PLEASE FEED THE BEAR

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Please feed the bear so it doesn’t get hungry and eat you. At least, this is what I told staff one Friday morning. In our weekly meetings my managers and their direct reports would share the significant activities of the week, performance indicators, and what might be coming up in their sections. As they were from different departments and disciplines, this cross-pollination of ideas and discussion of problems often resulted in unexpected synergies and solutions. I also used this two-hour meeting as a professional development opportunity, and we discussed management theory, recent books by notable thinkers and entrepreneurs and my notions for organizational and personal career success.

One day I used a metaphor to illustrate a useful practice: timely and unsolicited delivery of information up the chain-of-command. Or, feeding the bear. Bears are large and need a good quantity of nourishment to maintain their equanimity. It you don’t provide it, they’ll go looking for food. The longer they have to look, hunt and sniff out sustenance, the less congenial and forgiving they become. They soon grow agitated, restless and single-minded in their quest. The last thing you want is to look up from your sleeping bag and see a massive, slavering bear face looking in your tent.

Communicating up the operational chain-of-command in a busy organization is almost an artform. If you overreport, you obviously lack discernment and are unwilling to accept responsibility and risk. If you fail to instantly share significant events, you show signs of isolation, parochialism, lack of engagement and a serious big picture strategic deficiency. As a boss, I like to be kept up-to-date on current events, good and bad. I hated to be buttonholed by the general manager in the parking garage and asked for an impromptu update on a department when I have nothing to say. When a section grows silent, you might not notice for a while, and if things are spiraling out of control, and your subordinate manager is going low profile/deep cover, you will only find out when it is too late to avert disaster or embarrassment. As you may know, this can be disastrous and even career-ending. Going silent when trouble is brewing is a very poor instinct for a manager and will only lead to explosive revelation when the lid blows off and information flows from other sources. Then the information rolls and sometimes heads too.

An easy way to think about this, I told the crew, was to think of your boss as a neighborly but hungry bear. It was important to remember to feed the bear on a regular basis so the bear remained happy, content with life, satiated and very well informed. That way the bear didn’t make a special trip to your campsite and eat you.

Few things are more irritating to a boss than to have to data mine one of his own departments to find out what the heck is going on. At certain times in your career, you’ll be having lunch, studying a report, or having a conversation when you suddenly realize you haven’t heard from a certain manager. You feel a slow boil in the blood as you think about the amount of time that has passed, and you excuse yourself to make a phone call. You get the manager on the phone and proceed with an exhausting question and answer period until something of value is dredged up from the depths, belying the calm surface of tranquil waters. It is unnecessarily taxing on a manager’s time and patience to dig information out of a sleepy subordinate’s storehouse of information. At its worse, it exposes a subordinate manager who is not closely attuned to his or her operation and is not current on the early indicators that should be steering activity and providing focus.                  

Managers must realize, even in periodic times of labor peace, budget conformance, staffing stability, error control, and general placidity, they must keep the boss informed. First of all, all of these conditions are temporary, and the longer they persist the more vigilant you must be. And yes, even no news can be news. For instance, if the attrition rate falls into a trough, this non-event is quite significant in terms of planning and contemplation for longer range staffing strategy. Besides this, the boss has bosses to keep informed. The BOD could pop a question at any time, and being armed with information, and so-called non-information, is extremely useful at such times. Data is always recommended, but anecdotal information, as everyone should know in our current era, can be equally powerful and even turn into legend, cited for decades. A good story about a customer service success or employee satisfaction is worth its weight in spreadsheets. And if you are receiving these instructive anecdotes, congratulations: your subordinates are feeding their bear!

Anyway, contrary to the signs you see at the campground and zoo, please feed the bear. My bosses tended to think of me as a mind-reader because I anticipated their informational needs. At the end of the week, if you have not spent time with the boss, or shot off a status report or a summary of activities, events, and performance data, send one before launching into your weekend. A well-informed boss is a happy boss and one that won’t gobble you up to assuage the hunger pangs associated with an unsatisfying starvation diet of silence.

A final note: this message seemed to resonate well with staff. One manager drew a great picture of a grizzly for me with the proper caption. Another gave me a statuette of a brown bear rearing back on his hind legs with an intense managerial stare. He looked hungry. Find "Public Transit Operations: The Strategic Professional" here.