YOUR BOSS IS UNFAIRLY CRITICAL

• everything you do is wrong: approach the boss with a positive spin and ask how the boss wants it done differently. Only the most insecure boss will not appreciate the fact that you solicited feedback and didn’t blame them.
• he wants to reinvent the wheel and his shit always stinks less.

HE/SHE IS A MICROMANAGER

• it’s never good enough: again, emphasize that you want to solve the problem and improve your performance.

HE/SHE IS A HOTHEAD:

• secretion of abnormal levels of adrenaline: this is a psychological response to stress or the fact that they are over their heads and fear that they will be found out for what they really are not.

YOUR BOSS IS INEFFECTUAL

• lazy, distracted by family issues, burned out, or over his/her head. Yep, I’ve seen this a time or two! You can’t change the boss, so get help from senior coworkers or other supervisors. They ask how you are but don’t really care that you have a fever and are sick as a dog, just get the work done.

YOUR BOSS IS UNETHICAL

• dodges work, gets credit for someone else’s work, and is a huge liar.Haven’t we all had one of these?  What is more disturbing are bosses who say “I really went to the carpet to try and get this for you but..” when they have not done anything and are basically lying to your face.

MISSING IN ACTION

• they are never around and that sets you up for failure or having to scramble for help with an unenthusiastic supervisor not over you.

BACKGROUND SHADOW

• they never defend you or acknowledge you exist: I’d have a hard time conceptualizing someone not acknowledging me…but then….

THE EVIL ONE

• see hothead: Dr.Jekyll-Mr.Hyde– how the hell do you approach this boss?
• they are the predatory boss that crushes your spirit and leaves you in tears.
• you are the scum of the earth, never forget that!
• you start second guessing yourself so much that you ask for a third party’s opinion.

GLORY HOG

• “I’ll do it because no one can do it right.”
• this will be the first person to speak in a unit meeting and the last person to speak in a unit meeting.
• people are afraid to approach this one. It could also be a coworker that fits this category…

If you work for a boss like this I have some bad news.  The chances are that in any battle he/she is going to win because they know how to play the system and the game better than you do.  Also remember that HR people are not there for YOU they are there to protect the company and your boss.

What to do ?

1. If you have decided that you stuck at your job and actually it’s not a bad job except for your Satan manager than keep a personal file at all times with correspondence that directly demonstrates bad management behavior.  This includes emails and hand written notes.

2. If the demon is only demonic in person than always send a follow-up email with the key points of his/her rant and keep a copy for your files.

3. If going to work on Monday gives you that sinking feeling in your gut than it’s time to really think about leaving.  You have to ask yourself “which is better the enormous stress that is taking years of my life or leaving to get a breath of fresh air”.   Even little things like working on your resume or jobs online can make you feel empowered enough to say “the hell with you and everyone who looks like you”.

4. Meet with others within your team and probe them to see if they feel the same way.  However be very careful because scum buckets could use this against you by going behind your back.  I know someone who met with 5 people in her group who wanted to go to HR about a really bad Director they worked for.  The end results was that 4 of the 5 people were transferred out of the department to really bad jobs they did not want.

5. Finally..the best advice comes from Michael Corleone (aka The Godfather).  Don’t get angry at your enemies, it clouds your judgement.  Remain calm and tactful and above all use logic over emotion.

Related articles

• What makes you a good manager ? The key list (richsmanagementblog.com)
• When is it okay to quit without giving notice? (cbsnews.com)
• Why Can’t We Get Rid of Our Boss From Hell? (psychologytoday.com)
• This is why your boss hates you (theglobeandmail.com)
• Damage done by poor managers (richsmanagementblog.com)
• The Boss (whatiwishiwouldasaid.wordpress.com)
• Know when to give up (cbsnews.com)
• This is why your boss hates you (business.financialpost.com)

Kodak’s revenues peaked at nearly $16 billion in 1996 and its profits at $2.5 billion in 1999. The consensus forecast by analysts is that its revenues in 2011 were $6.2 billion. It recently reported a third-quarter loss of $222m, the ninth quarterly loss in three years. In 1988, Kodak employed over 145,000 workers worldwide; at the last count, barely one-tenth as many. Its share price has fallen by nearly 90% in the past year.

