This post, and the contents of the email that was sent to the tag wrangling committee, has some things in it that deeply concern me. I'm seeing *many* of the hallmarks of people who are inexperienced with people management (not process management, but people management) who have been thrust into a managerial role and are trying to figure out the rules for how to manage people as they go along.
And the thing is, when you say "if you expect us to act like a nonprofit org, you have to treat us as a nonprofit org" -- that works both ways, and I would indeed argue that you've got the causality reversed. You've already lost a lot of good faith from many people; a lot of people have gotten burned and a lot of people are going to be negative (not just critical, *negative*) no matter what you do. Waiting for those people to change the way they interact with the OTW before making changes in both process management and people management is only going to make the problem worse.
There's a point (and, sadly, I think y'all have crossed it with many people) where you will be unable to convince your critics that you're achieving measurable, positive change until a *lot* of time has passed. (A *lot*. I'm talking years, in some cases.) Expecting anyone to change how they present their negative opinions, or broadly chastising people without any specifics for not expressing feedback in the most constructive way possible, really does nothing but reinforce the negative perceptions people have.
(it also does, unfortunately, tend to push people who are neutral further into the negative end of the scale. a few years ago I touched on this in part 3 of my "Why Monetizing Social Media Through Advertising Is Doomed To Failure" essay, under the heading 'the long dark road to cat macros', There are four stages of reaction to a property or an organization doing something that has the potential to piss people off, and those stages aren't just applicable to advertising; they can be generalized. The OTW is on the line between a stage 3 and a stage 4 on more than one of the challenges facing the org, i think, and the thing about stage 4 is, once a specific individual has kicked over into stage 4 reaction on *anything*, the chances of you winning them back are not only next to nonexistent, any attempt to do so has a much greater chance of kicking stage 2 and stage 3 people over into stage 4.)
look, i'll be blunt: the org has a very bad PR problem right now, over and above the organizational and technical problems y'all are trying so hard to solve. And the thing is, everything you guys have done lately shows that you *know* you have these problems. You're taking a number of very badly needed steps to fix those problems; from the outside it definitely seems like you're getting a good sense of the scope of the problem. Everybody knows that change is not going to happen overnight -- even your worst and most negative critics know that, even if they gripe loudly about the problems not being solved yet. And it's very clear (also from outside) that you're taking those problems seriously and working on things that will solve them; even if you aren't 100% sure of the best ways to solve the problems, you're trying things and hoping they'll have a positive effect.
But telling people how to express criticism -- even if that's addressing people entirely internally, like the email to the wrangling committee -- *never, ever works*. Ever. I have never, not once in oh-god-12+-years of managing people and longer than that watching others manage people and being managed by people myself, seen a manager be successful in trying to dictate to people the manner in which they should provide critical feedback (as opposed to the process by which they should provide feedback in general). All it does, *especially* when the attempt is as vague and free of concrete details and specific examples as both the wrangling committee email and this post is, is make people even more frustrated, resentful, and -- and this gets worse the more vague the communication is -- paranoid about what is and isn't appropriate to say.
Part of being a manager, and it's definitely the sucky part, is to listen to people yelling at you -- at *you* personally, often in ways that are emotional, deeply personal, and incredibly hurtful -- and sift through the yelling for the underlying cause of their hurt and anger, then fix that underlying cause. (Or, at the very least, listen to their perspective and do what you can to find workarounds for the underlying cause.) It sucks. I won't deny that it sucks. It is deeply stressful, harrowing, emotional, and painful. But it's part of being a manager, and if someone is so conflict-avoidant or so emotionally vulnerable that listening to that kind of vitriol would be damaging to their health and stability, they should not be in a role that requires them to be responsible for managing people.
I'm not saying that people on a team *should* abuse their managers, or that people on the outside *should* be vituperative when offering criticism or negative opinions. It's definitely not a nice thing to do. But it happens -- especially when people feel like their more reasonable feedback has been ignored and they feel like they *have* to be nasty in order to be heard -- and it's the role of the people-manager to abosorb, *privately*, the negativity coming from their team members and to shield their team from the negativity of outside voices. Whether that involves pulling someone on the team aside for a confidential one-to-one chat and getting cried on or yelled at for four hours, or involves taking someone out of the way on the 'front lines' of customer interaction to handle an angry and abusive customer yourself, I'd argue that it's the #1 job task a manager should and must do in order for a team to be successful. And sadly, I really don't see a lot of that happening, from the bits that we see from the outside here. It may be happening -- the nature of good management is that it is, sadly, best when it is invisible -- but its lack shows in a lot of ways that can be measured from the outside and i'm seeing a lot of them lately.
