Do you want an Operator or an Administrator? (and 3 true stories)

Being a field level Manager/Operator now, is close to becoming purely administrative. The lines are becoming blurred in how to manage the day. Endless emails, policy adoption and reviews, aggressive vendors and adding to all that, the manufacturers pressing their needs too. It can get to be a daily burden and an outright hassle just to make others feel like they are being heard or listened to. If you are in a large company with top heavy corporate management, you’ll have endless reports/agendas, zoom calls and wall to wall meetings to attend, before you even deal with your employees and customer issues–lovely.. Has the real day started yet??

Someone at corporate has forgotten what field management is composed of on a daily basis or they’ve never been there to begin with. A real day in the field–a typical day might start with people not showing up for work, an equipment failure, cash flow issues and somewhere around 1 in the afternoon an irate customer might tell you, that if you don’t have his problem handled by 5 p.m. he’ll cut your balls off put ’em in a tobacco pouch and mail ’em home to your Mom.. Not a stretch to think that, as I’ve personally been through similar days many times in my career. Now, let’s add conference calls, and 4 meetings at a minimum?? Sure.. why not–everything can wait..

  True story #1:  I can remember sitting in a corporate meeting that was C Suite level, and having a lengthy presentation given to the group, and the plan being presented to us was going to add to our daily agendas (not replace or delete anything else) with additional new measurements, mandatory meetings/reviews/calls and reports.. (Oh great–yet another dashboard..) The President of the Company got up after the presentation and said, OK Guys, we need feedback now, or we’re going to adopt this into the company today. No one seemed to be reacting during the presentation. Me, my stomach was turning, I had a choking sensation from what I had heard..  So, I put my hand up and was called upon. I can clearly remember as if it was yesterday saying, “There’s NO WAY.. When are we ever going to have enough time to actually run the damn business? You guys can adopt this in other parts of the company, but not in my business unit, NO WAY.” The President actually said, “Thank you Bruce for having the courage to say what everybody else was thinking.” The agenda was stopped cold turkey, and the plan was NOT adopted. The truth hits hard. Speak your truth, or some master bullshitter and grifter will win at your expense..
 This is important to remember–even great companies can develop-entertain bad ideas or be put to sleep by slick vendors and just keep adding to the daily bombardment of administrative duties. Me, I’m a skeptic and I’m from Missouri–show me and prove it. Any new idea or agenda under consideration, should be predicated upon this simple principle: How does it replace something we already do, AND make the day simpler/better–there can’t be anymore ADDS.
Personally, I don’t have a problem with conference calls, meetings/planning sessions, vendors if properly vetted, as long as any of those things are productive, and it all needs to be sensible in consideration of everything else that’s already in place.

 True story #2: The manufacturers are burying the field with never ending communications and quite frankly it’s just unnecessary. Ah–but they also have their own field personnel and occasionally among them, you get an overachiever, or as I called them an unconscionable jackass.. I was managing a large region and, in my platform, I had 4 points of this one particular brand, and as luck would have it, our field rep was a jackass. Since I got copied on every manufacturer communication to all of our stores, I was fully aware of the mountain of communications that were inbound to field personnel. Not only were we getting everything from National, but the market rep would resend them all yet again, cc’ing everyone on planet earth, and then do follow up emails too. One Saturday I walked into the showroom of one of those 4 stores, and there he was sitting at our managers desk. I walked up and asked, what the hell are you doing on our desk? He said, I’m making sure they are getting every deal they should. I said Hey Pal, you’re not on our payroll, and my crew doesn’t need you up their ass sideways, not to mention all the emails you send out, which I want to talk to you about anyway. I said, come with me to the office. I said, you are forbidden to ever sit on our desk again at ANY of my 4 stores and I want you to cease and desist in sending redundant emails, and you can forget the follow ups as well that contain your diatribes, do you understand that? I walked him out to his car and said “have a nice Saturday”. The next week the emails were still coming, so I called the Zone Manager and asked him to bring his employee to my Regional Office. They came the next day. I said, Gents, this meeting is not going to be a positive one. I am telling you both, that he can no longer have oversight for your company as a field rep working with our stores. The Zone Manager was floored. After an explanation as to why I felt that way, we had an agreement, and that guy was removed effective that day. Point being, is that you can’t allow people to shave time out of what is already a busy day and interfere with your operations no matter who they are. 

