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5 Things Your Terrible Boss Says (And What They Really Mean)
Nov 18th
In a recent study, scientists combed the Earth looking for an elusive creature spoken of only in hushed voices over dimly-lit campfires and mostly-empty water coolers (didn’t someone tell Steve to replace that? Steve, come on man it’s your turn). Referred to colloquially as “A Good Boss” and scientifically as Notdouchebaginus Zeromicromanaginicus, scientists found this creature to be startlingly common. The important caveat was that satisfaction with one’s boss is highly correlated with income, meaning the more you make, the more you’re willing to put up with. For those of us making under $75,000 a year, our boss is more likely a person who makes the already unpleasant activity of working in an office that much more miserable. But anyone who’s had a terrible boss can attest that it’s not just the yelling, patronizing, or coming into work to find a giant steaming dump on your keyboard. The worst part is the Orwellian double-speak they obviously picked up from their more competent counterparts elsewhere and corrupted well beyond their original meaning. Phrases such as:
“I want it done and I want it done yesterday!”
What they think it means:
Despite the stereotype of the ineffectual, demanding boss, there are plenty of totalitarian taskmasters out there that are very good at running things. Steve Jobs, for example, was notoriously demanding and unforgiving. In a business setting, you need someone who can set a clear vision for the company, punish employees who don’t live up to that vision, and generally be the dynamo that powers the whole process. Good examples of these types of bosses are often described as “hard, but fair” despite that phrase always sounding like a euphemism. Unfortunately your terrible boss saw these other good bosses and learned the easiest and most evident, but also the most wrong lesson: being a good boss means being demanding, and nothing else.
What it actually means: “I forgot about this”
For a variety of reasons, this phrase is particularly common in the financial industry. Usually, because of the speed at which the industry hums along 24 hours a day, you’ll hear it on a trading floor because someone literally needed something yesterday. Unfortunately, your terrible boss decided they want to flex their managerial muscles when something falls through the cracks (and something always falls through the cracks), so they spout this utterly meaningless phrase. If you’re having a hard time understanding why this command can be so frustrating, let’s lay out what usually happens because of its maddening vagueness:
Step 1: Terrible Boss says “I want it done, and I want it done yesterday!”
Step 2: Terrified employee asks for clarification, the boss yells the phrase again so as to appear bold and demanding
Step 3: Terrified employee thinks “Oh so this is my highest and most immediate priority”, and focuses only on this task to the exclusion of their other responsibilities
Step 3: Everyone wonders why nothing is getting done, but since they depend on Terrified Employee for a variety of responsibilities, they can’t finish their work
Step 4: Company grinds to a halt, Terrible Boss blames Terrified Employee for doing exactly what he was told to do
Step 5: Do not profit
It’s easy to look at that set of steps and thing “Well, Terrified Employee should have known not to neglect their other responsibilities.” This is true and you are right. But, as we all need money to buy food, shelter, and filthy filthy porn (just kidding, no one pays for porn), Terrified Employee works well in excess of 40 hours a week and this is likely to happen almost every day. Eventually, Pavlov and self-preservation kick in and make financially-ruined fools of us all.
“I work all the time, so should you”
What they think it means:
Anyone who’s worked in an office at a level above temp can tell you that “40 hours a week” is more of a weak guideline that will be curb-stomped and left for dead in a coffee-fueled rage on three hours of sleep in three days. Weeks easily stretch to 60, 70, and 80+ plus hours, and that’s just what’s expected to justify the gobs of money you hope to make. Believe it or not, this often pays off, as those low-level Analysts that stick it out frequently end up making more money than anyone under 35 should be trusted with. The reason they were able to do this was usually because their boss led by example, putting in insane hours themselves, and always carrying their work phone even though it made them look like a douche when they set two Blackberries on the table at dinner. In other words, it was a shared sacrifice based on mutual respect.
What it actually means: “I don’t have to pick up the phone when you call, you do”
First off, if your Terrible Boss honestly put in the long hours and hard work of the good bosses above, they likely don’t fall in to the Terrible Boss category. More than likely, they don’t work that hard, they just say they do. No one ever corrects them because, one, who’s going to call the boss lazy, and two, it allows everyone else to goof off with wilder abandon. The expectation for how much work will get done is lowered because everyone’s in on the “Man I work so hard [opens Farmville]” joke.
This isn’t the bad part. The bad part is that the Terrible boss will leave early, take long lunches, and generally faff about because when something needs to get done, he can always put it off or make someone else do it. He’s the boss like that. (A good boss doesn’t abuse this privilege, but we’re not talking about them). Except when he wants something done, you are expected to be on call 24/7 because you foolishly submitted to this charade so that you could browse Facebook and get paid for it. Now while the lazy employee deserves some blame here, and indeed for all of the failures mentioned in this list, the fish rots from the head, as they say.
