In the first course I ever had to take on Quality, the instructor asked us to define quality. I immediately responded that quality was getting more than you paid for. For example, if you take your car in for an oil change and all they've done is an oil change, so what? Now, if they vacuumed out your car in addition, everybody would agree that was a quality job. The instructor flatly ignored me and called on somebody else. The upshot was that quality was defined as meeting requirements. If it was pointed out that you can follow requirements and the TV set would still blow up just after the warranty period, the instructor would respond that you didn't have the correct requirements.

So essentially, all skill, craftsmanship and genuine quality is legislated out, to make room for the idiots of redefinition.

What makes this even more terrible is the people that are attracted to Quality. Generally these as the people that believe that making Powerpoint slides is actual work. At my present job, we have a Quality Leader/Kaizan Specialist on the division president's staff. Once the president dragged him down to our department because production was having difficulty with crimping connectors to cables (an actual quality problem!). The President told him that this was the perfect project for a Kaizan (a type of quality process meeting) and for him, the main Quality guy, to look into it. That was the last time we ever saw that guy. The threat of doing actual work scared the hell out of him. However, when we started having Quality training again, he was totally there, showing how good an organizer he was.

This type of person is worthless. Actually worse than worthless because they have to pay him. I believe that, if I were ever to become president of a company, I would interview every single employee and ask them one question: "How good are you at powerpoint? As soon as someone answered 'Excellent' or 'Highly Skilled', I'd immediately fire them, because, they are obviously not doing any work to help the company.

How Ebay wastes its own money....

2009-12-28T19:09:00.004-05:00

I've always said that the two killer apps for the internet were shopping and porn. Those two items drove a lot of new internet technology. Porn is the reason you can see video clips on websites. Do you actually think that an entrenched bureaucracy like TV would acutally want to put their news clips on a website for people to see without commericals?

Anyways, I have been selling a lot of the stuff I had stored in the basement (for decades). I play fair, sell cheap and follow the rules. Only, and that is only, do I look for help when something is not covered by the online help. Ebay does follow the twisted ways of corporate America with respect to customer service. You know the drill--hire the cheapest labor and hope you get lucky. If I were to run a company, I'd rather know who was interfacing to my customers rather than hiring whoever I could get to take chicken feed.

I have a problem with leaving feedback. There is always more important things to do with my Ebay account that keep up with that. Besides, I'd rather find out what my customers say about what I sent them. I don't want to leave positive feedback then this idiot does nothing than complain when he gets the stuff. Fortunately that has not happened. You do get the odd anal orifice that insists on telling you how you are listing things wrong, how you are describing things wrong, and that THEY KNOW BETTER. I have a method of dealing with people like that. You nod and smile and walk away. DO NOT ENCOURAGE AN IDIOT!

To pick up the story, I, being a good Ebayer, decide to leave some feedback. The problem is, every time I leave multiple feedback, for more than one item/person, nothing gets saved. Everything I left feedback for is still on the list. WTF?! I try this over a period of several weeks and it still comes out the same. All I can do is leave feedback one at a time.

So I decide to go for help. Ebay is unique in their way of rationing Customer Service. First you have to click through the helps faqs until you reach a contact page. Now you can't just leave your question. That is not allowed. You have to select a canned question (and, of course, you know that virtually none fits my problem) and then they give you a phone number and a code. The code is good for about an hour, after that you have to go through the whole process again to get a new code. Just as an aside, does this sound like you are a valued customer that Ebay wants to help? If you answered 'yes', you need serious therapy, commit yourself immediately!

I get the phone number and my special code. I call. You know the drill--lots of menus and the entry of the code, all the while you are inundated with reminders that help is available quicker on the website! Just as an aside, does this sound like you are a valued customer that Ebay wants to help? If you answered 'yes', you need serious therapy, commit yourself immediately!

I finally get to the warning about monitored phone calls (for Quality!), then it clicks over to a busy signal. I try several times until my hour is up. Same busy signal. Just as an aside, does this sound like you are a valued customer that Ebay wants to help? If you answered 'yes', you need serious therapy, commit yourself immediately!

I relent and leave an email and the website promises me that they will be back to me within 48 hours. This part is at least true (for the first email that is....more to come). I made an unfortunate mistake when composing that email. I started by leaving a detailed account of my problem, then complained about the problem getting through on the phone.

Yes, you guess it. I got a email saying that they're sorry I had problems getting through on the phone after which they copied, directly from the website, the page on how to call into Ebay.
Not a word on feedback. Just as an aside, does this sound like you are a valued customer that Ebay wants to help? If you answered 'yes', you need serious therapy, commit yourself immediately!

I stayed calm, told them they should be ashamed of themselves that they did not even come close to addressing my issue and if they worked for me, I'd have fired them. Then I told them to go back and read my email.

This time it took 4 days to get a response. To be frank, I didn't expect to get any response. This time they told me they were sorry I was having problems with feedback and copied into their email the whole webpage on how feedback works. Just as an aside, does this sound like you are a valued customer that Ebay wants to help? If you answered 'yes', you need serious therapy, commit yourself immediately!

I had less restraint this time in reply. In gist, I told them they had better get to work answering my email because I wasn't going to go away. I was not going to get frustrated, that they would continue to hear from me.

This time it took a week to get a response. During that time I was seriously thinking of doing the serious detective work to get a phone number to reach somebody in charge. And, yes, they finally did look into my problem and answer my question satisfactorily.

Seriously, I laugh out loud every time I hear that canned voice telling me that my call is important to them. When you get the above kind of behavior, you realize you are not important and they just want you to go away. The sick thing about this is that if I pressed this issue about customer support, some poor email-answering slob will get fired for doing the exact process that some director or vice president has told them to do. It's those anal orifices that should be fired.

Finally Ebay sent me a survey on how my call to customer service went. After I finished laughing, I filled out a survey of canned answers (nowhere to really tell them what happened) and gave them all zeros. Mainly because there was nothing lower than zero or greatly dissatisfied.

You would expect them to look into it and want to know what went wrong. Ha! I don't expect to hear from them. That wouldn't be in the vice president's process.

True Tale of Printer Hell

2009-07-04T17:18:00.003-04:00

I've mentioned a lot of the pitfalls that management blindly falls into, but below is a true tale of how supposedly 'good' management can fall all over themselves in doing just the opposite of taking care of the customer. This is what happened to me.

