Turtles at Work

Recently I was lucky enough to be in a meeting to review the results of a inventory audit. My company every quarter at the directive of the Brain Trust (ie Executive Management Staff) conducts a count of every piece of manufactured product we have stored in our warehouse. The big shots stress how important it is to conduct these counts to ensure everything is accurate. This would seem like a logical request as any company would want to make sure the inventory stored was as accurate as possible. But at my company what may seem logical on the surface becomes idiotic and wasteful when you drill down deeper.

Doing such a count at my company is pointless due to the fact that product cycles out of our warehouse very quickly. The product kept in our warehouse only sits in our warehouse for an average of 10 days. Also, we have people that are responsible for counting and reporting on inventory daily. They can't count every type of product we have stored, but they usually cycle through the various portions of our warehouse each month. So the directive to count product quarterly does nothing more than waste time, effort and money. Here's the results of our latest quarterly warehouse counting effort that proves that point:

Cost to Pay Employees to Count: $16,500 (combination of regular time and OT)
Unit Difference Actual Inventory vs. Reported Inventory: -8 units
Dollar Difference Actual Inventory vs. Reported Inventory: -$150
Inventory Accuracy %: 99.98%

So we spent $16,500 in labor to find a shortage of 8 units and $150. Now, I've tried to look at this to see how anyone could explain spending $16,500 to uncover $150. Alas, I haven't developed any new form of math or logic that could justify this.

Now as a Turtle I would normally just "lay low" and let this slide, but I had a moment of temporary insanity. When the costs and results were being reviewed I actually questioned why we would continuously conduct such a costly exercise knowing that each time our inventory nearly matches up perfectly. I was met with an "Who's on First" Abbot and Costello type response from the various head honchos in the meeting. I retreated back into my shell to avoid any further bullshit responses, but in the back of my mind I began thinking about what that wasted $16,500 could have been used for. It could have gone towards:

• Better pay raises for me and my employees. It's nice watching the big shots drive around in expensive cars, wear expensive clothing, and take lavish vacations, while we get a pat on the back and a bag of donuts instead of raises.
• Training. We get zero training at my company. The rivers would turn red, it would rain frogs and locusts would attack the day we actually had a training class at my company.
• New cubicles. Our cubicles are seriously from the '70s. Many of my employees have Frankenstein cubicles made up of mismatched cubicle parts. Very professional!
• Office Equipment. Since our printer and copier breakdown at least once a week.
• Real Paper. We have this cheap paper that is so thin that it constantly gets caught in the printer causing it to jam up and overheat.

Smack! That's the sound of me crashing back to reality. The $16k could have applied to any of the above things, but instead my company will waste it on a pointless activity that has zero impact.

Posted by The Turtle King at Monday, August 06, 2007 1 comments    

Labels: Poor Management

In my post on 4/17/07 titled "Culture Change?" I discussed a couple memos on culture and expectations that the top executives at my company sent out to the workforce. In that post I commented on the memo from our Prez:

“the memo details out the expectations our president has for the leaders of our company. “Lead by Example”, “Be a Team Player” and “Challenge the Status Quo” are all key statements made by the head honcho is his groundbreaking document. He ends the memo with the snappy phrase “fail to plan and plan to fail” referencing the fact that the leaders need to better layout their goals, objectives and expectations.”

In order to keep myself amused at work, I try and test how bad the incompetence is at my company. I waited a few days after the memo came out and then sent an email to my boss asking him about the President’s memo. In particular I asked “will there be follow-up to this memo in terms of meetings, management training, or workshops to help successfully instill this mindset at our company.” No response to my email.

I then waited a few more days and approached my boss asking him if he read my email (I know he did because my return receipt came back that he opened it). I referenced my email and asked him about the follow-up to the President’s memo. My boss abruptly responds, “what exactly is there to follow up on, it’s all there in writing on what he expects.” He was in the middle of a game of computer solitaire and I guess I pissed him off my interrupting his game time with a real business question. Now I could have pushed him further on it but his response was the only answer I really needed. I also realized the importance of solitaire time to my boss and didn’t want to anger the beast further.

It has been almost a month since the memo came out and it is already forgotten. Heck, as I posted in my original blog entry on this, the memo was immediately ignored as one of my fellow managers was bashed by a VP the day after the memo on leadership came out. Real culture change and expectations are laid out through interaction and involvement by top leaders. If the top leaders believe that memos or other propaganda are going to make real change they are sorely mistaken. The top leaders at my company always stop way short of what is needed to jump start the workforce and create a real culture of performance and innovation. That’s why the phrase “it is what it is” is used so frequently by employees at my company!

Posted by The Turtle King at Friday, May 11, 2007 0 comments    

Labels: Poor Management

Over the past few weeks there have been several “culture changing” emails and memos sent out to the employees of my company from our executives.

The first memo for instance includes the completely overused acronym TEAM (together everyone achieves more) with a keen insightful passage “as you’ll notice there is no I in TEAM”. This memo hit home as my 9th grade basketball coach shared the same insight over 20 years ago and we went 0-17 that season.

The next memo details out the expectations our president has for the leaders of our company. “Lead by Example”, “Be a Team Player” and “Challenge the Status Quo” are all key statements made by the head honcho is his groundbreaking document. He ends the memo with the snappy phrase “fail to plan and plan to fail” referencing the fact that the leaders need to better layout their goals, objectives and expectations.

