Page 161 - Executive Warfare

The People You Have to Motivate

You can’t solve this problem by pretending, just because you are a sen-
ior player, to be expert at something you are not. But I’ve seen people
make this very mistake many, many times. Managers become defensive or
arrogant and work very hard simply to learn the vocabulary of the field.
And soon the chemical engineer is lec-
turing somebody who has spent a career
analyzing constitutional law on the sub- THE EXPERTS IN
ject she knows best. FIELDS OUTSIDE
I can remember, when I was doing YOUR OWN WILL
advertising work, one of my bosses INEVITABLY RESENT
complaining about a television com- YOU AS A
mercial that ended with a close-up. MANAGER.
“Where’s the top of the guy’s head?” the
boss asked, intensely exasperated.
“It’s outside the frame,” I explained. “The director is using a close-up
to focus in on the guy’s mood. It’s a pretty common thing to do.”
“I find it difficult to watch a commercial,” he said stubbornly, “when I
can’t see the top of a guy’s head.”
Possibly this boss was a member of some primitive tribe that had never
before seen video and so was incapable of comprehending its conventions.
Possibly he was an idiot.
Nothing is worse than a boss who doesn’t know what he’s talking about
because when he is adamant about his stupidity, you are compelled to fol-
low his orders. Then you have to go back to your people and justify
reshooting the commercial at some peculiar distance just to make sure
that every last strand of the actor’s hair is visible.
Behaving like that boss is the fastest possible way to lose the respect
of the people who work for you. Remember, the experts in fields outside
your own will inevitably resent you as a manager, one, because you’re
not one of them; two, because they don’t understand the things you are
expert in; and three, because they think their field is more important
anyway.

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