Larry Matteson, a former Kodak executive who now teaches at the University of Rochester’s Simon School of Business, recalls writing a report in 1979 detailing, fairly accurately, how different parts of the market would switch from film to digital, starting with government reconnaissance, then professional photography and finally the mass market, all by 2010. He was only a few years out.

Kodak realized that digital photography itself would not be very profitable. “Wise businesspeople concluded that it was best not to hurry to switch from making 70 cents on the dollar on film to maybe five cents at most in digital,” says Mr Matteson. Kodak was very slow to adapt to the changes to digital photography and for their slowness they are paying the price.

So where did Kodak fail ?

• Kodak’s culture did not help. Despite its strengths—hefty investment in research, a rigorous approach to manufacturing and good relations with its local community—Kodak had become a complacent monopolist.

• Another reason why Kodak was slow to change was that its executives “suffered from a mentality of perfect products, rather than the high-tech mindset of make it, launch it, fix it,” says Rosabeth Moss Kanter of Harvard Business School, who has advised the firm.

• Working in a one-company town did not help, either. Kodak’s bosses in Rochester seldom heard much criticism of the firm. Even when Kodak decided to diversify, it took years to make its first acquisition. It created a widely admired venture-capital arm, but never made big enough bets to create breakthroughs.

• Bad luck played a role, too. Kodak thought that the thousands of chemicals its researchers had created for use in film might instead be turned into drugs. But its pharmaceutical operations fizzled, and were sold in the 1990s.

• George Fisher, who served as Kodak’s boss from 1993 until 1999, decided that its expertise lay not in chemicals but in imaging. He cranked out digital cameras and offered customers the ability to post and share pictures online.  A brilliant boss might have turned this idea into something like Facebook, but Mr Fisher was not that boss. He failed to outsource much production, which might have made Kodak more nimble and creative. He struggled, too, to adapt Kodak’s “razor blade” business model. Kodak sold cheap cameras and relied on customers buying lots of expensive film. (Just as Gillette makes money on the blades, not the razors.) That model obviously does not work with digital cameras. Still, Kodak did eventually build a hefty business out of digital cameras—but it lasted only a few years before camera phones scuppered it.

• Kodak’s leadership has been inconsistent. Its strategy changed with each of several new chief executives. The latest, Antonio Perez, who took charge in 2005, has focused on turning the firm into a powerhouse of digital printing (something he learnt about at his old firm, Hewlett-Packard, and which Kodak still insists will save it). He has also tried to make money from the firm’s huge portfolio of intellectual property—hence the lawsuit against Apple.

Could Kodak have avoided its current misfortunes? Some say it could have become the equivalent of “Intel Inside” for the smartphone camera—a brand that consumers trust. But Canon and Sony were better placed to achieve that, given their superior intellectual property, and neither has succeeded in doing so. In the end Kodak was done in by management that refused to see the future or bring in talented people who could leverage the futre.  The sad part is that the employees of Kodak are going to pay the price for managements incompetence.

Source: The Economist: 

The last Kodak moment?
Kodak is at death’s door; Fujifilm, its old rival, is thriving. Why?

University of Florida researchers found that employees with abusive bosses were more likely than others to slow down or make errors on purpose (30% vs. 6%), hide from their bosses (27% vs. 4%), not put in maximum effort (33% vs. 9%), and take sick time when they weren’t sick (29% vs. 4%). Abused employees were three times less likely to make suggestions or go out of their way to fix workplace problems. Abusive superiors also drive out employees: over 20 million Americans have left jobs to flee from workplace bullies, most of whom were bosses.