Once upon a time, I had a Lexmark Color Inkjet Printer. It had cost me over $250. It had a single cartridge for black and the three primary colors which was hideously expensive. I only used it when absolutely necessary and tried to balance to the color use so that each $60 went as far as possible.

One day, my son announced that he wanted a good (non-dot matrix) printer for his computer and asked for a laser for his birthday. Not being able to afford one at that time, I researched ink jet printers and found that Canon printers had the cheapest cartridges and, in fact, usually had one for each color. I bought him one and, after use, he was thrilled. The print quality was great, maintenance costs were very low. In fact, it was so good, I gave away the Lexmark and bought myself a Canon S750. This printer faithfully served me for over ten years. I could always rely on the print quality, I could use it a lot, since each cartridge was cheap, and the only software it installed was a driver which dutifully informed me of ink levels every time I printed. When I bought a wireless print server, it had no problem and still performed as if it were a dedicated printer.

Life was Good.

Good things don't last. Late last year, the dear S750 gave up the ghost. After over ten years of service, it didn't seem like a good idea just to fix it. Technology had moved on. There were new things. So I went to the nearby Staples to buy a printer. It seems like a good idea, they had a $30 credit if you bought a printer, all their fliers said so!

I was entranced by the HP D5460, it was more compact, had a cute little LCD display to keep you informed and even had slots for camera memory. How could I go wrong? Little did I know at the time.

First Staples reneged on the rebate. They happily pointed out that the excruciatingly small print on each flyer meant that the printer had to be of a certain price, bought during a certain phase of the moon, and bought only on a pluterday. But we all expect rebates to be fantasy.

On returning home with the printer, it first informed me that it couldn't load drivers with the printer on the network. It firmly insisted the printer be attached to the computer or it wouldn't install. So twice I had to lug the printer over to two different computers to install drivers. And what an install! 135 Megs later, I had all sorts of applications, including one that announced "Buy supplies from HP!" which couldn't be uninstalled without breaking the printer driver. I dealt with that later, however, installing the drivers this way now broke the print server software, which now had to be reinstalled, again on both computers. I did that and was thrilled that now everything worked! I printed a test page from each computer. Looking good.

The next time I printed, nothing happened. After I had printed two pages, the printer sensed that I now needed new cartridges and refused to print unless I went over and pushed the 'Ok' button, acknowledging that I understood that the printer was desperately out of ink!

It was then that I noticed a single page stuck into the printer docs that announced that the low ink indication really wasn't a low ink indication, but more of an indication that you should buy new carts and be ready. Such genius.

Well, printing seemed to be fine, but I went back to staples to buy ink, figuring just once won't be bad, I can then get more online later. Sticker Shock! Ink was now three times as expensive as the Canon. Even online it was 2X expensive.

Needless to say, despite the low ink warning, it did print fine for a long while afterwards.

I missed the ability to know what the ink levels were, just in case I was going to print pictures. There seemed to be an application, called the HP Solutions Center, which would tell me the ink levels. I did not install it at first, because I had experience with 'Solutions Centers' and knew that was the equivalent of 'Abandon hope all ye..."

And even this was not so easy. I put the CD in and the Solutions Center steadfastly refused to install because my drivers were now newer than on the ones on the disk. What a concept, refuse to install supplementary applications for any reason. I was positive that 'Buy Supplies from HP!' would still install.

I got the new 'version' and installed it and watched the noisy HP driver pop-ups which dutifully told me that the print levels were not available at this time. In fact, they never seemed to be available. Further, the Solutions center told me that my printer was not active and will I please turn it on. But it still printed.

So I did what I thought that HP provided for....I call Tech Support. After negotiating 3 voice response systems, I was finally connected to A___ at the 7-Eleven, opps, I mean India. She would be very happy to help me and would I like her to fix it by remotely accessing my computer? Sure, what the hell. After much entry of information, name, assisting tech and the 10 digit case number which I would eventually memorize (8026646878, yes it will haunt me), the application, which happened to be VNC, hung as on 'Starting session'. This was because I was trying to use Firefox and could I please use IE. That didn't improve the situation, in fact, it continued to look identical. The hang occurred three more times in succession including a fourth time when my Indian 'friend's' computer hung also. Of course then followed an intense session of trying to figure out what was wrong with MY computer. My cache was cleared so many times, you could see yourself in the shine. A___ seemed to love to do the same things over and over again, hoping something different would happen. Finally she ascertained it was because I was using IE8 and would I please go and download IE7 and install it. After an hour of this, I decided I had had enough, told her so and hung up.

But it's not over....

HP send me an email, asking me about my support experience. Hmm, is there something lower than zero...then I came to the question: If you need to contact HP Support again, how would I do it, with all the usual suspects: email, website, phone, etc. Unwisely they added a choice called 'other' where I could fill it in. I typed in that I would buy another manufacturer's printer. Clever for me, but a bad idea because...

The next night at the same time, A___ called me back. She had the problem solved! (At least hers). Surprise, surprise, suddenly we could connect and she had control of my computer. In IE8. Sigh, at least she was consistent, she still had the idea that doing things 4 or 5 times in a row was some kind of charm. Luckily I have another computer, so I walked away and played my games while she played hers. Some of what she did was repeatedly try to reinstall the Solutions center and clean the cache, etc. Finally she announced that the firewall was causing a problem. Even though it has been turned off since I installed XP. She spend another 20 minutes opening up ports in the disabled firewall, since that was so boring to her, she began to chat me up. Really, wow, now I've got a date in India.

Finally she announced that all I had to do was reboot and it was all fixed. And...would I mind talking to her supervisor. At least he spoke English with less of an accent. He proceeded to tell me that A___ was his best tech (I had to bite my tongue to keep from telling him I felt sorry for him) and thank you for being so patient. At that point the system came up and to no surprise, the situation remained the same. The moment I told him it still didn't work, he vanished faster than any metaphor I can think of. My dear friend A___ was back and telling me that there was something in my print server that was blocking the messages and I should talk to them. AND she would be sure to call me at the same time tomorrow. I was beginning to realize the power of threats.

Linksys' support site was brilliant and to the point: They support bi-directional communications to the printer, however, most printer software does not support networking.

A___ never called back. I guess we are officially estranged.

