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Why You Always Need a Plan B
Posted: 08/24/2007, 10:20 AM PT
The Michael Vick case presents an interesting object lesson for managers
everywhere, and it’s this: You always need to have a viable fallback position
that can save you, no matter what unexpected disaster befalls you. You’ve got to
have a Plan B.
Vick, the Atlanta Falcons’ star quarterback, is expected to plead guilty to
federal dogfighting charges next week. No one knows what will happen next, but
most analysts think Vick will get anywhere from 12 to 36 months in prison. And
he could possibly be banned for life by the National Football League.
But as bad as things are for Vick, they aren’t much better for the pro
football franchise he’s leaving behind. The Falcons are owned by Arthur Blank,
one of the founders of Home Depot and a pretty successful businessman. Blank
obviously has a lot of business savvy, but the Vick situation has caught him and
his team management flat-footed.
Blank and his managers built the Atlanta Falcons around Vick, signing him to
a 10-year, $130 million contract extension in 2004. Yes, Vick has been the face
of the franchise, but he’s had some injury problems here and there, plus a
series of minor but troubling incidents that in hindsight seem to have
foreshadowed the larger legal troubles he now faces.
The Falcons’ team management believed so much in Vick that they traded away
his backup, a young and talented quarterback named Matt Schaub, to Houston
during the off-season. Schaub has played when Vick was injured the last couple
of years, and he always seemed to perform extremely well when thrown into the
breach.
Now the Falcons are in a fix. As a story in the Los Angeles Times put it,
“The team’s string of 51 consecutive sellouts is as good as dead.” The paper
also quotes a local radio executive who says, “There is absolutely no buzz with
this team now.” Schaub, discarded by the Falcons, might have been someone the
team could get people to rally around. Instead, fans get a journeyman in Joey
Harrington, a nice guy, but one who was involuntarily terminated from his last
two NFL quarterback gigs, in Detroit and Miami.
The lesson here is simple: Managers should always be thinking “What if … ?”
no matter how smoothly things seem to be running. You need to develop
contingency plan that will keep things going when the much-feared worst-case
scenario really does come to pass.
Arthur Blank and his managers should have seen this one coming. They had a
good Plan B, but decided to discard it and put all their faith in Michael Vick.
That’s a gutsy vote of confidence in a player, but a seriously dumb business
decision.
A Call Center Story With a Happy Ending
Posted: 08/20/2007, 7:15 AM PT
It’s hard to do business in 21st
century America
without encountering a call center. If you’re like me, more often than not this
turns out to be a less-than-satisfactory experience, talking with some company’s
outsourced workforce that is struggling mightily to help you from some foreign
land many time zones away.
In April I had to rebook my son’s air
travel from California to Germany
because of the backlog in the U.S. Passport Services Office (another great
workforce story for another day). I dealt with two airlines: United and
Lufthansa. Amazingly, the United call center was in some distant country, while
the Lufthansa person I connected with was an American based in the U.S.
Although the United representative was courteous, hardworking and ultimately
helpful, the customer experience could hardly match what I received from
Lufthansa, where I could ask more detailed questions and get a superior customer
service experience.
There’s a simple reason for all of
this: Call center work is, unfortunately, viewed as a high-volume, low-skill
activity that can be cheaply outsourced to some foreign workforce. In my view,
this is a shortsighted management approach. It seems to ignore the fact that
customers are likely to remember the personal interaction they had with your
workforce and how well they were served as much as the product your company sold
them. I remember the personalized service I received from Lufthansa, and it
makes me want to use them again in the future. I remember United, an airline I
fly with a lot, only because I was happy that the call center didn’t completely
screw me up.
All too often, businesses that
outsource their call centers forget what their customers expect. That’s why it
is wonderful to read stories like this
one today’s New York Times. It’s about Netflix and
how the online movie rental service made a strategic decision to place its call
center in Portland, Oregon, “shunning other lower-cost places in the
United
States and overseas, because it thought that
Oregonians would present a friendlier voice to its
customers.”
