Managers Part XVa - Leverage

I just now realized that I had titled this post, but never wrote it. Since I initially numbered it 15 in an 18-part series and subsequently numbered another post as 15, we'll call this 15a.

What is leverage? Basically it's the ability that you have as a manager to influence your employees. It's how you get them to do things. It's also the amount of work that you can accomplish by convincing multiple employees to do things in quantities that you could not do if working by yourself. Let's look at the how first.

Most amateur managers know that they have the power to fire their employees. This is the most basic, crude and rudimentary leverage that you have. Most employees understand this instinctively and will follow a manager's direction, even when they don't want to, disagree with it, or just think it's stupid, because they know that refusal to obey the boss's will can result in an opportunity to find a new job. The problem with this, from a manager's point of view, is that even though you will get compliance, you won't get enthusiasm and you certainly won't get independent action or innovation. To refer back to an another article in this series, you will have employees forever stuck at Levels 1 and 2. Some managers are satisfied with this, and are happy with just basic, mindless obedience. They'll never get their people to Level 3, let alone 4 or 5, and may have to settle for Level 1.

I got my real-life lesson in leverage when I was an assistant store manager. I had been schooled in the wisdom of the Five Levels, of monkeys and left- and right-leaning trapezoids, but hadn't really learned how to properly leverage my employees. As an assistant store manager, I had a lot of responsibility. I often describe the unofficial job description as "All the stuff that doesn't fall into anyone else's job responsibility". All that responsibility, however, didn't come with any matching authority, not any official authority anyway. I threw my weight around, waved my title in people's faces, but no one was impressed. I wasn't making any serious attempt to gain leverage by winning these people over, and I lacked the foundational piece of leverage: the ability to fire someone, and everyone knew it. I hadn't made an effort to convince people to do what I wanted them to do, and they knew I had no real authority (my store manager at the time was a "nice guy" who undermined me quite often, so I had no reflected authority from his support). It was after a few incidents where run-ins with employees that resulted in a reprimand from my boss that I began to employ the lessons that I had learned years before and little by little began to gain leverage, not from blunt force, but from precision use of tried and tested management techniques. I have to admit that I was given a new lease on management life when my nice guy boss was replaced by a guy who more of a bull in a china shop than I was. This enabled me to start fresh and stop my attempt to bludgeon people into obedience.

Grammar: Shit That You Shouldn't Oughta Sweat (i.e. the small stuff)

Lest any of you think that I am a grammar Nazi, here are a few grammar rules that, assuming that you even care about clear communication in your writing) you can safely stop worrying about. (Please remember that the "i.e." in the title is pronounced "that is" if you are reading this aloud, which your probably aren't)

Split Infinitives
An infinitive is, in English, the form of a verb that begins with "to", e.g. the infinitive of the verb "run" is "to run". The rules say that you shouldn't "split" an infinitive, adding a modifier is the way it's usually done. "To quickly run". Why is this a rule? It's hard to say, but sticking to it certainly does nothing to guarantee clarity, in fact it often clouds meaning, or at best makes you sound awkward. In Spanish the infinitive is helpfully indicated by the additional of "-ar", "-er" or "-ir" at the end of the verb, making splitting infinitives difficult. One of the most famous examples of a split infinitive in popular culture is "to boldly go" from Star Trek. It would be more correct, but likely more awkward to have proclaimed "to go boldly...". You decide, but try to obey this rule all the time and you'll see what I mean.

Ending Sentences With a Preposition
Prepositions are parts of speech that relate one word to enough, e.g. "to", "in", "after", "before". The rule is that a sentence should never end in a preposition. Why is this a rule? Because grammarians in the 17th century, educated in Latin, opined that since you didn't end sentences with prepositions in Latin, you shouldn't do it in English. This is another instance where following the rules tends to make for awkward sentences. "The pitcher glared at the spot on the outfield wall that the batter aimed at" becomes "The pitcher glared at the spot on the outfield wall at which the batter aimed"; or "Who should I give the payment to?" becomes "To whom should I give the payment?". Insisting on this rule can make your sentences more formal, but too much formality results in stilted language. Don't worry about this one either.

There are more, but that's all that you're going to get today!

Back to the Future

Anyone who really knows me knows that my favorite sub-genre of science fiction is time travel fiction. My favorite time travel movie is Back to the Future; and I include Back to the Future II & III - viewing them as a kind of continuing story. But recently, as I, for geeky/nerdy reasons, was mapping out the various time hopping trips, I realized that there was a discrepancy in how time travel was portrayed within the series.

