On to something less momentous and more conceptual.
While on the way to the Sea Ranch earlier this year, we had several interesting conversations (when not making fun of Kimberly's complete inability to identify common livestock or stopping for bathroom breaks). Two will form the basis of posts here, one today, and one later.
Today's has to do with how best to educate a new employee. So in honor of education, we depict Edna Krabappel, teacher extraordinaire.
This started out as a discussion on whether its really necessary to go through all the pain and suffering and humiliation of making mistakes at the beginning of your career. Maybe its better to be spared all that by being brought along gradually.
Only recently have I had to work with new, or untrained, lawyers. I have to say its a huge pain. Most of my career, I've been the relatively new lawyer, so I've been the one trying to gain experience. As you can imagine, my "team player" skills never really developed, and I haven't worked much with other lawyers, and certainly haven't supervised many. Like Pee Wee Herman, I'm a loner. A rebel. You don't want to get mixed up with a guy like me. But as our firm's practice has expanded and we've had to bring in relatively inexperienced attorneys, its something I've had to focus on. Law school doesn't exactly teach you how to manage people, or train them. So this has been somewhat on the fly.
Seems to me that roughly four models exist for how to train a new employee. Shockingly, I don't offer an opinion on which one is correct, other than "it depends." I learned that answer in law school, by the way.
One way is sink or swim. Give little or no guidance, just throw the rookie in with the sharks and hope for the best. Sometimes this works (Troy Aikman), sometimes not (David Carr).
The next is to apprentice. Spend months and years patiently watching and learning the master, helping out by doing little jobs along the way, until you've finally learned the craft and start doing it yourself. Like Darth Vader, or your plumber. In medicine, this is called an "internship." Which really means do all the doctor's work, charge the doctor's rates, the doctor gets all the money, and you don't get to sleep for most of about 2-3 years. Or maybe that's nursing.
Another is to just stay out of the way and watch. This is like NFL third-string quarterbacks holding a clipboard all season long. Or Maria in Sound of Music. You know, since she wasn't an asset to the abbey, the older nuns got together and shipped her down the road to the von Trapp mansion hoping she just wouldn't figure out how to get back to the convent?
I guess the last way is to go to school. Spend forever practicing doing what it is you're trying to do. Sort of like moot court, or jamming with your buddies in your stepmother's basement without ever actually playing a gig.
I pretty much became a lawyer under the sink or swim mode, although I obviously went to school and spent a couple of years clerking for judges. For most business and professional activities, though, you really can't learn how to do it unless you're actually doing it. For example, there's really no way to adequately practice trying a lawsuit. You have to just go do it. This method presupposes of course that you're going to make lots of mistakes, that you are able to recognize the mistakes, honest enough with yourself to admit them, and motivated enought to correct them. Not everyone can do that. Some people just aren't cut out for all the initial failure. You can't throw someone in the deep end if they don't have enough confidence to see them through that time. But for some, its worse having someone standing over you all day watching your every move, not giving you a chance to show what you can do. Now, a firm or company sometimes cannot afford a bunch of mistakes. No one would assign bet the company litigation, for example, to a first year lawyer (Legally Blonde notwithstanding). Generally the way to do this is to have someone with experience at least monitoring things to make sure they don't go too badly wrong.
The other viable way is the school method. This works best for people who don't handle failure that well. It tends to minimize the mistakes made at the beginning of your career, so it spares people the difficulty of dealing with the failure, and businesses the problem of cleaning up mistakes. The problem, though, is that from a business standpoint, its hard to subsidize an employee for so long while you're training them. That's the main reason why first round NFL draft picks start before they're actually ready-teams can't afford to have so much payroll tied up in a player who doesn't contribute. The same is true with every other business. This method also doesn't work well with individualists, who want to do their own thing instead of watching others. Studies have attributed the relative decline in male college attendance, for example, in this trait. The theory is that young men are generally more resistant to working within the highly structured academic environment, and are eager to begin their careers on their own terms instead of prolonging their learning time. Michael Dell did quite alright without spending years patiently learning the computer business.
So, whether to "grind someone into the dust" as part of their training depends on the person, and depends on the business.
No I will not be a guest lecturer in Management 305 this year.
Next up: the Daily Affirmations Approved and Dissapproved Lists
While on the way to the Sea Ranch earlier this year, we had several interesting conversations (when not making fun of Kimberly's complete inability to identify common livestock or stopping for bathroom breaks). Two will form the basis of posts here, one today, and one later.
