Lessons Learned - The Worst Boss Ever

Episode 03: Management Lessons I Learned on My Last Real Job - and the Worst Boss Ever

(See the bottom of this blog post to follow the whole "Lessons Learned" series.)

One of the most profound things I ever heard is: "Most things end badly. Otherwise, they wouldn't have ended at all." Sadly, this is all too true when it comes to jobs. 

I loved my job as Operations Manager for a truly high-tech company doing cutting-edge work and setting an example for both creative new ideas and transforming old operations into the new Internet-based technologies that will dominate the rest of my life.

When I was hired, I had an excellent boss. She mostly understood what we were up to, and mostly supported it. But she had her eyes set on other things. She left after I had been there two years and was replaced by the worst boss I have ever had. 

The new boss was both a horrible boss and a horrible human being. Under her management, people were crying at their desks and sick days skyrocketed. She didn't care because she was trying to climb a corporate ladder and this was just a rung on the way up. Worse, HER boss at our parent company knew how horrible she was and tolerated it. I think there were twenty-one companies inside the parent company, and many of them had terrible, unhappy, untalented people as general managers. It was a massive pile of smoldering mess. So I don't blame my original boss for jumping ship.

But when the original GM quit, she burned me on the way out. In the previous year, I had hit one home run after another. We had a massive and successful software development, all under my supervision. I had shepherded relationships with other companies in our industry, opened new offices in another state, and managed to license our new software to a company outside our corporate family. While all that was going on, I transformed my staff from a rag-tag crew into a well-documented, well-organized machine. And we were profitable.

I also put a strain on my family life in doing all that. I had a young family, and I was bringing in a good salary. But I was over-working in hopes of the big payout. In the meantime, my general manager was planning to quit and take a senior position with our primary competitor.

Before she left, she finished the year by screwing me out of a full MBO (management by objective) payment. It was NOT because I had under-performed. It was because she needed to pay me as little as possible because HER MBO was based in part on corporate profit. Paying me more meant less profit, and a lower payout for her. She took her payout. Then she quit.

Money aside, I felt personally betrayed. It was one of the few times in my life that someone I respected looked me straight in the eye and lied to me. I'm not even sure what the lesson was. I can't be the guy who doesn't trust anyone. I guess I learned that such people exist, and I learned to keep my eyes out. But I also learned that no one in business is looking out for my interests except me. Sigh.

Quick recap of the sequence from my point of view:

January rolls around. I get a significantly lower MBO than I expected. By the time that meeting ended, I had decided to quit my job. Within days, the new evil boss is on the scene. I try to work with her, but within a week she has made it clear that she sees me as a competitor for her job.

Given this set of circumstances, I decided to do three things that year.

1) Finish the installation and setup of the new system in the licensed state.

2) Take care of my staff to the extent I could, and help them to transition away with good recommendations if possible (It was clear within a week that many would quit).

3) Finish training and documenting everything so that, when I left, everything would work perfectly without me and would never skip a beat.

Number three is particularly important. Many people have this vision in their head that "They'll be sorry when I'm gone." No one's ever sorry when you're gone. People disappear all the time. Companies get by. My approach was the opposite. I wanted to "do it the right way." I felt it was important to make sure that everything was smooth and extremely well organized. Plus perfect documentation.

In the end, I accomplished this. I started looking for consulting gigs in the Summer. And by October, I was able to sign a deal. I then quit my job, gave two weeks notice, and took my two weeks vacation. So, in effect, I left that day and never came back. 

I also told the new, horrible boss, that I expected a full MBO payout (20% of my base salary). She agreed, and I left with a smile on my face. 

To this day - 29 years later - I am still friends with some folks from that job. And, unfortunately, the first thing that gets mentioned every time we get together is that horrible boss. We joke that there's a support group for people who had to work for her. The hard, hard lesson for me is that such people really do exist and good managers are often stuck in the middle between those bosses and their employees. Luckily for me, I determined that I would never be anything like that horrible boss.

My biggest challenge at that company was also my greatest opportunity. Creating an entirely new online service that was massively complicated and designed on brand-new technology to operate on a nationwide scale was hard. But it also showed me how creative people can be, myself included. The programmers we worked with were "managed" and by a guy who was more salesman than anything else. But the programmers were awesome, talented, and sincere.

In the end, that project was at about $500,000 when I left. It was probably at 95% complete and was deployed successfully in two states. I was honored to be the primary architect of a 300-page design document. As far as project management goes, it was a real baptism of fire. I knew how older databases worked, and learned enough SQL to understand what were we doing. I was also lucky that we'd hired a SQL programmer in-house who helped us develop additional programs.

Down the road a bit, Bill, that SQL programmer, came to work for me in my consulting business and we eventually worked our way up to another $500,000 project - but it would take more than ten years to get there. Because of my experience defining and managing programming and database projects, I ended up selling a lot of those services over the years.

My greatest achievement on that job, though, was documentation. In the last installment, I mentioned The EMyth Revisited by Michael Gerber. I firmly believe that every business owner (especially new ones) should read that book! Again and again over the years, success has been highly correlated with well documented processes and procedures.

The big development project started with documenting the system to be replaced (inputs and outputs) and finished with documenting the new system as implemented. Because it was designed to, eventually, be sold into every state, documenting the installation and daily operating was a large part of documenting the daily operation of the companies that would be running the software. 

At the same time, I had built up my team by having them create processes and procedures for every single thing they did in their jobs. We also documented all the technology in my department, and the company as a whole. Everything, everything, everything.

I am continually shocked at companies that operate with little or no documentation - of anything. It's like starting over every day. I just don't get it. 

It's no exaggeration that documentation is just like brushing your teeth. You just do it. You get in the habit and you just do it. You don't debate it. You don't consider not doing it. You just do it. In the end, this might be the greatest lesson I ever learned in running multiple businesses over the last thirty years.

I felt that I left my last real job with my head held high. The house was clean. Nothing was hidden in closets or painted over to hide the rust. I did what I could for my staff, and my family. And I left with high hopes to help people take advantage of amazing technology that was headed towards us like a speeding freight train.

Sadly, the horrible boss drove that company into the ground. Within a year after I left, the company was sold to their biggest competitor - where the previous boss was now a major player. Eventually, they shut down the new program for an inferior program that they'd already deployed in several states. There's some emotional baggage in all that for me, but it's really just a reminder that every experience in my life has been a step on the path to where I am today.

As I left that job, and that toxic environment, I didn't realize how much I'd love my new job - or how good bosses could be. I'll tell you more about that in the next episode.

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