How to Manage Employees When They Make Mistakes | Hacker News Reader

How to Manage Employees When They Make Mistakes

bothsidesofthetable.com

51 pointsamirmc23 comments

One of the things that was drilled into me in the cadets was that you can delegate responsibility for a task, but not accountability. Ultimately, when things go wrong it's your fault not theirs. Perhaps they didn't have the skills, resources or experience required. Perhaps something unexpected came up. Ultimately, their failure is your failure as a manager and that's what you need to remember. Rarely was a bit of shouting required and when it was it was more about motivation than discipline.

"Praise people publicly, but discipline people privately" This goes doubly if you need to criticise someone who has to manage others

One of the things that was drilled into me in the cadets was that you can delegate responsibility for a task, but not accountability.

Me too, but unfortunately it doesn't work like that in most organizations. Your boss's full time job, as he sees it, is to take credit for your successes and give you the blame for his failures. That's why he chose to become a manager rather than staying hands-on.

Pretty good list of management wisdom. I would have to disagree about one point though:

6. Praise people publicly, but discipline people privately

I used to completely agree with this earlier, but somebody(can't recall who) pointed a problem with this principle, a while ago.

Most things in the work place even if 'done' by one person has contributions from many to enable that person complete that assignment/task/project. Praising that one person in front of others can make the other feel shorted.

I would prefer to do this: "Discipline people privately and praise people privately, unless it is the whole team that is being praised"

Of course, there are always special occasions, when one has to boost up the standing of an employee in front of others, in preparation for bigger roles.

my 2c

A pretty good list of rules to go by.

Also I think it's important to have a look at the system which enabled the person to make the mistake.

One story a former colleague told me about a former workplace. The company would issue commission checks every month to their sales people. For some reason, they were using a spreadsheet to calculate the totals. A new hire in charge of the spreadsheet to issue checks did a sort on the names but didn't include the other columns to be sorted together. As a result, some people who just started working there got issued checks for thousands of dollars and some of them took off with the money. It resulted in months of headaches as the company attempted to sort everything out.

The person who accidentally sorted the spreadsheet got fired. However, no one else got disciplined. IMO, the people who allowed this system to be setup and used are the people who should have been responsible.

I would agree, that the people who set up the system should have atleast reviewed the work of the newbie, if they don't have a proper process documentation for managing it. (I often found, that excel based worksheets, though used extensively and sometimes for some really big stuff, are not accompanied by decent documentation)

I like to think, that when an employee doesn't perform well, there are three major sources of factors contributing towards that bad performance: 1) the employee 2) the management immediately above him/her 3) The top management which consiously or otherwise sets up the prevalent culture, which often can be an enabler or a disabler of performances.

In reality though, it could be a mix of factors from any one or more sources, in varying proportion.

I can't think of a situation where punishing someone for a mistake as though they were a misbehaving child is a remotely good idea.

If it's an honest mistake — that is, the employee honestly tried to make something work but it just wasn't happening — the employee requires help in achieving his goals, not abuse.

If the mistake shows gross incompetence or negligence, the employee should be fired.

Keeping someone around but killing their morale is a poor choice in both scenarios (unless we're making the assumption that you are only capable of hiring morons).

In the economic analysis of law there is a standard argument that goes like this:

If you punish a crime more severely, people will do less of it. But you have to be careful. If you punish both murder and shoplifting by death, a shoplifter who is being pursued by a cop might as well shoot the cop—he has nothing to lose.

It is my understanding that severity of punishment is not strongly correlated with reduced incidence of the behavior being punished. Consistency of punishment is strongly correlated. That is, a minor punishment consistently applied is far more effective at controlling behavior than a severe punishment inconsistently applied.

The problem with advice like this is that, as a result of following it, you become a phony. The "don't go back to being buddy buddy" stuff is just odd. It's manipulative at worst and unnatural and uncomfortable at best.

My philosophy is this: If you're half competent at choosing your team and someone you lead isn't performing, it's probably your fault. So before you decide that "your employees have made a mistake," you should probably be clear on whether not you made a mistake first.

Are the expectations clear? I bet you they're not. Leading people means exhaustive communication, especially about details and success conditions. If you're not sharing this stuff, you're not providing useful leadership.

Have you communicated the stakes? If something is important, don't assume that everyone else knows that. What makes it important? Why should anyone else case?

Are you available to help? If you're not making time to check in and support as unexpected complexities of the task crop up, you're in for some nice surprises at the end.

When people fail to meet the needs and expectations of the task, are you direct about it or do you pretend everything is cool? Do you look for opportunities to teach about the failing, explain what was disappointing? Most importantly, do you point out how to do better next time?

When people do outstandingly well, do you recognize that?

The tl;dr of this: getting what you want from people is a combination of being proactive and communicating. Not micromanaging, not being a babysitter, not being a bully, not being a softie.

Be direct, don't expect anyone to read your mind, understand you're part of the process as a leader.

(All this collected from being led by extraordinary leaders, lazy ones, and outright terrible ones.)

