Ready! Set. No?

by Tina Darmohray
<[email protected]>

Tina Darmohray, co-editor of ;login:, is a consultant on Internet firewalls and network connections and fre-quently gives tutorials on those subjects. She was a founding member of SAGE.

My husband and I frequently receive compliments on our children's behavior. A fellow father will comment on how well-behaved they are when they're out at a building-supply center with my husband, or a couple will swing by our dinner table at a restaurant and compliment us on our family. Heck! Even the photographer has gone on about how easy it is to photograph our kids because they're so cooperative. Now, do my husband and I think our kids are perfect? Not a chance!

So, why do we get such compliments? We've given this some thought. Our best guess is that it's a combination of things: we've got reasonable kids to start with, we threaten them before we go into public places (joke), and we do our best not to set them up to fail. What do I mean by that last one? That means we choose family restaurants rather than five-star affairs, for instance. We also make sure they're rested, fed, comfortable, and have appropriate entertainment available. Otherwise, we just don't go. In short, they behave because they're in situations where they can.

I'm a firm believer that this same principle applies to adults in the workplace. A good manager doesn't set employees up to fail. Setting folks up to fail is a lose-lose situation. Managers who don't heed this rule have the scenario where the employee not only fails at the task but also gets the accompanying negative feelings of being a failure. Lose-lose situations should be avoided wherever possible. Still, I see way too much of it in the workplace; some examples are below.

A security incident has occurred, so now security response and fixes are the focus of everyone in the company, from the CEO down. The security group are suddenly in the hot seat. They pull all-nighters to get things running again. Just as things return to normal, the message comes down from the top: "Rearchitect the site over the weekend to avoid this situation again." Everyone knows that responding to this knee-jerk reaction isn't possible or even advisable. Still, those in charge demand immediate action and a formal report on the tested "perfect solution" with an arbitrary deadline for presentation to the president and CEO by close of business on Friday.

What happens? The security group spend the rest of the week setting up tests of various vendor solutions and calling upon whatever applicable internal resources are necessary. No one is working smart, and everyone is feeling as though they're in a never-ending fire drill. It turns out that this arbitrary deadline really can't be met. The week ends, the report of "no solution" gets presented to the top, and the whole urgency of the exercise gets lost going forward. Meanwhile, the security group are burnt out, frustrated, and feeling like failures on all fronts.

An internal support employee is doing a good job supporting two internal groups. One customer group, unaware of the split-time nature of the support employee, requests more of his time from his manager. The employee's manager increases the hours, committing, on paper, every available hour in the employee's day. This leaves no "overhead" time for the employee to keep up on mail, fiddle with something new, read a trade magazine, and so on. Now there's an inherent expectation that the employee can't meet. He'll either have to work extra hours or disappoint the customer. This dilemma sets him up to fail.

Let's not omit the proverbial favorite of being assigned the responsibility without the authority. The senior network administrator is responsible for configuring the company's router so that it protects the corporate computer assets. Such decisions ideally involve key management and technical personnel who create a corporate security policy. Once in place, such a policy can easily be implemented, including configuring the ACLs in the company's Internet router. Without such a document, or consensus, the network administrator is left to deploy her "best guess." In this situation she's "damned if she does and damned if she doesn't." If the company is broken into, she'll clearly get the heat, but if she implements what she guesses to be "right," she'll likely be criticized for that too. Being in a situation where you have the responsibility but not the authority is being set up to fail.

Managing projects or people under unrealistic or arbitrary deadlines is a recipe for failure. Not only do you miss the target of delivering good work in a timely fashion, but managers also suffer the collateral damage of discouraging their employees en route. I maintain that it's far better to give the "bad" news up front by setting the expectations of the customer (the boss, the client, the group you're working in conjunction with) realistically to begin with. This may mean that you have to push back on a deadline, let someone know that you can't support them at the level they'd like immediately, or tell them that you need something from them in order for you to be successful going forward. No matter what it takes, shooting for a win-win situation where the employee succeeds and everyone feels good about it is worth the realism up front. If it seems dicey to begin with, remind yourself that folks often have a short memory, and if you deliver the goods in a consistent and timely manner, you'll be well thought of in the end. Over time, you'll build respect from your employees and confidence from your peers, managers, and clients.