Old Dogs, New Tricks

At the MIT Sloan School of Business, the Industrial Relations faculty pays a lot of attention to identifying and studying managerial styles. The categories range from autocratic to laissez-faire with varying degrees and nuances.

Attila the Hun was autocratic. My boss, Jack Chinn, at Madison Paper was above him in the hierarchy. Strong, aggressive, brutal, my way or the highway type of management. Although it would only be fair to mention that after 5 years of expensive "new age" touchy-feely management training, Jack moved back down the ladder to a position as a "communicating autocrat". He never made it to the next rung of "benevolent autocrat"... God bless his shinny head.

At the bottom of the management style ladder is "laissez-faire", French for "Let them do what they want...". I never saw this management style work successfully in industry, but it is the predominant style in government. Very unproductive, though the employees ends up with a hugely inflated self esteem, usually entirely unwarranted.

In the middle is the "situational manager", someone with all the tricks in his management tool bag and the savvy to use them appropriately, at the right time, with the right employee. This management style of win-win negotiations and participative management of a motivated workforce sometimes leads to managerial schizophrenia where the manager loses a total grasp of reality.

We spent months discussing managerial styles at MIT. Dr Edgar Shein, Professor Emeritus of Industrial Relations, introduced us to all the leading edge thinking and theories in the field. One of the "new techniques" of the day was termed "MBWA", Management by Walking Around. It was pretty lame, but the basic principle was for the boss to walk around the workplace demonstrating to the crews that he (or she) was just a regular guy who cared not only for the job, but for the human resource, "our most important asset". Hope my cynicism isn't shining through too brightly here...

So I was academically intrigued when I witnessed an entirely new and very effective managerial style on the docks last week. The crew had wandered out onto the dock loading area and were standing around as Don and I were working loading boats and filling totes with fish for the lobstermen. We had just made a coffee run to the Port Hole and everyone was wiping the slime off their hands so they could hold their cups and sip the hot, thick drinks, for most the first nonalchololic drinks of the day. Don called for someone to help him winch up the totes from the boats and fork them full of greasy herring. Everyone saw what needed to be done. Usually the men jump to when a task is at hand, but this morning they just wanted to sit down and drink their coffee... so no one jumped. Don grabbed his full cup of coffee off the winch and threw it with full force at the wall above everyones head. Coffee rained down on the stunned men's heads and they all snapped to action as Don stormed off the dock. The totes were filled and returned to the boat in record time and everyone went back inside and back to work.

I have coined the new managerial style "MBHCATW", Managent By Hucking Coffee At The Wall and plan to present a paper at the next Sloan Fellows Convention. Very effective and a lot cheaper than an industrial psychologist.

A few days later I had an opportunity to put theory into practice. I sold $500 worth of herring to my cousin Chipper Z. from Kennebunkport. The herring supply is drying up and we are holding back supply to nonregular customers. But Chip, even though a first time customer, is family so I went to bat for him and the boss agreed to the sale... this time. Afterwards snide conmments were made, all in fun, but when the boss ribbed me in front of the grinning crew asking if I had any more cousins, I picked up my coffee and drove it at a row of barrells. Everyone laughed and we went back to work. No more ribbing.

Who says old dogs can't learn new tricks...