880: How to Thrive and Succeed as a Middle Manager with Bill Schaninger

Pete Mockaitis

Bill, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Bill Schaninger

Hey, thank you for having me.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, I’m super excited to dig into your wisdom of your latest book here, Power to the Middle: Why Managers Hold the Keys to the Future of Work. But, first, I got to hear, you’re freshly retired, how is that going for you?

Bill Schaninger

You know, one, it’s pretty awesome. That’s for sure. I do definitely have more degrees of flexibility in my daily calendar than I’ve had ever. It’s still a little strange. If I count all the way back to when I was working at KidsPeace, which is a residential psychiatric treatment center, through to my time in grad school, then joining McKinsey in 2000, it’s been a long run since I’ve had this much flexibility. So, that part is wonderful and awesome.

But now, because, I guess like most things happen when you’re not expecting, I’ve had a run of really interesting things pop up and opportunities, and I just thought maybe I was going to retire, form an LLC, and set up a website, a media kit, and just do some speeches and tour the book, I’m still going to do that, but I’ve had some really interesting opportunities present themselves to me that I’m working through right now. And so, maybe they’ll be an additional chapter that I didn’t quite count on.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Well, now I’d love to hear a bit about your latest, Power to the Middle. Any particularly fascinating insights that you found in your research there?

Bill Schaninger

Yeah, for sure. Look, everybody who writes a book always wants to come out with why does the book now matter.

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, absolutely. It’s like the first third of every business book.

Bill Schaninger

Exactly right.

Pete Mockaitis

It’s like, “Dude, I already bought your book. We could just get to the goods.”

Bill Schaninger

“Yeah, now more than ever.” Like, we used to joke, particularly in the dotcom era, right when I joined McKinsey, it seemed like, particularly against the Y2K stuff and then the war for talent stuff, it was like everything literally led with, “Now more than ever.” And I don’t think that’s the case but what I do think that’s interesting is we’ve had this pretty amazing confluence of things that maybe would’ve been difficult to predict.

Who would’ve guessed a global pandemic was coming? Maybe Dr. Fauci and his colleagues who do infectious diseases said, “Yeah, that was likely, dummy.” But I certainly didn’t know it was going to impact us to that scale. But just prior to that, we’d had that massive run around what was being called future work, which was the impact of automation. Now, we’re seeing the next tranche of that in generative AI. And, at the same time, underneath that, we had a group of people who, when they said, “You can’t come to work because it’s unsafe,” and then we’re working from home, a few months into it, said, “And you know what, I might not come back to work.”

And so, that, the big shifts that we saw in the work, the nature of the work, how it was done, where it was done, when it was done, the workforce, the composition of it, the skillsets required in it, and the workplace, what’s the point of having a workplace, do we need an office, all those things have come around and come right to the fore here in the last 18 months.

And then the good news is we know the answer to a lot of it is the role of the middle manager. That is the good news. Who knows how the work is changing? And what’s going to go back to how it was? And what’s always going to be different going forward? Probably the manager responsible for the work getting done. Who’s going to know what workers can do, and what kind of flexibility we have, and where they need to be redeployed or upskilled? Probably the manager who those people work for.

Who creates an environment that people actually want to come back to, actually want to feel part of that’s really attractive? Again, probably the people leaders who are there. So, that’s the good news. We know the answer. The bad news? We have systemically beaten these roles up, made them the source of derision and mockery, and signal to them that their job is actually administrivia and bureaucracy and meetings, and not the very thing we desperately need them to do, which is be good leaders.

And so, that’s the conundrum. We know the answer but we also know the is the problem. And so, a good portion of this book is saying, “How do we really dig back into the nature of these roles, the people in these roles, and how we give them a fighting chance to be successful?”

Pete Mockaitis

Okay, understood. Well, so I’d love to get a sense for the mockery. Tell us, paint a picture there.

Bill Schaninger

Well, look, I’m 53, and so I’m clearly Gen X. In my lifetime, we had “Wall Street” come out, and Gordon Gekko was supposed to be an antihero, he’s supposed to be a villain.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah, greed is good, that guy.

Bill Schaninger

Yeah, greed is good, “Wake up, bud. It’s time to make real money.” That guy was beloved, not reviled. And so, for many of us in the ‘80s, our parents, who believed that they would have cradled the great employment, were fired. Fired from Bethlehem Steel, fired from Mack Trucks, fired from Fuller Company, fired from Lucent. Just to name a few. US Steel, whatever, pick large institution we would’ve all known and loved. GM for certain, Ford, Chrysler.

