I’ve never had a job that required I wear a suit unless you count the two years I spent in Germany as a missionary. I had to wear a suit, white shirt and tie each day regardless of the weather.

I didn’t like the dress code back then and never got used to it.

By the time I was released, I was so tired of wearing a suit I vowed I’d never take a job that required I wear one each day.

So far so good.

My first job out of college had a firm business casual dress code. My current job has the same but is more flexible. I can occasionally wear jeans and mock turtlenecks without being sent home.

I think back to my days as a missionary and remember how much more approachable I was when I wasn’t wearing a suit, tie and name badge. When all decked out in dark suit, many Germans assumed I was selling something, and wouldn’t converse. But on our preparation day I wore jeans and a t-shirt and fit into the landscape. I was a lot more approachable which made sharing my message a lot easier. There were times when I taught more people on preparation day than the rest of the week days combined.

I know that serving a mission and working in an office are two entirely different activities. But I wonder if some of the same walls I built as a missionary show up in the office?

Why would any of my far more relaxed technicians want to talk to a guy sitting behind a desk wearing slacks and a tie? I know I wouldn’t.

I’m much more likely to hear from my crew if I spend time playing basketball with them as opposed to sitting in my office in nicely pressed business casual attire all day.

Does it matter how much time I spent polishing my shoes, ironing my shirts and pressing my pants if I don’t hear how my team is doing and connect with them on their terms?

How approachable are you?

Photo by Geekgirly

“He’s a high school coach”.

That’s what I’d tell people when they asked what my father did for work. He was also a teacher for over 30 years. And a driver’s ed instructor. And a swimming pool manager.

But to my friends he was Coach Nordquist, and everyone who knew my father understood his love of athletics. He believed that participating in athletics could teach a young boy or girl lessons that academic classes could not.

Everyone knows what a coach does. Same goes for teacher, mechanic, dentist and electrician. None of these professions require further explanation. We all have a good idea of how a dentist spends his day.

I hadn’t given much thought to this topic until I overheard a conversation between Luca and Lincoln last week.

Lincoln: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

Luca: “I don’t know. Maybe a baker”

Lincoln: “What does dad do at work?”

Luca: “I don’t know. Something with computers”

Although she’s only 7-years old, this is as good a description of my job as any I’ve heard before. In my career in technology, I’ve never had a job title that’s easy to describe to someone outside the industry. Not that job titles mean much anymore. I doubt few of my coworkers know my title is “Technical Operations Manager”. It’s so bland and so vague that many people probably hear “I’m the Technical blah blah blah blah….” They immediately tune out at technical.

Lately, my job feels like it’s changing each day. I used to think my primary responsibilities included hiring, training and leading a group of technicians who support Microsoft conferences, trade shows and product launches. Although these tasks are important, they don’t bring a lot of job satisfaction to me at the end of each day.

What does bring joy to my work is listening. Listening to the idea of new hires who haven’t become jaded by the industry. Listening to my best techs on how we can go after new business. And listening to customers who appreciate the work our people put in on their behalf. Leading doesn’t mean speaking all the time. Sure, occasionally my voice should be heard but it shouldn’t be the only voice that’s heard.

I still have a lot to learn, and I make a lot of mistakes. But I’m beginning to listen more which allows me to catch issues as they arise at an early stage. That gives me time to solve or at least minimize problems. But it doesn’t come naturally. 

Years may pass before my kids are able to describe what I do at work. But until then I’m happy to hear them call me goofy dad.

The first time I heard about the 80/20 rule I was taking a economics course at the University of Utah. I don’t recall the context of the discussion but it seemed reasonable.

80/20 Rule = 20% of your efforts produce 80% of the results

You may have heard it expressed as:

People wear 20% of their wardrobe 80% of the time

80% of income is distributed to wealthiest 20%

20% of your sales force produces 80% of sales

Users spend 80% of their time using 20% of a product’s features

The first time I recognized this rule in action was the time I was in charge of the Microsoft Project partner program. I spent months analyzing over 150 partners who built add-ons or complimentary products to Project. What I found was that of those 150 partners, about 15 were responsible for driving over 80% of partner related revenue.