Don't try to count the number of stupid management tricks, you'll lose count quickly....

It's all in the Management

2009-02-21T19:55:00.004-05:00

As management goes, so goes the company. If the management of a company or a division is just there killing time until the next promotion, you're best off looking for a job elsewhere.

Management has always talked about commitment, however, if you are only doing things so that you will quickly get another promotion, ascend to corporate, then you are lacking commitment. In the end a company is not just the management or the workers, it's the way everyone works together. I hesitate to say teamwork because that word has been over-used and bent all out of recognition. "Teamwork," said one manager. "Is a lot of people doing what I say."

Oh, it sounds like a joke, but too many managers feel that way.

Just this week I got a taste of what different kinds of management will do to companies. If you haven't noticed, if you call a company and experience bad customer service, rest assured that management is to blame. When management lacks commitment, so does everyone else. Oh, you do have those one or two individuals that will not want to work, but in general, most people, most workers want to do a good job. They and we just get frustrated when we get no help from management. Remember that a manager only exists to provide what's necessary for the workers to do their job.

I'm not going to pull punches with this story, no Company A and Company B. I'm giving the names.

For a long time I have been frustrated with AT&T. We used to have our local & long distance telephone service (land line) with them and DSL internet. Let's face it, AT&T charges a lot for a single telephone line. Then you start adding services like voice mail and caller ID, which have since become indispensible, and you have a large bill. Back in the heyday of dial-up internet, I had 3 phone lines in the house....and a whopping bill. Since I've cut back to one line, I've always been trying to get the best deal to keep my expenses in line. Everytime I called AT&T, they have graciously offered a new deal. The problem was, everytime I changed my service, the next month my bill was sky-high. Like clockwork I'd call and be told that they were sorry, but the correct codes were not entered for me. Note that every time my bill went higher, not lower. Then, a month or two later, my bill would suddenly jump up. Upon calling, I'd be told, oh, sorry, a particular program or discount expired, but we have a new deal. And, you called it, we'd go through the whole fiasco again. In general, I'd be calling AT&T customer service about over-billing at least 3 to 4 times a year. Do you think that's good customer service?

To my mind because I was constantly being over-charged, it had to be something that was mandated by some manager. Think about the profit if the person doesn't call! Plus, even if we have to refund the money after a few months, think of all the interest on that money! From purely a bean-counter mentality, it's a great strategy.

And, let me not forget, that even when I requested AT&T to email me when the discount or calling plan expired (which they said they do ALL THE TIME!), I have never, never received notice except in the next bill.

Contrast this to Cox Communications (at least in my area). I had them for cable TV just as long as I had AT&T (well, SBC & SNET going back ages, same difference), however, in the last 20 years I had to call their customer service maybe once. I honestly don't remember.

Hang with me, we're getting to the point here.

I finally went with Cox Digital Telephone, which meant that I had to go with digital TV also (that was not a choice I was going to fight ;-). I called Cox on Monday, picked up a cable box that afternoon and was watching HBO a couple of hours later. The phone was installed on Friday. Since my phone number was ported, I lost DSL. To AT&T's credit, they did waive the change of phone number fee (or so they said, I haven't gotten the bill yet...here we go again), but that was the highlight. I called on Friday and was told that the largest phone company in America would have to send a service technician out to install the new number. I had a choice: I could either get a guy in on Weds between the hours of 8am to 6 pm (!) or I could wait to Thursday and then he'd be there sometime between 8am and 12 noon. Such a deal. I did not mention that when I had the Cox appointment for the phone, the appointment was for 10:30 to 12:30. Much better.

Now comes more fun. When I had set the appointment with AT&T, they told me that my DSL service would be restored by 8 pm that night. In other words, I was lied to. When I called soon after the phone guy left, I was told, oh, no, you're scheduled for activation tomorrow. I got a little upset.

"Sir, it takes more than just flipping a switch."

"How much more than flipping a switch?"

"It takes much more than just flipping a switch."

"How much more than flipping a switch?"

"It takes much more than just flipping a switch."

"Wow we're getting somewhere really fast here!"

My sarcasm was not appreciated.

The next day, by the time I got home from work, the DSL modem was happy, but my browser would only take me to an AT&T page that told me I had a problem with my High-speed Internet. Lovely.

It seemed that my DSL had not been reconnected, I had a whole new account! Stupidly I let the AT&T service person (on the phone) walk me through the re-registration. Luckily I got my email address back (and, according to the tech, this wasn't a given). Being eager to get this sh*t over with I stupidly followed her directions. These directions included an unnecessary step that no technician would ever have you do unless you have router problems--she had me hit the reset button on the router. Although I did have internet access now, I did not realize until after the phone was cold that my wireless print server was no longer in contact. To make the story short, not only was the security on my wireless router set back to 'none', but it also reset the password to default.

As you can see, we have one company that agressively pushes technology and makes it easier for the customer, while another is hanging onto old, obsolete technology and making it difficult for the customer. In one case the management is involved and committed, in the other, they won't do anything but count the number of their vacation homes.

"Let's See What Happens"

2009-01-08T12:47:00.003-05:00

There is another management 'policy' that seems to be making the rounds, especially during times of downturn. I call it the 'Let's see what happens' policy.

Have you ever seen a company, that upon losing a senior manager, did not immediately have a replacement ready to step in? Very few. Very, very few. To me this is the proper way to do things. When you are about to lose an employee, you are about to lose valuable experience, doesn't it make sense to hire someone before they leave and get that experience transferred (to an extent)? Apparently not, as workers leave, more and more companies are not replacing working personnel (or should I say 'working resources'?). The operative policy is to do nothing, but if you've read this blog at all, you realize that is the normal operating procedure for management--do nothing.

Think about it! It saves management from laying off a person!

Of course, the hidden problem (well, not hidden to the workers, only to management) is that something does not get done. Usually this will not be apparent immediately as other workers scramble to fill the gap. These days there is never any extra capacity so something will not get done. The consequences are usually weeks to months in the future.

At my current job, we recently lost our best final test technician. We are left with 2 final test technicians, one undergoing serious health problems and the other is just plain useless. When the production manager was asked when the departed was going to be replaced, he remarked that he is going to 'monitor the situation'. The sad thing is that we are one of the industries that is not undergoing a downturn.