Well, I’m belaboring that because for the people of the Gen X era, we saw this massive transition of it’s no longer esteemed to be a middle manager at fill-in-the-blank big company because, in many cases, a lot of those jobs went away.

And then you ran that through the ‘90s where it was the run up of, “Oh, now it’s going to be Y2K and the dotcom era, and the fixation on A-talents,” and the people in the middle were treated almost as a disembodied member of the machine. You had office space, you had your TPS reports, “Who moved my stapler?” you had Dilbert as the cartoon. There’s cartoons or cartoons, you know, animation, it was making a mockery of the mindless dolt that was in the middle manager job, someone to be avoided, mocked, endured, and not someone who teaches you the ropes, someone who helps you understand how to get work done, someone who makes sure that you know that you have people around you who care about you.

That, to me, is the kind of the mark where it was no longer viewed as being part of an institution, was something to be respected. And instead, these roles started being viewed as negative. And so, for those who did have talent, then it becomes like, “Well, how quickly can I get in and out of these roles?” So, that would be one, for sure, which is just, at some point, we decided these weren’t respected roles anymore.

The second around the same time, certainly in the late ‘80s, early ‘90s, we started getting re-engineering, restructuring, rightsizing, downsizing.

Pete Mockaitis

Rationalizing.

Bill Schaninger

Yeah, right. Exactly. All those are code for, “We’re going to give you more people than you can possibly lead. Maybe you can keep an eye on them. And, really, you’re just there to keep a lid on it and pay attention to the bad actors.” And so, in that case, we’ve given them spans that they can’t possibly lead. And the idea of like six by six, and with apologies to my former competitors, I’m sorry, it is absurd to think that every leadership job can magically have these many numbers of direct reports, and some kind of axiom. It doesn’t work that way.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah, a six by six means each manager would have six direct reports, and there are six layers between the CEO and the front, frontliners.

Bill Schaninger

Right. And that’s just absurd. Nothing in life is that simple. Nothing in life is that axiomatic. If you’re a general counsel and you happen to be wonderful at IP law, you’re probably still going to want to really manhandle some of those IP cases but you might grow a few assistant GCs who are good at contracts, who are good at labor, who are good at comp. And then you’ll figure out somebody who’s good at saying what we’re going to send to outside counsel, that kind of stuff.

But, in that case, because there’s a bunch of different disciplines and you’re still carrying a little bit of your own work, you might have a relatively small span of control. If you’re running a call center or an outside salesforce, where the work that everyone does is the same, and you have relatively similar levels of skills, well, okay, in that case, maybe you can have a bigger span because you’re getting an economy of scale and scope.

It’s just saying that the nature of the work, the nature of the unit, the nature of what the leader does themselves should drive span. If you go to a place where you really have real variability in your workforce, and some of those workers are really going to need coaching and development and help, you cannot have a span where you can’t possibly give them the help that they need. So, that, to me, is setting the manager up for failure. It’s not just that you’re setting the manager up for failure, you’re setting the unit up for failure. And you will likely have cultural implications, almost like a negative contagion.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, let’s zoom right in and say you are, in fact, a manager in the middle, and you are facing some of these challenges, what the heck do you do? Are there any top best practices that are really transformative?

Bill Schaninger

We think so. For sure, we spent a lot of time looking and seeing what people were asked to do. The vast majority of time, they were being asked to attend meetings, feed the beast, if you will with administrivia, where they were spending time on planning of some form.

Pete Mockaitis

Meeting about the meeting about the meeting.

Bill Schaninger

That’s right, “We’re going to plan for a process to think about doing some work.” When, really, I’d say job one here is look at the role itself, “What are the jobs to be done?” If the jobs to be done aren’t starting with leading the organization that you’re responsible for, it’s wrong. Job one should be lead the people you’re responsible for, and then all the other stuff comes on.

And, actually, God forbid, you allow some slack. As a bit of a side point here, I think we’ve taken our approach to working capital from a financial working capital standpoint, where we try to really lean it out. We certainly apply that to supply chains, and I think we’ve applied it to people, human capital as well. Like, if a unit sends someone to training, everybody else is going to pick up slack. God forbid someone gets sick, or has a baby, or has something that was unexpected happen in their life, the unit runs down complement.

We’ve just gone through COVID where, in many cases, people were used to running at 65%, 70%, 75% complement, not the full stack. That means it’s been a long time since we actually had a full complement of employees that allowed people to do things like get trained, not be as productive as they might be because they’re brand new.

