"When Steve came into my office I asked him a question: “Steve, do you know why I came to work today?”
“Why did I bother waking up? Why did I bother coming in? If it was about the money, couldn’t I sell the company tomorrow and have more money than I ever wanted? I don’t want to be famous, in fact just the opposite. ”
Well, then why did I come to work.”
And on and on... Please...
My impression would've been, "why is this guy treating me like a 5 year old".
My approach (IMHO) would've been something like:
Me: "Steve, one of your managers isn't following company policy concerning 1 on 1 meets".
Steve: "Oh?".
I give Steve the managers name, "You'll take care of it?"
Steve: "Of course."
Me: "Thank you."
I give Steve the benefit of the doubt that he'll deal with it. No need for me, the CEO, to micromanage. Now if Steve doesn't deal with it, that's another matter.
Yeah, I don't understand either the story or the threat. It's as if the author was never _really_ a manager before.
I found that, unless I worded things very carefully, my directs tended to take honest questions as statements of decisions made. I had to go to great lengths for them not to take anything I said as both 1) an extremely urgent policy decision and 2) associated with a threat of termination/failure to advance their career.
The only thing that I can imagine is that this person's directs didn't respect him, forcing him to take this action. That's the only scenario I've seen managers need to "lay down the law."
Yeah. I am a huge fan of Ben. He has done brilliant insightful post after brilliant insightful such post. And there is undoubtedly an important point being made. But the way the story is told is incredibly patronizing. I hope this was simply rhetorical artifice rather than a blow by blow account of the meeting.
I'm still a fan. Too much good stuff. But a little disappointed by the style tho not the substance.
There's also "Steve, you need to spend some time and diagnose how this happened. How did you not notice? Why wasn't it Tim's number one priority? How do we fix this situation, check that it isn't happening in the rest of the organization, and make sure it doesn't happen again?"
It is really weird. For six months the CEO didn't notice anything bad in the work place, no bad things happening that would make him think that is something is going very wrong.
Than, by chance, he notices that one of his employes isn't doing something he asked, for six months. Then he thinks "wow, this guy is ruining my work" and threatens to fire two workers if they don't fix it in 24 hours.
From any perspective, the OP came off looking really bad, and I doubt that people will feel better in such a work place... especially when word spreads that if you make mistakes you can be fired in 24 hours.
> For six months the CEO didn't notice anything bad in the work place...
Both he didn't put in place any controls and the required task was mostly useless. In such a situation I'd fire the CEO, because he mandates employees to waste company time. Each one hour 1:1 useless meeting wastes two hours!
“Why did I bother waking up? Why did I bother coming in? If it was about the money, couldn’t I sell the company tomorrow and have more money than I ever wanted? I don’t want to be famous, in fact just the opposite. ”
Well, then why did I come to work.”
And on and on... Please...
My impression would've been, "why is this guy treating me like a 5 year old".
My approach (IMHO) would've been something like:
Me: "Steve, one of your managers isn't following company policy concerning 1 on 1 meets".
Steve: "Oh?".
I give Steve the managers name, "You'll take care of it?"
Steve: "Of course."
Me: "Thank you."
I give Steve the benefit of the doubt that he'll deal with it. No need for me, the CEO, to micromanage. Now if Steve doesn't deal with it, that's another matter.