Today's has to do with how best to educate a new employee. So in honor of education, we depict Edna Krabappel, teacher extraordinaire.
This started out as a discussion on whether its really necessary to go through all the pain and suffering and humiliation of making mistakes at the beginning of your career. Maybe its better to be spared all that by being brought along gradually.
Only recently have I had to work with new, or untrained, lawyers. I have to say its a huge pain. Most of my career, I've been the relatively new lawyer, so I've been the one trying to gain experience. As you can imagine, my "team player" skills never really developed, and I haven't worked much with other lawyers, and certainly haven't supervised many. Like Pee Wee Herman, I'm a loner. A rebel. You don't want to get mixed up with a guy like me. But as our firm's practice has expanded and we've had to bring in relatively inexperienced attorneys, its something I've had to focus on. Law school doesn't exactly teach you how to manage people, or train them. So this has been somewhat on the fly.
Seems to me that roughly four models exist for how to train a new employee. Shockingly, I don't offer an opinion on which one is correct, other than "it depends." I learned that answer in law school, by the way.
One way is sink or swim. Give little or no guidance, just throw the rookie in with the sharks and hope for the best. Sometimes this works (Troy Aikman), sometimes not (David Carr).
The next is to apprentice. Spend months and years patiently watching and learning the master, helping out by doing little jobs along the way, until you've finally learned the craft and start doing it yourself. Like Darth Vader, or your plumber. In medicine, this is called an "internship." Which really means do all the doctor's work, charge the doctor's rates, the doctor gets all the money, and you don't get to sleep for most of about 2-3 years. Or maybe that's nursing.
Another is to just stay out of the way and watch. This is like NFL third-string quarterbacks holding a clipboard all season long. Or Maria in Sound of Music. You know, since she wasn't an asset to the abbey, the older nuns got together and shipped her down the road to the von Trapp mansion hoping she just wouldn't figure out how to get back to the convent?
I guess the last way is to go to school. Spend forever practicing doing what it is you're trying to do. Sort of like moot court, or jamming with your buddies in your stepmother's basement without ever actually playing a gig.
I pretty much became a lawyer under the sink or swim mode, although I obviously went to school and spent a couple of years clerking for judges. For most business and professional activities, though, you really can't learn how to do it unless you're actually doing it. For example, there's really no way to adequately practice trying a lawsuit. You have to just go do it. This method presupposes of course that you're going to make lots of mistakes, that you are able to recognize the mistakes, honest enough with yourself to admit them, and motivated enought to correct them. Not everyone can do that. Some people just aren't cut out for all the initial failure. You can't throw someone in the deep end if they don't have enough confidence to see them through that time. But for some, its worse having someone standing over you all day watching your every move, not giving you a chance to show what you can do. Now, a firm or company sometimes cannot afford a bunch of mistakes. No one would assign bet the company litigation, for example, to a first year lawyer (Legally Blonde notwithstanding). Generally the way to do this is to have someone with experience at least monitoring things to make sure they don't go too badly wrong.
The other viable way is the school method. This works best for people who don't handle failure that well. It tends to minimize the mistakes made at the beginning of your career, so it spares people the difficulty of dealing with the failure, and businesses the problem of cleaning up mistakes. The problem, though, is that from a business standpoint, its hard to subsidize an employee for so long while you're training them. That's the main reason why first round NFL draft picks start before they're actually ready-teams can't afford to have so much payroll tied up in a player who doesn't contribute. The same is true with every other business. This method also doesn't work well with individualists, who want to do their own thing instead of watching others. Studies have attributed the relative decline in male college attendance, for example, in this trait. The theory is that young men are generally more resistant to working within the highly structured academic environment, and are eager to begin their careers on their own terms instead of prolonging their learning time. Michael Dell did quite alright without spending years patiently learning the computer business.
So, whether to "grind someone into the dust" as part of their training depends on the person, and depends on the business.
No I will not be a guest lecturer in Management 305 this year.
Next up: the Daily Affirmations Approved and Dissapproved Lists
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I saw something pretty odd today, even by Austin standards. No I'm not referring to Trevor Hoffman's blown save tonight against the Astros. I said "odd" not "beyond the bounds of physical reality." The past three times I've eaten lunch at Central Market, the same older man was there, by himself, hunched over and wearing a shirt that looks like those cowboy flower design shirts Hank Williams and Buck Owens used to wear. Different shirt each time, same style. Who is he? Why is he always at Central Market? What's up with the shirts? Do people look at me and think the same things (only instead its "who's the guy always wearing the izod shirts with bloodshot eyes?").
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