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Here’s a counter argument: maybe Gloria doesn’t need to have defined tasks for every hour of every day, but it absolutely could not hurt for her to make proacti

by whall6 5y ago

Here’s a counter argument: maybe Gloria doesn’t need to have defined tasks for every hour of every day, but it absolutely could not hurt for her to make proactive decisions that fill her time when she isn’t busy tending to Tony’s schedule. Ideally, an organization would be able to attract the candidates that would spend their free time doing constructive things. This _would_ be an org where everyone is busy all the time. Suggesting that it’s always OK to be doing nothing when we don’t have a pressing task in the name of “Slack” is not what the author intends (in my interpretation) and absolutely a waste of the extremely powerful minds we have as humans.

jl2718 5y ago
The value of your employees voluntary contributions are capped at the least valuable thing you put on their list of things to do. If your employee’s best chance at success are in the success of your business, they’ll do great things without being asked, that you don’t even know about. If not, it doesn’t matter what you ask them to do.
- whall6 5y ago
  I can’t really see how the value of employee contributions are capped at the least valuable thing they have the responsibility to do. As for the second part of your reply, I entirely agree. When employees catch the vision of the company as a whole, it makes sense that they would be motivated to bring something to the table on their free time. Much harder to do within larger orgs.
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  I think this is only true if you create a workplace environment that encourages this. If you micromanage your employees with metrics, they will adjust their behavior to maximize the metrics, and you will know exactly what they are doing (but not if they are doing what they should be doing).
  - jl2718 5y ago
    No. You will expect them to maximize the metrics, but they will do the minimum, and think you’re an idiot, and the quality of their work will be terrible, and they won’t say a word. Every new hire is an opportunity to let that person do their best work for the company. Your opportunity to screw up because you think you know better. If that doesn’t make sense to you, you’re probably in the 60-90% that HBR classifies as negative value managers. We have this idea that management is just a bunch of simple processes, and it is, in the same way that building a bridge is just welding together steel beams. Every struggling engineer wants to be a manager because they think it’s easier work with more power over other people and higher pay, which it is, and this incentive structure creates this reality no matter how hard you fight it. Think about the opposite. What would happen if each engineer had a budget and they decide how much they want to pay whom for management services? How would your role as a manager change in that situation? To earn a salary, you would have to have an extraordinary competence in helping people to be more effective, or just play politics downward. And the engineers, well, they could choose to be lazy and incompetent, or they could be aggressive and incompetent, or they could be ambitious and disciplined, or whatever they want to be. So you see how the situation is not that different with the roles reversed.
underdeserver 5y ago
Counter-argument to that - Maybe Tony wants Gloria to "slack off" so that she has 100% of her mental energy available to solve whatever problem he needs to her to solve.
- whall6 5y ago
  Hmm if it’s a question of mental capacity, I don’t really have anything to add. That’s a good point.
- baobabKoodaa 5y ago
  This works the other way as well: if you are constantly bored and idle, you will not be in a good state of mind when you suddenly need to focus on an urgent task.
axiosgunnar 5y ago
I feel bad giving our employees „fillers“ when there is no important work to be done. I feel like a dirty capitalist exploiting the fact that we have a contract of employment with this person and I can legally command what he will do in his next 30 minutes (and I‘m fairly conservative otherwise, mind you). I rather wait until there is meaningful stuff to do. Of course at some point „hey we have a few days of no urgent tasks. how about we try to improve our test coverage a bit?“ becomes a completely reasonable thing and I believe/hope that the employee will agree and be motivated since he knows that he I value his time even though I am paying for it and don‘t give him fillers. But things like „ok wow that was quick! well umm, lets check the issues list...oh yeah! since you have 26 minutes left, could you fix that one misaligned pixel please?“ make me cringe.

by whall6 5y ago

jl2718 5y ago

The value of your employees voluntary contributions are capped at the least valuable thing you put on their list of things to do. If your employee’s best chance at success are in the success of your business, they’ll do great things without being asked, that you don’t even know about. If not, it doesn’t matter what you ask them to do.

whall6 5y ago
I can’t really see how the value of employee contributions are capped at the least valuable thing they have the responsibility to do. As for the second part of your reply, I entirely agree. When employees catch the vision of the company as a whole, it makes sense that they would be motivated to bring something to the table on their free time. Much harder to do within larger orgs.
rsj_hn 5y ago
I think this is only true if you create a workplace environment that encourages this. If you micromanage your employees with metrics, they will adjust their behavior to maximize the metrics, and you will know exactly what they are doing (but not if they are doing what they should be doing).
- jl2718 5y ago
  No. You will expect them to maximize the metrics, but they will do the minimum, and think you’re an idiot, and the quality of their work will be terrible, and they won’t say a word. Every new hire is an opportunity to let that person do their best work for the company. Your opportunity to screw up because you think you know better. If that doesn’t make sense to you, you’re probably in the 60-90% that HBR classifies as negative value managers. We have this idea that management is just a bunch of simple processes, and it is, in the same way that building a bridge is just welding together steel beams. Every struggling engineer wants to be a manager because they think it’s easier work with more power over other people and higher pay, which it is, and this incentive structure creates this reality no matter how hard you fight it. Think about the opposite. What would happen if each engineer had a budget and they decide how much they want to pay whom for management services? How would your role as a manager change in that situation? To earn a salary, you would have to have an extraordinary competence in helping people to be more effective, or just play politics downward. And the engineers, well, they could choose to be lazy and incompetent, or they could be aggressive and incompetent, or they could be ambitious and disciplined, or whatever they want to be. So you see how the situation is not that different with the roles reversed.

underdeserver 5y ago

Counter-argument to that - Maybe Tony wants Gloria to "slack off" so that she has 100% of her mental energy available to solve whatever problem he needs to her to solve.

whall6 5y ago
Hmm if it’s a question of mental capacity, I don’t really have anything to add. That’s a good point.
baobabKoodaa 5y ago
This works the other way as well: if you are constantly bored and idle, you will not be in a good state of mind when you suddenly need to focus on an urgent task.

axiosgunnar 5y ago

I feel bad giving our employees „fillers“ when there is no important work to be done. I feel like a dirty capitalist exploiting the fact that we have a contract of employment with this person and I can legally command what he will do in his next 30 minutes (and I‘m fairly conservative otherwise, mind you). I rather wait until there is meaningful stuff to do. Of course at some point „hey we have a few days of no urgent tasks. how about we try to improve our test coverage a bit?“ becomes a completely reasonable thing and I believe/hope that the employee will agree and be motivated since he knows that he I value his time even though I am paying for it and don‘t give him fillers. But things like „ok wow that was quick! well umm, lets check the issues list...oh yeah! since you have 26 minutes left, could you fix that one misaligned pixel please?“ make me cringe.