Define management

An interesting thing happened at work today. Actually, a few interesting things. After I resigned (with 4 months notice so I could play frisbee this summer, save some money, and figure out what I wanted to do with my life) a few weeks ago, people have actually started to listen to me. They say they like my honesty. I was honest before, you just never bothered asking me anything. Anyway, the culture at my company has turned for the worse, it's no fun to work there, and let's be honest, working sucks anyway so when you stop having fun with your coworkers it's time to consider moving on. So he asked me why. And I told him. He asked me to write "an essay" with my thoughts so he could take it back to the management team because they don't believe him the culture is getting negative.

My initial response is then management doesn't walk around the company enough and see everyone scowling at each other. Grrrr! I haven't given that much thought to the essay yet, but it's intriguing when someone asks me to just throw my thoughts out. That's how I developed my tax ideas a few months ago. That's how I developed my master plan to breed humans and penguins. That is how i realized life is really just a crock of shit and all I really need to worry about is being happy and forget being so damned neurotic about retiring.

Anyway, I thought about responding with a single statement: Define your style of management of people. As a company, we help companies organize themselves around their strategies. Internally, we are a mess, we really are. I worked at a company before and when I left, I hated it. But it wasn't disorganized, it wasn't a mess, I just didn't agree with their expectations of workers and that famous work life balance. So I thought about making each manager define that, then actually prove they are doing it. They aren't, it doesn't matter what they say.

Here is my thought. I think I will pose a series of somewhat rhetorical questions for them to respond to, such as:

1. Why do people work?
2. When was the last time you asked someone randomly what they thought of the company?
3. Did you believe their answer? If not, why? Can you address that?
4. Do you believe your workers are trying to make the company a better place to work, or is everyone doing their work and going home?
5. Are you making the company a better place? How?

I could go on, and I will. I figure once I list the questions, I'll spend a few thousand words expounding my beliefs. People work primarily because we need money to live. That's obvious. But as much as I make fun, I don't want to be retired, I would go crazy. I would just end up doing something full time even if I didn't get paid. So at some level I want to work. What do I want to do? I have been thinking about that a lot lately as I consider my next move. I want at least 1 of 2 things: 1) A job that interests me, one that challenges me, one where i need to think and I learn new things or 2) A job that means something, meaning a non-profit that actually makes a difference. That's it, I can't think of anything else. I need enough salary to live on, but I can live really cheap if i have to, but i need one of those two things to be fulfilled to make it worthwhile.

So I am assuming most people more or less agree with those two ideas, although I'm not basing that on anything. If I were walking my management team through this exercise and we came up with this as the list, I would then pose the next obvious question: Are you providing this type of environment to your employees? If not, can you fix it? If not, have you at least addressed it with your employees? If not, you aren't managing, you are working. It's not the same, not at that level.

After freaking out a little the other day concerned about what i would do, I am ok now. I'll be fine. My company offered to send me to San Fran again. I turned down this offer last year, and most people thought I was crazy turning it down, asking how often a company would offer to move you to San Fran! And I might turn it down again! Maybe I am crazy. Yet here is the thing. Rumour is that I was interested in San Fran. I spoke to a friend out there, and she said the 2 top guys at our San Fran office asked her if I was interested in moving to San Fran. She asked me. I said yes. She told them. They still haven't spoken to me directly. She is younger, less experienced, and has a "lower" job title than I do (but she's a great employee and more positive than me- it's the youth...we carpooled for while, and it was a good matter/anti-matter conversation every day). Anyway, I said until one of the bosses in CA talks to me, I'm not even considering it a valid discussion. Conversation over. Theoretically, they are going to call me. I bet I get an email, or they wait until I am about to leave. What' wrong with people? The press wonders why the economy won't grow? These idiots are consulting other companies! We're doomed.