Archived Target, Microsoft, and "Stacked Management"

[talan123]

Pre '08 I remember Target raises and in general, being different. It was more about merit and less about "You should be happy with what you got because other people got a lot less." Then I was told that they were being pressured to have certain number of team members be 'O' and 'E' vs the other three rankings. Now you have to suck up, be going with the crowd. I was troubled by what I saw. I never could figure out how this system came to be. Now I know.

Variety Magazine has an article about how Microsoft lost 10 years of it's innovative life because of the same management system. It turned Microsoft from an innovative company into a company of employees that cannibalize each other.

I cannot but help and think it's really done the same thing to Target.

 

[Hardlinesmaster]

Wow! You are correct, talan!

 

[chevalier]

Great find. thanks!

 

[commiecorvus]

Wow, I wonder if Spot will see that and change how it handles it's employees?


Yea, right.

 

[greydot]

thats funny i actually quoted this exact article last week sometime. Someone I know was partial to this quote:

“If you were on a team of 10 people, you walked in the first day knowing that, no matter how good everyone was, 2 people were going to get a great review, 7 were going to get mediocre reviews, and 1 was going to get a terrible review,” --

which we all know how that correlates.

personally i thought this quote summed up the BIGGEST problems i have with my job right now:

“It was always much less about how I could become a better engineer and much more about my need to improve my visibility among other managers."

this. right now at my store its not even about if you do your job, its if you send out an email and run down a big brag list about what you did (even if you didn't do it) instead of actually doing any work.

 

[3LetterDevil]

this. right now at my store its not even about if you do your job, its if you send out an email and run down a big brag list about what you did (even if you didn't do it) instead of actually doing any work.

Can someone PLEASE explain to me WHY ^^ is necessary? Even our floating and PRN pharmacists have to do this and IMHO, it's a HUGE waste of time! Some days, when we're ridiculously busy, they're lucky if they are able to simply keep up with checking the Rx's, answering the IVR, and doing the tasks that are necessary to conduct business on a daily basis, without having the added hassle of having to come up with bogus "rah-rah moments". I'm not sure what the other work centers have to "promote" in theirs, but for the pharmacy, I know 2 of the questions are "What did you do to promote 'Genuine healthcare'?" and "What did you do to provide (great-not sure of the exact wording) customer service?" as well as a couple of others. One night, the pharmacist on duty wanted to put "We didn't go postal on any guests today" :hunter:

 

[naterstx]

Can someone PLEASE explain to me WHY ^^ is necessary? Even our floating and PRN pharmacists have to do this and IMHO, it's a HUGE waste of time! Some days, when we're ridiculously busy, they're lucky if they are able to simply keep up with checking the Rx's, answering the IVR, and doing the tasks that are necessary to conduct business on a daily basis, without having the added hassle of having to come up with bogus "rah-rah moments". I'm not sure what the other work centers have to "promote" in theirs, but for the pharmacy, I know 2 of the questions are "What did you do to promote 'Genuine healthcare'?" and "What did you do to provide (great-not sure of the exact wording) customer service?" as well as a couple of others. One night, the pharmacist on duty wanted to put "We didn't go postal on any guests today" :hunter:

It's obnoxious, I've had to start doing this and I loathe it completely. My ETL/STL put so much pressure on me to start doing these "bragging e-mails" and it feels so artificial to me. So what if I filled a freaking endcap, or train x number of TMs on how to qmos.... that's my job. Whatever, is what it is.

 

[ptl]

Whatever, is what it is.

Exactly. It is what it is, so I just spend a minute on it each day as I'm on the way out the door. I just open the email I sent yesterday, copy and paste it into a new one, change the relevant numbers, switch a few words around, and send it on. Nobody really cares about it; I've actually sent it completely unchanged before--word for word, number for number, still saying "we did today" what we had actually done yesterday--and not heard a word about it from anyone, despite it going to every TL/exec on the staff.

 

[The Mule]

Lol, welcome to FM! Seems we spend 5 minutes filling out paperwork and entering in information on the PC for every 1 minute of "turning the screws".

 

[greydot]

Ugh, I've seen the amount of paperwork our SFT has to do. It's amazing he has time to get anything done. Not to mention, on a recent visit - his DFM told him to make sure he had all his paperwork in order so he could show his (DFM's) boss. He did, and when he asked something about paperwork our SFT said okay, this covers this, this, and this, the guy promptly took the papers, looked at them for half a second, then rolled them up and proceeded to use them as a pointer around the store.

So yes, Virginia, your paperwork is probably pointless.

 

[talan123]

Ugh, I've seen the amount of paperwork our SFT has to do. It's amazing he has time to get anything done. Not to mention, on a recent visit - his DFM told him to make sure he had all his paperwork in order so he could show his (DFM's) boss. He did, and when he asked something about paperwork our SFT said okay, this covers this, this, and this, the guy promptly took the papers, looked at them for half a second, then rolled them up and proceeded to use them as a pointer around the store.

So yes, Virginia, your paperwork is probably pointless.

