So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part XXIII - Yule Edition

Let's interrupt our march through my cult years with a side visit to The Way's views on Christmas. It may surprise some people that there are Christian denominations that do not celebrate Christmas. In the early days of European settlement in North America Christmas celebrations were actually banned in some of the colonies. The Puritans in particular had problems with the way Christmas was celebrated. Their objections were manifold. On one hand they viewed Christmas as a distinctly Papist, i.e. Catholic celebration. This was in the era of religious wars between Catholic and Protestant monarchs, and the Puritans were, if anything, ultra-Protestant. The other part of their resistance was how English Christmas traditions, especially among the working classes, had become a day off from work and dominated by fun and games. And drinking. A lot of drinking. It took a long time for the Christmas observances of non-English immigrants to make their way into American ways of celebrating Christmas; but even today, there are groups such as the Jehovah's Witnesses who do not observe any special days, based upon the Biblical admonition in Galatians 4:10 not to be "an observer of days and seasons". 

The Way, at least during my involvement, talked a good game in regards to following the dictates of the Bible, but in practice found ways around their supposed standards. Christmas observance was no exception. 

It's no surprise to most people that the Bible does not give a date for Jesus' birth. It doesn't give a year either. Part of this can be attributed to the lack of a common calendar. The current A.D. numbering system was devised in what we now call 525 A.D., when Dionysius Exiguus came up with a numbering system independent of the regnal years of reigning monarchs. He calculated (although we aren't sure what he based his calculation on) that A.D. 1 was the first full year following the birth of Jesus, putting Jesus' birth in what we now call 1 B.C. (there is no Year "0" in this system). There's a lot of other theories regarding what time of year Jesus was born, ranging from the Spring to mid September, but none are definitive. The December date that was associated with Saturnalia and the birth of "The Unconquered Sun" eventually became the accepted consensus date. 

Not satisfied with the position that we don't know the actual date or year of Jesus' birth, Victor Wierwille, the leader of The Way, set out to prove that the Bible really does give us that information, and that you can discover it with some Biblical research and a little astronomy. In 1981 he published Jesus Christ Our Promised Seed which claimed to narrow down the time to a 90-minute window on September 11, 3 B.C.!

In the late 1800's a Church of England minister, E.W. Bullinger, wrote a book titled Witness of the Stars. The premise was that the constellations told a story—the story of the Bible, and that interpreted properly, you could trace the prophecies of the coming Messiah throughout the zodiac. His reasoning behind this was quite convoluted and somewhat technical, if not completely opaque and inaccessible to the layman, but Wierwille latched on to it and added his own theories. Wierwille made the assumption that the Magi of the gospels (nowhere are they called kings by the way) were the successors of the wise men of the court of Babylon who answered to the prophet (and lions' den guy) Daniel, which was why they thought a "star" heralded the birth of a king of a backwater province of a foreign power. This made sense, sort of, but like so much of Wierwille's "research", he took what was a plausible assumption and promoted it as fact. So what did he think the Magi were looking for? Certainly not a laser beam from heaven spotlighting the manger. No, based on the constellation Leo the Lion representing the Tribe of Judah, Wierwille looked for astronomical events that would have been visible in Roman Judea during the time period between when he calculated Herod came to power and his death (which was based on calculations that disagreed with virtually all those who studied that time period). I don't recall the details, but he came up with something and tied it in with the completely unrelated verses in Revelation 12 about a woman "clothed with the sun, with stars in her hair and the moon at her feet" to indicate when the constellation Virgo was visible between sunset and moonrise using astronomical software and came up with the incredibly specific time frame that if I remember correctly was an 81 minute (my memory is a bit fuzzy on the actual time frame) time span the evening of September 11, 3 B.C. It was assumption built upon assumption based on a crazy theory, but it was wrapped up in a blue book cover and presented as undisputed fact. "Teachings" featuring the claims from this book were highlighted every December, with all of us faithful Waybots telling ourselves how superior we were to regular Christians because we knew this completely irrelevant and worthless information. We were also pretty fond of changing the words of Christmas Carols to make them more "accurate" and telling everyone who stood still for a half minute that angels don't have wings. 