And so, it ends up creating a situation where managers are like, “I can only have people who are experienced, who can hit the ground running, and magically are perfectly performing from day one.” That never happens, it disappoints everyone, and everyone is under stress from the get because they’re struggling just to keep their nose above water.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that is so true, and, in a way, kind of tragic for, not to globalize too much, but I’ll just say it, humanity in terms of what we, as a species, are capable of is severely diminished if there’s an attitude of, “I don’t want to do any investing in the people to make them better and capable. I want them fully formed and ready to go.” One, yeah, good luck. There’s very limited supply of such people. And, two, it’s the aggregate learning, growth, development for workers as a whole is severely diminished, and that’s just a bummer.

Bill Schaninger

Oh, 100%. Just think about the human condition at work where you’re supposed to know everything immediately. No, that’s just not how it works. So much of our time has been to become aware of something, you learn about it, it’s broken up into constituent pieces, you had to practice it a little bit, like the actual idea of developing a skill. What happened to that?

What happened to somebody who was decent standing behind you, hand on the shoulders, saying, “Hey, okay, we’re going to push it here a little bit but we’re not going to let you run off the cliff, all right? Yeah, we’re going to challenge you but we’re going to make sure you’re okay.” That sort of stuff requires time and attention, and should be job one. So, you see the first thing we do, “Job one. Do your job. Lead.”

Pete Mockaitis

Well, I want to dig deep. So, that’s job one and it’s often not done, some folks may not actually have a clear picture of what constitutes leading the people. So, lay it on us, Bill, what is that kind of stuff?

Bill Schaninger

Well, the next one then, for sure, is look at the work that everyone’s doing that’s in your charge. If you were to take the job and break it down into its activity level, automation eliminates very few jobs in their entirety. Automation does, however, eliminate, or could eliminate, a lot of tasks. So, if you were doing old-school cost-cutting, what’s the first thing you’d look at? Demand reduction. Could we look at all the work and say, well, let’s just turn down the volume?” Maybe.

“Could we look at some of the activities and just stop doing it?” Maybe. “Could we tech automate it? Maybe. “Could we reduce variability by not allowing everyone to have their own forms and their own time of the month, get to more of a standard?” Maybe. Okay, so when you do all those maybes, you find out what still needs to be done, and then you give what you should be done to technology, or you give what should be done to automation, or maybe even some out to a vendor who can just offshore it or nearshore it, and do it for you. You will still have something left.

The ability to pull a job apart into its activity pieces, its task components, automate, reduce variability, reduce volume. You have what’s left. Put that back together. Now you look at it, and say, “Okay, is that enough? Is that enough to be a meaningful job? Could people see the purpose of that job, how it fits in with the overall purpose? Can we bolt some things onto it and make a new and more interesting and exciting job that also often happens to line up with what our employees want to do?” That idea of, instead of just being a job eliminator but a job re-imaginer, huge idea and a huge skill. And the person best suited to do it is the manager.

Pete Mockaitis

That’s right because you’ve got to be pretty up close to see what is happening.

Bill Schaninger
Yeah, in the weeds. You’ve got to be in the mud with them, you know what I mean?

Pete Mockaitis

That’s true. And I think about, hey, I’ve got a team supporting my podcast, and they’re great. Thank you, team. And there are times, we go into it, it’s like, “All right, straight up, there’s a paper shuffle there on minute 8-and-20 seconds in. What are the options do we have available to eliminate that?” And then, sure enough, that sparks some things, like, “Oh, I guess there’s a thousand-dollar piece of software that can make that easier, but when we do it hundreds of thousands of times, that becomes well worth it in terms of the time that we’re saving.” Great.

And so, it’d be quite possible to be completely unaware of that forever, like no one is going to probably mention it, and yet that makes a world of difference. So, I’d love it, Bill, if you could give us an example of, okay, here’s an example of a job, a manager, and a deconstruction, and then a reconstruction, and how that can look, sound, and feel in practice?

Bill Schaninger

Well, just look at someone who, let’s say, produces reports, like classic FP&A, financial performance analysis.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. So, like budgeting and how do we do on the budget.

Bill Schaninger

Yeah, and particularly the end of the month, we’re going to close the month. Say, okay, first one is, “Are we asking people to go out and get 10 different streams of data coming in or can that be hardwired, it just comes in, you don’t need to pull it, it’s pushed in?” That would be one. You can say, “Okay, the format, are we going to go to a consistent format and/or have it setup with a data scientist and transforms you need to get a common format?” That would be two.