Before I get to that, let's look at the concept of "willing suspension of disbelief". In order to enjoy any science fiction, fantasy or superhero movie, you have to accept the premise that time travel is possible, some people can fly or dragons exist, despite the evidence of physics and other real science. People who enjoy these genres are apt to not blink an eye at a teenager inventing "web slingers" and using his "spider sense" to fight crime, while scoffing at how quickly some toast pops out of the toaster. I'm one of those people. But even if one is willing to accept the impossible in order to enjoy the story, the non-real aspects must be internally consistent, in other words, the impossible physics, super powers et al must always be treated the same way. In Back to the Future II, the internal consistency is broken.

In the first movie, Marty, due to his presence in his past and his interaction with the teenage versions of his parents, was making changes that had immediate affects in the future (the "present" that he had traveled from). This is illustrated by the family picture that he carries: as his parents' romantic encounter becomes less and less likely, he and his siblings begin to fade from the picture, implying that changes in the past propagate forward in time without delay. When the timeline is repaired, Marty's picture is restored.When he returns to 1985 his present is changed in several ways as a result of changes in the manner in which his parents met.

In Back to the Future II this rule seems to have been skipped over. Marty & Doc (and Jennifer) travel to 2015 to save Marty & Jennifer's future kids from making a decision that will land them in jail. While there Biff steals the DeLorean, travels back to 1955, gives his teenage self a book that enables him to predict the results of fifty years of sporting events, and comes back to 2015, with Doc & Marty none the wiser...until they return to 1985. They find that Hill Valley is a dystopian society due to Biff's malign influence, a change made when Old Biff gave Young Biff the sports book. The change, like in the first movie, happens instantaneously, except for one detail: why didn't the change propagate forward to 2015? When Biff returns to 2015, it should have been a time 30 years after the nightmare Hill Valley, with him as top dog, head of a gambling empire, but nothing changed! Doc and Marty don't notice any changes either.

Some time travel fiction portrays the changes as so instantaneous that a person who is aware that time travel is occurring will actually see reality change around them. An example of this is the Netflix remake of Frequency. Changes to the timeline made by one character in a second character's past  are shown as a quick blur, with everything subsequently different. One scene has a detective being led into the station, under arrest for an execution of a suspect; then time changes, and between one step and another she is not under arrest, but is being briefed on the case.

Another oddity, but internally consistent nonetheless, is how time travelers, when returning to their native time, are unchanged, even when everything else is. Marty is exactly the same, even though everyone around him has changed. In the changed timeline from Back to the Future he would have had a completely different upbringing than in the original timeline. In some time travel fiction the returning time traveler holds two sets of memories, pre- and post-change. The Butterfly Effect is a good example of this. In Back to the Future II it's a little more extreme since in the "Biff Timeline" Marty was in military school (or something like that) and Doc was in a mental institution. That's a tough one to make work, so I'll cut them some slack!

Mind Your Own Business

"Mind your own business" is one of those phrases that we throw out when we feel that someone has crossed a boundary, is "telling us what to do". I know I don't enjoy unsolicited advice: I don't want people suggesting to me what I should photograph, or what kind of writing I should do, what foods to cook, or what books I ought to read. Like many people, if I want your input I'll ask for it. However, the few times I ever hear someone tell me to mind my own business is when I have intervened in a situation where someone is being violent or abusive. I inserted myself into a situation recently that could have gotten physical, a man aggressively harassing  a woman on the street; he was aghast that I was interfering with him. On several occasions over the last few years I have spoken up when I saw a customer treating a retail employee badly. I've always replied that I had just made it my business.

Contrary to the mindset of abusers, no one has the right to use their power over others to treat people badly.

And that's what it is, misuse, abuse, of power.

We've recently, rightly, cast a spotlight on powerful men sexually abusing less powerful women. One of the reasons that it continued for as long as it did (and let's not be naive, still continues) was that those who saw it happening, heard about it happening, had it reported to them, did nothing. But the opportunity to speak up, to step in, to intervene, occurs every day in a variety of situations. Schoolyard bullying, nasty customers, martinet bosses, it doesn't always, or even often, happen behind closed doors.

It's everybody's business.

Dragons

There may be a reason
that the road less traveled
is less traveled
What's over the hill
or around the bend?
'Here there be dragons'
isn't seen on maps
anymore
but the dragons
are still
there