Professional Documents
Culture Documents
L
I K E M O S T O F U S , I once had a terrible boss a person who thought
that humiliating people was a good way to motivate them. At one point,
a colleague mistakenly copied me on an email chain in which my boss
had ridiculed me repeatedly to my peers. When I confronted my boss, he
told me not to worry my pretty little head about it. Really.
Partially as a result of this experience, I started my own company
Juice Software. My goal was to create an environment where people would
love their work and one another. Friends often laughed when I said that, as
if I were talking about a commune instead of a company. But I was serious.
I spent a lot more than eight hours a day at my job. If I didnt enjoy my work
and my colleagues, the majority of my brief time on this planet would be
unhappy.
that had gotten him the job. Third, I could fi x the document myself for now,
and that would be faster than teaching him how to re-write it.
Lets first deal with how this affected Bob. Remember, he knew his
work wasnt good, and so my false praise just messed with his mind. It al-
lowed him to deceive himself into thinking that he could continue along
the same course. Which he did. By failing to confront the problem, Id re-
moved the incentive for him to try harder and lulled him into thinking hed
be fi ne.
Its brutally hard to tell people when they are screwing up. You dont
want to hurt anyones feelings; thats because youre not a sadist. You dont
want that person or the rest of the team to think youre a jerk. Plus, youve
been told since you learned to talk, If you dont have anything nice to say,
dont say anything at all. Now all of a sudden its your job to say it. Youve
got to undo a lifetime of training. Management is hard.
To make matters worse, I kept making the same mistake over and over
for ten months. As you probably know, for every piece of subpar work you
accept, for every missed deadline you let slip, you begin to feel resentment
and then anger. You no longer just think the work is bad: you think the per-
son is bad. This makes it harder to have an even-keeled conversation. You
start to avoid talking to the person at all.
And of course, the impact of my behavior with Bob didnt stop with
him: others on the team wondered why I accepted such poor work. Follow-
ing my lead, they too tried to cover for him. They would fi x mistakes hed
made and do or redo his work, usually when they should have been sleeping.
Covering for people is sometimes necessary for a short period of time say,
if somebody is going through a crisis. But when it goes on too long it starts
to take a toll. People whose work had been exceptional started to get sloppy.
We missed key deadlines. Knowing why Bobs colleagues were late, I didnt
give them too hard a time. Then they began to wonder if I knew the differ-
ence between great and mediocre; perhaps I didnt even take the missed
deadlines seriously. As is often the case when people are not sure if the qual-
ity of what they are doing is appreciated, the results began to suffer, and so
did morale.
As I faced the prospect of losing my team, I realized I couldnt put it off
any longer. I invited Bob to have coffee with me. He expected to have a nice
chat, but instead, after a few false starts, I fired him. Now we were both hud-
dled miserably over our muffi ns and lattes. After an excruciating silence,
Bob pushed his chair back, metal screeching on marble, and looked me
straight in the eye. Why didnt you tell me?
As that question was rolling around in my mind with no good answer,
he asked me a second question: Why didnt anyone tell me? I thought you
all cared about me!
It was the low point of my career. I had made a series of mistakes, and
Bob was taking the fall. Not only was my earlier praise a head-fakeId
never given Bob any criticism. Id also never asked him to give me feed-
back, which might have allowed him to talk things through and perhaps
fi nd a solution. Worst of all, Id failed to create a culture in which Bobs
peers would naturally warn him when he was going off the rails. The
teams cohesion was cracking, and it showed in our results. Lack of praise
and criticism had absolutely disastrous effects on the team and on our
outcomes.
You can draw a straight line from lack of guidance to a dysfunctional
team that gets poor results. It wasnt just too late for Bob. It was too late for
the whole company; Juice failed not too long after I fired Bob.
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