“Then the forms and reports that are put out, are we going to have one version or multiple versions? Are we going to allow people to call for a mid-month data?” “No, I’d like mine on the 21st,” “I like mine on the 15th,” “Or will we go to a common model? What about the analyses on variance that we’re going to run on it? Are we going to control for the same factors, control for just the business?” Just basic things like that, all of it which is like, “How often does it happen? To what standard? How many people have to be involved? How much can be automated and made pushed? And how much is it just actually also become a little bit of self-serve?

So, that answers all the reporting questions. And we have that happen time and again, particularly when you’re looking at the effectiveness and efficiency of a finance unit. But what if you were to say, “Well, what about actual analysis? What explains variability across units? What explains variability across customer segments or product groups?” Well, now that’s pretty cool, that’s actual setting out a question, “Why do we make more in one region than another?”

I was doing some really neat work with a burger fast-food joint that that we all know, and they had all these interesting pulls of data, and we’re sitting around with managers and store managers who are going, “Well, we think that GM matters.” “Okay, we have 50 stores here that’s signed up to be guinea pigs, let’s look. Hey, look at that. Actually, after about 18 months, it seems to tail off on the impact. Okay, so what have we learned? We learned that it’s really an important environment to have those managers learning for the first 18 months, two years after that, kind of flat.”

What about hiring? Vacancies are a real problem. Got it. What about hiring part two? Stars, but you know what, you need at least one star in every shift. You don’t load them up for certain shifts and leave other shifts exposed. Length of shift. Actually, we used to think that we were doing people a solid by having them work eight ten-hour shifts so they could avoid the trips in on the bus, but we’re seeing here, anytime somebody works for more than four hours, they start making some mistakes. And after six hours, they make a huge number of mistakes.

Now, why am I belaboring that? That was a group of managers who ran stores, sitting there, and instead of just being, like, protectors of the status quo or guardians of the data that nobody get access to, first, they started with, “How can we routinized and get rid of all the nonsense and bureaucracy around reporting so we could spend our time exploring and understanding variability in performance because who would know it better than us?”

And that, to me, was a big shift, where you get managers, they didn’t have to be data scientists, they didn’t have to be data engineers, but they needed to know enough about the system of production, of performance, of activity, and say, “Well, how could we understand the differences there?”

Pete Mockaitis

You know, Bill, you’re really bringing me some flashbacks here. I’m thinking of that little 25-year-old Pete Mockaitis, senior associate consultant at Bain, and much of our job was, “Let’s just get all the data to finally start making some sense,” as opposed to, “Oh, you can’t trust that because of this, you can’t trust that because of this. Oh, you got to clean it, make it a flat file. Oh, we got to cross reference that, we got to exclude that.” So, it’s like all this stuff, all this stuff.

Bill Schaninger

The storage and the flat file. I remember once saying to someone, “If you just let us run org lab, here’s what you’re going to get. We’re going to tell you exactly the size, shape, and cost of your organization. And the good news is the flat file you get back will be better than the one you gave because we would’ve fixed it.”

Pete Mockaitis

That’s right. And for those not in the know, I’ll just tell you, a flat file is a spreadsheet that has all the columns and all rows and no gaps such that nothing silly breaks when you’re jumping around it, and you can pivot table, etc.

Bill Schaninger

In a world of dismay, it’s like, “Just know that somewhere in that, the nesting and the hierarchy of roles are articulated in columns and/or the cost of the person in that job is articulated in another column.”

Pete Mockaitis

Yes. So, I remember there was all that work, and it wasn’t really fun. I actually made a rap song, “Mo Data, Mo Problems” and performed it. But I remember, for me, it was extremely exciting. My heart started thumping, it’s like, “Okay, finally, we’ve got the pristine real true data, and I’m about to push the button that makes the chart that shows us a thing. Is our hypothesis…?”

Bill Schaninger

Just being able to move to understanding, right, Pete? Listen, if you accept that there’s a little bit of, “We have to clean it,” now think about this because the modern data people are going, “No, Bill, you don’t need to clean it anymore. We can automate all of that,” because then you go from a common poll, common source, so you’re creating a common lake. And then the way in which, whether it’s through an API or something else, there’s just a push. It actually fits.