Will they ever learn?

Missing It Badly

2008-12-27T20:27:00.002-05:00

You have probably been on the court and done something like this yourself: You dribble around, take a jump shot and the ball catches nothing but air, no backboard, net or anything. And you feel really stupid. If you're really 'lucky', your friends are watching (and laughing their shorts off).

That is 'Missing it badly'.

It must be a 'people' thing.

Go to your local grocery and just watch the women at food shopping (and the men too...). They roll the cart down the aisle, stop the card on the right side and then stand on the left side, blocking the whole aisle. When you say 'excuse me', they jump out of the way, saying they're sorry. Really? It doesn't take a lot of brain power to notice one's surroundings.

Again, missing it badly.

A couple of years ago, I got in trouble with the director of the local ASPCA. It all began with complaints about people wearing fur. I jokingly remarked that people should wear dog fur, plenty of dogs get euthanized. I was then soundly lambasted for my 'insensitivity' and how dogs should be treated with more dignity. I don't mind people holding opinions if they are willing to discuss them. Here I was being belittled, so I fought back. I reminded the person that they support abortion but shouldn't human beings or at least fetuses be treated with more dignity. As most liberals will do when 'you don't just understand' but point out how they just don't understand, this person began to demonstrate how foul mouthed they could be. In front of a room full of people. I just rolled my eyes until that person realized what they had done.

Again, missing it badly.

Let me note now that I don't mind whatever opinion a person has. The problem is that all of us, and I mean ALL OF US, hold opinions without knowing what the hell we are talking about. When it's pointed out to me, I learn from it. Most people react like you just excreted on their couch.

How does this apply to management? Very simple, management misses it badly much too often.

Take the normal operations of a manufacturing facility. You have to hire people to build the product, test it, package it and send it out. This is very similar to the football team. The product is a touchdown or score and you need a team to get that ball down the field. So what do you do? It's obvious! You hire the cheapest possible labor and hope you get lucky.

Yeah, that's a recipe for success.

Or consider the usual workplace: You have a combination of abilities and capacities. Some are better workers than others, so you aim to keep the good and get rid of the bad, right? Nope, you make sure that yearly merit increases are as small as possible so that the good people, who can readily get another job, leave. Then you are left with the dead wood, who wouldn't be able to easily get another job.

That's it. Missing it badly.

Back again!

2008-12-10T07:35:00.004-05:00

I hadn't realized that it has been so long since I last posted. You KNOW that whatever I've said is not the last word on the pathetic management that plagues all US companies.

But all is not doom and gloom, there are the bright spots, those managers that know the meaning of the word integrity, well, those that know that integrity does not equal greed. While the capitalist system is the best we have, because people will strive to do better with a reward, there are and will always be abuses. History has shown, however, that these abuses do not last forever. Take the oil cartel, for example. The Arab countries came together out of greed and every time they make a concerted effort to gobble down more cash from the infidel countries, one of their own will stab them in the back, again from greed, wanting more that the share the cartel has given them.

What greedy managers have fighting against them are other greedy managers. Oh, sure, we end up with some companies with 'old boys' clubs' where they all cooperate to suck the company dry. In the end, however, market forces work against them. Without effort from the upper management of a company, any endeavor will slowly--or not so slowly--die off. While this is unfortunate for the workers at that company, they, the workers, really have to vote with their feet where employment is concerned. As the good, honest workers see problems around them, they leave for other companies, leaving a bloated hiearchy teetering on top of a shrinking mass of increasingly incompetent workers. Why incompetent? Because good workers will always find another job at good pay, the incompetent remain simply because they know they cannot get the same pay at another company.

Oh, well, it's back to work here again. I'll post again soon, but in the meantime, Merry Christmas to you all.

Yeah, screw the crap with 'happy holidays'. Don't expect politically correct here......

Friends of Xcompany????

2008-01-05T06:50:00.001-05:00

I'm definitely in a somber mood this morning. Usually an early riser, I lingered in bed for about a half hour and my mind turned in a bad direction. I'm a good worker, constantly running over in my mind what needs to be done at home and at work. This morning, however, my mind turned to a mailing list I had just joined.

I've had an email address on Hotmail since the day I discovered the 'net and that's over ten years now. I have been contacted by the strangest of people from my past over the years and within the last couple of months that I was contacted by a former carpool mate from my longest tenure job. I was at that job for so long that I passed through 3 different carpools and several different members. He had gotten my email address from a list that another former employee had started called 'Friends of Xcompany'. I'm trying to eliminate all possibility that anyone reading this could possibly discover which company this was because of what I'm about to say. Sorry.

I eagerly joined 'Friends of Xcompany' and was given a introduction by the list manager (to which no one responded). I stopped every once in a while to think about posting to the list and the thoughts grew and grew until I realized that if I were to post the typical 'Hi, it's great to see you all again' message, I'd be a huge hypocrite. On the list were several people that caused hell in my life. The corporate atmosphere at Xcompany encouraged back-stabbing and all manner of exploitation. I realized I wasn't really a 'Friend of Xcompany', I hated the place for the way it warped me. Nor could I really say that we'd be a group of Friends from Xcompany because at least one person on the list happily went about getting people fired that they didn't like. In that case I'm not going by rumor but was present at one incident where that person really did that by exaggerating and outright lying to personnel. Now if I had done something like that I would be filled with guilt and I really wouldn't want to be around the people who would have known that. Much less be a happy poster gushing at all my 'friends'.

This morning I realized that over the past few years I've been mentally and emotionally recovering from Xcompany and it's lies and deceit. I could not really blame it all on management except for the fact that management was fully eager to believe anything bad about it's employees from whatever source and no matter how true it was. It was as if everytime one of your kids ratted on the other, you made no attempt to find out what really happened, but punished the kid ratted on. Think of what that would do to the environment of a company and you have Xcompany.

This post was meant to be therapy for me and pretty much it was. I realize now (and always have) that holding a grudge is a waste of my life. However that does conflict with any resolution to be honest and honorable. Whatever it means, it still results in my not being a 'Friend of Xcompany'.

