Summary

The article discusses the harsh realities of upper management, where leaders must enforce policies they may not agree with, while navigating the complexities of corporate directives and personal integrity.

Abstract

The author reflects on their experience in upper management, emphasizing the necessity of executing corporate policies that they may personally disagree with, as long as those policies are not unethical or illegal. The article highlights the importance of effective communication in leadership roles, the challenges of maintaining one's personal values while adhering to corporate objectives, and the political maneuvering required to protect one's team and oneself. It illustrates a specific instance where the author had to implement a company-wide directive to lay off the bottom 10% of employees, despite personally opposing it. The author describes how they navigated the situation by strategically communicating with superiors and subordinates, ultimately making difficult decisions to meet corporate demands while minimizing the impact on their own team.

Opinions

Leadership often requires executing decisions that one may not personally support, provided they are not unethical or illegal.
Effective communication is a critical skill for leaders, enabling them to navigate corporate politics and convey their messages both up and down the organizational hierarchy.
Leaders must balance their personal values with the demands of their role, which can be a source of internal conflict.
It is possible for leaders to work within the system to mitigate the impact of corporate directives on their teams, even if they cannot change the directives themselves.
The author believes that leadership is not for everyone, as it requires the ability to handle significant power and make tough decisions without compromising one's inner core.
The article suggests that leaders can maintain a dual persona: one that is publicly supportive of corporate objectives and another that privately works to soften the blow of those objectives on their teams.
The author values the ability to keep one's spirit intact despite the pressures of upper management, viewing it as a key aspect of successful leadership.

Leadership

A Brutal Truth Of Upper Management

Leaders must vigorously execute actions they do not support

“The only men ruthless enough to fight against tyranny were themselves inclined to it.” ― Susan Wise Bauer, The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome

Communication is Key

In my long corporate career, I have perfectly executed policies with which I disagreed. This is a brutal truth of upper management. The guidelines were not immoral, unethical, or illegal, so they were a part of my job to implement. Early on, I learned hard lessons around communication, up and down the chain, so I was not entangled in unnecessary politics later in my career.

The correct communication techniques will make you the Master of Communication. If you do not have the heart for what I say, jump out of this article and read something else. Leadership is hard. Upper management will break your spirit if you allow it to. I wanted to be a C-suite executive, an upper manager and was working toward that goal. But I also desired to keep myself, my inner me, safe. Yes. I craved power, but on my terms.

Leaders must support the corporate goals. Period. Dead stop. When I was the manufacturing Director for a division of a multi-billion company, Corporate emailed that every department had to fire/replace the bottom-ranked 10% of our employees. There were no potions, no alternative to avoid the slaughter. The division president, my boss’s boss, flew in to call an off-site meeting with his entire management team, including our supervisors, to ensure every manager understood the directive. He wanted those who had teams to hear the message from him directly.

Can We Change This Direction?

A contingent of us, two vice presidents and three directors, completed the research to establish that our division could meet the required number of layoffs, but not every department would give up 10%. To keep our objectives safe (and our company bonuses), we could meet the overall number of layoffs, but not at the department level. While I was not the instigator of this presentation, I was a major player.

My department (Operations) would benefit from going in this direction with an 8.5% layoff rate. The supply chain, manufacturing engineers, building maintenance, shipping /receiving, and production associates worked for Operations. Everyone agreed that our organization would be in trouble without suppliers and predictable products being built and shipped.

In our pre-meeting preparation discussion, all of us put the truth of how we could be a successful team to the test. Some departments, like mine, would lay less than 10%, others, with the leader’s concurrence, would lay off more. Engineering was one organization that could lay off more because they hired 15% more new hires than projected that year. New hires were not productive and ranked low just because they were new hires. Recent hires had no ranking because they had not had a performance appraisal.

Despite the truth of our argument, it was for naught. There was such vigorous discussion that my boss called for a break. The executives agreed with us. We could experience significant issues and loss of revenue if we followed corporate direction. Too bad.

Get It Done

That was exactly what we were going to do. Despite our vigorous opposition to the 10% layoff number, the marching instructions were to put the list together as requested and submit the names by the end of the following week. And put together a mitigation plan if you were a department that would have problems meeting goals, like mine. The message: this was happening, deal with it.

Once we returned to the office, it was time for me to earn some of those big bucks I was making. Despite my actual feelings about the corporate plan when I met with my team, I would not budge on the 10% layoff. My people considered me cold-blooded. There was no mercy in me for the arguments my direct reports made for their people.

Since my boss knew I was against the 10% layoffs for my team, I made sure to stop by his office to communicate unsolicited updates of my actions. It would be easy for him to assume that I was undermining his directions (I was not). In Human Resources (HR) meetings and with my boss, my communication behind closed doors was soothing, empathic, reluctant, and obedient. In staff meetings, I was all in with the boss when layoffs came up but behind closed doors, just me and him; I kept the pressure on.

We met the number of people headquarters requested to be laid off. My boss and HR agreed to report Engineering and Operations together as one group. As that group, we met the 10% bottom line. My department laid off 9% in real life, and Engineering lost 12.5% to make up for Operations. Our let-go employees got one week’s pay per year of service plus four weeks added on as an organizational “thank you.”

The key to success was that I was communicating cooperatively: as far as anyone knew, I was entirely in support of the corporate objectives. In fact, I disagreed but executed the corporate plan to the best of my ability.

There was an agenda driving my actions. I was working against corporate every step of the way to make both my life and my teams’ life easier. In the end, I came out ok. The team still lost 9% (but it was not 10%), and my boss recognized I would do what must be done. The ability to hold those two personas side by side is part of what it takes to be a leader.

Stay You

Keeping your inner core safe is a chore. A Leader does the best they can for their people no matter their personal feelings about directives from their superiors. Don’t strive for this level of power if you can not handle it. Remember, one of God’s greatest gifts is unanswered prayers. Know that big jobs require significant compromises.

Space Is Power, Command It, and It’s Yours

Manage your meetings like a boss

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He Said I Was No Lady. He Was Right. I Was the Vice President of Operations.

He did not have to like me but had to respect me

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Toni Crowe retired as the Vice President of Operations to pursue her dream of being a writer. Toni has written six books, two of which won the 2019 Reader’s Choice Gold Awards. Her bestselling business book, “Bullets and Bosses Don’t Have Friends: How Do You Manage A Man Sitting With His Dick in His Hand?” was one of the winners. Her first book, “Never a $7 Whore” was the other.

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