So, there’s a little bit of work can mean, “We don’t need people doing that manually anymore.” All the people are like, “Oh, I’ve got to run the reports,” which often meant they were doing stupid bridge documents for somebody wouldn’t give up their architecture to something else. All that’s saying is there’s a lot of work we ask people to do, it’s dumb and a pain in the ass. Often, it’s completely untransparent how much it costs and it’s there for the whim for a leader.

Pete Mockaitis

Yes, and then once that’s done, things get really fun and interesting.

Bill Schaninger

Yeah, because then you can actually answer questions, like, “Gee, why do some engineering teams do better than others?” “Well, I don’t know. That one’s trying to go across seven times zones.” That doesn’t work.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah. So, I like that notion in that it’s not just about quantity of work, hours, dollars, but finding what is suitable for a person to do, and what is meaningful, rich, has some purpose, and fits together. And then, all told, is that a full job in terms of…

Bill Schaninger

Yeah, because you may want to add some things that make it a full job. The idea of disaggregating and then reaggregating, it is really like a job architect. And then taking into account the person in front of you, not the FTE, not the widget maker, not the disembodied robot – the person. And so then, you think about second, just in my list but maybe not importance, is know enough about your employee, the person, to know what matters to them, to understand what role work has in their life’s purpose.

Naina Dhingra and I wrote an article a couple of years ago, saying, “Help your employees find purpose—or watch them leave” that did incredibly well in terms of really resonating and people downloading it. But a good portion of it was just you have three circles here on the purpose front. The biggest circle, the outside one, is the person’s life purpose. The middle circle, which will vary in size, is the purpose that vocation serves, and the inside circle, the smallest, is what you, the company, are providing in terms of vocation.

It’s so arrogant for companies to think that they are the entirety of that person’s purpose but this is what COVID did. COVID said to people, “Well, we’re not going to drive two hours to work anymore, or 90 minutes, and we’re not going to all magically turn up by 9:00.” When that was taken out, now you had people at home, particularly moms, let’s just stick with moms for a second. You’re a mom, you’re a teacher, you’re a caregiver, you’re an employee, you’re a partner or a spouse, maybe you’re looking after a sick mom or a sick dad or aunt or uncle, whoever. That role-stacking forced a bit of a reckoning on everyone, to say, “What actually freaking matters to me? What do I really want to do with my life?”

And now it’s no wonder that we continue to have people saying, about on any given time, like 40% are thinking of leaving, many of them have already left one or two jobs, a fair number of them said, “Hey, by the way, I’ll leave even if I don’t have no job on hand.” And then there was always this group that thought that that was going to go away. It’s not going away because we’ve had a reckoning force to say, “Is where I’m spending my time worth it? Because now, actually, I’m seeing at the end of the day, I could be around my kids. I can feed my kids breakfast. I could see them when they come home from school.”

The rise of the nonlinear work day, in many cases, is people recognizing that life matters a lot, a lot, and we have to come to grips with that. Now, who is best to facilitate that? The boss. The manager. People don’t leave companies; they leave bosses. When people are saying, “I don’t feel supported,” it’s because they don’t feel supported by the boss. The environment is crappy because of the boss. “I don’t have flexibility,” usually because of the boss. Not always. Sometimes there are some strange policy stuff going on. Mostly it’s because of the boss.

So, this, to me, is like this is not just kumbaya, or go fix your spans, or, “Oh, gee, woe is me,” you’re being contrarian by saying don’t fire your middle managers. No, we’re saying this is actually essential to creating a healthy organization that people want to be part of and stay at, and it’s no longer a nice to have. You literally cannot get the work done that delivers your plan if you don’t invest in the people who are running the joint.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. So, let’s continue this lead the people. We’ve deconstructed jobs, we figured out what really belongs for a human to do that is a job and then is the right size for a person, so that’s one big chunk of the management.

Bill Schaninger

The purpose part, I think, will be second, you know what I mean.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, yeah, I was going to go there next. So, how does one help people find their purpose?

Bill Schaninger

Well, you’d probably start by asking…

Pete Mockaitis

“So, what’s your purpose, Bill?”

Bill Schaninger

If you say to people, like, we wrote an instrument, which is kind of like a purpose finder, and here’s the interesting thing. In general, the younger you are and the less people that you’re responsible for taking care of the harder time you have in giving specifics about what your purpose is. Now, you might be able to say, “I just need to make a difference in the world.” Okay. Maybe it has to do with healthcare or social justice or education. Okay. “Well, what might that look like if you were doing it?” “Oh, I don’t know, I’m kind of counting on you to help me figure that out. You’re the employer.”

