Memorial Day

As a veteran who spent his entire enlistment far far away from any combat, I have great appreciation for those who sacrificed much more than I can imagine. I meant to post this days ago but my battle with food poisoning got the best of me. Tomorrow I'll try for humor instead of poetry.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
-John McCrae

I don't trust people who don't like dogs, but I always trust dogs that don't like people

First of all, I'm going to admit, the title has nothing to do with the blog post -- I just like it.  It's one of those internet quotes that may or may not belong to Bill Murray but it's funnier if he did actually say it so I just go with it.

A fun fact about government employees is that 85% of federal employees actually work outside of D.C. A lot of government employees travel frequently for work. It's why hotels offer the "government rate" not the "Wal-Mart rate." I was one of those employees that traveled a lot.

I'm going to share a story of travel and communication. I was aware I would need to audit an office which required overnight travel. I became aware of this because our administrative assistant emailed me a copy of my hotel reservation. I needed to leave in three days. At no point did my boss tell me about this trip. So in my best passive-aggressive pouty behavior I pretended like I didn't see the email. The rest of the day I did my work, avoided my inbox like it was the zika virus, and went home.

The next morning my boss asked why I had not completed my travel authorization yet. I was still was needlessly grumpy about not being told I needed to go out of town in, now, 2 days. So of course I was mature and I answered "what authorization?"  She reminded me I needed to complete the authorization right away and left. Meanwhile she never actually mentioned that I was going to be traveling.  She also never caught on that my shock about an authorization might mean that I was never told about this trip.

The next day, now t-minus 1 day until the trip, a co-worker asked what time we should meet to drive to the other office.  I told her that I was not in charge of the trip so I didn't know what time we should meet (or that we were even going...).  She then informed me that I would be driving everybody.

So I'm already annoyed that nobody had the courtesy to tell me that we were even making this office visit.  Then I'm being told that I am going to be driving everybody in my car.  After muttering self-pitying phrases on my way to my desk I see an email from our admin aide.  "Why didn't you add the cost for mileage on your travel authorization?"

Due to poor communication I was basically living in the movie Office Space.  If you're not familiar with the movie, first of all I suggest you watch it immediately, the main character is named Peter Gibbons.  Peter Gibbons is not a happy employee.  I felt like Peter Gibbons.

Airing of Grievances and Feats of Strengths

This recent govexec article is fascinating.  Not only for the content of the article, but also for the comments.  It is pretty easy to recognize who is bargaining unit and who is not within a few seconds.  Especially the guy who says "unions have no place in public service."  I'm just guessing he isn't the local president.  He also probably doesn't spend a lot of time with the guy saying "it has everything to do with poor management."  So how did public service unions and managers get to the point of a Seinfeld inspired Festivus-styled airing of grievances in a comment section of an article?  

I do not know either poster I mentioned above, but I can probably safely assume they do not have the same perspective on union-management relations.  However, that does not mean they cannot work together and actually accomplish things.  Sometimes, management and the union may have different motives for their opinions but the opinions might actually be the same.  Take this article about the TSA for example.  AFGE wants to add 6,000 TSA screeners.  If I were a manager in an airport with 2-hour lines at the check-point, I'd probably appreciate a few more screeners too.  Of course, management will accuse the union of just trying to get more dues-paying members.

How does this tie into "don't manage like this" examples? I've worked with managers that will spend more time composing an email to the local union rep sitting five feet away than actually talking to the person.  Call me old fashioned, but I think everybody can agree that context can be misinterpreted when reading an email.  Especially an email to/from somebody when you're already questioning that person's motivation for even sending the email in the first place.  I had a co-worker email back-and-forth with a union rep for over 15 minutes about the arrival time of an employee that was a few minutes late for work.  And each email got more and more argumentative.  Email is not only impersonal it also makes it easier for the sender to be a jerk.  Unless you're a total sociopath, it should be difficult to be rude to somebody in person.  That's why it is so easy to hang up on a telemarketer but so difficult to try to explain to the Salvation Army bell ringer why you don't have change for him.  

I know there is a manager out there reading this saying "Hey, why not point out what the union rep is doing wrong?"  Well this blog isn't called "How to be a better union rep".  It's call Don't Manage Like This!  Besides manager out there reading this, if you weren't so defensive maybe you would have a better relationship with your union representatives.  I would love to think that managers are always correct but based on my experiences, I am not actually myopic enough to believe that.

