Page 168 - Executive Warfare

EXECUTIVE W ARF ARE

Kronthal was clearly right, and in late 2007, he was rehired by Merrill.
My advice is, make it clear that you value the Kronthals on your own team.
Encourage your employees to bring bad news to you individually so
that they don’t have to be shamed publicly for unpopular opinions or any
mistakes they may have made. Encourage them to come to you even when
they don’t have a solution. Sometimes there is no immediate solution to
a problem, but you need to know what is happening anyway.
As you begin to manage more senior people, one of the things you
have to accept is that you won’t spend most of your day having fun con-
versations. The people working for you now are very experienced and
capable. They are not going to ask your advice unless there is something
wrong. As a result, most of your meetings with them will be about how
to solve problems.
These one-on-one meetings are where the sausage is really made in
organizational life. You have to welcome them because it is very difficult
to make decisions at the higher levels if you don’t have all the facts.
Create an environment where your direct reports actually look forward
to meeting with you, even if the subject of the meeting is going to be
unpleasant. Develop a good bedside
manner so that they’ll think of visiting

ONE-ON-ONE you as not unlike a visit to the doctor
MEETINGS ARE when they have a terrible splinter in
WHERE THE their toe. They are going in with some
SAUSAGE IS pain, the toe will become more painful
before it gets better, but they know that
REALLY MADE IN
ORGANIZATIONAL the pain is going to be relieved.
LIFE. Make it clear that the punishment for
telling you bad news late—when gan-
grene has already set in—is far more
severe than the punishment for bringing bad news early.
However, understand that you will never get the kind of candor you
want from your employees unless you are honest with them, too. I used

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