So, there is something here around you can have a nebulous idea that’s incredibly high beta, “I need to believe that the place I’m joining is consistent with having purpose in the world.” That’s pretty high for the youngsters. As employees get a little older or, in particular, have a mouth to feed, whether that’s through a baby, an adoption, someone they care for, whatever, it starts needing to get super specific because time now is not fungible.

Time is, “I’ve got a certain amount of time for my family, a certain amount of time for me, a certain amount of time for work. Now I can start getting incredibly going, yes, it’s not just about healthcare. I’m passionate about making a difference in cold chain for vaccines.” “Okay, got it.” “I’m passionate about making sure that housing is available to students so that they don’t have to be so transient.” “Got it.” So, workers are at different places about their ability to express what their purpose is and the extent to which vocation hits that.

The conduit from the company, which doesn’t have corpus to the boss which does, that’s the big deal. Does the boss understand enough, buy into, or are they a good representation of why the company exists, how it’s going to have impact or make money, and how they’re going to run the place? And can they translate that into what it means for the person in a particular role?

And that’s a skill, that’s a real skill. It also means that the bosses that are disenfranchised don’t feel engaged themselves, feel hard done by, etc. or really, they were just a good individual contributor who really never wanted to be bosses anyway. All those people are real risk points for the organization.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Well, that’s good stuff.

Bill Schaninger

That makes sense?

Pete Mockaitis

I got you, yeah. And I’m curious, are there any particular practices that you endorse with regard to one-on-ones, check ins, etc.?

Bill Schaninger

Yeah, no, 100%. Look, I think a lot of bosses have been raised, and I think COVID really gave us some real practice in, let’s say, agita about this. At a point at which you saw more and more employees raising their hands, saying, “I’m depressed,” “I’m anxious,” “I’m struggling with alcohol or drug use,” “I’m just really lonely,” some leaders naturally were more about the human condition, “I’m just going to look out after this person. I worry about them because I care about the person.”

Others are like, “Ooh, I can’t talk about that. I’m the boss. HR has told me I shouldn’t ask about mental health.” There was something here saying not playing like you’re a psychiatrist, not offering psychiatric advice, but just caring for one human to a next. I think that came much higher on the list of job one, two, or three.

Show the employee that they matter as a person first, an employee second. If you do that, if the person standing in front of you knows that you care about them, then the question, “Hey, what really matters to you about this? Everybody has choice, everybody decides where they’re going to go to work, what matters to you? What are you trying to get done here?”

For some people, it’s as simple as, “I love my family. I want to be interested in what I’m doing but this is I’m paying bills here. Job one for me is being a provider.” “Got it.” Other people might be, “It’s not just enough to make a check. I need to make a difference in the community I live in. I’m from here, I grew up here,” whatever. You just ask. Ask and prime the pump a little bit, and, more often than not, you will get way more than you can work with.

But once you know it, the mere act of asking gets you credit, and then being thoughtful to work with the person, and say, “You can reframe what we asked you to do, and you could see how that’s really pretty consistent with what matters to you. See if that helps.” It requires time. You know who can’t do that? People who are on the phone and on Zooms 12 hours a day.

Pete Mockaitis

That’s true. That’s true. All right, Bill, so much good stuff. I wanted to also get your take on sort of office politics sorts of things. This is unpleasant for many people in the middle and, yet, it seems that it’s pretty necessary to do well in order to flourish in many environments. How do we think about this?

Bill Schaninger

Oh, it sucks. That’s the technical term. No, listen, politics or the nature of politics exist anytime there’s more than one human doing something. Two people, one is trying to influence the other. Three people, there’s a power dynamic that’s shifting between the three. You get any groups of people, there will be a political environment just by the mere nature of classic psychosocial behavior. So, that’s going to happen.

As soon as you can accept that, “Oh, it should be eradicated,” that’s absurd. That’s not how it works. There’s always influencing, particularly non-power-based influencing. Okay, given that though, what people are really saying is, “I’m trying to figure out how it works around here, and this political stuff is often untransparent. It feels like a black box. I don’t feel like I’m plugged into or someone else is plugged into.”

One way to do it is be really thoughtful about things like, “What are we collectively trying to do? What does that mean for us individually?” Good role clarity goes a long way towards leading this. What am I asking to do? What good looks like? By when? With whom? What can you decide on your own? What do you have to bring back to me? Good, good, good role clarity for any task reduces a lot of the need that people are trying to figure out what the hell is going on, where politics take root. So, a boss that’s really good at role clarity, really good at showing how it fits in with the overall picture, really helpful.