“We need to hire a superstar”
What they think it means:
Everyone knows that person in the office. The one that puts in the extra hours, goes the extra mile, and who wows and charms both clients and coworkers. They are the drive shaft that makes the well-oiled engine of the company hum like a song. They are rare, but with enough searching and careful cultivation, they can be found. While a company needs so much more than a handful of superstars, often the sheer driving force of them will push quality and productivity up, inspiring employees and managers alike to work harder and better.
What it actually means: “We are so fundamentally fucked”
No superstar employee is going to fix a company that is already fundamentally broke, and if Terrible Boss even feels the need to utter this phrase, it usually is. First off, superstars are there to be had, but because they’re so good they are usually incredibly expensive. Second, even if you do manage to find a diamond in the rough, many of the company’s problems likely stem from the Terrible Boss herself. No employee, even an extremely capable one, can get much done when they are being, say, micromanaged, harassed, and given confusing priorities.
So when this phrase comes out of Terrible Boss’s mouth, it usually means something closer to “Everything is wrong. I don’t know how to fix it. I don’t possesses the self-awareness to fix myself. Let’s try to find someone to shift the responsibility on to”. And in her mind, it sounds like she’s calling for high-powered, hard-charging, silicon valley corporate culture instead of meekly drowning in a lack of perception.
“We are going to do this perfectly, no mistakes”
What they think it means:
Of course, every office strives for perfection on every project. But here’s the thing, it is really, really hard to avoid the millions of mistakes that can get made every day. Reams and reams of business literature have been written on how to ensure quality of the highest degree. It often doesn’t involve working harder or more intensely, but putting into place the proper procedures to eliminate the most error-prone step of the process (that part is the humans…for now).
What it actually means: “I will micromanage this shit into the ground”
One of the biggest problems with Terrible Bosses is that a combination of arrogance and misguided good intentions frequently leads them to micromanage their employees. This creates the perverse incentive where employees end up tailoring projects, products and procedures exactly to their Terrible Boss’s specifications, instead of improving on them when the opportunity presents itself. The exacting nature of micromanaging also leads employees to shoot for the boss’s specifications, and no further. This is because the first thing out of Terrible Boss’s mouth when shown a project isn’t “What can we improve here?” or “Oh that’s interesting, what was the idea behind this?”. It’s usually more along the lines of “Why didn’t you do what I said?”
This is the result of the Terrible Boss wanting and demanding perfection, but not realizing that unless he is Steve Jobs or an OCD genius, he is going to miss things. And the harder he tries to control more of the process, the less responsibility employees will feel to double check themselves or, god forbid, innovate on top of Terrible Boss’s design. Ironically, shooting for perfection is worse in this scenario than shooting for “as good as we can do”, because Terrible Boss will have fewer chances to mess things up. More importantly, employees will be responsible for their own slice of the project, meaning if something goes wrong they don’t have the excuse of “I just did what you told me”, and a productive conversation about what went wrong and how to prevent it in the future can ensue.
“Summarize it for me” (Alternately, “Bulletpoints”)
What they think it means:
As boring as they are, regular updates and progress reports are important to make sure everyone is on the same page, time doesn’t get wasted working on overlapping areas of a project, and the boss — who is likely overseeing many teams simultaneously — knows what is going on. A good boss keeps up to date with the reports, comments on the progress, and addresses problem areas. This is all really basic stuff.
What it actually means: “I will never read this”
Unfortunately, if your boss actually kept abreast of what was going on and tried to address problems, he wouldn’t be terrible. Not only do most of your e-mails sit unread in his inbox, he will often call you later to ask for a verbal summary. Worst of all, when something goes wrong (and it will), you will ineffectually point to your numerous e-mails on the subject, to which your Terrible boss will reply “you should have called me”.
It is frustrating because with a Terrible Boss the real problem will never get addressed, but to make things even worse it turns out that your boss is actually speaking an entirely different language.
View full post on Business Pundit
Pwned: What Does It Mean?
Oct 1st
I, like most of my generation, am a gamer. Well, let me clarify that: I’m a casual gamer. I’ll take a few games of Dr. Mario or Peggle over a MMORPG any day.
Still, I’m online a lot, so I run across plenty of gaming culture and jargon. Take “pwned,” for example. It’s defined as:
A corruption of the word “Owned.” This originated in an online game called Warcraft, where a map designer misspelled “owned.” When the computer beat a player, it was supposed to say, so-and-so “has been owned.” Instead, it said so-and-so “has been pwned.”
It basically means “to own” or to be dominated by an opponent or situation, especially by some god-like or computer-like force. It’s a good word, and fun to play with, so I thought I’d put it into a business situation and see what happened.