In business, as in many of life’s
endeavors, it’s easy to jump on the bandwagon and just mimic what everyone else
is doing. I tip my hat to the courageous managers and executives at Netflix who
didn’t allow themselves to be stampeded into the outsourcing craze, and instead
are offering something precious—something that customers just can’t get enough
of these days: caring, personal service from someone who really knows what
they’re going through.
Got a comment about outsourcing, customer service or any of
my other posts? Until we get the comment posting function on this blog
operational, send me comments at jhollon@workforce.com.
Responding to ‘The Talent-Shortage Myth’
Posted: 08/14/2007, 2:15 PM PT
I got a huge response to my earlier blog item on “The
Talent-Shortage
Myth”—too many
to put here in a blog item. For the most part, I found the huge outpouring of
response to be intelligent and insightful. Some agreed with me, many thought I
was wrong, but the majority said something along the lines of “Yes, you are
right in part, but have you considered this … ?”
In order to publish as many of these reader responses as possible,
we have put them here in a format that should make it easier for you to
scroll through them and dig into what these many different people have to say
about the notion of a coming talent shortage with the retirement of the baby
boomer generation as ground zero.
I’m still game for any additional comments about the talent
shortage, real or not, or any of my other posts. Until we get the comment
posting function on this blog operational, send me comments at jhollon@workforce.com.
In Defense of Nose Picking and Boorish Behavior
Posted: 08/10/2007, 1:00 PM PT
Whenever I think that I’ve seen just about everything in the way
of management practice and behavior, I get shocked by something so outlandish,
ridiculous or just plain unbelievable that even my jaded and cynical soul is
shaken by it.This one hits close to home (more on that in a bit), and is something you
won’t see taught to MBA students anytime soon: An impassioned management defense
of an employee’s boorish behavior, and his right to embarrass the company by
picking his nose in public, on television.
It’s a little complicated to fully
explain and do it justice, so you might want to check out this link to the Los
Angeles-area blog LAObserved.com
for the full background. Essentially, the story is that a longtime
newspaper employee who was taking a buyout was accused of deliberately picking
his nose and embarrassing the publication on camera during a television
broadcast from the newspaper’s newsroom. When the television producer complained
about the on-camera nose picking and behavior of this newspaper employee during
this and other newscasts, the story was picked up by both local and national
blogs and media Web sites.
Here’s the outlandish/incredible/unbelievable
part: The supervising editor/boss of the on-camera nose-picker wrote a long,
impassioned memo defending the behavior and complaining that he was the victim
of “drive-by journalism.”
This all happened in the newsroom of a large
suburban daily newspaper in Southern California—The Orange County Register,
where I worked as an editor for nearly 12 years, departing in late 1992. I also
know the principals involved in this, both the accused nose-picker, who used to
work for me, and the editor who wrote the nose-picking defense.
While I
greatly admire any manager who goes to bat for a subordinate wrongly accused, I
still can’t believe that the defense essentially comes down to “Yes, he picked
his nose on camera and embarrassed us, but he didn’t mean to. And by the way,
being loud and boorish is just the way he is.”
Defending bad behavior is not
a sound management practice anywhere on this planet. As bad as this employee’s
behavior looks, whether he did it on purpose or not, I’d hate to be the manager
known for defending an employee’s right to pick his nose in front of a
substantial television audience.
What do you think? Send me comments at jhollon@workforce.com. I will publish as
many of them as I can.
“Greatest Manager of the 20th Century?”
Posted: 08/09/2007, 12:10 PM PT
You may not be familiar with HSM, but they put on some pretty good executive
education events, including the World Business Forum. They get great
speakers—this October’s World Business Forum in New York has names like Alan
Greenspan, Kofi Annan, Herb Kelleher and Michael Eisner on the program—and are
generally well attended, a sure sign that people are hungry for business insight
and wisdom.