Management Training: How To Treat Employees Part 1

2007-12-02T11:46:00.000-05:00

The whole reason behind 'Stupid Management Tricks' is that managers, especially those of director level & above do not know how to treat employees. The primary evidence for this is the massive change that occurred years ago when Personnel Departments were renamed to 'Human Resources'. The pervasive labeling of people as a 'resource' begins the process of dehumanizing the employee. In short, you are no longer thought of as a person working for the company, but one the level of a desk or chair, which can be cheerfully discarded when no longer needed. But even more than that, the dehumanizing process again absolves the manager from doing something. Mainly, dealing with employee morale. I mean, a desk or chair will still function if you treat it like crap, right? During my tenure at one of the many Philips companies, a new CEO had the literal nerve to stand up in front of the massive headquarters meeting and say that he's not going to do anything about morale, you'll have to do it. This too is another abdication of responsibility as more than anything, management sets the culture in a company. Opps, forgot, desks & chairs have no culture. Gee, see how easy it works for the manager?

If you look at the great leaders of history: Alexander, Caesar, Patton, etc, one thing that distinguished them from the not-so-great was the observation that they knew their soldiers by name. This is a very powerful thing, it generates a lot of loyalty. When you have someone's loyalty, you can get them to perform virtual miracles. You can ask a lot of them...and get it.

There is one problem with this which is why so many managers don't do it. It takes effort.

A Management Model: The Baseball Team

2007-09-08T13:31:00.000-04:00

I started talking about this before and got distracted, so let's get back to this. Teams, organizations, companies, corporations, etc, all have one thing in common--Organization. Some forms of organization work better than others. For example, the baseball team. Do you think that the Baseball Team would work organized as a Democracy? I doubt it! Democracy is geared toward larger teams where the individual conceits will not dominate. But take a look at the Baseball Team as a corporate entity. They have a product--sports, or more accurately, entertainment. In selling that product, they have to make enough to pay their expenses (player salaries, travel) and make a profit. If there's no profit, there is no reason to do business nor does the product maintain any level of quality. If you don't believe that, take a look at most non-profits and you'll see a lot of people going through the motions once the 'thrill' of doing something meaningful wears off.

Back to the baseball team, selling the product is selling entertainment. Teams are not national but local, so they have to appeal to the local populace. They make money by selling admission to games, merchandizing, TV rights. And the one thing that stands out in those areas is that they get more money out of it, they have to win. Sure there will always be hard-core fans, but ask anyone at a Kansas City Royal game how many butts are in the seats as opposed to the George Brett years and you'll find a significant difference. But the key here is that selling your product is winning and visa versa. How does a baseball team do this? It's not an exact science, but they hire the best players (who create the product, the workers) and put the best coaches over them (management).

I think you can already see where this is going. Many, many companies fail or just drag along because they try to hire the cheapest labor. Think Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Here is a baseball franchise that has finished last or next to last every year. Look in the stands, if it ain't a good team they're playing, there's very few there.

Now look at the other extreme: When the team is not doing well, what happens? Do they eliminate some of the players to make up the revenue shortfall? No way! The first thing they do is fire the manager. This should be a lesson for business. While you do need to hire the best people to make your product, you need management that will get them to perform at their best.

Sabotaging the Work

2007-08-19T13:50:00.000-04:00

Management has only one responsibility, only one task: To make sure that the workers have what they need to do their job. It's no rocket science, except to those who actually hold the management positions. Then think of all the assistance that your typical manager has! There are reams of books, reviews of those books and, for every possible decision, there are country-wide surveys to show effectiveness. For example, there have been dozens of studies of 'flex-time' in it's various incarnations and every single one mentions increases in productivity and a decline in absenteeism. That would mean that every since company would want to jump on it? Wrong! The most prevalent response is "Well it won't work for this company (or business)". However, if management can frustrate the workforce, they jump on it immediately.

I worked at a major military manufacturer for roughly one year back in the '70's. It was a co-op job. The strangest thing I noticed there on the first day was that, although the company had provided vending machines all over all the buildings, each had the coin slot drilled out to fit a padlock. Unless you removed the padlock, you couldn't put coins in the slot! Once a day, during the lunch half-hour, a supervisor would come by and unlock the coin slot. By that time, there would usually be a line 4 or 5 deep in front of the machine.

Why did this happen? Nobody seemed to know. But where there is a will, there is a way and people will get their coffee. Catering trucks would pull up in front of each building and the people would stream out. Even the management would send their secretaries out to get coffee.

This would not last. A memo from someone on high (if I told you the name, you'd know the company) setting forth a new policy that nobody was allowed to go out of the building to get anything from the caterers. I was a young kid that knew very little at that time, so this struck me as absurd. So I responded to the 'someone' with my own memo. However I wasn't so stupid, I added a line that caused 5 levels of management to quiver with fear. I added a line to the effect that maybe they should be looking at those managers that have so little to do that they are watching people out the windows. Even then, I heard nothing for a long time. Since this was a co-op job, they waited until the last day before I went back to college. Then I found out that the guy I had memo'ed was 5 levels of management above me. I was interviewed by each manager on the way up, including Mr. Upper Management. The main question they all wanted to know was "Who was the manager with nothing do?". I would like to note that every manager I talked to, had a cup of coffee in their office.

But when I finally got to the top of the management ladder, I found out why they locked the slots on the vending machines. It seemed that the military branch they built stuff for, had done a survey on productivity at that location. They had seen a number of people drinking coffee. As soon as management saw that in the report, they acted with alacrity! Maintenance was out there drilling immediately.

If you've ever been in an engineering environment, a cup of coffee doesn't slow down productivity, but rather enhances it. But as you can see, as soon as they have even a whiff of a reason, they're overly willing to make things worse for the workforce.

The Art of Self-Deception

2007-08-05T10:57:00.000-04:00

When I mentioned the Voluntary Separation Plan, we've already encountered the almost desperate need of managers to deceive themselves. In that instance, since the world was cosy and rosy for them, then everyone must be happy. I believe this need for self-deception results from the infusion of something that should not be in management--the ego. Sorry to get religious on you, but the Bible states that "Whoever would be great in the kingdom of God, would be a servant to all." Despite the origin, if you look at management with that in mind, you begin to understand where 'THINGS WENT WRONG". To put it plainly, it is the responsibility of any manager in your organization to make sure that you can do your job. Think about it, that would include everything: Equipment, workspace, safety, etc. However, once ego enters into the equation, things fall apart. Ego is reason that managers self-deceive. "If I'm promoted to this position, how can I do anything wrong?" Then the fantasies begin.

