February 4 – Our new nanny is a wonder. It’s like the whole world has changed. A little toleration of failure appears to be part of her make up. The children, even the eldest, seem to think she’s Mary Poppins whilst the urgency that my wife and I had suffered of having to be at home at an absolute moment in time to avoid suffering the silence of accusation from behind a sulky brow has been lifted from our lives – not that we’ll abuse the new freedom.
It’s been quite extraordinarily liberating to see what difference an apparently small change can make. 97% of that change is attitudinal. We have no intention at all of being late. The reality is we both like our children and are usually home to see them as soon as we can be (being a Dad is the next most important role I have after being a husband and comes before work). But the freedom toleration brings has been enormously powerful in improving the quality of life.
It’s a lesson learned I brought into work this week. I have had debriefing meetings with #1 and the soon to be departing numbers 2 and 3 in her department. I wanted to know just why issues had reached the point where two people wanted to leave and admit the candour of comments was quite shocking. I’d been well aware there was stress – that had become obvious. But it seems it had moved beyond that to pettiness. Neither side comes out of it well – and I can’t lose them all, so of course I have to support #1 right now, but it’s also very clear she has much still to learn about delegation and flexibility – and just about having a sense of humour to make sure things get done when there is pressure on everyone that requires give and take all round.
No one can write a manual to explain such rules. But they’re need in the implicit infrastructure of management. And they clearly failed in our accounts department without me really realising. And maybe that’s not to my credit either – although, as I’ve noted before, sometimes you really have to respect the right of line managers to manage.
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Interesting
Some interesting developments and comments.
It looks as though no.1 is being held accountable for issues within the accounts department. It may just be that there has been some personality clash and the 2 leavers have stuck together against their immediate manager, which often happens.
Has No1 previous experience of managing a team ? - does she get much support from ?
It looks as though No1 is not entirely happy, and you need to understand why.
It also appears that No1 authority is constantly being undermined - do you hold exit interviews with all employees ? If not, why did you do so in this case ? - did you explain your reasons to No1 ?
You mention she has delegation issues - after the recent bank rec-gate, she is probably too worried to delegate any work in case it is not 100% correct and she gets the blame (and maybe another written warning or dismissal !).
I remember a while ago that you had an employee in accounts (who was fully qualified) who made a mistake with some ledger postings. They returned to work to discover that their access to post journals had been reversed !
Was no1 around at this time ?
I believe that you first need to look closer to home to identify and resolve all issues, otherwise No1 might just get up and leave one day and then there will be nobody left !