A short story from real life at a shoe shop

I picked Margaret up with her groceries last night, and she told me the good news she had just gotten a 10% pay rise, from the 1st of Oct, she was very happy and I was for her but this got me to thinking about her Boss and well here are some my thoughts on "John"

John is a case study for any wanna be leader of people, the case study of how not to do it he has broken most of my cardinal rules for man management and a few others beside, and his company lets him get on with it. He meets the targets and has 26 years under his belt with the same company, he has had that shop for 3 years so it will soon be time for a move on, that is the life expectancy of a shop manager and it is the same for a fast and rising manager in most businesses these days (Move before you become stale and they find you out).

There are a few points we could talk about from even that, but I need to press on to what I wanted to say, John's inability to deal with his staff and his reluctance to address the salary issue previously cost the company 10% for shop floor staff and more for the supervisor, if he had addressed the issue earlier when it was raised he could have gotten away with 5%, the money was there for the increase and he would not have not gotten in to the trouble he is in now.
The previous week he had told the staff there was no money for a rise, he had spoken to the area manager and that was the feedback, his assistant manager happened to be letting off steam at the area manager the next week, about John and how the staff were looking for new jobs and they would be in a real mess coming up to there most profitable period, where they needed the staff to work a lot of overtime, and with John's / companies attitude to salary and conditions she did not see how they were going to hit there revenue targets for the shop.

So this week John is mister nice guy and the staff has a salary increase, will this correct the problems probably not , we all know Maslow's theory and how this will help for a short time but the problem will come back.


So lesson for today, look after the staff, and don't pinch on the pennies it may cause you to spend pounds.


Slainte
Gordon