Page 161 - Becoming a Successful Manager

152 BUILDING ON YOUR FOUNDATION

activities; he was the teacher, and every employee was his student.
Those reviews simply didn’t work and were not effective two-way
communications.
Though Jake was an able producer, and both he and the orga-
nization had made a substantial investment of time in his training,
he soon resigned. Eventually, many others in the department were
as disgruntled as Jake was by the Vacuum Theory of Manage-
ment, and they too left.
Mike continued to hire new people, evaluate them, and even-
tually watch them leave. That cycle was both expensive and time-
consuming, and it certainly didn’t contribute to the long-term

profitability of the company.
Recall from previous chapters the image of the master gar-
dener tending a garden. Note the word tend, which means “to take
care of, to minister to, to watch over, to look after.” The gardener
pays attention to the garden all the time. This includes tilling
the soil, watering it as appropriate, and fertilizing it regularly. It’s
more than just selecting and planting seeds and then looking in
on them every once in a while, because gardening is a continuous
nurturing process. Similarly, as manager of your department, you
must be attentive to your employees—all the time, even if you
must use communication technologies to accomplish this.
Another way to look at the process-versus-event concept and
the need to be continually alert is to compare it to driving a car. At

the wheel, you are constantly observing traffic, pedestrians, and
signs; measuring your location, your relation to other objects, and
your speed; and making adjustments as necessary—slowing down,
speeding up, changing lanes. You also watch the gauges to moni-
tor fuel consumption, temperature, electrical power, pressure, and
other indicators of how well or poorly your vehicle is running. You
don’t wait until the end of the trip to check these items to see how
you did. That would incur the risk of not completing the trip. So,