FROM THE EDITOR

One of the plot points of a schlocky TV show I caught the other night was a none-too-subtle rip-off of the Enron scandal. The CEO, charming even during deposition, looked at a flow chart showing off-shore accounts and paper subsidiaries and admitted that, if the chart looked strange to the prosecutor, it looked strange to him too. That's why he's the CEO and not the CFO or comptroller, he said.

"So," she shot back, "You're telling me you don't understand the financial workings of your own company?"

He explained that he felt his role was more to motivate - to give the vision - and get the team members to do their best work, like a coach.

That's when I switched off the TV, because trite sports analogies applied to business are my tipping point.

Professional sports and - worse yet - professional sports franchises are not real life. They are irrational organizations that are not - and should not be - emulated in a rational, free market business environment. Not to get all Das Kapital, but if you're modeling your business on the sports model, then are you paying your "shortstop" ten times more than your "manager?" And, if that manager maintains a Joe Torre-like success level (12 playoff appearances in 12 years and four World Series championships) are you seriously going to fire him?

Yes, we want bosses who motivate, but not to the exclusion of all else.

No, we don't want bosses who micromanage, but bosses do need to be conversant with the day-to-day, week-to-week, year-to-year tasks that comprise their employees' work lives and define their outputs.

One way supervisors can keep in touch is through the annual appraisal system.

Sure, the major purpose of a review is to form a basis for equitably divvying salary increases. But as writers Amy Hurd (page 28) and Michael Mulvaney, William McKinney and Rich Grodsky (Web Xtra) illustrate, proper employee review processes can expose supervisors to some of the nuances of their employees' jobs.

As part of a six-step process for improving an agency's performance appraisal, Dr. Mulvaney and his writing team suggest that employees work with their bosses to analyze their jobs, rate and weight the tasks they do and help design the appraisal instrument. Dr. Hurd recommends that employers arrive at individual required competencies for each employee and measure performance according to how well employees apply those specific competencies to their specific jobs.

Under either system, supervisors periodically meet with employees to discuss how each job works. Employees get to clue their bosses in to aspects of the job they might not be aware of. (And, sometimes, the supervisor and supervisee uncover and correct some mutual misapprehensions.) The process also allows employers to show employees how their jobs relate to the larger operations of the agency.

The result is not only a group of smarter employees, but also the kind of smarter, more attuned and more responsible managers that can set our industry above the rest.

— RODD WHELPLEY

Editor

4 Illinois Parks & Recreation www.ILipra.org