Michael Buble or Andre Rieu?

Every year around this time, sooner or later I'm asking myself the same question, - who is Andre Rieu and how did he learn his stage craft from Liberace? These are the questions which tell you you're watching the wrong channel. Click. Wait a minute, isn't Andre just like many other problem employees? Pretty good at what he does but annoying as heck?

A few years back I held a seminar entitled, "How to Manage the Oklahoma Bomber." McViegh was another "problem employee." What got my attention was that in the US military McViegh served in the Persian Gulf with honor, and was awarded a Bronze star! After the military, he committed this atrocity. Later, in prison he becomes a model prisoner again. What gives? Structure, freedom, structure. Given freedom he becomes a bad guy. With structure, he became a good guy.

We all have at least one problem employee, and some of them we can recover with tighter structure. Difficult employees have such a negative effect on industry I think any economic turnaround plan should stipulate that nasty people stay home. Canada's GDP would skyrocket!

Companies are not institutions, (such as the military and prisons) who are free to use these structure tools to get good behavior out of otherwise, very nasty people. But let's look at what they do. They reduce or take away degrees of freedom. In business, we reduce subjective decision making range.

They control the person's time. In business, we micro manage, we move closer.

Control their activities. At work we tighten job descriptions and roles.

Increased reporting and relentless surveillance. Managers start directing closely, telling people what needs to be done.

They control their peer group. At work this becomes more difficult but we can break up a nest of like minded problem people.

They control the individual's social life and best friend. At work we're limited to watching for cliques or packs and physically distancing them.



Ken Blanchard went down the same road, he called it Situational Leadership, (required reading). Still true.

I'm sure I'm doing Mr. Rieu a disservice by including him in this story. He's probably not that bad a guy. However, not willing to take a chance, I recorded Michael Buble's Christmas concert. Great, wonderful, fun! I like the guy.

Let's build great companies!

Happy New Year,
Wolfgang

p.s. The Chao plan. Succession planning. Random, how to maintain the culture it's taken you a lifetime to build. How to build in accountability. Defining a key management group. Building a dashboard, (KPIs) so you can manage the company from the beach with your smart phone. Number of shares. Buyouts only from growth money, not profit. If you want to know more, email me at wolf@managing.ca Chao.