That being said, I was terrified of messing it up and running afoul of some gamer mockery. Better to stick to Dr. Mario for me, I think.
View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends
Like you mean it
Sep 22nd
Sasha Dichter gives a tremendous talk that was just picked up at TED. Other than an insane amount of effort and practice, what’s his secret? He’s speaking his own story. Rather than following a map or parroting a line from someone else, Sasha is talking about his own work, his own ideas. He paces because the creative energy gives him no choice, it’s that eager to get out into the world.
Here’s a followup I did in response to a request from Sasha’s cohorts at Acumen. Again, this is straightforward (I won’t say ‘easy’) because it’s what I believe. I’ve been in the field and seen this with my own eyes. Too often, the corporate world pushes talking points onto people, and more often than that, speakers and writers get nervous and they turn into parrots. The only reason to go through the hassle and risk of putting yourself out there is to be out there… you, not a clone.
PS In honor of my new book, here are a few interviews I’ve done recently that you might enjoy…
With Brian Clark at Copyblogger on blogs, books and more
With Radio Ink about risk and creativity
With William Arruda on careers and promotion
View full post on Seth’s Blog
That buzzing in my ear didn’t mean I was about to die
Sep 7th
Six weeks ago, at midnight, I found myself awake but wiped out from jet lag. I was in a lumpy bed, in the dark, in an obscure, $20 a night, John-Waters’-esque former country club. I was in Kitale, Kenya, near the Ugandan border.
A mosquito was buzzing in my ear. (Why do they buzz in your ear?). I had meds, of course, but what if I didn’t? What if, like so many who live here, I had kids and no money for medicine?
Try to imagine that for a second before you click onto the next thing you’ve got on your agenda for today.
Today is End Malaria Day.
Right this minute, right now, please do three things:
- Buy two copies of End Malaria, an astonishing new book by more than sixty of your favorite authors. In a minute, I will explain why this might be the most important book you buy this year (not the best book, of course, just the most important one). You should buy one in paperback too so you can evangelize a copy to a colleague.
- Tweet or like this post, or email it to ten friends (It only takes a second.)
- And, visit the End Malaria Day website and share it as well.
What would happen if you did that? What would happen if you stepped up and spent a few dollars?
Here’s what would happen: someone wouldn’t die.
A child wouldn’t die from malaria, a disease that causes more childhood death than HIV/AIDS.
It’s that direct. Malaria bednets are simple nets that hang over a window or a bed. They’re treated with a chemical that mosquitos hate. The mosquitos fly away, they don’t bite, people don’t get malaria.
Every single penny spent on the Kindle edition goes to Malaria No More, giving them enough money to buy one or two bednets and to deliver them and be sure they’re used properly. Low overhead, no graft, no waste. Just effectiveness. And if you buy the beautiful paperback edition, you can easily give it away when you’re done and the same $20 donation gets made. None of the authors or anyone at the Domino Project sees your money, there’s no ulterior motive, just the fact that a kid won’t die.
Wait, there is one ulterior motive: You might be inspired. One of the sixty plus contributors might share a gem or spark an idea.
And I guess there’s a second motive: Stepping up feels right. It’s a few clicks to buy a book, one you might be able to afford. And for the rest of the day, or even a week, you’ll remember how it felt to save someone’s life.
Please.
And if you could, after you buy a copy, please tweet or post or email your friends. It matters. Thanks.
View full post on Seth’s Blog
Twice as much doesn’t always mean twice as much
Aug 20th
How expensive do you think it is for a fast food chain to switch to sea salt on its french fries? Even if we assert that sea salt costs twice as much as the competitor (dirt salt?), it’s easy to see that the impact on the cost of making each order of fries is tiny, since salt is probably 1% of the cost of the item.
That means that upgrading a high-leverage component of your product might not have any real impact on your costs. It just feels that way to the purchasing department.
On the other side of the ‘twice’ coin, you might discover that you’re falling behind the competition. So you spend twice as much on ads, or twice as much time on social media, or devote twice as many of your resources to a problem.
The challenge, of course, is that twice as much of your time or money is irrelevant. Who cares where you started? The correct comparison is to what the competition is investing, and how well.
View full post on Seth’s Blog
National Election Results Don’t Mean Much for Economy
Nov 3rd
Although some states have already seen interesting election results, the national stage isn’t as exciting. From an economic perspective, the new Republican majority in the House isn’t going to amount to much more than gridlock, according to the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein:
From the perspective of actually getting anything done in the next two years, there was perhaps no worse outcome. Republicans don’t fully control Congress, so they don’t have enough power to be blamed for legislative outcomes. But Democrats don’t control the House and they don’t have a near-filibuster proof majority in the Senate, so they can’t pass legislation. Republicans, in other words, are not left with the burden of governance, and Democrats are not left with the power to govern. Republicans don’t have to be responsible, and Democrats can’t do it for them.