I'm not saying you shouldn't have posted this, or that the tag wrangling chairs shouldn't have written the email that they did, but going forward I do think you (you = "collectively, as an organization, anyone who is in any position of authority") have to be *super* careful to avoid anything *at all* that looks like vague chastising or an attempt to police people's emotions and reactions, whether sent internally or posted externally. I know how frustrating it is to feel like you're amking a lot of headway on tough problems (which I definitely think you guys are, don't get me wrong) and people aren't giving you any credit, just continuing to holler at you -- believe me, I worked for LJ for six years, I know *exactly* how that feels. but it takes a long, long, *long* time for negative experiences or interactions to fade from people's minds, and at this point, y'all are just going to have to put up with being shouted at and snarked about for a while until the effects of those organizational changes start to be felt.
facetofcathy is absolutely correct when she says above: There's a point at which requests for us all to step up and be respectful and constructive and to use the official channels in professional ways sounds uncomfortably like half of a good cop/bad cop routine. there are a lot of people out there who have used those official channels and tried to be respectful and constructive and have gotten burned. it's going to take a while to get those people's goodwill back, and it sucks for those OTW staff who are new to their roles and feeling as though they're being punished for things that other people have done, but the org as a whole needs to make up a lot of ground to get back to 'neutral' in a lot of cases.
and in the meantime, people are going to yell. and it's the job of a manager to listen to the yelling, maintain composure in the face of the yelling, and do something productive with the underlying problems that are motivating the yelling. not to chastise people for yelling (even, and probably *especially*, if they're also doing something about the underlying cause of the yelling). doing that burns goodwill faster than just about anything else, and overshadows the very real efforts being made to address the organizational shortcomings people are yelling about in the first place.
(apologies for any typos/unclear bits, i'm four days post-hand-surgery and have one hand mostly bound up right now. Once i'm closer to recovered, though, i'm yet again repeating the offer i've made multiple times before: if you have people who need information on people management, or if you've got specific questions about how to improve people management skills or how to handle a situation or specific problem, i'm still happy to help.)
no subject
And the thing is, when you say "if you expect us to act like a nonprofit org, you have to treat us as a nonprofit org" -- that works both ways, and I would indeed argue that you've got the causality reversed. You've already lost a lot of good faith from many people; a lot of people have gotten burned and a lot of people are going to be negative (not just critical, *negative*) no matter what you do. Waiting for those people to change the way they interact with the OTW before making changes in both process management and people management is only going to make the problem worse.
There's a point (and, sadly, I think y'all have crossed it with many people) where you will be unable to convince your critics that you're achieving measurable, positive change until a *lot* of time has passed. (A *lot*. I'm talking years, in some cases.) Expecting anyone to change how they present their negative opinions, or broadly chastising people without any specifics for not expressing feedback in the most constructive way possible, really does nothing but reinforce the negative perceptions people have.
(it also does, unfortunately, tend to push people who are neutral further into the negative end of the scale. a few years ago I touched on this in part 3 of my "Why Monetizing Social Media Through Advertising Is Doomed To Failure" essay, under the heading 'the long dark road to cat macros', There are four stages of reaction to a property or an organization doing something that has the potential to piss people off, and those stages aren't just applicable to advertising; they can be generalized. The OTW is on the line between a stage 3 and a stage 4 on more than one of the challenges facing the org, i think, and the thing about stage 4 is, once a specific individual has kicked over into stage 4 reaction on *anything*, the chances of you winning them back are not only next to nonexistent, any attempt to do so has a much greater chance of kicking stage 2 and stage 3 people over into stage 4.)
look, i'll be blunt: the org has a very bad PR problem right now, over and above the organizational and technical problems y'all are trying so hard to solve. And the thing is, everything you guys have done lately shows that you *know* you have these problems. You're taking a number of very badly needed steps to fix those problems; from the outside it definitely seems like you're getting a good sense of the scope of the problem. Everybody knows that change is not going to happen overnight -- even your worst and most negative critics know that, even if they gripe loudly about the problems not being solved yet. And it's very clear (also from outside) that you're taking those problems seriously and working on things that will solve them; even if you aren't 100% sure of the best ways to solve the problems, you're trying things and hoping they'll have a positive effect.