Even before this book came out, The Way had a split personality when it came to Christmas. On one hand they preached that we weren't to be observers of days and seasons (like Christmas) but on the other hand we did observe most of the cultural and secular aspects of Christmas. Somehow The Way's leaders thought that simply changing the name made it all okay, hence the Wayism: Household Holiday. (I'm not going to get into it in detail here, but The Way made a distinction between the family of God and the household of God, with the household being the more exclusive, special and blessed subset of the family). Even assuming that The Way was God's "household", what made December 25th a household holiday? No one ever had a good answer. What annoyed me personally though was how "Household Holiday" became "Ho Ho" and we would wish each other "Happy Ho Ho". Way employees, and those in their Way Corps training program, were given some time off during the "Household Holidays" in order to temporarily "relocate" off campus to visit family or friends (you know, just like people who did celebrate Christmas)—which was called (of course) "Ho Ho Relo". Yikes. 

Throughout my involvement in The Way I observed Christmas just like any other secular American. I had a tree, I put up decorations, I sent out cards, exchanged gifts, but I also engaged in smug superiority over all those poor, ignorant Christians who just didn't understand the "true meaning of Christmas". 

Start from the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part XXIV

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part XXII

To say that the people of Sidney were fortified against us was an understatement. In addition to the "Jericho March" incident there were frequent threats of violence and attempts to run us out of town. We were confronted in the grocery store by shouting church members; cars driven by those opposed to our presence attempted to run us down in the street; objects were thrown at us in public; we were evicted from our home on New Year's Eve; we were the subject of a radio program warning the town about us; continuing attempts to get us fired...it was constant.

One thing that this treatment solidified in me was a tendency toward anti-bigotry. I remember thinking at the time that while this persecution was horrible, I could convert to one of the mainstream churches and it would all stop, or I could move to the next town and no one would know that I was in a cult. A Black person on the other hand, couldn't un-Black himself in order to stop the racism. This lesson stayed with me. Although there was still work to do ridding myself of racist mindsets and habits, being the target of virulent prejudice made me think twice about engaging in it myself. 

But when you're in a cult, your thinking tends to follow certain grooves. Just like the opposition from our families was seen as proof that we were angering "the adversary" (aka The Devil), and therefore doing God's work, the steady opposition from the townspeople put us in the company of the followers of Jesus in the Bible's Acts of The Apostles. We were being persecuted for speaking "The Word". Of course this widespread antipathy in such a small town meant that we had quickly worn out our welcome. Door knocking became out of the question, and there weren't many public venues where people hadn't made up their minds about us already. But we somehow found the energy to pat ourselves on the back for being such devoted and committed followers of The Way, Jesus Christ. 

After the first of the year, after having to find a new place to live after being evicted, Ronnie, our state leader decided that we would be relocated halfway through the year, in February. Our witnessing wasn't without any results, we had two men signed up for the PFAL class, but since we needed seven to run a class, we hadn't been able to run one. Once we found out we were moving, both of our new coverts decided to move with us, to Kearney as it turned out. Although one of them was having sex with one of the WOW women and the other one had some serious mental issues, so they weren't quite as devoted to "The Word" as we thought. 

Our time in Sidney ended on an amusing note. We had invited Rev. Jerry over for coffee to say goodbye. While in our home he made a big deal about how "The Lord" had informed him that two of us were staying in Sidney while the other two moved on. I still remember Gail laughing and telling him that The Lord must have thrown him a curve since we were all leaving. The next day, after selling or giving away our furniture and packing up the car, we headed for Kearney.

New problems awaited us there.