All you do is choose different words than I do but I suspect we're not a million miles off. You talk of "not being a bully, not being a softie." That is sufficiently vague as to be acceptable and populist. But it is a hard line to walk and it is at the heart of what I was getting at with heat vs. light. I suspect if we sat and talked about it you'd find that we aren't that far off each other in management style. I am neither phony or manipulative. Although I can see why nuance is lost when I write quick blog posts and choose words that don't resonate with you.

I agree completely with everything that you say.

Yet the problem now is if you spend all that time communicating, you still can't know for sure if everyone was listening or tuning you out half the time. More so if other people around you undercommunicate instead of overcommunicate.

Perhaps it is not the norm but I've seen this response to a few leaders who spend a lot of time communicating. Wonder if it is worth it, always

.... exhaustive communication, especially about details ..... and ....communicating. Not micromanaging, not ...

I agree with some of your points, but aren't the 'details" and 'not micromanaging' statments conflicting in what you say?

You could definitely take it too far and enter that territory, yes.

I'm saying the difference between "Build me a house by next week" and "Build me a house large enough for four people with a garage and laundry facilities. If we're missing those things, we won't be competitive."

Especially outside of technical realms, it's nauseatingly common for requests to go under-specified, leading to a bunch of wasted work once everyone circles back and realizes "Oh, forgot to tell you about..."

That is true, quite often time and work gets wasted because the right specs are not decided or not communicated or the right questions not asked up front .

As a supplier of data analysis and reports to cost cutting/six sigma projects, I have seen it too many times where some project leaders don't go by the 'data first' principle. They pre-decide the direction of the project with no or minimal data and then go about collecting selective data supporting their direction.

>>They pre-decide the direction of the project with no or minimal data and then go about collecting selective data supporting their direction.

I associate this behavior with (impulse) buying. Some like to think they are buyers who base their decisions on rationale rather than feelings, when in reality they buy based on emotion only to rationalize it later.

People, especially in management, really need to read and understand Kohlberg's theory of moral development [1] before comparing adult incentivized behavior with the behavior of children.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kohlberg%27s_stages_of_moral_de...

So if his rules are "point out what went wrong, describe what he wanted, work with the employee to alter things so it wont happen again", where does "punishment" and "distance" come into it at all? Why is it good that for several days his employee feels unable to talk to him about anything? Who does that benefit?

So his expected and desired situation outcome was different from the actual outcome and he's disappointed, or angry, or whatever. Why does that give him the right to 'punish' someone else? His inaccurate mental model (based on a poor understanding of his employee) -> his problem.

What if his 'punishment' doesn't work because the employee isn't "crushed", what if the employee is indifferent to being shouted at or distanced?

The only thing which matters is how to alter things so it's better next time That's it. That might mean process changes, or not giving that responsibility to that employee, or replacing that employee. Anything else is railing against the unchangable past.

(Also, how to deal with children is not a good framework for how to deal with adults).

Why is it good that for several days his employee feels unable to talk to him about anything? Who does that benefit?

Agreed, I am completely uncomfortable with that. Once you indicate to someone that you do not trust them, why should they trust you?

The sad thing is that he is actually sounding reasonable to himself (and to others I am sure), because he is advocating against an even worse behaviour (like yelling at people).

Also, how to deal with children is not a good framework for how to deal with adults

Agreed, but it's not like his childrearing advice is that great either. Yeah, you can threaten to take the lego away from two fighting children, but it's better to teach them the skills to negotiate possession.

I understand why you would be uncomfortable about it. But I firmly believe that giving an employee time to reflect on what went wrong & why is important. And they need distance to achieve this. If you're immediately chummy with them after a failure then this time of reflection is less likely. I know it doesn't sit well with everybody so I'm not asking you to adopt my style. But it is not manipulative and actually is quite effective.

> But I firmly believe that giving an employee time to reflect on what went wrong & why is important. And they need distance to achieve this.

I agree with you on this but I see a distinction between being 'cold and distant' vs 'not chummy'. The latter seems appropriate but the former seems counter productive (at least it would be with me).

My impression is that you mean the latter but I can see how the original post might be read as meaning the former.

Perhaps my language didn't properly reflect my thoughts. I did mean the latter. thank you.

> (Also, how to deal with children is not a good framework for how to deal with adults).

Also, how do deal with children is not a good framework for how to deal with slightly older children.

These people who treat high-school children (ie, teenagers) like elementary school children are just insane. They’re not, and it hurts everyone.

But when they’re being naughty an “I’ll buy you ice cream if you’re good” approach doesn’t work and isn’t warranted. I much simpler, “if I have to come over there and separate you two, you’re going to lose your lego set for a week” yields better results. Not with a yell. Certainly never with violence. But with heat.

I didn't parent that way at all. I see no reason why my parenting style wouldn't work equally well as a management style. My sons are 20 and 23 and are fanatically loyal to me, even when I am sick and under stress and wigging out on them like some kind of lunatic. I don't punish. Discipline and punishment are not the same thing and the fact that the word "discipline" has come to be a euphemism for punishment is just commentary on how rampantly common it is to punish kids rather then teach them how and why to do things. Did I take things away from them sometimes? Yes. But only to remove the problem, not as a form of punishment. And I did not threaten. Threats are a weak stance and they breed disrespect and fear, neither of which is anything I want from anyone generally, let alone my kids.

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