But telling people how to express criticism -- even if that's addressing people entirely internally, like the email to the wrangling committee -- *never, ever works*. Ever. I have never, not once in oh-god-12+-years of managing people and longer than that watching others manage people and being managed by people myself, seen a manager be successful in trying to dictate to people the manner in which they should provide critical feedback (as opposed to the process by which they should provide feedback in general). All it does, *especially* when the attempt is as vague and free of concrete details and specific examples as both the wrangling committee email and this post is, is make people even more frustrated, resentful, and -- and this gets worse the more vague the communication is -- paranoid about what is and isn't appropriate to say.
Part of being a manager, and it's definitely the sucky part, is to listen to people yelling at you -- at *you* personally, often in ways that are emotional, deeply personal, and incredibly hurtful -- and sift through the yelling for the underlying cause of their hurt and anger, then fix that underlying cause. (Or, at the very least, listen to their perspective and do what you can to find workarounds for the underlying cause.) It sucks. I won't deny that it sucks. It is deeply stressful, harrowing, emotional, and painful. But it's part of being a manager, and if someone is so conflict-avoidant or so emotionally vulnerable that listening to that kind of vitriol would be damaging to their health and stability, they should not be in a role that requires them to be responsible for managing people.
I'm not saying that people on a team *should* abuse their managers, or that people on the outside *should* be vituperative when offering criticism or negative opinions. It's definitely not a nice thing to do. But it happens -- especially when people feel like their more reasonable feedback has been ignored and they feel like they *have* to be nasty in order to be heard -- and it's the role of the people-manager to abosorb, *privately*, the negativity coming from their team members and to shield their team from the negativity of outside voices. Whether that involves pulling someone on the team aside for a confidential one-to-one chat and getting cried on or yelled at for four hours, or involves taking someone out of the way on the 'front lines' of customer interaction to handle an angry and abusive customer yourself, I'd argue that it's the #1 job task a manager should and must do in order for a team to be successful. And sadly, I really don't see a lot of that happening, from the bits that we see from the outside here. It may be happening -- the nature of good management is that it is, sadly, best when it is invisible -- but its lack shows in a lot of ways that can be measured from the outside and i'm seeing a lot of them lately.
I'm not saying you shouldn't have posted this, or that the tag wrangling chairs shouldn't have written the email that they did, but going forward I do think you (you = "collectively, as an organization, anyone who is in any position of authority") have to be *super* careful to avoid anything *at all* that looks like vague chastising or an attempt to police people's emotions and reactions, whether sent internally or posted externally. I know how frustrating it is to feel like you're amking a lot of headway on tough problems (which I definitely think you guys are, don't get me wrong) and people aren't giving you any credit, just continuing to holler at you -- believe me, I worked for LJ for six years, I know *exactly* how that feels. but it takes a long, long, *long* time for negative experiences or interactions to fade from people's minds, and at this point, y'all are just going to have to put up with being shouted at and snarked about for a while until the effects of those organizational changes start to be felt.
and in the meantime, people are going to yell. and it's the job of a manager to listen to the yelling, maintain composure in the face of the yelling, and do something productive with the underlying problems that are motivating the yelling. not to chastise people for yelling (even, and probably *especially*, if they're also doing something about the underlying cause of the yelling). doing that burns goodwill faster than just about anything else, and overshadows the very real efforts being made to address the organizational shortcomings people are yelling about in the first place.
(apologies for any typos/unclear bits, i'm four days post-hand-surgery and have one hand mostly bound up right now. Once i'm closer to recovered, though, i'm yet again repeating the offer i've made multiple times before: if you have people who need information on people management, or if you've got specific questions about how to improve people management skills or how to handle a situation or specific problem, i'm still happy to help.)