A staple of the World Business Forum is Jack Welch,
the former General Electric CEO who seems to be the go-to guy for management
wisdom. In fact, Welch is such a big draw that the people at HSM have done a
spinoff conference where, for $10,000, you and 99 other executives get to spend
two days hobnobbing and listening to Jack up close and personal.
I’ve never been to one of these special “Two Days With Jack Welch” events,
but I get lots of marketing materials about them from HSM. What struck me this
week was that they’re now marketing Welch like this: “20 Years as Head of
General Electric, Greatest Manager of the 20th Century, Bestselling Author and
Business Icon.” Greatest manager of the 20th century????? I like Jack Welch and
respect his wisdom, but is he really the “greatest manager of the 20th century?”
Is that a demonstrable fact, or just marketing hype and hyperbole?
What do you think? I’d love to hear if you believe he is, or if not, whom you
might suggest as the greatest manager of the past 100 years. Send me comments at
jhollon@workforce.com. I will publish
as many of them as I can.
Message in a Book List
Posted: 08/03/2007, 10:00 AM PT
Last week, I listed
the top-selling
books at the Society for Human Resource Management annual conference in Las
Vegas. I asked, "What does this list of the top-selling books purchased at last
month's Society for Human Resource Management annual conference in Las Vegas tell
you about the HR professional in the 21st century? Let me know if you can figure
it out." Here's what some readers had to say:
- From Dr. Janice Presser, CEO of The Gabriel Institute in Philadelphia—"SHRM's
typical member is the HR person for a 100-person or fewer organization, so
this likely represents people who haven't thought *if* they should be doing
things like performance evaluations, just *how* to get people to do them with
the least amount of pain. My wish list reading list for HR professionals would
include The Black Swan (Nassim Nicholas Taleb) and A Whole New Mind (Dan Pink,
who spoke at the conference and I think sold fairly well)."
- From Michael Mercer, author, business psychologist, and president of Mercer
Systems in Barrington, Illinois—"Probably the main reason those books
sold best at SHRM conference is very simple: The authors of many or most of
those books delivered presentations at the SHRM conference. I am the author
of five books. I consistently find that when I speak at a conference, more
of my books are sold than when I do not speak at that conference."
- From a training and development professional in eastern Tennessee—"If
I had to derive a single message from the list, it appears to be around managing
the upcoming generations from Generation X forward. It's all about retention
and effective management."
Do you have any thoughts on this book list, or anything else I've written? I'd
love to hear from you if you do. Until we get the reader comments functioning
on this blog, send your thoughts along to me at jhollon@workforce.com.
I'll publish as many as I can.
The Talent-Shortage Myth
Posted: 08/02/2007, 11:04 AM PT
Every week, I get pitches from PR people touting experts who want to talk about
the great talent shortage that will soon be upon us, given that the 76 million baby
boomers born between 1946 and 1964 will start retiring soon. I’m sure these "experts"
are well-meaning, but like a lot of the verbiage that experts and consultants spew,
I don’t buy it.
That’s not to say that there won’t be worker shortages in some specific areas
(think nurses or other health care workers, for example), but the notion that the
baby-boom generation will retire in lockstep once they hit age 65 is ridiculous.
We’ve said it in numerous stories in Workforce Management, like in this
story by
Ed Frauenheim.
A story this week in The Detroit News also hits this baby boomer talent-shortage
myth squarely on the head. The story, "Baby boomers stay on the job longer than
other generations,"
focused on the need for companies to help older workers who plan to remain in the
workforce past the typical retirement age of 65. The article pointed to an AARP
survey that found that 69 percent of laborers between the age of 45 and 74 plan
to work during their retirement.