I decided to cut back the number of partners in the program to 90 and focus my efforts on the top 15. In theory this seemed like the right thing to do, but in practice, I only had time to work closely with 5 partners.

Lately I’ve wondered if the 80/20 rule can be applied to my group of technicians. I think back 6 years to how I managed 40 people and it’s easy to see where I failed. Of those 40, maybe 10 were top performers, 25 were good techs, and 5 were subpar performers. I assumed the top 5 could manage themselves and didn’t need much guidance to succeed. This freed up time to spend elsewhere.

As their manager I felt it was my responsibility to fix the problems. As a result I spent 80% of my time with bottom feeder 5. I don’t believe I was a total failure in this approach but I didn’t have much success helping them move into the middle tier, and not one ever raised his game to join the top tier.

Fast forward to today where I manage the same group of technicians. The group is half the size as before due to how we’ve structured our teams. This time around I’ve taken a different approach. I now spend 80% of my time working with my top 5 techs.

But I’ve found that my best technicians look for ways to improve our company. They are the most confident and thus willing to challenge my suggestions. They listen to our customers and want to improve our products. They drive at least 80% of the new business opportunities. They can manage themselves but still need someone who can push ideas through the organization.

The biggest benefit I’ve noticed from this approach is the top 5 set the example for rest of the group. If the bar is set high, the group will police itself. I still spend time with those who need daily guidance but not at the expense of my most valuable techs.

At the end of each week I ask myself: Did I spend more time managing problem techs or more time leading the best ones?

I still fall short. But my goal is to move from spending the greater part of the week solving problems to leading the top performing members of the team. The less time I spend fixing problems, they more time I can devote to growing our business.

Photo by Betsy Martian

I finished reading the latest book from Seth Godin titled, Tribes. Near the beginning of the book he covers the difference between managers and leaders.

Management is about manipulating resources to get a known job done. Burger King franchises hire managers. Managers manage a process they’ve seen before and react to the outside world striving to make that process as fast and as cheap as possible.

Leadership, on the other hand, is about creating change.

Leaders have followers. Managers have employees.

Managers make widgets. Leaders make change.

When I read the passage above I stopped. Then I went back and read it several times, and it’s been on my mind ever since.

 
“That would be great”

I think all but one position I’ve held since graduating from college 14 years ago has included “manager” in the title including my first job as retail store manager.

But only in my current job am I encouraged to be a leader. Sure I still have to manage a number of processes and resource, but we have people on staff who are better at those tasks.

I think back to that first job I had as a store manager and realize what a poor leader I was. I assumed that everyone would follow me in step since I was the manager. I figured the titled carried all the clout I needed.

But it doesn’t work that way, and I realized my assistant manager was the person everyone followed.

From my experience it’s easier to be a leader if you work for one.

Managers are a lot easier to find.

My father worked as a school teacher for 32 years. He worked for the same school district for all those years. Although he held many jobs over that time span, he worked for the same employer. Although he probably doesn’t consider himself wealthy, the job was reliable, the benefits sufficient and the pension fantastic. I’m sure, on some level, he feels a sense of loyalty to his employer of 32 years.

Throughout my career I’ve been treated quite well by most of my employers. I’ve worked at companies with 5 employees to several with over 50,000. I’ve felt more loyalty towards the smaller companies. They felt like family. In those times I’ve certainly felt loyalty towards my managers and employees. That’s not a surprise because I’ve searched out opportunities to work for good people ahead of how big or popular the company may be.

Not so much with the larger companies. Working for Microsoft I felt like Z from the movie Antz. Just a tiny cog in a massive machine that’s easy to replace. Here’s your marching orders.

With higher numbers of unemployment, business owners know they’re in the catbird seat when it comes to hiring, promotions and raises. We’ve gone through the flip side of this equation where employees jumped from job to job like free agents searching for the highest bidder. Both sides have treated the other like a disposable partnership at times.

Eventually the jobs will come back. The pendulum will swing back towards the employees. I hope both employees and business owners will exercise mutual respect for each other during economic prosperity as well as economic downtown.