There are at least 21 million bosses in the United States, with estimates running as high as 38 million. Over 90 percent of U.S. employees have at least one boss, someone who presides over them in the local hierarchy.   The success or failure of every boss hinges on how well or how badly he or she navigates these vexing and all-too-human relationships.

Ways that senior leaders treat direct reports create numerous other ripple effects that travel down and across the hierarchy, shaping a company’s culture and performance. A study of sixty-six of the fastest growing new U.S. firms showed that the best CEOs blended a “top-down” directive approach with a more participative “shared leadership” approach in managing their top teams. This research showed that when CEOs used this one-two punch of directive and participative approaches to lead senior teams, their companies enjoyed superior performance—growing both revenue and numbers of personnel faster than similar firms.

The best bosses embrace five beliefs that are stepping stones to effective action.

(1) Don’t crush the bird

“I believe that managing is like holding a dove in your hand. If you hold it too tightly, you kill it, but if you hold it too loosely, you lose it.”  Managers who are too assertive will damage relationships with superiors, peers, and followers; but managers who are not assertive enough won’t press followers to achieve sufficiently tough goals.   Moderately assertive bosses were rated as most effective overall, most likely to succeed in the future, and as someone the MBAs would work with again.

(2) Effective bosses know it is sometimes best to leave their people alone.

They realize that keeping a close eye on people often either has no effect on performance or undermines it—in contrast to micromanagers, who believe their relentless attention and advice bolsters performance.

(3) The best bosses think and act like they are running a marathon, not a sprint.

They work strenuously toward challenges, maintaining effort and interest despite failure, adversity, and plateaus in progress.

(4) Small wins and saying thank you are a great path

If you focus on the little things the big things will take care of themselves.  Never forget to say thank you even if someone is just doing their job and go out of your want to teach praise and listen to what your people are doing and saying.

(5) I got your back

Good bosses take all the blame and none of the credit and they cover their people’s asses.  They also never talk about their people behind their backs and critic them in public.

The truth is that bosses of everything from small groups to Fortune 500 firms don’t matter as much as most of us believe. They typically account for less than 15 percent of the between good and bad organizational performance, although they often get over 50 percent of the blame and credit.

Finally one thing I learned in Air Force Officers Leadership School is that you always act like you’re in control even when you aren’t.   Good bosses have to lead and give orders and people won’t follow someone who is not sure where they are going or keeps changing the direction in which they are going.

Related articles

• Use Your Crappy Boss to Make Yourself a Better Employee [Careers] (lifehacker.com)
• What can be done about a workplace bully? (career-advice.monster.co.uk)
• How can I work effectively under multiple bosses? (career-advice.monster.co.uk)
• Survey: 1 In 6 Adults Suffer Some Form Of Workplace Bullying (newyork.cbslocal.com)
• 10 ways to get your boss to listen (cbsnews.com)
• Bullies in the Workplace (atropregor.wordpress.com)
• The Job Coaches: Coping with a difficult boss (c4women.wordpress.com)

Workers were asked, “Have you ever worked for an unreasonable boss?” Their responses:

Workers who have had an unreasonable boss also were asked, “How did you respond?” Their responses:

Added Hosking, “Friction between supervisors and employees can stem from differing work styles. It’s not possible to control your boss’s actions, but you can change how you respond to them.”

OfficeTeam identifies five common types of challenging bosses and tips for working with them:

When your boss doesn’t support you you need to take the bull by the horns and let him. or her, know that you are not happy.  The worst thing you can do is to say and do nothing because that only reinforces cowardly behavior.  Here are some key things you should do in a situation like this:

(1) Write down everything at the meeting, especially anything someone said about you, your presentation or data and for objectivity.

(2) Arrange a meeting with your boss as soon as possible after the ambush.

(3) As an opening to the meeting ask “so how do you think the meeting went ?” When he, or she, has finished you should clearly voice your disappointment that they did not come to your defense at the meeting.  If they pre-read your presentation and guided you on what to say, or not say, and this was one of the reasons for the belittling then you need to be even more articulate at your disappointment.