I think I've worked with him before

So I said I wouldn't use this blog to perpetuate stereotypes of government employees...some stereotypes are just too good not to perpetuate:

I'm also impressed by Flash's tie.  He clearly is an old-school government employee!

Twitter

Follow me on Twitter @governmentMGR to receive updates when a new blog is posted. I'll also try to write some micro blogs with management stories in 140 characters or less. Who am I kidding, bureaucrats can't be concise!

Gargoyles vs. Concierges

I had a foreign language requirement in college so I enrolled in a German 101 class. German was not as popular as some of the other languages in the university so the department was fairly intimate. After having the same professor for German 101 and 102, I decided I would like to continue my German studies because he was really that great of a professor. He often would grade a little easier than he needed, he would grant extensions for questionable excuses, and he would always go out of his way to ask about life outside of his classroom. I asked him after a German 201 class about his willingness to be so helpful to his students. He replied that most people are either gatekeepers or doormen. He went on to explain that a gatekeeper will force you to run through a gauntlet to get ahead, deservedly so or not. Often the gatekeeper had a poor experience to get where he is at so he feels the need to make you suffer as well. In contrast, the doorman is there to open a door for you and to help you go through. A doorman does this because he realizes that he didn't get to where he was at on his own. And to pay back those who helped him, he pays it forward to the next person coming along. My German professor explained that he tries to always be a doorman.

As I've explained in previous posts, most of us have toiled under bad leadership at some point.  But that is no reason to be a bad manager when it is your turn. Don't be a gatekeeper. Job security is one of the benefits to government employment. I mean, it can be damn near impossible to get rid of us! But that also leads to stale management that swears that it took them 25 years to get promoted and they had to kayak across the Potomac to get to work before the metro made it easy for today's lazy gen-xers millennials! So instead of opening doors to help people walk through them, they turn into scary gargoyles and try to punish you for daring to try to advance.

My German professor went on to explain that he knew I would never be very good at German, but he also knew I was just taking his class as a means to an end. Rather than being unnecessarily difficult he made sure that I took his class seriously and held open the door for me and thousands of grateful students.

So be the doorman, you'll be a better manager and you'll get to wear a cooler hat too.

Christmas in May

Many government employees, like private-sector employees, are very generous in their communities.  One office I worked in was especially giving during the Christmas season.  Long before I arrived in the office, employees would 'adopt' a family and provide presents for needy children and adults.  Sounds great, right?  What would be interesting about a blog post about a giving tree?  Keep reading...

In early December, my manager gathered his management team and we discussed the upcoming holidays.  We talked about granting leave, the office pot-luck, and of course, the office giving tree.  One supervisor has always gravitated towards leading the giving tree campaign.  Our manager was new so he asked us how it worked.  The supervisor explained that she normally emails the office asking if any employees know of any needy families.  She went on to explain that one employee's husband manages a non-profit agency for homeless veterans so the employee nominated some families served by her husband.  You might think, "oh that seems a little bit borderline inappropriate."  But I'm just getting started!  So the supervisor continued to explain that one employee nominated his daughter who ran into some hard times.  I'm still not done.  She ended by letting us know that one employee nominated herself.

This was my first experience with the giving tree project in our office so my head was about to burst.  Our manager was in a similar state of shock and asked if the other employees were aware they were donating to a co-worker's husband's clients, a co-worker's child, or directly to a co-worker.  Nobody was sure, but the supervisor said she made sure it was all anonymous.

I finally spoke up and asked if people realized that we could not go forward with this bizarre plan.  The manager, who I thought was on my side, said he agreed.  BUT...he added that it was too late in the season to change the program this year so he just was going to wash his hands of it and turn it over to the supervisor and he specifically asked not to be informed about the project anymore.

So to summarize, we had employees who saw nothing wrong with taking handouts from their co-workers who thought they were donating to needy families in the community (they technically were I guess).  We also had a management official who saw nothing wrong with this process for years.  And we had a manger who decided his official course of action was official plausible deniability.  I was not innocent in the entire process either.  Perhaps I could have done more to stop the event but instead I just sat back and enjoyed my egg nog.