The Real “Job One”

In my last post I spent a lot of time taking the managers of the world to task on trying to squeeze as much as they possibly can from their subordinates. I can’t help but feel it’s only fair if I turn the pillow over and take a look at the issue of employment from the side of the employee and their responsibilities toward their manager and how to effectively maintain that relationship.

When most employees start a job they think about their job duties in terms of some specific task they’ve been hired to perform. Programmers think that they’re there to write code or a baker might think they’re there to pump out pastries as fast as they can and doubtless there is some aspect of that to any job but it’s not the most important thing you’ll do in any given day. The real Job One of any employee is to foster a relationship with their manager and make themselves as easy to manage as possible. An average manager has seven direct reports and in a perfect world managing that many people would be trivially easy. Unfortunately, it’s not because the roll of a manager, in addition to managing the relationship between his employees and his own superiors is to fill in any gaps left by his employees. Ultimately your manager is responsible for the success of the entire group whereas the employee is responsible only for the success of his or her specific set of tasks. If you screw up, the person above you in the org chart pays the price in some way. So it’s in your best interest to make that person’s job as easy as possible. Doing so reflects well on your manager and also reflects well on you.

So what specifically is one to do for one’s manager? The first thing I tell the people I work with is that it’s their number one priority to raise things up to management that they think are wrong or need improvement. Many times the reaction to this statement is, “shouldn’t they know already?” The truth to this is, though, that most of the time they don’t. Even in the case that a person does a job and is then promoted to manager over that same job they used to do, the second the promotion occurs they begin to become less and less well-suited to manage that job. Jobs change over time. So the norms from the time when they did the job slowly slide into the past and become obsolete. Unless you take the time to let them know what’s really going on, they’ll manage with the only information they have, which is from ten years ago when they were doing it themselves. So providing your management with the skivvy on day to day operations is essential.

Once employees realize that managers don’t know everything, they sometimes next fall into a trap of being fearful to tell the truth about what’s going on. Mostly commonly this comes up when managers need to know that there’s just too much work to actually get done. They’ll assume that it’s viewed as a weakness if you have to say that you can’t do everything you’ve been assigned. In some cases this is a well-founded fear. If your manager is a complete jerk then he may not care that you have too much to do. Alternatively, the company may just be unable to staff appropriately to do the allotted work. Or, and you’re not going to like this, you may just not be well-suited for the job you’re doing. Any one of these three may be the case and for the first two you lose nothing by raising up your concern. If your manager was a jerk before he’ll be a jerk after so at least you got it off your chest. It’s the third case that makes people worry. They think that if they raise up a concern and it’s found that they’re just not good at their job then they’ll get fired. But why would you want to stay at a job that you suck at? With all the employment options in this country, it’s uniquely silly to slave away at a job you just don’t excel in. If you’re really no good at it, then chances are you’re not passionate about it and you probably don’t really enjoy it anyway. So what are you losing except your whole life by hanging on to a crappy job? Go do something you really enjoy. The overarching point here is that there’s nothing to be afraid of. Give your manager good feedback about what’s going on and the outcomes are all positive in the long term.

So now that we’re all telling our managers what’s going on in our jobs each day, let’s see things from their viewpoint. The first thing to know is that managing people… well, to put it simply, managing people is really, really hard. Think of it this way: if you’re a baker, you come in every day, you mix up the dough, you put it in the oven for a prescribed amount of time and it comes out looking at least somewhat like bread. Easy. Predictable. Routine. Most jobs are like this. There’s some known set of inputs and the result is some known set of outputs. They can be tangled at times but in general you know what you get out from what you put in. Managing people is an entirely different kettle of fish. Every single person in a company is different and reacts in a specific way. Each one has various things which motivate them and annoy them and make them enjoy their job (or not). Most of the time they each have their own unique communication style so not only must you try to figure out how to make them happy but you must also figure out how to translate what they actually SAY into what they actually MEAN. So when you combine individual uniqueness with sometimes inscrutable communication styles, you get a job that is not only difficult but sometimes downright frustrating to the point of impossible.

The other major point to remember here is that your manager is human too. Just as you come in to work every day and want to be successful, she too wants desperately to do well. She has a boss to whom she reports. When you don’t give accurate information about what’s going on in your job or use communication styles that she has to spend extra time unraveling you’re making her job a lot harder. Remember that as frustrated as you may be with customers or clients or end-users or whoever consumes the work you do from day-to-day, your boss’s relationship to you is similar from their perspective. You are a direct consumer of your boss’s management skills. If you make it harder for them to do their job then you’re the equivalent of the customer at the bakery who changes their mind 15 times about what the birthday cake should say on it.

Remember too that unless you work for the CEO directly, your boss also has a boss. Just because you tell them something is wrong or needs to change doesn’t mean they have the power and influence within the company to actually do anything about it. That doesn’t mean they’re not listening. It also doesn’t mean that they don’t agree with you. Just because they’re management doesn’t mean they are always heard or listened to by those above them.

In summary, management of a team, while in title it resides with one central leader, is everyone’s responsibility. Nobody really knows what’s going on in your job except you. The most important thing you can do is to accurately and promptly report to your manager so that he can do what’s best for everyone. Only the manager has visibility across all parts of the team as well as knowing what’s expected from above in the org chart. It’s also worth repeating that managers are just people too. From the bottom of the chain of command it’s easy to look up and think that everyone’s sitting in an ivory tower of authority above you. Fortunately, that’s not really true. Everyone in an organization has a boss and the CEO usually has a banker. Personally, I’d rather have a boss.