I know my last post said I would follow-up on the election outcomes but daaammmnn… just watch the news. They talk about nothing but the election all week. It is almost nauseating.
So, let me instead tell you that I love the movie “Office Space” as much as every other white collar (and probably also most blue collar) American, but overall I think Corporate America is pretty OK. However there are two things I DON’T like and this week totally reminded of those.
1. CUBICLES - I’m pretty lucky. I generally work in a nice conference room at the particular company I’m at for the week. Usually descent size, big windows, good location within the building, quiet, etc. However, right now I’m working in place where the only space available is a damn cubicle and I’m sitting in it. To make it worse, the space is pretty small and the cubicle walls are like 6 feet high. PURE MISERY for those of you who have never had the honor, don’t know how people do it everyday. I am the least “snooty” person you will ever meet I hope but cubicles suck. One great thing about ACE Hardware stores… NO CUBICLES. Everyone thinks that having an office would be/is so great. I gotta call BS on that one… it’s only cuz they have never worked in a cubicle. The only thing better than an office is the wide open floor of a warehouse, factory, retail store, or (even better yet) the great outdoors.
2. MIDDLE MANAGEMENT - I work for the partners of my company, that is who I answer to ultimately and that is who can decide to make/break my career. And, I happen to think I have a great relationship with the partner responsible for me and my work performance. What I often don’t like dealing with is the middle management between me and that person. Clearly, my company is about 10-100 times more lean in terms of middle management than tyopical industry companies (we operate on up-or-out). But I still don’t like it. Today I wrote a status update document for the engagement I am working on. There are on this job two different middle management personnel above me and below this partner level person I described before. I had to first send the document I wrote to the one above me who told me to forward it on to the one above him making sure to state “here is the status update (so and so) and I put together” (rather than simply I wrote). The next person up then called me to state “I will go ahead and forward the update on to (the partner and the client) for you so you don’t have to worry about that” which effectively meant “don’t worry, I will make sure to take credit for your work with both the partner and the client”. All said and done… the exact same document (WORD FOR WORD) ended up going to the client and the partner.
So, I effectively spent 3 hours dealing with a 20 minute status update I could have sent to both managers, the partner, and the client all at once… all so I could make sure middle management got credit for my work. And what was the result… partner calling me to say thanks and great job this week. Why? Because every great leader knows exactly who is delivering value to an organization and who is spending time on wasting the time of others.
Yet another lesson I learned in a hardware store but didn’t really apply until after I left. Don’t waste time on playing employee-employer games. Employer (at least ones that make money) always knows where business value is being created.
MOST IMPORTANTLY… If you read the opening paragraph about Office Space and thought “hmmm… never seen it”. Drop everything and go put it in your Netflix queue (or rent it for those poor few who actually still go to video rental stores). One of the best movies in history!