Second, transparency. Don’t force junior people to solve the disputes of more senior people always. If two bosses or two or three more senior people are giving someone trying to do work very different messages, then all you have to teach the junior person to do is send an email or call or have a meeting with the three people, and say, “You have told me A. You’ve told me J. You’ve told me Z. I need some help on figuring out how those things either relate together or which one we’re picking.” Don’t force junior people to solve the disagreements of senior people.

And the last one, transparency, particularly around performance. If you don’t want people guessing, trying to read the tea leaves, don’t force them to read the tea leaves. Check in with them regularly, not in a formal, “Oh, we’re going to fill out a form.” Good coaching. Could you imagine sending your child to piano lessons, and the piano instructor never actually provided any feedback to how your child was playing? Okay, well, that’s the nonsense that people get at work. The boss literally doesn’t tell them how they’re doing, right?

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah. I’m thinking we had Kim Scott, talking about radical candor, and just those notions of it’s not kind to withhold information about how people are performing, and then they get fired and they had no idea. And then we had an employment lawyer who said that for wrongful termination suits, it is always the plaintiffs, those who had been terminated, who introduce the evidence of the performance reviews in the courtroom, or the negotiation. It is never on the other side. It’s sort of like, “Well, according to all these official reports, it says I met expectations every six months, time after time after time.”

Bill Schaninger

Imagine, if you just said to people…Long, long, long ago when I was at the residential psychiatric treatment center, and I had a team, I don’t know, of six, seven, or eight, I would keep little 3×5 cards for each employee, and I would jot things down, pros and cons, then I want to make sure I turn to one each week, we chat, I go, “Hey, that was great, that was great, that was great. This is coming. Can we work on this? How are you doing on X?” whatever.

So, that then when the evaluation was due, a semi-annual, it was a summation and a synthesis with a heavier emphasis on go-forward planning, and no one was surprised ever. The essence of performance management is the management part, it’s the coaching part, it’s the feedback part. So, where politics breed is when the person doesn’t know where they stand, and they’re desperately trying to figure that out and get a hook into something they can trust. You can fight back the influence of a politics just by creating an environment that people can trust where they stand and know how they’re doing.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah, that makes sense, that a clear role and it doesn’t mean if someone is doing something it doesn’t mean, “I’ve lost standing,” or, “I’ve gained standing.” It’s like, “No, that’s just what they do, and that’s what I do.”

Bill Schaninger

Exactly right.

Pete Mockaitis

“Okay. And then I know how well I’m doing, and so there we go. No need to worry. I will just keep on trucking.”

Bill Schaninger

Yeah, you got it.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, Bill, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Bill Schaninger

I just think maybe one of the most important things to remember always, particularly out of the tech sector but other places, you see these other things, “Oh, no one needs managers. Let’s fire all the managers.” What a load of crap. Give me a break. If you put 15 really well-intended people in a room, but you didn’t let them know what the other 15 people were doing, and you say, “Hey, yeah, we’d like to get from New York to L.A. Go,” you’re not getting the same answers from those 15 people. You’re not.

Why would you think that in an exercise that requires cohesion, collaboration, coordination, maybe some consistency, why would you think that they didn’t need to be led? This idea of, “Oh, people are smart, they’re well-intended,” no. You know who says that? People who really want to be their own boss. Great. Go be a vendor. If you’re going to join an organization, then suborn your own needs to something of a greater good. The greater good has to take primacy. That’s the whole point of joining something. You’re intentionally doing it and that needs to be led or you don’t deliver on it.

So, honestly, I’m pretty aggressive in my rebuke of that because I think that sounds like people who really want the freedom of the gig economy, particularly that we saw in tech, and someone else’s capital to play with, and I don’t think you get both.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Well, now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Bill Schaninger

Yes, it’s from the song “Freewill,” “If you choose not to decide, you still made a choice.” Geddy Lee, he is a poet. But the idea is so much of work is everyone knows everything, everyone knows who’s struggling, everyone knows who’s a bad boss, everyone knows clients that really aren’t worth serving, and so many people just kick the can down the road. They’ll speak about it in hush tones but they won’t actually raise it.