At one company, the structure was very simple, they had production & engineering. Production had it's top tech as supervisor in Final Test and a manufacturing engineer. When all else failed, then engineering was involved. It didn't take an act of Congress, all they had to do was come over and get us.

Then we got a new production manager. A woman from a major aerospace manufacturer. The key here is not the woman part, but the 'major' part. The larger the organization, the more it relies on the managerial 'buddy-buddy' system. That is another subject. However, back to the situation....the problem arose when the production supervisor (one step below the lady) and his group leader decided that they were tired of getting beat on for late shipments. The solution was easy, blame Engineering! When a unit got tied up in final test, it was immediately marked as moved to Engineering for debugging, even if Engineering never heard of it or got it for a week later. Now our manager was getting beat up. However the lady had a great idea! To solve the problem, all she had to do was get a few of those lazy engineers transferred to production, problem solved!

Here's where the self-deception occurred: One of the techs that was going to be transferred was going to be put in the position of customer support (answering the phone). This particular guy was at the company for a few years. First he was a final test tech, then he really, really wanted to get into engineering. He was going to school at night, etc. There was an opening for an Engineering Tech, but someone talked him into taking on the customer support job. After a year, we had fought to get him into engineering and now, 3 months later, this lady wanted to move him right back into that position AGAIN. He even told her he did not want that job, to which the lady replied that if he didn't take it, she didn't know if there would be a position for him.

As you notice, this lady, despite being told the situation, refused to believe it because it conflicted with her idea. Roughly 6 months after the transfer, this guy left. When the lady was told that it was because of the transfer, she responded that he was going to leave anyways! As you notice, there was no compulsion to actually believe that she had done something wrong.

The big key here is: If you can't admit your mistakes, you can't learn anything!

What Should a Manager be doing????

2007-07-28T08:43:00.000-04:00

I'm sure that like me, you've looked at the useless protoplasm known as 'your boss' and wondered how the hell they ever got into that position. In some cases it's fairly obvious, like MacDonald's, the quickest way to get to be manager is just to be there for more than 6 months and not be blindingly stupid.

Let's consider what a manager is supposed to be. If you are going to criticize something, it's best to know why you are criticizing it.

The first step is to establish that management involves responsibility. The manager, essentially manages something or somebody. In a sense we all manage things in our lives from our time & money, up to our family. Now a family is not a good analog to a business. The family includes blood relationships which do not (or rather should not) impinge on the business atmosphere. However, a good analog is, essentially, the baseball team.

Consider a baseball team. Obviously the main focus of the baseball owner is to make money. While a team can make money without winning ('60's Mets), it doesn't generally happen. The fans come to see success. So as in business, success means money. The baseball team has it's upper management - Team manager, coaches, etc and it has it's workers - The players. Notice that, should we even consider the general management of the team, that the structure is quite flat. There are only 2 or 3 levels of management. This is important because communication is important. Frank Herbert in the novel 'God Emperor of Dune' put it very succintly "Sometimes the most important information is that something has gone wrong." So here we're already getting at part of the failure of American Business: They don't know when something has gone wrong. It will take a long time for that information, that something has gone wrong, to weasel it's way to the top, especially if you are considering the company with 5 or 6 levels of management.

Does that information actually need to go up all those levels? Actually not! If the managment is good, then someone along the line will make a decision. It's as simple as that, someone has to make a decision. That, given the poor quality of the people who generally rise to management positions, is very difficult. Frank Herbert again addressed that when the God Emperor himself said that bureaucrats will delay a decision (by asking for reports, etc) until the problem is uncorrectible. The American Management Association, back in the '70s, did a study on the most effective managers and discovered that effective managers only made the right decision 10% of the time. Do you know what that means? It means that all you have to do is make a decision and you can be effective! This also means that you can evaluate your decision and make another decision to correct it.

We'll get back to the baseball team in the next post.....

The Origin Of Policies

2007-07-20T10:32:00.000-04:00

I was once told by someone in the auto industry that, if you want to know the why behind some feature of the car, just say "It's cheaper" and 99% of the time you'd be correct. Think about that in relationship to the policies in your workplace and you'll notice that the same applies. "It's cheaper!"

Management is almost always about doing things easier, or at doing the least amount of work. If a manager has to dig through the numbers to find out real costs, he will most likely not do the work. For example, and in engineering we see this a lot, we can do a lot of calculations in Excel. However, many times we need something like Matlab which will yield better results faster. In most companies, everyone gets/has Excel. Matlab costs $1200. This is an easy decision for a manager. He says no to the expenditure, because they're getting by with Excel. He makes no effort to discover how much time is wasted using Excel over the course of a year or two. That would require work.

For example, at my current workplace, they made a grand effort to get people to turn off their computers at night, rather than let them run. At the end of the year, they trumpeted how they had 'saved' over $100,000 on their electric bill. We set about and did a quick calculation as to how much time is wasted waiting for the computer to boot & be usable. Given the number of employees & an average salary, we calculated that, in productive time, roughly it cost the company about $2 million waiting for the computer (over the course of a year). Notice how the easy, obvious stat is grasped onto without any thought as to the hidden costs.

Note that with this calculation we did not screen out those functions that don't really accomplish anything even if the computer was up (like HR, Finance, Contracts, etc). So the number might be lower.

Now consider something we encounter everywhere--Labor grades. Have you ever sat down to understand why we have labor grades at all? Here is a system that takes a few people to maintain and the benefit it gives is....??? The only justification I can perceive is that it sets a structure on what job deserves what pay. But that's a moot point in the days of Internet and surveys. If I want a specific type of engineer, I can consult all the job sites on the net and get a good idea, for the job and the location, of what that engineer will cost me. Then with that as a guideline, I can interview people and then negotiate a pay rate. As you notice, the labor grade does not enter into this at all.

What labor grades are designed to do, is to artificially limit the amount of money they pay an employee. Most labor grades have a maximum range, when you hit that, well, sorry you can't get a raise unless we promote you. The more devious way is to begin to limit the max raise as the person gets up in the range. It saves money!!! At my current job, my raise was reduced by 25% because I was at 65% of my labor grade range.

Then again, why would you want to limit the pay a person could get except for the fact of 'saving money'? The plain fact is, that if you have someone doing excellent work, you should 1) Want to retain them and 2)Pay them enough so that they don't want to leave.