For the time being, this means that the gains of Obama’s first two years are probably safe. Health-care repeal will not pass the Senate, and if Republicans attempt to defund the program, it will be the House acting on its own — a less tenable position than the Congress acting against the executive. It is also difficult to see major new stimulus programs — for instance, a payroll-tax holiday — finding backers in Congress, as Republicans will not be able to take full credit for them. This will be, instead, a time of implementation for the White House, oversight for the House, and paralysis for the Senate. As for getting the economy back on track, that’s now Ben Bernanke’s job, whether he wants it or not.
The problem with oligarchical musical chairs is that it substitutes dogmatic battles for sorely needed economic policy. If nothing happens in Washington in the next two years, given our current economic state, it’s the equivalent of giving the country a green light to die a slow death.
We need economic reform, badly, which means agreement between the two parties and subsequent action. If everyone’s sitting pretty in their reactionary seats, nothing will ever get done. The only groups that this kind of inaction benefits are status quo beneficiaries–the corporations that prosper under current subsidies and conditions–and the extremists who want to make 2012 their winning ground.
View full post on Business Pundit
What does ‘pro-business’ mean?
Oct 13th
What makes a policy or a politician pro business? Some would tell you it includes:
- Lower or eliminate the minimum wage
- Eviscerate OSHA and other safety and pollution inspections
- Make it difficult for workers to easily switch jobs from one company or another
- Educate the public just enough for them to be compliant cogs in the factory system
- Fight transparency to employees, the public and investors
- Cut corporate taxes
I think these are certainly pro-factory policies. All of them make it easier for the factory to be more efficient, to have more power over workers and to generate short-term profits.
But “business” is no longer the same as “factory”. (Aside: Factories don’t have to make stuff… they’re any business that focuses on doing what it did yesterday, but cheaper and faster.) It turns out that factory thinking is part of a race to the bottom, to be the cheapest, the easiest place to pollute, the workforce that will take what it can get.
It’s not surprising that there’s tension here. If you are working hard to cut prices and improve productivity, you might view labor as a cost, not an asset, and you might want as little hindrance as possible in the impact you have on the community. On the other hand, a business based on connection and innovation and flexibility may very well have a different take on it.
I grew up not too far from the Love Canal. It’s a world famous toxic waste dump. While it helped the short tem profits of Hooker, the chemical company that dumped there, it’s not clear that looking the other way was a pro-business strategy. At some point, a healthy and fairly paid community is essential if you want to sell them something.
The oil sands project in Alberta Canada is a factory-friendly effort. So was the lead excavation in Picher, OK. Creating systems that leverage the factory can often lead to financial success (in the short run). The problem is that the future doesn’t belong to efficient factories, because as we train people to look for the cheap, we race to the bottom–and someone else, somewhere else, will win that race.
Perhaps we could see pro-business strategies looking more like this:
- Investing in training the workforce to solve interesting problems, so they can work at just about any job.
- Maintaining infrastructure, safety and civil rights so we can create a community where talented people and the entrepreneurs who hire them (two groups that can live wherever they choose) would choose to live there.
- Reward and celebrate the scientific process that leads to scalable breakthroughs, productivity and a stable path to the future.
- Spend community (our) money on services and infrastructure that help successful organizations and families thrive.
Once you’ve seen how difficult it is to start a thriving business in a place without clean water, fast internet connections and a stable government of rational laws, it’s a lot harder to take what we’ve built for granted.
Capital is selfish and it often seeks the highest possible short-term results. But capital isn’t driving our economy any longer, innovation by unique people is. And people aren’t so predictable.
Linchpins are scarce. They can live where they choose, hire whom they want and build organizations filled with other linchpins. The race to the top will belong to communities that figure out how to avoid being the dumping ground for the organizational, social and physical pollution that factories create.
View full post on Seth’s Blog
What Does it Mean When Social Media Companies Can’t Survive?
Oct 7th
| This morning Jay Baer wrote a post about how social media behemoth Facebook was basically suffocating the rest of the web… |
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View full post on Home Wealth Project Riot!
5 Current Social Media Stories That Mean Good Things For Your Business
Jul 20th
| There are too many happenings everyday in the social media space for any single business owner to keep up with. Today’s web is fast, and very, very… |
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View full post on Home Wealth Project Riot!
ROI Doesn’t Mean ‘Return on Ignorance’
Jul 8th
| Too many companies are diving into social media without thinking a project through. Brian Solis has some thoughts on a better way to use these new… |
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View full post on Home Wealth Project Riot!