Start from the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part XXIII

An Agnostic's Look at The Bible - Part XXII - Translations

Translating the Bible from the language in which it was written isn't anything new. During the Third Century BCE a translation of the Jewish scriptures was made from Hebrew into Greek since many Jews, especially those of the diaspora, no longer spoke or were able to read Hebrew. Aramaic or Greek were the everyday languages of most Jews of that era. This translation came to be referred to as The Septuagint. This was the version of the Old Testament that the writers of the New Testament were familiar with. Old Testament quotes typically adhere more closely to the Septuagint than to the Hebrew. 

The New Testament was originally written in Greek. Although there are some who maintain that parts of it were first written in Aramaic, this position doesn't stand up to close scrutiny. While Aramaic was the common tongue among Jews in Judaea, Syria, and other parts of what we now call the Middle East, Gentiles, as well as many Jews, employed Greek as the lingua franca. 

After Christianity was legalized in the Fourth Century CE, Latin translations were made, culminating in St. Jerome's Vulgate. ("Vulgate" means "common" in Latin). This incrementally became the official Bible of Western European Christianity. The Douay-Rheims translation was an English translation made from the Latin Vulgate in the late 1500's. 

During the Protestant Reformation emphasis was placed individual reading of the Bible, thus English language versions began to be made. There were several, but the most well-known is the King James Version (KJV). The KJV was not translated from the Latin version, but from Greek texts. A myth has proliferated that King James influenced the theology of the KJV, or that "parts were changed", or "taken out" to strengthen a patriarchal or anti-feminist viewpoint. Firstly, King James was not a theologian, nor did he have any theological aspirations. He did instruct the translators to adhere to Church of England structure and theology. This would be reflected, for example, in the word episcopos being translated as "bishop", rather than "overseer", among other things. The actual translation was done by several teams of translators who were experts in Biblical Greek. There is no evidence that there was any wholesale changing or deletions of sections in order to diminish the role of women, or to make any major theological revision. Whatever perceived theological problems surfaced had always been there. 

The KJV was revised regularly, mostly updating spelling and syntax, as it was originally written at the very beginning of the Early Modern period of the English language. Around the turn of the 19^th Century wholesale revisions started to be produced. The KJV translators, while using Greek manuscripts to compose their translations, relied on a small number of manuscripts that in retrospect were not very reliable. By 1900 there were a greater number of Greek manuscripts to work from. Greek manuscript editions known as "critical manuscripts" were composed, producing Greek New Testaments that compared various readings. Not only were there better manuscripts to work from, but the knowledge of Biblical Greek had improved over three centuries, as had the understanding of cultural referenced that might not be obvious from a literal translation. KJV contained many English words and expressions that had changed their meaning since it had been first published, in addition to Greek idioms. The newer versions endeavored to make the language of the Bible more accessible and understandable. A modern translation is likely as "accurate" as can be reasonably expected. 

What a translation, any translation, doesn't do, is wave away the contradictions and discrepancies. They're all still there, they're just rendered in modern vernacular. Even if we can be reasonably sure that we have Greek texts that reflect what was in the originally composed gospels, epistles and apocalypses, that doesn't make any of it true. I'm not concerned that the earliest epistle was written 20 years after Jesus supposedly lived, or that the first gospel another 10-20 years after that, or that Jesus himself never left any written records. That's normal. Most historical records that we have access to today were not contemporary records. Just because it's explainable, doesn't confer the laurel of truth upon it. Just because we can confirm certain facts about the Iliad and the Odyssey doesn't mean that all the supernatural doings of the various gods are true. 

What we've got is a pretty well preserved version of documents considering that they were written almost 2,000 years ago. 

Workin' Man - Part XXII - Trouble Every Day

Well, I get up at seven, yeah

And I go to work at nine
I got no time for livin'
Yes, I'm workin' all the time

It seems to me
I could live my life
A lot better than I think I am
I guess that's why they call me
They call me the workin' man

'Cause I get home at five o'clock
And I take myself out an ice cold beer
Always seem to be wondering'
Why there's nothin' goin' down here

I guess that's why they call me
They call me the workin' man

"Workin' Man" - Words & Music by Lee & Lifeson 

 Even though my time at Pine Lake was probably the high point of my B&R Stores career, I did manage to get myself in trouble a couple of times. In B&R Stores, once you got into trouble, the target on your back never really went away. In addition to my own experience I was aware of others who never fully recovered from one bad decision. 

