I know some of you are list hounds, so if you’d rather skip the monologue, scroll down a bit.
A month ago I shared some specific ways to get ahead at work. For me it worked, I got promoted within my IT group and was actually bumped up two spots. As I mentioned in that post, I was promoted directly by a VP (my boss’ boss), which was unusual. Since then my boss was let go basically because anarchy broke out in the group and people were quitting daily. However, it got me thinking. What if I didn’t have a VP that recognized my efforts? When does the atmosphere at work get so backstabbing and bureaucratic, that there is no good process to overcome it? What if a star employee wants to grow but management doesn’t know what to do or how to take advantage of the enthusiasm and motivation?
Those are all questions that I want address because they are best answered individually. However, there are several things that mid-level managers can do to keep employees happy and there are even more things they can do to irritate them to the point of quitting or becoming a virus.
I polled the other guys in my group and we built a damn good list of things that our IT manager did that led to him losing his $100K/year job. Note that I left a few specific things out because I don’t need anyone getting pinched. If you repeat these things successfully, you too will get your team to hate you. If you are a reporting to someone that does these things, print this and do the old Office Space under the door routine.
- Assign enough projects with tight deadlines so that your team has no choice but to work a sixty-hour week while you only work thirty hours.
- Cap overtime pay.
- Do not offer project pay.
- Constantly underestimate the time it takes to get things done and then penalize employees’ bonuses because they didn’t hit the goal.
- Talk more than you listen.
- Tell the team to begin planning for tons of deployments but never obtain the budget to actually implement any of them.
- Don’t trust written time cards. Make employees email you when they get to the office so you can see a timestamp when they get in.
- Always take sides in disputes instead of moderating.
- Avoid looking people in the eye.
- Reprimand employees in front of the entire team.
- Hire someone that is very weak to take the place of a veteran and expect the same results from the team.
- Reprimand Mark but don’t reprimand Tony when he makes the same error.
- Consistency is good. Never ask you employees if they are challenged enough or want to take on more responsibility.
- Make promises to internal customers but have no idea on the elements involved in getting the task done.
- You know that Tony is a slacker, but he is really cool to hang out with so keep him around and give him good reviews.
- Suzy can take 20 minute breaks instead of 10 because she’s a little cuter than Paul.
- Give your employees second tier systems to work with but expect top tier results.
- Never cross train anybody on anything. The skills they walked in with are the skills they are leaving with.
- Mandate a new policy without consulting a single person that will have to live with it.
- Give employees low raises because the more you save, the higher your bonus.
- When talking to an employee on the phone, type away at your email. That’s a great time to catch-up!
- When someone comes to you with an issue regarding another employee, use a lot of big words to explain the situation but really take no interest or action.
- Create a desk cleanliness policy.
- When Suzy comes in late and leaves early, and we complain, do nothing about it.