I believe that this sort of reasoning is foreign to those in management. But this will lead us onto the change from Personnel to Human Resources and what that change really meant, other than a name change. Next time.

Short-sighted Managers (Oxymoron)

2007-07-17T14:19:00.000-04:00

If you have even worked one year in a corporate environment, it's easy to relate evidence of management short-sightedness. This does not say anything good about American management. In the next day or two, I'm going to try to create a mental model of what a manager should be and do.

Most, if not all, evidence of managerial short-sightedness is the result of being overly worried about money. Or rather worried about money in the wrong way. I've seen management throw all sorts of money into partitions, floor plants, even re-doing the all-important lobby, but when faced with a drain on their skilled people, will refuse to devote a penny to keeping them.

One business fact that a lot of managers (and their clueless support functions such as accounting, contract management, etc) miss is that there is a cost to doing business. Yes, there is such a thing as spending too much money to do business, but there also is a threshold over which 'efficiency' in spending is counter-productive.

A case in point: In the mid-70's (just out of college for me, I'm old but not that old ;-), I worked for a manufacturer of medical ultrasound equipment. At that time, they were the leaders in medical ultrasound. They owned the market. Unfortunately due to management decisions, by the early '80's they were shutting the whole plant down and getting out of that business. The factory was structured such that assemblies were built and tested, then assembled into the unit which was tested and calibrated by final test. Final test consisted of perhaps 15 to 20 test techinicians of various capabilities. One of the things that this manufacturer did that I applaud is that they hired most of their test technicians from the local electronics schools. They trained them on-the-job. What they didn't do, and, of course, this was to 'save' money, they would not increase their pay sufficiently as their skills increased. The obvious resulted. The good technicians would soon discover they could make a lot more working for someone else and be gone. The poor technicians would remain knowing that they wouldn't be able to deal with a different job. As a result, this company had a 'hard core' of incompetent techs supplimented with a revolving door of good techs who were just passing through.

So what was the result of their attempts to 'save' money. Between the training new techs just to have them leave & the deadwood left behind, it essentially cost them more money than they would have spent to keep their employees. But the critical clue here is that that loss of money was not directly visible. You would have had to dig a little to see the loss.

This is right in line with the law of management that we've already enumerated: A Manager will do what is easy. Since the loss of margin from poor technicians was not directly evident from glancing at a spreadsheet, management did not see it.

Dominant Management Philosophy: Shirk Responsibility!

2007-07-15T08:46:00.000-04:00

I think that anyone who has been working in corporate America generally gets truly surprised when a manager takes responsibility. As engineers, we have a tendency to get noticed by and have more contact with corporate management. Then you truly see the mental contortions that managers go through to blame things on someone else.

One of the biggest and best methods of shifting the blame is called 'employee empowerment'. This is trumpeted as the savior of corporations by shifting much of the responsibility of improvements to the people doing the work. If you look at it superficially, it sounds great. We finally get a say in the company! But if you think about it, if we're researching how to improve our products and organization, what the hell are the managers doing? Simply sitting there and taking the credit.

Here's a few examples form my experience.

In my first job (another medical manufacturer), they instituted a program to reward those who come up with cost saving ideas. I don't remember what the amount of the reward was, but it was peanuts as compared to what the company could save. At the outset, their suggestion box was filled with ideas. As policy put it, they would examine each idea and get back to the employee within two weeks. One employee (not me, but a poor smuck on the production line) came up with the idea that the backplane for this system should be translated to a PCB motherboard instead of hand-wiring it as they had been doing for years. Two weeks went by and he heard nothing. He went to Personnel (back then they hadn't made the dehumanizing change to Human Resources) to inquire. He was told that they were going to do that anyways, so he didn't qualify for an award. The information got around very quickly. Soon no ideas were coming in and the program died of neglect. Classic case of a stupid management trick. Even if they were 'already' going to do that, would it have hurt them to reward him anyways? Just think, though, they SAVED a couple of hundred dollars.

The company I am currently with, had purchased a rival company just before I was hired. This rival was functioning, making a profit and my company was envious of the contracts they were getting from the Government. So they bought them. Management invaded that company in force, instituted all the functions, processes and software that they HAD to have. Since that point, 4 years now, that small company has not only ceased to make a profit, but has been a money-sink. Do you think that one manager might have gotten the idea that maybe they did something wrong?

Finally, from a incident that occurred while I was in college, I realized that the art of shirking responsibility is not new to management, but is a carry-over from the art of confidence men and swindlers.

During the end of my college years, I would bring my car to school, find a place to park it and basically let it sit until I used it to go back and forth to home. Once in this big city, I bought gas at a station just down the road from the school. I had a gas credit card then and gas was only about 30 cents a gallon (well, I did tell you I have been working a LONG time ;-). This was the old days when they had the rollers to frank the receipt which you signed. They would frank the receipt with the cost, then write it in. Being slightly inattentive, I didn't look at the franking and just signed based on the written-in number which was $4.00. When I got my monthly statement (back in the days when you actually got the receipts with your statement), the receipt showed a $14.00 franking and the copy had a nice one written in. Obviously I complained as my car couldn't possibly hold $14.00 worth of gas back then. I received a nice letter rolling the charge back to $4.00 and mentioning how the gas station owner had fired the employee responsible. What? Think about it! If the employee boosts up a charge, how is he going to profit from that? Not a bit! He must have been told to do that by the owner and, when the feces hit the rotating blades, took the fall for the owner.

Now you know where managers get that philosophy.

The Voluntary Separation Plan (VSP)

2007-07-13T08:02:00.000-04:00

I was employed by a major medical equipment manufacturer for close to 17 years. I used to quip that I was looking for another job for 16 1/2 of those years. I hired on there simply because I needed a job and they offered one. I got a good indication of how this company felt about it's employees at the interview. At the end of the interviewing gauntlet, I asked the HR guy to see the benefits package. His response: If we give you an offer, then you can look at the benefits package. The strange, or at least what I thought was strange at the time, thing was that everybody complained about this guy, but no move was made to remove him until he left on his own.

The particular place of employment then proceeded to have a layoff once a year. They always scheduled the layoffs for either Thanksgiving or Christmas to give their employees that warm feeling.

