Asking Too Much (or the Wrong Things) of Employees

"The Office's" Michael Scott was a talented sales person but a comically awful manager, to his employee's eternal dismay. Are similar mis-matches of skills and responsibilities causing tension and frustration in your organization?

In the age of the Great Recession, it is common for managers and employees to be asked to “do more with less.”  When this is pushed to the extreme – i.e., employees  forced to run beyond capacity for too long with insufficient relief —  it is easy to predict the results: burned out managers, demoralized employees, declining product quality, disenchanted customers, and vanishing profits.

Situations like the above are fairly easy to discern, if difficult to correct. What about a related circumstance, though – where employees aren’t asked to do too many things, but the wrong things?  I encountered such a situation this past week.

The Discouraged Sales Manager

A good friend is a sales manager with responsibility for a team of field sales representatives.  Over the past year

“Do Unto Others …”

This is the sixth in an occasional series of posts on the topic of “Managing By Cliches.”

We often talk in HR about big ideas — “cutting edge” practices and “strategic visions,” and the like — and this is a very good thing, as it helps us help management guide the organization forward.  At the same time, we might sometimes be prone to forget what employees really want from their employers, and what puts them in a place to contribute to organizational success — that is, respect, dignity, being “heard” and taken seriously.

A “Smack In The Face” Reminder

As I was scrolling through some Twitter messages the other day, I saw one that mentioned a website for “workplace humor.”  I clicked on the link and quickly became engrossed in PleaseFireMe.Com, which features pages and pages of postings from discouraged employees.  (I imagine that there might be many similar websites — I had never thought to look before).  What I saw there made me chuckle, shake my head, and wince, disturbed and discouraged me, and finally, encouraged me.