Several of my naive co-workers will optimistically believe these encouraging words from our big shots are part of a real change. I can hear the comments such as “wow, this is a good sign” and “it looks like someone at the top realizes we are important.” As a Work Turtle I am keen to these types of executive mind tricks and unlike my gullible colleagues I easily realize that emails and memos don’t result in a culture change, actions do.

A few days after the “culture changing” emails are sent out I am presented with a situation that proves my point. Unfortunately one of my gullible colleagues is the brunt of the cultural backfire. A fellow manager, Rob, sees a problem that is impacting our customers. This problem has existed for some time and has been accepted as how we do business. Seeing the “culture changing” memos and emails Rob decided to “Challenge the Status Quo” by questioning the problems and what we can do to better service our customer. Rob emails the departments involved and tries to get a team of people together to look at the problem. Rob asks “can meet to discuss these issues and setup a plan to include how we stop/reduce the issues and monitor the results”.

Rob has tried to address this problem in the past with no result, but this time he feels empowered by the culture changing emails so he hits send, feeling like he is going to make a difference. Then the response from the Executive Vice President of the department involved in creating the problem comes crashing down on Rob (response below)

Rob,

Why do you have to keep harping on this with stupid question? As long as we have people working here we will always have problems. If you would like I could investigate employing robots maybe that would solve the problem. I don’t ask you stupid questions when your people screw something up. There will never be “a plan” that will solve all these issues. If you come up with it, tell me so I can patent it and retire a rich man.

Doug
Executive Vice President of Manufacturing

Now you would think that an Executive Vice President would be in the loop on the “culture changing” emails. You would also think that there would be the customary “love fest” period of a couple months in which everyone is drunk on the culture change stuff and tries to cooperate. In this case it only took a few days to show Rob and other employees that actions speak louder than emails or memos. Executives will have these great ideas to change the company culture, but if there is no action or accountability to live the culture set forth, than nothing happens. Instead employees, who long for such change, are victims of the harsh reality that nothing will ever change. If you are a Work Turtle you will realize these false promises of culture change. If you are not a Work Turtle, what are you waiting for?

Posted by The Turtle King at Tuesday, April 17, 2007 0 comments    

Labels: Poor Management

It’s 10:00am on a Thursday morning and my co-workers and I were gathered together for our department meeting. I was a manager of a three person scheduling and forecasting group. As we all sat down to review the agenda for the meeting, we noticed the first agenda item was titled: Motivation. As I looked around the room, I could tell that everyone was intrigued by the mystery of what “Motivation” meant on the agenda. Maybe it could be some type of bonus or incentive program, I thought to myself.

Our department head entered the room, sat down and began the meeting. “I want to start off this meeting with something that will inspire and motivate all of you.” She then reaches to her side and placed a small CD player boom box on the table and hit play. She closed her eyes and let out a big sigh.

The song “I Hope You Dance” by Lee Ann Womack begins to play. I looked around the room and saw a few people physically moved by the song. I watched as my boss as well as some of my coworkers began to actually cry. I then looked at the two guys in my group. They both looked back at me, shrugging their shoulders. They had the same “what the hell is this” look on their faces. Most of the other non-crying people in the room also looked completely puzzled by what was happening. The song finally ended and my boss uttered “this song really hits hard at what we are trying to do here.” The few that had been crying wiped the tears from their faces and thanked our boss for playing the song. We then immediately moved on to the next agenda item relating to some type of problem within our department.

Following the meeting my work group gathered in our work area to talk about “the song”. We tried to figure out what our boss was trying to accomplish or what her comment meant following the song. What I had derived from this incident is that my boss was trying to motivate and inspire the team with a song that probably had some type of inspirational impact on her. Instead of motivating and inspiring our management staff, she completely confused and baffled the majority of us. The “song incident” as well as many other foiled attempts at motivation by our boss resulted in our team losing respect for her. Her failed motivation attempts became office jokes as time after time she would completely miss the mark on what inspires and motivates people.

Motivation is a nifty little concept that is completely misunderstood and misinterpreted by clueless leaders. I’ve come across many bosses that thought they were quite inspirational, when in fact their actions had the opposite result. So many leaders try to motivate but forget to really understand what is meaningful to their employees. Why? Because they jump the gun and try to start “motivating” without building relationships and finding out what makes people tick. You can’t motivate people if you don’t know who they are, what they want, and why.

I’ve seen my managers actually buy books with titles “1,000 Ways to Motivate Employees” or “Creating Inspired Employees”. I’ve watched as they pointlessly tried to implement stupid ideas from these ridiculous books. Breaking News to Clueless Leaders: You can’t buy a book that tells you how to motivate employees! What you can do is listen, observe and interact with employees. There is a saying “no two people are alike” and if you try to use the same motivational tactics for everyone, you will fail.

Unfortunately for most of us though, manager after manager will hang motivation posters or hand out motivational cards without even knowing they are doing more harm than good. Hopefully your motivationally challenged boss doesn’t play ‘I Hope You Dance”. I still have nightmares from that experience!

Posted by The Turtle King at Wednesday, April 11, 2007 0 comments    

Labels: Poor Management