How to change "Boss will catch you" mindset?

1 points by va9 13 years ago | 5 comments

I manage around 70 people in very high level. There are managers who stands the floor to get the actual work done. I just go on daily meetings, just once in a day to understand where a job stands and give them directions.

When I walk around floors, recently, I started hearing "do that way, steve will catch you." I think this statements are not healthy. So my team is working properly just because I catch them in review calls. This isnt correct, right?

I am sure I listen to them when they say things sensible. I made sure I never run beurocratic team management. Is this is normal? How can I put the "I too own the product" mindset in my team just not because team is performing that their boss asked them to do.

pif 13 years ago |

IMHO, people will feel that they "own" the product when they'll really _own_ the product! I mean, when they'll have some freedom in how to do their work, when they'll be sincerely requested their opinion before taking decisions and when they'll participate in the financial benefits and risks. If you pay a fixed salary to someone to do the work you dictate him, you'll have a subordinate, not an associate. Just to be clear, I don't consider wrong or reductive at all to offer a fixed salary; it's just that a co-founder and an employee are in a different situation: a co-founder shares your goal (success for the company), while the employee has his own goal (more money and better conditions for him) which only partially are based on the overall success of your business.

rachelbythebay 13 years ago |

It's not clear what your people are saying ("do that way"?) so it's not easy to say what might be going on. Please clarify.

va9 13 years ago | |

I mean to say, suppose they have to finish a document. Now due to the time factor they are "making-up" something to achieve the deadline. They know they are "intentionally" missing something. Due to the fact they know I will catch the missing thing or "improper" document they say to other peers. "Don't miss it, Steve will catch you". Now this is okay that the document ends up to be expected one. But the mindset of someone will catch me if I miss it -- is this is normal? What if I fail to attend such daily meetings in future. At some point, once they realize, I am no more there to review them they will no longer producing "perfect" ones. Or I am doing lot of baby-sitting that made my team so dump they just follow my lines. Kind of have some thoughts around how to manage such team would be great to hear.

rachelbythebay 13 years ago | | |

Okay, that helps. Thank you.

What I'm getting from you is that your employees seem unable or unwilling to accomplish their jobs by themselves. You are constantly cleaning up after them, and worry about what's going to happen once you stop doing that. Will they pick up the slack or will they start producing substandard output?

Unfortunately, in my experience, there's only one way to find out, and that's to just disconnect and let things revert to their true output levels. Without you artificially propping things up, you should be able to see what they are able to produce. If this isn't enough to make you happy, well then, you have to do something about that.

I say this because I've been witness to a phenomenon some people dubbed the "cone of influence". Some people were buoyed up by the presence of a much stronger coworker in their area. That person was responsible for helping them accomplish many of the harder tasks they encountered. When that person was later removed from the team, not only did that person's direct contributions vanish, but the remaining team members also lost effectiveness.

It sounds like you might be providing one of those cones.