(4) Learn from the experience.   You can either count on, or not count on, your managers support when you present key data or make a presentation.  Don’t hope that your manager will suddenly discover that he has a set of gonads.

(5) Build a support network within your organization.  Your goal here is to learn if this executive has a habit of ambushing employees and making them feel small or whether he, she, sees a target on your back.  If it’s the latter than you need to find out exactly what’s going on and where you stand.  Remember that if they want to get rid of you they will find a reason regardless of the quality of your work.

(6) If you have a company executive who gets his jollies by belittling employees per others within your company than you all need to document the bad behavior and take action.  Under no circumstances should you let this bad behavior go on as it’s only going to lead to an environment of fear and high stress levels.

(7) Be willing to take a stand but ensure it’s not personal.  If someone attacks you at a meeting you need to fire a return volley using logic and facts.  Do not let personal relationships get in the way and don’t count on support at the meeting from anyone else because they are going to do what is best for them and that means “don’t rock the boat”.

Finally if you can’t do anything about it and your ready to punch holes in the wall from the stress then take action.  Ask for a transfer to another department of work on your resume and make the decision that this much stress is not worth double the money they are paying you.

A good manager listens and knows when to talk and when to keep quiet but a good manager never ever attacks an employee in public. Unfortunately there are a lot of bad managers out there and lot of people live in terror when they see one on one meetings pop up on their calendars.  Life is too short to deal with people like this who often are compensating for a lack of anatomical features.

What would you do in the scenario:

You have just completed an upgrade to your brands website that consisted of months of research and usability studies.  During the development you met with product managers and directors and you of course got approvals from your boss on upgrading the site via the findings in the research.  The day your site launches you get a call from you boss later that night at home in which he tells you that he just got his ass handed to him because the VP of Sales was not in the “loop” about the change to the website and he blames you.  He wants you to go back to the old site even though your customers hated it and  it was a site that was patch-worked together and ready to collapse with each new code entry.

This scenario actually happened to me and let me tell you when I received the call from my boss I was a lot more than angry. If my boss wanted to get approvals from anyone outside the department than he should have let me know.  The next day I met with him and provided him with all the correspondance that led to the launch of the new site. He was in the loop on ALL the planned changes yet when the VP of Sales called him on the carpet I was the one who was left out on the ledge.

I refused to contact IT and allow the old site back up because there was everything from broken links to pages that were not being used at all by our audience.  It was a horrible user experience and our Webmaster indicated that the site could collapse from the weight of too many changes by too many people over the  years at anytime.

The key lesson for me was that my boss did not have my back and that he was more interested in blowing with the political winds than doing what was right for customers, prospects and shareholders.  The new site resulted in both an increase in conversion and users, via a pop-up survey, rated our site an average of 9.2 on a scale of 10 compared to a 6.1 before the new site was launched.

I stuck to my principles and frankly was ready to do whatever was necessary to keep the new site up and running.  In a weekly meeting later on I laid out my case to my boss who apologized and asked “who can guide me in getting the right people in the loop for further changes”.  He said let me think about that but a week later I was reporting to a new Director as he washed his hands of our website.  He is now a VP of another division and my advice to people who work for him is that his interests lie in climbing the ladder not in doing what is right.

This is reality to a lot of people out there, especially today where so many people are afraid of doing what is right because they live in fear of losing their jobs or being accused of “rocking the boat”.  However Seth Godin was correct when he said that Linchpins have to be willing to loose the love of others to do what is right.   You can accept your environment or you can choose to be a Linchpin.  Which path will you take ?

