Dane DeValcourt

First its important to make a disclaimer that I am not specifically referring to anything that is or has occured at my current place of employment of course.  I have spent 15 years in IT and in that time I have seen a lot go on in the corporate world particularly as it relates to those around me.  I haven’t spent much time in or around the upper echelon types and for that I am actually very thankful.  Those people kinda scare me as I know I simply can’t relate to the type of person they are and what drives them.  Nope, I prefer to spend my time in the trenches and behind the scenes.  I like working with the technology, particularly the machines.  Things are either working or broke.  No politics, favoritism, emotions and all the other crap that comes along from others self interest.

I have what is apparently a very naive and wonderland like view of what work is suppose to be.  I believe that people should be the best they can be at the job they choose to do.  I believe that if you are great at what you do others will recognize this talent and reward it (not just financially).

There are LOTS of flaws with this basic logic however.

1. “job they choose” – not everyone is in the job they choose to do.  No one stuck a gun to their head but people get forced into jobs they don’t particularly choose and want to do.  Many reasons why this may be, such as being fired and having to take something to make ends meet or management moved someone and well the employee hoped it would only be temporary.
2. “others will recognize” – others should recognize but either don’t for a number of reasons or does but because of politics, favoritism or simply chooses to ignore.
3. “reward” – most will instinctively think money when you see reward, and some would argue that yearly raises are rewards.  In actuality rewards mean many different things to different people.  It’s important to know and recognize how to reward someone if you really feel they deserve it.  Personally I think a good manager is one that can recognize what drives a person and what their idea of a reward is.  They can usually get the most out of an employee by satisfying them through some of the non traditional rewards.  For instance, some may value learning and training or might just like to be taken out to lunch after a job well done.

It’s nuts all the things I am thinking about just in what I have typed so far.  I wish someone could tap into my head and sort all of this stuff out and put it in words for others.  I think way more about even some of the most subtle things then most people do and I really believe others might find some of it interesting.  Don’t get me wrong, nothing I say is new or ground breaking, simply just things I think of from conversations with others.

Some of the things racing around right now:

Managers/VP’s/CXX’s – What happend to earning respect?  Its not bestowed just because of a title right?

IT People / Geeks – There are people in IT and there are those that ARE IT (Geeks).  Understand the differences and reward / promote correctly.

Movers and Shakers – Ughh these people irk the heck out of me!  These are the people who obviously only care about themselves.  Wake up and see this corporate america!  If someone is jumping to a new position every chance they get within a company something is wrong.  This person doesn’t care about the company or the job they are doing or the people working with or beneath them.  How can they if they can’t stay in one place long enough?  They are only after power and money.

Things aren’t always as they appear on the surface.  This is something that has always puzzled me when it comes to management and executives.  Many create an environment where they (the manager) is very out of touch with those working for them and sometimes its the employees that exclude the manager.  Regardless there are so many things that don’t come to the surface that an out of touch manager will not see or hear about for various reasons and thus some bad employees can “float” around for a while.  Sadly many employees will unwillingly protect the bad employees without even knowing it.  In one breath they will talk among themselves with nothing good to say about someone, however in an effort to prevent things from affecting them or the department the good employees will often over compensate and pick up the bad employees slack.

Ah well, just some random thoughts.

Its obvious to me there is a reason I am still a simple worker bee when it comes to the business world.  I simply can’t comprehend some of the decisions that are made by many businesses and their leaders.

For instance, how does a company in these economic times do layoffs one week and the next take all the employees to Disney Land for a holiday retreat?  Mahalo is only one example, I see this sort of thing happen all over though.  Some take it even further than that and some less.  But regardless how do you operate a business and in one breath talk about how you need to implement cost cutting initiatives and in the next waste money on such trivial things?

Also baffled why it takes an ‘economic’ crisis before they decide  to cut back on expenses and try to be more efficient.  Shouldn’t you operate a business where you always try to be as efficient as possible?

For instance most businesses tend to reward managers not for cost cutting and efficiency but quite the opposite in fact.  Many managers are rewarded based on how many employees they manage.  So of course most managers want more employees since they are rewarded based on headcount so there is no need to be efficient or have efficient employees. 

Then of course you have the way companies use ‘budgets’ to manage money.  What a joke that is.  Again managers are typically judged by the size of their budget.  The bigger the budget the bigger the manager.  So of course managers want budgets to be as big as possible so they have no reason to be efficient in how they spend money.  In fact many want to go over budget because that must mean they need a bigger budget.  If a manager is prudient and runs an efficient department and is able to save money and come in under budget then they run the risk of having their budget cut next year. 

It seems to me you would want to reward the ones who run a tight ship if you will and not the opposite way around?  But as I said I guess thats why I am but lowly little worker bee and not one to buy into this madness.