B&R people loved to play pranks on each other. My Store Director and HR Coordinator would do things like remove all the other's office furniture, or re-arrange the letters on their keyboard on each other's birthdays. One Assistant Store Director would call other stores to put in large improbable orders. Managers would write up fake annual performance reviews with a zeroes. It could get brutal. One of my pranks ended up getting reported to Corporate HR, not because the other employee objected, but because his mother was not amused! I got written up by the VP of Operations. (He told my Store Director that he couldn't be trusted to convey the seriousness of the issue). Not only was I written up, but I had to go to the Employee Assistance Program for counseling for my "poor decision-making". And I was barred from attending the annual holiday party that year. And to pour salt in the wound, $20 was deducted from my paycheck for not attending the party! (When we signed up to attend the annual party we had to agree to be charged $20 if we ended up not going to — discourage no-shows). 

The other thing that caused a target to get permanently affixed to my back involved the store newsletter from a few years back. Once I had been removed from the editorial staff of "Nine's News" at the Cornhusker Super Saver I started my own newsletter, "Words of Wisdom by Ill-Gotten Booty". After a while I turned it into a blog which garnered readers from around the company. This was attention that I should have avoided! Since the subject matter was mostly store related, I was no doubt asking for trouble. The first article that got me noticed was when the Lincoln Journal-Star included the 48th & O Super Saver night crew in a series about Lincoln after dark. The photos included in the article showed multiple violations of what I referred to as the "Schulte Doctrine", Operations VP Tom Schulte's micromanaging of night crew operations. Store Director Nick gave me a heads-up that the blog was getting unwanted attention, but nothing further was said about it at the time. I regularly wrote humorous Top Ten lists, and featured one of the Top Ten Reasons to Attend the B&R Holiday Party, which ended up being referenced on stage at the party itself. I was never confronted about it, but it came up several years later in the aftermath of another situation and incorrectly referred to as Top Ten Reasons Not to Attend the B&R Holiday Party. You truly couldn't put your mistakes behind you at B&R Stores. 

For most Store Director openings the corporate office generally promoted Assistant Store Directors or brought in someone at that level from outside the company. And since most Assistant Store Directors aspired to be Store Directors, every time a Store Director retired, or a new store was built, most, if not all, Assistant Store Directors applied for the position — including me. Over the years I applied for quite a few openings, ten before I finally was promoted. 

The first few times I was turned down it didn't bother me too much. There never was a hierarchy of people "in line" for a promotion, each opening was a free-for-all and the people who were promoted instead of me were definitely qualified. It was when they took over a store in Omaha from another company when I began to think I wasn't even being considered. There weren't many applicants, mainly because the store was in a rough neighborhood. They ended up hiring someone from outside the company. The outside director, a week before opening day, before ever setting foot in the store, decided he didn't want the job. 

An Evening Supervisor from the Millard Super Saver had been hired as the Grocery Manager, and quickly promoted to Assistant Store Director when no qualified candidates applied for that position. Since he had been in the store from Day One, he was subsequently promoted to Store Director. Where the early rejections didn't sting so badly because individuals with more seniority and at least equal ability were being promoted, now I was starting to see new, less experienced Assistant Store Directors leapfrog over me, including those whom I had trained!

I had been passed over a few more times when I finally decided to find out why I was not considered qualified for promotion. I believe that I had established a record for the number of times I applied for, and was passed over for, promotion. I cornered Operations VP Tom Schulte at the corporate office one afternoon and asked him to give me honest feedback about why I was being passed over and what I needed to do to advance. I don't think he really had a clear idea, but I'm sure he was influenced by my reputation as (1) Being rough on people — which really was a thing of the past at that point and (2) The incidents which earned me write-ups and which arguably demonstrated that I did not make good decisions. In our conversation it was pretty clear that he had no idea what my management style was, or what my good points (or bad points) as a manager were. He agreed to coach me and give me feedback, which to his credit he regularly did. During this time I was passed over one more time. During the interview I was asked if I was willing to manage the Save Best store, a small, store with a total of eight employees. I responded that I would, if offered it, but that I didn't think it was a good fit for me. I was told that that answer was the main reason I was passed over. But I did not give up. 

