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How to kill a company's morale in one easy memo

technocrat.net

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Re: How to kill a company's morale in one easy memo

#81

Post by hyperbovine »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #49

I'd actually like to take a step back from the hate-fest going on in the comments here and evaluate this. Before you downvote me, at least read what I have to say. This email is a classic example of poor communication. It's very clear that the guy is frustrated and is taking it out via an emotional response. However, we don't know the whole story here, do we? From my reading, it sounds like this has been an ongoing p…

To get where the author of this memo got (CEO of a publicly traded corporation), work essentially has to be your life. I mean, your #1 priority, ahead of friends, family, fun, and everything else. I have never seen an example of such a person at the helm of a large, multinational corporation, who does not, generally, appear to fit that description. This memo illustrates the total disconnect between that sort of person, and the other 97% of us for whom work ranks a distant 5th-10th on life's list of priorities.

So, in some sense, it's understandable. Inexcusable, but I at least get the place from where this sort of vitriol is coming from. He really thinks he can get people to care as much as he does. In some ways it's amazing that he made it so far while remaining so deluded.

Re: How to kill a company's morale in one easy memo

#82

Post by willyt »

jgrahamc wrote: post #8
j_baker wrote: post #6

"I think this parental type action SUCKS. However, what you are doing, as managers, with this company makes me SICK. It makes sick to have to write this directive. I know I am painting with a broad brush and the majority of the KC based associates are hard working, committed to Cerner success and committed to transforming health care. I know the parking lot is not a great measurement for 'effort'. I know that 'result…

On the company's web site there's a page about him (he's the CEO): http://cerner.com/public/Cerner_2.asp?id=27586 In that it says: "Cerner associates extol Neal for his passion and foresight, his ability to drive change within organizations, his entrepreneurial spirit, and his candid, uninhibited conversational style." So that's just a candid, uninhibited conversational style :-) Note that that message was sent in 20…

I watched a Midwife trying to enter my partners test results into what I believe was a CERNER system at my local hospital. It was painful. The UI is text based, looks pre windows 3.1 and breaks all the basic rules of UI design. Evidently, they also had more serious technical issues under the hood: http://bit.ly/4vLPtE http://bit.ly/9NQKi8 It took them months to sort this out and wasted a huge amount of the medical staff's time. I personally experienced the problems with appointments disappearing. Also, the nurses were having to print out test requests and give them to patients to take to appointments with instructions about what they information they needed to bring back because they couldn't make the requests through the system or access the results of the tests they had requested.

In short, I don't think the success of this company is based on the quality of its software or the timeliness of its delivery. Maybe this is always a problem where the end users are not the customer. The company that builds the system is chosen based on tenders from a few suppliers. As a consumer of a system like this it's hard to identify what you are actually buying. The purchasing of such a system will be managed by a senior executive who will have little experience of the pitfalls of the system in use before they are contractually committed to paying out significant sums of money. There is no market connection between the quality of the software and the end users. I suspect that companies make money in these markets by gaming the bidding process and milking every loophole in the contract to add extra time and cost, not by actually producing a better quality product than their competitors. It's not just a public sector purchasing problem either. Just look at any large construction project, these are also typically be late and over budget. Is there some kind of 'complexity threshold' at which point the market is not driving the quality or cost of the product because you are not sure what you are buying and for how much?

Re: How to kill a company's morale in one easy memo

#83

Post by tygorius »

j_baker wrote: post #24
jgrahamc wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the company's web site there's a page about him (he's the CEO): http://cerner.com/public/Cerner_2.asp?id=27586 In that it says: "Cerner associates extol Neal for his passion and foresight, his ability to drive change within organizations, his entrepreneurial spirit, and his candid, uninhibited conversational style." So that's just a candid, uninhibited conversational style :-) Note that that message was sent in 20…

That's speculation. They've done better than the NASDAQ, but how do you know they couldn't have done better without the memo being sent out?

Well, here's one clue from Google Finance's weekly price data: in the three weeks before he sent the memo the price had dropped from $29.407 to $21.063 - a 28% drop. Oddly enough, the 3/23 Friday close of $17 (just after the memo went public) marked the bottom of that stock decline. A month later the stock closed up at $21.55.

Generally speaking, warm fuzzy bosses don't mean spit to a stock's price, while layoffs can sometimes improve it. The perception that a division's managers are ineffectual, however, could hurt a lot. The story that a CEO was starting to kick managerial ass could improve investor's assessment of the company's chances. Certainly the price data supports the argument that the CEO's actions stopped the price erosion.

Re: How to kill a company's morale in one easy memo

#84

Post by CamperBob »

wazoox wrote: post #36
antidaily wrote: post #26

In April of 2010, Forbes magazine named Patterson fourth on their annual list of "America's Best-Performing Bosses" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neal_Patterson

Doesn't excuse being an horrible asshole.

The memo's almost ten years old. Maybe he learned from the reaction he provoked?

Re: How to kill a company's morale in one easy memo

#85

Post by tygorius »

aphyr wrote: post #22

Am I the only person who saw the line about the parking lot being half empty at 8 and 5 and thought, "Oh, that's consistent with a normal distribution of people working 10 hour days with a couple hour variance in arrival times"?

