Managing a company, managing yourself

Dilbert — Scott Adam’s comicstrip satire on office life — depicts a world where people do a lot, but achieve nothing. I could describe the comic, but Adams’ strips tell it best:

Adams offered common-sense, humane fixes to this waste at the end of one of his books, The Dilbert Principle. When I read the book a couple of years ago I thought his advice was so useful for management that I wrote notes on it immediately. But when I reread those notes the other day, I was surprised at how much of his advice is useful for individuals too.

Take his advice to ‘eliminate the assholes’. It’s obviously helpful in a company. Yet lots of us think it’s useful to be assholes to ourselves, especially after we’ve failed at something. Not so. As Kelly McGonigal writes in The Willpower Instinct, ‘Study after study shows that self-criticism is consistently associated with less motivation and worse self-control. … In contrast … being supportive and kind to yourself, especially in the face of stress and failure is associated with more motivation and better self-control.’

So here are my notes. You might find them helpful too.

The OA5 company

Employee effectiveness is fundamental — they produce great products, and with great products and effective employees, any company will be successful. Here are three implications:

1. Stop messing around with stuff that doesn’t create great products or effective employees.

i) Stop doing stuff that’s one step removed from the fundamentals. For example:

• Write software, not policies for doing so.
• Develop products, but don’t go establishing a Task Force to test product development improvements.

ii) Stop tinkering (e.g. altering the organisational structure or rewriting company policy). Major streamlining is fine and truly abominable stuff must be changed. Otherwise, keep things consistent, warts and all. Here’s why:

• Tinkering disrupts your employees, who work best when things are consistent.
• Good products and effective employees will make tinkering unnecessary. They’ll generate enough income to make, say, a poor compensation plan seem adequate. And effective employees will suggest improvements without being on a Quality Team.

2. Get your employees Out At 5. Your employees will be effective if they’re creative and happy. You can keep them that way by getting them Out At 5. Here’s why:

• This isn’t settling for less productivity, just less time: people are mentally productive for only a few hours a day, and they know how to fit their activities into a reduced time.
• It’s also the best way to keep employees happy & creative: work can only give people so much satisfaction; after that, they need to get away from it and recharge elsewhere.

3. The real job of managers.

The big picture which managers fret over is actually in the details: the casual conversations, the coffee, and the office supplies. The way you approach these everyday activities will be what drives or stalls your fundamentals. Here are some ideas:

• Stay out of the way. You can’t do much to stimulate happiness and creativity, but you can kill them. Tell people to focus on what’s important, that creativity is okay, and then get out of the way. Don’t manage things that don’t impact productivity (e.g. dress, how work spaces are decorated); don’t create artificial creativity processes (e.g. an Employee Suggestion Plan).
• Eliminate the assholes, whatever their skills.  They suck the life from everyone else.
• Make sure your employees are learning something every day. They’ll be more productive, satisfied and energetic. So support all requests for training. Support experimentation. Reward good communicators.
• Teach employees to be efficient, and lead by example. Creative work in the morning; brainless work (like staff meetings) in the afternoon. Keep meetings short, and make it clear that brevity and clarity are prized. Respectfully interrupt people who take too long to get to the point: it will give everyone permission to do the same.