How to control your employees
When you hire a carpenter, make them use your tools
Let’s look at two images:
Image 1:
Image 2:
Which image shows a good employee? That’s right, its Image 2, because the employee is wearing a suit within their designated work area.
There are other problems with Image 1:
The employee is using personal headphones, not company branded audio gear assigned by their local IT support representative
The employee is working from their home - not an approved work location
The resource is not displaying any of our corporate values1 in their cord management, reflecting poorly on our department
The things’s workstation is not locked
The thing is sleeping
How to tell if your employees are working
Many new managers struggle with determining if their employees are working hard, and they are insecure about it. The way to battle insecurity is to get ahead of it, go on the offensive - assert dominance. Like a stupid, dumb dog that gets scared when there are fireworks - they don’t understand something, get scared, and trash your house. Fireworks are your employees deep technical understanding of software development, you are a dog, and the house is your company’s culture.
Now you might be thinking that this is a silly comparison to make. Fine, let’s look at some additional reasons companies assert control over their employees.
1: They think they are supposed to, based on their training
Many software managers can draw direct lessons from their time running the afternoon shift at a Chick-fil-A2, while others were individual contributors at a software company. You can tell the difference quite clearly in how they think that employees are motivated and rewarded.
CFA manager:
Free chicken: you motivate employees with childish, delicious rewards.
Cleaning toilets: you punish employees if they make a mistake.
Software manager:
Reward: grant well-used autonomy with more autonomy.
Punishment: discourage bad behavior through reputation and temporary reduction in autonomy.
2: They think they are supposed to, based on their heroes
Many think that the best leadership is military leadership.3 The goals of your cat mom blogging platform is to make money and delight users, not defend a position, but many draw direct comparisons and use what is called command-and-control leadership styles, which work great when you want to get someone to do something that their instincts say is dangerous. It doesn't work as well if you want people to decide what to do and then work together as a group to do it. The military is the best leadership style for their needs; your needs are different.
3. Managing any other way is much harder
Coordinating work amongst knowledge workers and giving them space to figure stuff out is harder than controlling them. Trying to guide them to make the right decision, get them unstuck on a problem, or offer novel solutions requires you to understand the work very well and have additional people skills. Being a software development manager is closer to being a manager of craftsmen than a manager of manual labor. And this is just simply harder.
All that matters it output
You hire a carpenter to work on your house, then make them work how you want them to work, with your tools, on your schedule, and using your methodology. And you have never been a carpenter. Or you are a former carpenter, give them space, and offer up a tool if you see them getting stuck.
Which way of working ends up with the best result?
Suggested honest company values: { Order, Greed, Hierarchy, Consistency }
For those not familiar, Chick-fil-a is like if Colonel Sanders joined a (mostly harmless) cult.
More often than not, these people have not been in the military.
I think the military contains strong leaders and great weapons. USA, USA, USA