Around Christmas 2012 a new Super Saver had been built in the Fallbrook neighborhood and corporate announced that Brian, who was the Store Director at 48th & O, had been named the new Store Director, which meant that there would be an opening there. The posting was simply for "Lincoln Store Director" — which probably meant that Store Directors would shifted around. I applied. Even though my streak of being turned down for promotions had reached nine, the coaching I received from Tom Schulte had encouraged me. Also, at Pine Lake we were shooting for a store sales record. My projections had clearly shown that we would exceed $1 million in sales for the first time. The store, including the areas that I was directly responsible for, had never been better. I felt that these were factors in my favor. 

As it turned out, a Store Director was retiring in addition to the opening created by the new store this stated a merry-go-round of director reassignments resulting in the Russ's at 70th & Van Dorn being offered to me. I had applied, but hadn't been interviewed, possibly because my last application and interview hadn't been that long before. Tom Schulte showed up at the store and without any ceremony offered me the position. I accepted, with the condition that he allow me to be flexible in order to continue to officiate weddings. I started as the Russ's 70th & Van Dorn Store Director the first week of January 2013.

In a lot of ways being an Assistant Store Director was the best of both worlds. I had a lot of authority and wrote my own schedule; I had Saturdays off to do weddings; I was somewhat shielded from corporate nonsense by my Store Director. But I was still somewhat ambitious and felt that I had something to prove after so many rejections. I was a little nervous about being given a store that was losing money and was notorious for being unable to make the labor budget, but figured I would somehow make it work. 

Start with Part I

Go to: Part XXIII

An Agnostic's Look at The Bible - Part XXI - Jesus Thought the World Was About To End

In a previous article Part V - The Milieu of the Gospels and Apocalypticism, I touched on what the culture of Judaea was during the time Jesus was supposed to have lived. I also touched on Apocalypticism. 

Eschatology is the genre of theology that deals with a belief that at some point the world will end and attempts to describe what that end will look like. Apocalypticism is a strain of eschatology which maintains the end of the world, or the age is imminent. Jesus, based on what is attributed to him in the Gospels, preached that the end of the world as he knew it was coming to an end, ushering in a new age under the rule of God and his representatives. Everything he did and said was in service of getting people to act right, to get themselves worthy of entering the soon-to-be inaugurated Kingdom of God. He wasn't trying to change society, because he believed that pretty soon there wouldn't be a society. He wasn't thinking long term because he didn't think there'd be a long term. He wasn't fighting the government or the religious establishment (other than pointing out their hypocrisy) because they were irrelevant — they'd soon be gone. But he was wrong — the world didn't end within Jesus' generation.

It could be argued that much about Jesus' message could still be applied by anyone today wanting to live "a good life" despite Jesus being wrong about the end of the world. "Love thy neighbor" sounds good, who could argue with that? The Sermon on the Mount (and the very similar Sermon on the Plain) lay out some pretty good guidelines for living a "Christian" life. Many Christians, attempting to keep their more dominionistic coreligionists at arms length, have taken to styling themselves "Jesus Followers", but is that what they are doing? 

Since Jesus believed that the end of the world was coming soon, the last thing he would have been worried about was improving society. He wasn't even concerned about personal relationships, note how he says how his followers must hate their parents, siblings, and spouses. I'm sure there's Christians who explain all that away, but that's what the man said. What about the part about selling all your possessions and giving it all to the poor? These things make sense in the context of the world as we know it ending just around the corner. If making nice with people who are against what Jesus is preaching is going to get you evicted from the Kingdom of God, is it worth it? Especially since the society in which these relationships function is soon going away for good. And why would you need riches? I submit that very few people are doing those things, even those who have taken vows of poverty aren't living in a van down by the river. So what Jesus are Christians following?

