In October 1988, I was summoned to the office of Maurice “Mo” Hickey, publisher of the Denver Post.
Hickey was blunt. He said he’d just fired the business news editor and that the position was now vacant. Then, he offered the job to me—a wisecracking, irreverent reporter with no experience managing anything.
Chuck Green, the editor-in-chief, was in charge of my training, which lasted roughly thirty seconds. He said: “Pick a story to run at the top of the page and put a big headline on it. Put a story with a photo in the center, another story on the right, and briefs on the left.” Then he added: “You’ll figure out the rest.”
That was it. I was now a manager. Fifteen people who were beer-drinking buddies became direct reports. What in hell was I supposed to do for them, with them, and to them? I had all the power, but was being in charge the same thing as being a manager? I didn’t have a clue.
It took a while, but I eventually learned quite a bit about managing—at the Post, then at the Denver Business Journal, where I was editor-in-chief, and then at my own start-up, the Pacific Coast Business Times. The main thing I’ve learned is that to be a good manager, you need to be more than in charge. You need to be self-aware. You need to be tuned into the people who report to you—I mean, really tuned in. And you need to accept that you don’t have all the answers.
Fortunately, I’ve had someone in my corner, someone whose life work involves untangling the complex relationships between managers and their direct reports.
That person is Samuel Culbert, the author of this book. I met him years ago, when we were introduced at a reception for the Gerald Loeb Awards at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, where he is a leader in his field of organizational development. We struck up a conversation that’s continued for years over dinners, via email, and on the telephone. Throughout those years, Sam has taught me how to be a good manager, in spite of myself. He’s taught me that being a good manager isn’t about being a good guy or a bad guy. He’s taught me that being a good manager isn’t about having a vision and imposing that vision on everybody. And he’s taught me that bad management behavior begins with mistaken assumptions made about people in general, and individually with each unique person encountered.
What Sam does so well is observe. He understands workplace behaviors, motivations, and consequences, both intended and unintended. He is relentless in his pursuit of straight talk. That’s what this book does so well: it’s a groundbreaking effort to understand and bridge the psychological gaps that are among the biggest roadblocks to success in every workplace.
I must add one note of caution. This is not a pop-culture, feel-good book where you put marks on a checklist or download an app and suddenly become a better manager in a transformed workplace. If only it were that easy. The thesis of Good People, Bad Managers: How Work Culture Corrupts Good Intentions is that underlying workplace problems can only be addressed by a new mind-set—held by bosses and employees alike. Sam argues that it takes an enormous commitment to throwing out much of what we’ve learned about how to be a manager, and thinking, perhaps for the first time, like a human being.
In pursuit of change, Good People, Bad Managers journeys deep inside the heads of managers and their direct reports to understand what makes them tick. Sam argues forcefully that managers are “engulfed in a cultural force-field that often has them disoriented—engaged in actions having consequences they need to be aware of and do more about.” He also argues that disorientation starts early and never lets up, even in business school. No wonder there are so many bad managers: they have no clue how to be any other way!
If anybody can dissect, tear apart, and then rebuild the way managers think and behave, it is Sam—the systems engineer turned clinical psychologist. He has spent his career analyzing and deconstructing management problems at any number of corporations—from agribusinesses to giant consumer companies. He has keen powers of observation, which he has brought to bear on power and relationships in the twenty-first-century workplace. His conclusions will both shock and absorb you. His solutions will point you in new directions as you think through how to achieve your team’s goals. He will make you see what management is all about in a way you’ve never done before. It may be disheartening at times, but it will always be enlightening.
Sam’s prescription for righting what is wrong couldn’t come at a more crucial time. We live in an era where bad management doesn’t just lead to stress, disorientation, and weak performance. It can, and often does, lead directly to the disasters that are covered daily in the financial press. And those disasters, with the accompanying lack of responsibility at the top, are increasingly the reason why rank-and-file workers feel they are falling further and further behind, both financially and spiritually.
Imagine what would have happened inside the halls of Volkswagen if honest and intelligent communication had carried the day when management came up with the idea of short-cutting emissions tests on diesel engines.
Imagine, too, what would have happened if a culture of straight talk had prevailed a decade ago at the leading rating agencies, Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s. A major tragedy of the financial crisis is that management incentivized and pressed staff to sign off on triple-A ratings for billions and billions of dollars of soon-to-be worthless mortgage securities. Nobody dared to question why those ratings were being given on worthless junk, and partly because of that breakdown the world’s financial markets seized up and teetered on the edge of collapse.
In Good People, Bad Managers, Samuel Culbert teaches us how to build better companies in America and around the world from the inside out. But we must be open-minded—and be prepared to learn hard lessons.
Henry Dubroff
CEO and Editor-in-Chief
Pacific Coast Business Times