And I’m not sure about the rhetoric around radical candor but I do think candor, that helps. Calling it like you see it, that helps. So much of our risks and our approaches to risk is counsel the first line of defense, which is people. You know when that’s not working? When no one actually bothers to tell you what’s going on. And the decision to not tell someone is a choice, and I think those things come back and bite us all the time. So, for me, if you choose not to decide, you still made a choice. Holding back information ought to be treated as anything else. It’s still a choice, and it ought to have consequences, I might add.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Bill Schaninger

I was just thinking of the prison experiments the other day, and even in times where they’ve tried to replicate it, and they’ve had varying degrees of success or whatever, people taking on role identity, people assuming role identity, the importance of the cultural contagion, many, many people, they really just want to be part of something bigger. They want to be part of a group. They want to belong. They want to have affinity.

But once they’re in that group, if not managed well, the normative influence of that group, the culture, may take you into places not great. And so, I think, for leaders, the most important thing you can do is help shape, not just by talking about it, but by behaving that way, by reinforcing it, by looking at who you pick to be leaders themselves. What does it mean to be us? What really matters?

And I think there, you can count on the fact that the powerful nature of a group and the need to belong can be an incredible force for good or a force for bad. I would say, when you see things like bullying, septic workplaces, that kind of stuff. It cuts both ways but it can be managed truly for the good. And, again, who best to help manage that but the middle managers, the workplace leaders.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And a favorite book?

Bill Schaninger

Well, this one, of course. Obviously, I’m proud of this one. I, for a long time, a lot just because of where I’ve grown up here in Lehigh Valley, that people who worked their whole lives and really invested in a company and wanted just to do a good job of leading people, and leading from the middle, I feel like they’ve been given a short trip. But if you look at things like principals, people who run medical centers, doctors, there are these roles that just matters so much in our daily lives. People who run the DMV center. These are middle managers by definition.

Everywhere we look, if someone who neither makes a strategic choice or is actually doing the work but is critical to a service being delivered, a person being connected to, touched, etc. I really do think it’s the most important thing we can do right now as institutions by acknowledging who gets the joy and the responsibility of leading people. And I think we should take it seriously as such.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Bill Schaninger

This format, podcast, I love it. I’ve been doing it a couple years here at McKinsey quite a bit, and I certainly, in my retired life, I’m pretty sure I’m going to start my own. And I want a format just to be able to go a little bit deeper on some topics. I think one thing that’s really hurt us, I’m about to riff, but one thing I think that really hurt us is the lack of depth to talk about the structure of a problem, the nuance of a problem, the fact that there’s usually multiple facets to it. Very few things in the human condition are simple. Most of the time there’s a couple things going on. I think podcasts really lend themselves to a little bit deeper exploration.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And a favorite habit?

Bill Schaninger

I like taking calls in cars. I think, at some point, we spend so much time on Zooms or calls or whatever. Zooms, in particular, not Zoom the product, it’s video conferencing, whatever. It’s a little emotionally taxing, and sometimes, for me, I was a doodler as a kid and so I’ll build Lego now to help focus. Sometimes I just need to get out of the space, get my head out of the space and think differently. And driving while taking calls, I love doing it and I will most certainly continue doing it. I think it actually brings a little bit more of me to the call.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote it back to you often?

Bill Schaninger

Yeah, the two most important questions you can say is, “How are we going to make money? And how are we going to run the place?” And anybody who’s in any kind of positional leadership should be able to answer that on a dime, not in a trite manner, but in the manner that makes it clear to the person in front of them what that means for them.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Bill Schaninger

Bill.Schaninger@gmail.com and Bill Schaninger, PhD on LinkedIn. And then I have a website being setup, and it’ll be up, I don’t know, two, three weeks so I’ll be able to, soon, have a link there on LinkedIn.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Bill Schaninger

Yeah, just remember that if you’ve been given the charge to lead people, it is an awesome responsibility and really, really what a gift to actually be able to influence more than just yourself. Long ago, when I was first given a unit to be responsible for at the residential psychiatric treatment center, the person who hired me walked me out, and said, “Do you see that building up there? It’s yours. All the kids in there, it’s yours. All the employees, yours. Everything that happens there, whether you’re here or not, yours. Do you understand? It’s yours.”

And that so resonated with me, and I wasn’t the seniormost person, not even close. But it was this idea of it only ever works when people really internalize what it’s really about, and their own personal obligation beyond their own success. And then you have a chance of actually doing something special. Otherwise, you’re probably just surviving it.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Bill, thank you. This has been a treat. I wish you much luck and fun and power to the middle.

Bill Schaninger

Thank you. Really appreciate it.