People tend to view Jesus through the lens of their own priorities. He wasn't a socialist, he wasn't an advocate for equal rights, he wasn't a feminist, he wasn't any of the things that the Christian Nationalists emphasize either. He was a guy who was convinced that the world was going to end and that God was taking over. He told people that they all had better get their lives right or they're going to miss the boat. 

Start at The Beginning: Part I 

Managers Part XXII - The Holidays

One of the responsibilities of management is to be an example (a good one of course!) to the non-management employees. Managers have to battle the non-management employee's view that managers don't do anything, that they don't know anything and that they just get in the way. One way amateur managers try to overcome this bias is to be "Mr. Nice Guy", or to spend their day "in the trenches", doing "real work". There are one major problem with these approaches. Those two types of managers tend to not manage, worrying so much about how they are perceived that they become ineffective. If the chief manager is spending all of her time sweeping the floor or stocking shelves, why do we really need a manager? A manager's job is not to do things, but to ensure that things get done. (Search through these articles for the 5 Levels for more explanation). Sure, a manager might gain some goodwill by pitching in with mundane tasks, but what's happening in the rest of his area of responsibility while he's stocking shelves or cleaning toilets? Unless the staffing plan includes "vocational time", a manager should be spending his time directing the work of subordinates. This brings us to the holidays.

There's a school of thought that maintains that a manager, by virtue of seniority or by having "made it" to those exalted ranks of bosses, should get the best shifts, including days off on holidays. Most of my experience as a manager has been in the realm of retail grocery, so that's what I'll refer to.

Just as the by very fact of having accepted a job in retail you have also accepted the reality that you will be busiest and most in demand at exactly the time that you want to have time off, by accepting a position in management (especially in retail) you accept the reality that your managerial skills will be most needed during those times when you believe that your seniority earns you time off. The thing about holidays is that they are unusual. You are selling items that you hardly knew that you carried throughout the year. You are busier, with customers in a hurry and impatient. This is the time to make sure that someone whose job is to ensure that things get done is on the scene. This is the time to have people who don't need to be told what to do in the building.

A few years ago I was in a local grocery store at about 7:00PM two days before Christmas. For those of you who have never worked in retail grocery, December 23rd, along with the day before Thanksgiving and July 3rd, is one of the top three busiest days that a grocery store will see all year. As I walked through the store the only manager that I encountered was a harried cashier supervisor. The only person who was on the sales floor was a high school boy diffidently facing the cereal aisle. The displays were close to empty as were the aisles. However the store was not, empty of customers. Every part of the store was thronged with Christmas shoppers, many of whom were disappointed to find that what they had come in for was sold out. Possibly the missing products were somewhere in the store, but since there wasn't anyone to stock them, the emptiness prevailed. Obviously all the managers adhered to their regular schedules and were home in time for dinner.

Contrast this scene to one a few years earlier. At 7:00PM the Store Director was just leaving after a 12-hour shift, the Assistant Store Director was ten hours into his 12-hour shift, the Assistant Grocery Manager and Evening Supervisor were both scheduled until 11:00PM. There were twice the usual complement of grocery clerks, all with assignments to keep their assigned aisles and displays full. Managers from various departments were still around, giving last minute instructions to their closers.

The difference in these two scenarios should be obvious. In the second, the senior managers saw that it was part of getting things done to not pretend that this was just an ordinary day and do what needed to be done to keep the store running smoothly. Why, if you took your position as a manager seriously, would you assume that extraordinary sales conditions warranted ordinary staffing?

I worked in the store described in the second scenario. While we may have worked six, or even seven, days during the week leading up to Christmas, followed by an almost as crazy New Year's week, with year-end inventory crammed in there somewhere, we planned for the insanity. We might work 60 hours or more for two weeks straight, but the weeks before and after the insanity might see us working only three or four days. And because the senior managers scheduled themselves to work late, or on holidays, they short circuited any complaints from "the troops" when they had to work on the holidays.