According to the story: "The economic impact will be ‘positive,’ said Dana Johnson,
chief economist for Comerica Bank. Retaining older workers will ease the burden
of finding enough new employees to replace the 10 million baby boomers who will
be eligible for retirement by 2010. Working longer also means seniors are still
contributing to the dwindling Social Security fund. ‘To me, it’s a good example
of the flexibility of our economy,’ Johnson said."
Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying that businesses should sit back and do nothing
because workers are going to magically keep working and stay on the job. It’s always
prudent to plan for unforeseen shortages and contingencies, whether we’re talking
about workers, materials or anything else. But I do believe that all the gloom-and-doom
talk about some giant worker shortage because baby boomers are going to start retiring
in droves is fueled by people taking an extremely limited and narrow look at retirement
patterns. What they are forecasting will be, at best, a demographic ripple and not
the giant tidal wave they want us to believe is out there.
"I plan on working until I drop dead," Carol Dowdy, 59, wellness director for
Artisan/National Logistics Management in Detroit, told the News. Amen to that, I
say, because I’m one of those baby boomers who just happen to agree with her and
plan to do the same. I suspect that there are a lot more of us in the same boat.
Got a thought about the predicted talent shortage or any of my other posts? Until
we get the comment posting function on this blog operational, send me comments at
jhollon@workforce.com. I will publish as many of them as I can.
Next Post: 3. “Greatest Manager of the 20th Century?”
You may not be familiar with HSM, but they put on some pretty good executive education events, including the World Business Forum. They get great speakers—this October’s World Business Forum in New York has names like Alan Greenspan, Kofi Annan, Herb Kelleher and Michael Eisner on the program—and are generally well attended, a sure sign that people are hungry for business insight and wisdom.
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John Hollon
Workforce Management editor John Hollon is an award-winning journalist with more than 20 years' experience as a newspaper, magazine, Internet and business journal editor. He holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from California State University, Long Beach, and an MBA from Pepperdine University's Graziadio School of Business and Management.
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Previous Posts
1. A Call Center Story With a Happy Ending
It’s hard to do business in 21st century America without encountering a call center. If you’re like me, more often than not this turns out to be a less-than-satisfactory experience, talking with some company’s outsourced workforce that is struggling mightily to help you from some foreign land many time zones away.
2. “Greatest Manager of the 20th Century?”
You may not be familiar with HSM, but they put on some pretty good executive education events, including the World Business Forum. They get great speakers—this October’s World Business Forum in New York has names like Alan Greenspan, Kofi Annan, Herb Kelleher and Michael Eisner on the program—and are generally well attended, a sure sign that people are hungry for business insight and wisdom.
3. In Defense of Nose Picking and Boorish Behavior
Whenever I think that I’ve seen just about everything in the way of management practice and behavior, I get shocked by something so outlandish, ridiculous or just plain unbelievable that even my jaded and cynical soul is shaken by it.
This one hits close to home (more on that in a bit), and is something you won’t see taught to MBA students anytime soon: An impassioned management defense of an employee’s boorish behavior, and his right to embarrass the company by picking his nose in public, on television.
4. Message in a Book List
I asked, "What does this list of the top-selling books purchased at last month's Society for Human Resource Management annual conference in Las Vegas tell you about the HR professional in the 21st century?"
5. Responding to ‘The Talent-Shortage Myth’
Responses to the "Talent Shortage" posting.
6. The Talent-Shortage Myth
7. Why You Always Need a Plan B
The Michael Vick case presents an interesting object lesson for managers everywhere, and it’s this: You always need to have a viable fallback position that can save you, no matter what unexpected disaster befalls you. You’ve got to have a Plan B.
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Workforce Blogs |
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The Business of Management
Workforce Management editor John Hollon analyzes and comments on business, management and the art of leading a workforce.
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Workforce Washington
Washington staff writer Mark Schoeff Jr. provides an insider’s insights to the workings of our nation’s capital from the workforce management perspective.
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Global Work Watch
Staff writer Ed Frauenheim blogs about how companies worldwide marshal and manage their workers.
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