One year, instead of their typical layoff, they did something different. It was dubbed the VSP and basically was a program that allowed you to lay yourself off in exchange for essentially very little more than a typical layoff. You would get the typical 2 weeks for every year of service severance, but as an added bonus, they paid your medical benefits for roughly 3 months after layoff. So in other words, if you could do it, you could find a job, tell then you'd start in 2 or 3 months and make a bunch of money. That is exactly what a few people did. In fact a lot just took the package to get the hell out of the place. Upper management had estimated that about 25 people would take the VSP. In reality, 180 did.

Then came the interesting part. Of the 180, quite a few were key people they couldn't do without. A few came back as consultants. A few even rehired after the consultant stint. On the whole the entire VSP program was a flat failure. Sure it did reduce head count, but, as always, it was the key people that left, leaving the deadwood who couldn't find another job.

Even more interesting is Upper Management's reaction to the results of the VSP. Despite all the evidence that the place was so bad to work at that all people needed was a small incentive to leave, Management had its own rationalization. They believed that they had made the package too attractive. And they never had another one.

The point? Well, as you can see, it's pointless to reason with management. Here they did not want to admit failure and, because things were so cozy for them, they refused to reckon with any idea that people didn't want to work there.

"I didn't know what you've been doing, so I gave you average."

2007-07-10T06:13:00.000-04:00

The above is an exact quote from a manager I had very early on in my career. The reference was obviously to my yearly review. That would not have been a bad thing if I had been taking the typical managerial stance by spending the whole year waiting for someone else to do something. But it wasn't. I had spent the year redesigning the backplane for a system that had been originally designed way before my time. During this period my days consisted of getting in and the next thing I would know, everyone would be going home. In those days, PCB design was done on paper, there were no personal computers.

Now the manager in question used to be one of my co-workers. He was one of those types, yeah, you've seen them, that like to dress up really nice. He would even leave his keys on his desk because he didn't want them to make a hole in his pants pocket. He had started out as an engineer on this project, transferred to marketing (you saw that coming, didn't you?) then returned as our boss. Somehow he had convinced someone that he would be the savior of the project.

At the point when my review was due, he had been with the project roughly 3 to 4 months. Do you know what an engineer can do in a period of 3 to 4 months? Then witness how much this manager had done in the same period. He had not even figured out what his workers had been doing! Although we should qualify that, because he was a manager, he probably didn't want to or didn't care what I was doing. It was much easier to give me 'average' than to actually find out what I was doing.

His stupid management trick worked very well. Within a month I was gone to another job. Incidentally, I got a 20% raise to change jobs.

You would actually think that eventually even the dimmest manager would figure out that their tricks backfire 99% of the time. But managers have a built in defense mechanism that saves their pride when they cause something bad to happen. We'll explore that next time when I tell the story of the Voluntary Separation Plan.

A Manager Will Always Do What Is Easy

2007-07-08T06:27:00.000-04:00

Don't get me wrong, there are good managers out there. After so many years, I've realized that to be a good manager, there are very few things you have to know and do. The primary and most important are: 1) They have to work; and 2) They have to know what their company does.

We'll deal with the latter later (always wanted to say that ;-), as there is a heresy which has become gospel among managers is that a manager can manage anything. Well, that applies only if you want a bad manager.

But now we'll talk about work, something that is anathema to a large majority of managers. The work that managers are supposed to do varies with the level of the position, but in these days of slim staffing and accelerated deadlines, it is very important that your manager be right there to roll up his sleeves and assist when things get crazy. When deadlines are looming and things are not working, a manager can delegate all he wishes, it won't make a damn bit of difference. Even on what is called a 'fully staffed' project, all you need is for one of the project members to walk and the project is in serious trouble.

To really demonstrate why work is so important and so infrequent from managers, you just need to look at a company going through a slump. Sales are down and the cash flow is not good. In this type of situation there are actually a lot of things that upper management can do to reverse the downward trend. First, they can increase market penetration. This involves hiring more sales personnel in the right areas to just sell more. This does require a good knowledge of your markets. Second, the company can roll out new products. Again, you need to know your market and clear away obstacles to development. Third, you can become more efficient. This is more than just laying off people and trying to make one person do the work of two or three. This involves looking closely at the way the company does business and getting rid of unnecessary work. Unfortunately the author of 90% of unnecessary work is management itself. Finally, the last way to try to turn around a company is layoffs.

Think about all these methods. Which one is the easiest? Layoffs! Which one do you see happen the most? Layoffs!

The next time you get a really stupid pointy-haired boss announcement in your company and ask yourself why. Just remember, it was the easy.

"If I do this for you, I have to do it for everybody"

2007-07-07T09:30:00.000-04:00

This phrase is usually used as a last-ditch effort to say 'No' when a manager can't logically argue with you. When confronted with this response, the first thing to remember is, please, don't laugh out loud.

I've heard statements referred to as 'lies from the pit of hell'. This was qualifies as a 'lie from the pit of stupidity'.

Obviously this is a lie because in any organization there are those privileged few who garner 'perks' that not everyone can get.

For example, take a look outside at the parking lot. See that the VPs and even low-level managers have assigned parking spots. Did they have to do that for everyone? NO! And let's talk about bonuses. When the company does well, do all share in the bonuses? No, again.

At one job that I had years ago, every year they would have a 'sales meeting'. This would take place at a convenient location, for example, Bermuda or Hawaii, where the sales force and upper management would engage in 'team-building' activities such as golf, shopping or a trip to the casino. Now the obvious question is who was invited to these important company-paid activities? Not the people that do the work, of course!

Which brings us around to probably the first and most important law of managers: A manager will do whatever is easy.

Think about that 'til next time.....didymus7

In the beginning...a start

2007-07-06T12:14:00.000-04:00

I've been working in corporate America for over 30 years from the perspective of an engineer. This is a level high enough to see what upper management is doing but low enough to get hit with the crap that comes from that level. It really amazes me that management, especially upper management, makes the same stupid mistakes over and over again. We all read Dilbert and laugh, but what are CEO's, VP's and directors doing when they read Dilbert? It's enough to accuse them of not being able to read.

Over the years I've compiled the 'Laws of Management' and when I get some time I'll post them all and let everyone argue about them.

Next post - "If I do that for you, I'll have to do it for everybody."