The point is that the title of manager shouldn't entitle you to special treatment or exempt you from the stresses of unusually busy seasons. If anything, it should be the time when you're spending more time and effort in your job.

Start at the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part XXIII

Managers Part XXI - Delegation & Assignments

One of the core concepts of getting control of your time as a manager is learning to delegate. Before you can do that, you have to understand what delegation is and how it's different from assignment. 

One way to look at assigning tasks, is that it's the manager constantly telling people what to do. They complete one task, then are given another, or are given a list of tasks to be completed in a set time frame. Delegation, on the other hand, occurs when a manager communicates her expectations, draws the big picture, and gives her subordinates the freedom to make it happen in their own way. There is a continuum of assignment/delegation, with a new employee figuratively having their hand held as they go through their day, being told what every step is. This progresses to asking for assignments and then to knowing what to do, but checking with the boss. Eventually, the subordinate is able to self-assign without checking with his manager.

Delegation is not to be confused with abdication of responsibility. I have seen plenty of hands-off managers who are loved by their employees because they "let them do their jobs", when closer inspection would reveal that they aren't doing their jobs, they're doing something that's not their jobs, but the manager is too conflict-averse to actually manage them. These employees might benefit from some direction from their manager, but in its absence they set their own standards. These standards might be convenient for them, but also might be out of sync with the standards and goals of the company. In situations like this neither delegation nor assignment is taking place. The employees who realize that they have the freedom to spend their work days however they like will become resentful when some manager higher up the chain of command tries to correct things, or a new manager, who knows how to manage, comes on board. The employees who expect to be assigned tasks will, in the absence of any direction, badger the manager for instruction, ironically tying up his day micromanaging. Thus the management pyramid is turned upside down.

One morning a few months back I entered a local grocery store and immediately became aware of two things that were out of place. One was sign on the front of the building announcing that a fundraiser was taking place. The problem was that this fundraiser was the previous day. The second was overflowing trash cans in the lobby of the store. Of course trash cans get full and people forget to do things like take down signs, but I frequently interpret little things like that in light of management and their commitment to customer service.

Why was that sign still up? Perhaps whoever was supposed to remove it simply forgot. But my management brain looked at it differently. Most likely no one had been assigned the task of removing that sign when the event was completed. It wasn't on anyone's to-do list, so it didn't get done. The store director, or department manager, whoever had set up this event, did not think to add this to "the list".

Which brings us to delegation. There were likely several managers, including the store director, the evening supervisor, perhaps the front end manager, who were overall responsible for the store being fully staffed, fully stocked and clean. All of these people should have been trained as to what state the store should be in and had been delegated the responsibility of making sure that those standards were met. Surely this included walking outside periodically. By the time I arrived several manager shifts had come on duty and walked in the front door since that sign became outdated. Same with the overflowing trash cans. My guess is that whoever is specifically assigned to empty trash had clocked out between 6:00 and 9:00pm and the next person so assigned had not arrived yet. In between, no one thought it was their job and the manager in charge hadn't followed up. That store team was used to be assigned tasks, not delegated responsibility. Since no one had been assigned the tasks of taking down the banner or emptying the trash, it didn't get done. 

These may seem like small things, and they are, but they are indicative of a larger trend.

When I was an Assistant Store Director in a grocery store, one of the corporate supervisors insisted that we give our evening supervisors a to-do list. My Store Director and I had invested a lot of time training our supervisors and department managers to see the big picture. We delegated to them the responsibility of keeping the store in great shape. They didn't need a to-do list. If I gave them something outside the norm, they didn't need me to hand them a note, they just got it done. This corporate supervisor was obviously not a delegator when he ran his own store, but rather was an assigner of tasks. 

Management isn't about doing things, it's about getting things done. If you don't train and delegate, you'll be doing it all yourself, and if you don't follow up, things might get done, but they'll be the wrong things.

Start at the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part XXII