Not completely pointless... It makes a nice pointer.

/Pun... I feel so dirty.

 

[invictustaylor]

this was taken from the readers comments:

The middle management layer is Microsoft's Achilles heel - a bunch of frightened rabbits not wanting to do anything to risk their career path at Microsoft.


this is exactly how I feel about every stl and almost every etl, srtl, and tl I have ever worked with at target.

 

[TheWanderer]

Can someone PLEASE explain to me WHY ^^ is necessary? Even our floating and PRN pharmacists have to do this and IMHO, it's a HUGE waste of time! Some days, when we're ridiculously busy, they're lucky if they are able to simply keep up with checking the Rx's, answering the IVR, and doing the tasks that are necessary to conduct business on a daily basis, without having the added hassle of having to come up with bogus "rah-rah moments". I'm not sure what the other work centers have to "promote" in theirs, but for the pharmacy, I know 2 of the questions are "What did you do to promote 'Genuine healthcare'?" and "What did you do to provide (great-not sure of the exact wording) customer service?" as well as a couple of others. One night, the pharmacist on duty wanted to put "We didn't go postal on any guests today" :hunter:

Yuck. Our pharmacists don't have to mess with that. Their nightly email consists of "We did X scripts, Y auto-refills enrolled, and Z new Rx Rewards. We'll drop $$$$ in sales for the store tonight." That's pretty much it, except for the occasional bit of recognition or big news (like updates on TimberRx when we were doing that). On Fridays they always send out a weekly review where they talk about payroll and survey scores and stuff, but it never seems artificially inflated.

 

[PharmTech]

I agree its all busy work if you ask me, and super fake and artificial.

 

[Life201]

Wow, I wonder if Spot will see that and change how it handles it's employees?


Yea, right.

They'll change tactics only when it stops lining the pockets of the lucky few.

When management becomes focused on making sure the reports are 'green' so they can get bonuses, of course the actual work becomes secondary as the real goal is to figure out how to manipulate the reports.

This results in management preferring 'drones' who will help them meet report expectations over workers who started off believing doing a competent job actually was a goal.

Target sacrifices professionalism & real productivity in the work place & then methodically infantilizes the workers by implementing meaningless 'feel good' time wasters like GTC & other 'projects' more fitting in a Kindergarten classroom.

Target work dynamics are just as offensive as any middle school or high school popularity contest. And some people will say or do anything to join that rarefied group on top. Once on top, they love to look down on the poor slobs they 'rule.'

 

[mrknownothing]

Speaking of stacked management...

 

[pzychopopgroove]

Why am I not surprised?

 

[naterstx]

They'll change tactics only when it stops lining the pockets of the lucky few.

When management becomes focused on making sure the reports are 'green' so they can get bonuses, of course the actual work becomes secondary as the real goal is to figure out how to manipulate the reports.

This results in management preferring 'drones' who will help them meet report expectations over workers who started off believing doing a competent job actually was a goal.

Target sacrifices professionalism & real productivity in the work place & then methodically infantilizes the workers by implementing meaningless 'feel good' time wasters like GTC & other 'projects' more fitting in a Kindergarten classroom.

Target work dynamics are just as offensive as any middle school or high school popularity contest. And some people will say or do anything to join that rarefied group on top. Once on top, they love to look down on the poor slobs they 'rule.'

Not that I'm saying Target, or general corporate management structure, is a perfect methodology, but I'd like to see your alternative option.

Also, I don't care to debate you're clearly jaded view of your management, maybe they suck, maybe they don't... lets just let that one be.

But your discussion of "making reports green" and "ignoring" doing a competent job brings up the question... What's your solution?

 

[tech]

Not that I'm saying Target, or general corporate management structure, is a perfect methodology, but I'd like to see your alternative option.

Also, I don't care to debate you're clearly jaded view of your management, maybe they suck, maybe they don't... lets just let that one be.

But your discussion of "making reports green" and "ignoring" doing a competent job brings up the question... What's your solution?

idk, I think "maybe" a better way to go about it would be just looking at profits. The STL would allocate as many or little hours as they see fit for the entire store, their bonus would depend on how much actual profit the store makes. If they are not profitable enough they get canned, if they profit as well as corporate expected they would get a basic bonus, however if they exceed expatiations they would get a larger bonus.

ETLs bonus would be determined by profits by the entire store as well it is a team effort. It is a team effort, ETL-LOG has as much to do with how much the store profits as the ETL-GE. Every team should be working together to achieve the best results.

Maybe if leadership has that mindset we would see this company go back to its roots and focus more on guest services and less on tasks. In a perfect world this would make guests want to come back to Target instead of shopping at our competitors and I believe could lead to much greater profits for the company as a whole.

***When I say profit I mean sales-total expenses***

 

[konk]

It's funny to read this thread after reading all the Retail comics.

 

[Hardlinesmaster]

It's funny to read this thread after reading all the Retail comics.

Norm feuti is a honorary member of the breakroom. I love his comic. Go to off the clock forum, for his comic thread.