Landing the Big Fish

Managing people is like fishing, especially in a regulated environment.  A lot of ideas that should work, just don’t.  Like, for instance, telling people what to do.  You’d think that if you’re the boss, the employees would do what you tell them to do, right?  At least most of the time…

In fact, it doesn’t work that way.  You tell them to do something and frequently they don’t do it.  Now, of course, they don’t outright refuse to do it.  No! That would be insubordination.  They’re much too shrewd for that.  Rather they’ll say something like, “Are you sure you want us to do that??  We tried that about a year before you came here.  Everything went to hell.”

You then find yourself spending all your time knocking down all their excuses.  But they can create excuses a lot faster than you can get rid of them.  At the end of the day you’re exhausted and you’ve accomplished nothing.

I guess you could just lose your patience and order them to do what you want.  After all, you’re the boss.  You were put in charge because you’re smarter than everybody else, right?

Wrong again.

The problem is that when you order an employee to so something that they think is mistaken, they may swallow hard and scurry off.  But if you think that they’re working diligently on your project, you’re deluding yourself.

They are sitting in their cubical typing madly away, alright.  But that’s only the appearance of work.  Actually they are frantically texting their friends about the absurdity of their work life.

Eventually they may complete their project.  But what if something goes wrong during implementation? (it usually does even under the best of circumstances)  They are simply doing what you have ordered them to do.  The employees don't feel ownership of the assignment.  The outcome belongs to you, the boss.  If the project fails, then the employee was right in the first place, “This project was a bad idea to begin with.”

Well, you could fire the employee.  But you can’t fire everybody. 

And you can’t directly oversee everybody in your department, either.  If you had time to do that, you wouldn’t need any employees.

This is your pathway to either a mental breakdown or the street.

There is a better way.  You need to convince your employees to take ownership of their assignment.

Think fishing.  Fishing is another endeavor where intuition fails.  If you want to catch a ten pound fish, you’d think that you’d need at least a ten pound test leader line.  Nope!  The fish can see a ten pound leader line.  It’s too thick.  The fish won’t strike the lure.

So, you need a thinner, and therefore weaker, leader line; maybe a five pound test line.  The problem, of course, is that when the fish strikes, you can’t just jerk on the rod and pull the fish out of the water.  The line will break.  Now comes the hard part.  You have to know how to work that fish until it’s ready to be caught.

I can’t coach you on that.  I’m no expert on fishing.  All I know is that you have to have skill and patience.  But if you do it right, you can catch a ten pound fish with a five pound line.

Similarly with your employees:  They need a reason to work.  Explain to them in their own terms why the project is worthwhile.  The time you spend here will pay itself back tenfold.  This is different than knocking down excuses.  You’re starting with the lure, “What if we could…”

It’s okay for an amateur to go fishing.  You’ll have fun communing with nature and you won’t be harming the fish.  But it’s not okay to be an amateur manager on the job.  You can do great harm to your employees, the company, and your career.  You need to learn your craft.

Start by learning how to pitch your assignments to your employees.

Does this sound manipulative?  Maybe.  But your employees will be happier with their jobs, and you certainly will be with yours.