 Unfortunately, most of the corporate world has adopted the “micro-management” approach to producing results. What causes this management style from the top down? Well, if the scale of the company is large enough, they have to make a tough decision during the process of growth. It’s either to centralize or decentralize, and that’s not an easy decision to make. In all fairness, for a large company to be decentralized, it requires EXCEPTIONAL leaders at Regional and Divisional scale–those types of folks are very rare talents, and they are equivalent in talent and experience, to Presidents in most other companies. Most of modern Corporate America opts for centralized management and BOOM the administrator in operations is/was born.  

Starting a day in Operations should start with what I call “management by patrol” which involves physically walking, talking and seeing what is happening in operations. It’s almost an extinct process in most companies now, as many companies now start their day with conference calls and or meetings. What the hell is there to talk about everyday (our business fell apart overnight?) and what could be more important than management by patrol first?

Reports… don’t get me started–if a company has mandatory “corporate daily reports” (and some have multiple) they should be tossed and whoever designed and put them in place, should be unceremoniously fired, as in gone, or they’ll just make more. Daily reports are redundant and a waste of time. Let qualified people operate the business! Sound familiar?

 True story #3: I had an exec that was hired into a General Manager position by way of home office insertion (manufacturer politics).. It happens. I placed him in operations and on the first day I said, Hey Man, you’re going to get quite possibly 100+ emails a day–forget them and just run the business–don’t try to read or answer them all, and if it’s important enough it will come from me, and usually I’ll call if it’s really urgent. (The business was a successful point to begin with, and we had an opening due to a transfer). Immediately the business slowed big time.. I went back at the end of the week and sat with the new General Manager and asked him what was happening (he was in his office at his desk when I walked in). He said, Wow I’m busy trying to stay up with all these corporate communications–I said, Hey Brother I AM CORPORATE, so believe me, if you need to know what’s happening at Corporate, it will come from me and that’s why I told you on day 1, don’t bother trying to read all those emails–it’s 95% bullshit anyway. 5 days later, business was still drifting downward, and I went in again and there he was at his desk typing emails–I said, Hey Brother, I need you to be out front leading the business, not at your desk typing all day–he said, But I don’t want people to think I’m not staying up with communications.. I said, I don’t think you understand, so I’m going to explain this to you one more time–do NOT spend more than 1 hour a day TOTAL reading/responding to emails period, and the next time I come here, if you’re sitting at your desk typing emails, I’m going to fire your ass–do you understand that? He said, yes Bruce.. I said, Great, I look forward to seeing you next week–until then drive sales! A week later with business still in a spiral, I went in at 11 in the morning and there he was at his desk typing away–I walked in, he turned and looked up at me and I said, you’re fired. The last I saw of him he was walking down the street with his briefcase, in a suit and tie on a pretty rough street—to be clear, I did offer him a ride home–I guess I should have sent it by email.. He was a classic administrator. The next day I put a hands-on manager in charge and the business took off like a rocket.. Moral to the story–get off your ass and manage people, not emails. Remember, if it’s important enough, the phone will ring.

 Can the administrator be successful and win–sure, but it doesn’t mean that he couldn’t have done much better and been more profitable if unencumbered and allowed to actually MANAGE and operate the business. Any fool can fill out reports and do conference calls, which by the way, most of the time, the people are just listening to the pontificators on the call, while they’re watching YouTube or the news..  

Soul searching in Corporate America needs to take place in regard to how they interact with their field level operations–there are only so many hours in a day and the VAST MAJORITY of the day needs to be used to manage associates and the client experience. Elimination of redundant reports, conference calls and meetings should be priority 1 and the new mantra for 2024 in Corporate America. And QUIT hiring inexperienced/less than qualified people that you think can become a General Manager via micro-management–instead hire people that would scare the hell out of your competitors. Me, I would rather have to de-tune someone, than tune them up. 
I have a challenge for Corporate America. Find a way to eliminate 75% of all emails and reduce all zoom type calls and conference calls to no more than 20 minutes. Also, quit issuing policy to ALL that is caused by the failures of a few..

  Remember the guy walking down the street with the briefcase–don’t be him.

all the best to everyone,
Bruce Daugherty

Look for the next story called “The 10-1 policy”
You don’t want to miss it.