Through the first quarter of 2011, nearly 600,000 college-educated white men ages 35 to 64 were unemployed, according to previously unpublished Labor Department stats. That’s more than 5 percent jobless—double the group’s pre-recession rate. That might not sound bad compared with the plight of younger, less-educated workers and minorities, but it’s a historic change from the last recession, when about half as many lost their oxford shirts. The number of college-educated men unemployed for at least a year is five times higher today than after the dotcom bubble. In New York City, men in the 35-to-54 kill zone have lost jobs faster than any other group, including teenage girls, according to new data from the Fiscal Policy Institute.

As if that’s not bad enough what we are also seeing is that some of the worst managers were kept in their jobs as some of the more talented people were shown the door.   That’s because today a lot of managers are rated on how well they don’t rock the boat and they go with the prevailing political winds rather than their expertise or what they have done.

Now that the job market is heating up again there are going to be some people are in desperation mode to get a paycheck and as thus they could soon find that they are going to work in a cube city with a bad manager to boot.  I know a paycheck is better than no paycheck but at what cost ?  The stress of a poor manager can break down your health and lead to emotional problems if you’re not careful.

So what is a bad manager ?  Well here are some things that I have learned over my 17+ years of experience:

1ne: He, she, does not take an active interest in you or your career.  They might ask how you are doing but they don’t really care and they don’t really listen to your needs or concerns.

2wo: They do not have your back.  They might be with you when you’re developing a presentation and tell you that your on track but when you get pushback at the the presentation they abandon you like you have a contagious disease.

3hree: At review time they only point out your weaknesses and do not acknowledge the value you have brought to the company.

4our: They micromanage you and they tend to be passive aggressive sending you emails or text messages rather than meeting with you one on one.

5ive: They don’t ask for your input when developing proposals or plans that directly effect your area or in an area in which you have extensive knowledge.

6ix: They suck up to their bosses rather than engage them in meaningful debate.

7even: They focus on tasks that don’t add value to customers or shareholders like fancy Power Point presentations.

8ight: They don’t praise you in public when you do a good job and they very rarely remember to say “thank you”.

9ine: They don’t invite you to lunch to ask you “how are things” and listen to how you feel.

10en: They will not support you if you have an issue with a coworker or process that doesn’t make sense.

Managing employees is not hard you just have to remember that they are people and that they want and need to be heard and know that you care about their professional development.  Believe it or not they do have a life outside of work and sometimes work has to take a back seat to other problems.  Listen more and talk less can lead to better management.

What led to his firing ?

1. Bringing in too many outside people & consultants - When you do this you are essentially telling people “you don’t know how to get back on track.  I do and I’m bringing in people who can straighten this mess out”.  This just created dissention within the company.

2. Bringing religion into the workplace - As The New York Times reported, Griffin, a Roman Catholic, made people at Time Inc. uneasy by making mentions of the faith, and one source said that at Meredith, Griffin was just one of a “Catholic cabal” of higher ups who made regular references to being Catholic. “Instead of saying, ‘Go sit down in your seat,’ it would be, ‘Everyone go in your pew,’  I can’t imagine anything more degrading and offensive to people.

3. Not taking time to understand the culture and key executive influencers and win them over - Mr Griffin probably thought he was brought in to change the company and improve it’s performance but we know that evolutionary change is better than revolutionary change and that you have to be able to first get buy-in from senior company influencers rather than go full force in a direction where only you know where you are going.  One Time Inc. employee said Thursday night. “He had a style that some people would describe as demeaning,” the employee said. “It was getting in the way of business. People were starting to get the sense that Time Warner was getting a sense of it.”

Even though Mr Griffin had already produced some results today how you do it is just as important as what you do to big companies with a diverse culture and executives who don’t like to be told what to do.  Mr Griffin might have known what was needed to turn Time around but his lack of business savvy and political skills surely led to a short career and a pink slip.