Given that the memo was a rant aimed at managers over problems that dated back a year, I took it to mean "You guys are working hard on things and leading by example, right?"

I've had a couple of bosses who worked hard and expected the managers to work hard too. They were also bosses who believed in sharing the wealth when the company succeeded. Which makes me wonder how many pieces of the puzzle (like his apology/clarification memo) we're not privy to.

Re: How to kill a company's morale in one easy memo

#86

Post by jemfinch »

Silhouette wrote: post #56
dbrannan wrote: post #11

Hmm... sounds like this issue could be solved if everyone stopped car-pooling.

Don't encourage them! Car parks have proven to be one of the most reliable indicators of whether I want to work at a company. On arrival for interview, I take a look around. If there are lots of nice cars, it's a good sign that the company is doing well and compensates its staff accordingly. If there are lots of older cars, it's probably a geek-friendly start-up atmosphere, not making much money yet, but everyone's i…

> If people start doing things like car pooling, this almost perfect way to avoid wasting several hours in an interview for a job I'm never going to accept anyway will be spoiled, and I'll have to find some other obvious prejudice to use! :-)

What do you do? Get to the parking lot, look at it, and then just call them and say, "I've decided not to interview with you"?

Re: How to kill a company's morale in one easy memo

#87

Post by [deleted] »

j_baker wrote: post #6

"I think this parental type action SUCKS. However, what you are doing, as managers, with this company makes me SICK. It makes sick to have to write this directive. I know I am painting with a broad brush and the majority of the KC based associates are hard working, committed to Cerner success and committed to transforming health care. I know the parking lot is not a great measurement for 'effort'. I know that 'result…

[deleted]

Re: How to kill a company's morale in one easy memo

#88

Post by jemfinch »

j_baker wrote: post #6

"I think this parental type action SUCKS. However, what you are doing, as managers, with this company makes me SICK. It makes sick to have to write this directive. I know I am painting with a broad brush and the majority of the KC based associates are hard working, committed to Cerner success and committed to transforming health care. I know the parking lot is not a great measurement for 'effort'. I know that 'result…

> This part proves that this guy is the worst kind of douchebag: one that knows what he is doing is stupid and heavy handed, and yet does it anyway.

You're overlooking a really important nuance of his letter: "I am through with the debate." It sounds like he'd been pushing the managers for better performance out of their teams for some time and was getting no results. He's trying a different tactic; perhaps not the best tactic, but it's better than repeating the same thing that already hadn't been working for some time.

Re: How to kill a company's morale in one easy memo

#89

Post by nl »

leelin wrote: post #30

I'll call some BS on the stock price affect... after some quick Googling this article seems to pinpoint the exact date: http://www.healthdatamanagement.com/news/4296-1.html Comparing CERN stock vs the S&P500, Dow Jones, and a related company ECLP and MDRX will show that all of them tanked the same week, and all of them recovered quite well within a month or so.

The link above is actually about the effect this memo had on the stock price. To quote:

A blunt e-mail message from Cerner Corp. CEO Neal Patterson about the work ethic of some employees caused the company's stock value to fall sharply last week. The company acknowledges the harsh tone of the message could have caused investors to question if the company was in crisis ... After the e-mail was posted on a Yahoo! bulletin board last week, the stock fell nearly 20% on March 22-23, including 15%, or $6.13 per share, on March 23. Patterson threatened installing time clocks, discontinuing an employee stock discount program and cutting staff by five percent, a morale blow at a company that prides itself on good employee relations. He told managers they had two weeks to get their units in shape, or "pack your bags." In a March 23 interview with the Kansas City Star, Patterson said threatening measures are not being pursued, but he continued to voice concern about work ethics in some segments of the company. He also sent out another e-mail apologizing for the harsh tone of the first one.

It would be interesting to see the apology email.

Re: How to kill a company's morale in one easy memo

#90

Post by nl »

jgrahamc wrote: post #8
j_baker wrote: post #6

"I think this parental type action SUCKS. However, what you are doing, as managers, with this company makes me SICK. It makes sick to have to write this directive. I know I am painting with a broad brush and the majority of the KC based associates are hard working, committed to Cerner success and committed to transforming health care. I know the parking lot is not a great measurement for 'effort'. I know that 'result…

On the company's web site there's a page about him (he's the CEO): http://cerner.com/public/Cerner_2.asp?id=27586 In that it says: "Cerner associates extol Neal for his passion and foresight, his ability to drive change within organizations, his entrepreneurial spirit, and his candid, uninhibited conversational style." So that's just a candid, uninhibited conversational style :-) Note that that message was sent in 20…

It did cause the stock to drop a bit for a while, and caused some negative publicity - including a NY Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/05/business/stinging-office-m...

The e-mail message was leaked and posted on Yahoo. Its belligerent tone surprised thousands of readers, including analysts and investors. In the stock market, the valuation of the company, which was $1.5 billion on March 20, plummeted 22 percent in three days.

....

At the end of the week, as the stock fell, Mr. Patterson sent out another e-mail message to his troops. Unlike the first memo, it was not called a Management Directive, but rather a Neal Note. It was both an apology to those he offended and a confirmation of the work-ethic problem within the company.

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