1. Most of your emails are one-word long

It may be efficient, but many bosses don’t realize how curt a one-word email—even a simple “yes” or “no”—can be, says Barbara Pachter, a management coach and author of several workplace etiquette books. She calls it the “BlackBerry effect.”  ”Managers have a tendency to be abrupt, especially when they’re answering emails on the go,” Ms. Pachter says. “It comes off as an invitation for conflict. A simple addition of ‘thanks’ goes a long way.”  Some managers craft even shorter emails. When Christina Marcus emailed an idea for a project to a former boss, he responded “Y.” Thinking he was questioning her idea, she spent 20 minutes crafting a response. Turns out, the “Y” meant “yes,” not “why.” ” Ms. Marcus eventually left the firm.

2. You Rarely Talk to Your Employees Face-to-Face

Relying on email may be convenient, but bosses are increasingly using technology to avoid having tough discussions, says Robert Sutton, professor at Stanford University and author of “Good Boss, Bad Boss.”  ”No one wants to do the dirty work, but it’s a boss’ lot in life to deal with difficult issues,” Mr. Sutton says. Face-time engenders trust with employees, adds Ms. Pachter.

3. Your employees are out sick–a lot.

Employees will fake sickness to avoid a bad boss, says Mr. Sutton. But there’s evidence that a bad boss may be bad for your health. A 2008 Swedish study that tracked more than 3,000 men over 10 years found that the men who said they were poorly managed at work were 20%-40% more likely to have a heart attack.

4. Your team’s working overtime, but still missing deadlines.

New bosses are particularly prone to giving unmanageable deadlines to staffers, says Gini Graham Scott, author of “A Survival Guide for Working with Bad Bosses.”  A human resources executive at a New York firm who declined to be named because she’s currently looking for a new position, says that she began working 15-hour days after her new boss came on board. Her boss’ first order of business: Promising more aggressive deadlines to clients. “She would tell the client, ‘We can have this for you in three days,’ which was impossible,” says this woman.

5. You yell.

Even if you aren’t screaming angrily at your employees, speaking loudly can damage workplace morale, says Ms. Pachter, the management coach. “Employees will constantly feel like they’re being reprimanded, and they’ll avoid you if there’s ever a problem,” she says.  At one of Ms. Marcus’ former jobs every debate was a public forum, she says. “My bosses would shout freely across the office, even when they weren’t necessarily angry,” she says. “It charged the atmosphere and really killed productivity, especially when you were trying to figure out who you should be listening to.”

What is upsetting to a skeptical and angry public is that today even bad CEO’s get rewarded for failure.  Too many leave a company in ruins with depleted shareholder value and still manage to take millions of dollars in compensation with them while employees face years without bonuses and massive layoffs.

On average, 2% of the CEOs at the largest 500 companies were forced out each year between 1970 and 2006. But this number would be much higher if directors cared more about shareholder value or were not so loathe toward forcing CEOs out, largely for personal reasons. These personal reasons may include their own ties to the CEO, or considerations that firing the CEO may put their jobs as directors at risk, or hurt their chances of being nominated to other boards.

Consider the recent case at HP (HPQ). Former CEO Mark Hurd was forced out by the board for ethics violations. For the board members, however, removing Hurd was a courageous act. That move, in fact, put the directors’ jobs at risk. The new CEO, Leo Apotheker, with the aid of new director and chair Ray Lane, asked for directors to volunteer their resignation so that they could rebuild the board with directors that they both knew. If any other employee had been caught doing what Hurd was doing they would have been led out the door with their box of belongings and no severance but since Hurd is CEO he got to leave with tens of millions of dollars in shareholders money.  I bet this made the people who work at HP happy.

CEO’s need to earn a fair living but at some point in time fairness cannot mean tens of millions of dollars in perks and compensation.  I mean how much is enough ?   True, being a CEO is not easy but those that take the job for the money are not the ones that you want in charge.  You want people who love what they do and to them money is a smaller part of the equation.

The streets of business are lined with CEO’s who led companies to ruin and after they were shown the door they just went to their banks to make huge deposits and spend the rest of their lives counting money.  Boards need to examine CEO compensation closely and shareholders have to stop allowing board members to be part of an exclusive club that allows them to reward one another at shareholder and employee expense.