My First Boss

Passing through my hometown of Chapin, S.C. always makes me nostalgic for the good ol’ days. This summer I passed through and remembered my first boss, Mr. Wicker.

Believe it or not, my first job was as a school bus driver. Until 1987, the legal age to drive a school bus in South Carolina was 16. I started driving as soon as I turned 16 in the tenth grade. Don’t worry, this isn’t one of my “dangerous idea” columns. Instead, it’s about the leadership lessons I learned from Mr. Wicker.

Although it seems bizarre now, the system actually worked pretty well. The student drivers got paid to drive to school and a great parking spot. The school got cheap labor that didn’t know what unions were.

But the brain behind it all was Mr. Wicker. Each year, Mr. Wicker hand-picked about 30 students to go through the testing and training process.

He was pretty good at this task because he was also the vice principal in charge of discipline. Everyone had a healthy fear of Mr. Wicker. Rumors abounded about the implements of torture hidden in his office.

This responsibility, however, allowed him to know just about everyone in town and he had a pretty good idea about which students were responsible enough to handle a bus full of K-12 students.

Mr. Wicker chose drivers from every walk of life: black and white, male and female, athletes and artists. He also liked to keep busses within families. My older brother drove as did my younger sister.

After putting us through the ringer to make sure we were able to safely perform our duties, Mr. Wicker trusted us and supported us. When any conflict arose, he assumed that the bus driver was in the right. If I thought a student needed to be suspended from the bus, he (or she) was suspended. My recommendations carried the same weight as any teacher’s.

I never abused this trust because I knew that it had to be earned. Mr. Wicker’s trust in us caused us to act in trustworthy ways.

With this trust, however, came great responsibility. Mr. Wicker was in the parking lot every afternoon as the busses left. One day I pulled out of the lot when a car was in my blind spot. The car had time to stop before we collided, but Mr. Wicker was waiting for me the next day with a stern warning.

When necessary, Mr. Wicker was willing to go beyond stern warnings. Most of the full-time drivers were seniors and the juniors and sophomores served as substitutes. I received a full-time route as a junior, however, because one of the senior drivers was allowing his friend to stand in the stairwell along the route. Mr. Wicker didn’t tolerate blatant disregard for safety procedures and the senior was fired and replaced by a junior.

I learned a lot more from Mr. Wicker, but these simple lessons would seem to be relevant in any organization. Leaders should select employees carefully, make sure they’re trained well, and then trust them to do their job.

If Mr. Wicker was able to trust a bunch of high school kids with the lives of hundreds of children, I wonder why so many organizational leaders have trouble trusting their grown employees.

Organizational Commitment

One thing that most employers want is a committed workforce. If employees are committed to the organization, they should work harder and stick around longer. Replacing employees is expensive, so organizational commitment is a good thing.

What most organizations don’t realize, however, is that there are different types of commitment.
Some people, for example, are committed to their organization because they truly want to be part of the organization. These people strongly believe in the values and goals of the organization.

Some people are committed to their organization because they believe that they ought to be part of the organization. This type of commitment is common in family-owned businesses where someone wants to leave, but feels a moral obligation to stay.

Finally, some people are committed to their organization because they feel like they have to be part of the organization. These people may believe that they can’t find any better option or that it would be too costly to leave.

Many managers believe that it doesn’t really matter what kind of commitment they generate, as long as their employees feel some type of commitment that makes them reluctant to leave.
But is any commitment good commitment?

Let’s answer that question by looking at a different type of relationship. It turns out that people who study marital commitment have identified the same three types of commitment in marriages.

Some people are committed to their spouse because of common goals and values. Others are committed to their spouse because they believe that they have a moral obligation to preserve the relationship. Finally, and you can see where this is going, some people are committed to their spouse because they don’t believe they can do any better or they believe that it would be too costly to leave.

Which kind of marriage seems like the most fulfilling and productive? It’s pretty obvious that people with the “want to” kind of commitment will have better relationships. On the other end of the spectrum, marriages that are based on the “have to” kind of commitment seem rather pathetic, if not dangerous.

Someone who wants to leave a marriage, but feels like they can’t, will rarely act in the best interest of the spouse. And, in fact, a person in this predicament may act in ways that harm the spouse out of resentment.

I think the same danger exists when organizations cultivate the “have to” kind of commitment among their employees. Employees who want to leave a company, but feel as though they can’t, will rarely act in the best interest of the company.

Unfortunately, out of the three types of commitment, the “have to” kind is probably the easiest to generate. All you have to do is offer high pay or expensive benefits.

People with high salaries and miserable work environments often end up feeling trapped. They want to leave, but are trapped by mortgages and car payments. These people will do enough to get by at work, but not much more.

The most difficult kind of commitment to generate is also the most valuable. The “want to” kind of commitment begins with organizational values and goals that employees are proud to help the organization pursue. The next step is a very carefully designed employee selection process. Finally, just like any spouse, employees want to feel appreciated and they want to have a voice in decisions that affect them.

Are benefits beneficial?

In my last column I proposed the dangerous idea that job experience is overrated. I have a few more dangerous ideas and was planning to save them for later, but one of these dangerous ideas seems especially relevant now.

Let me preface this idea by stating that I’m not taking sides in the current school budget dilemma. Most organizations are facing the same situation, but the school budget allows us to view the problem with some numbers.

Let’s start with a thought experiment. Let’s imagine that we’re starting a brand new school system. We have 68 million dollars to use to educate approximately 11,000 students. How should the money be used to best accomplish the goal?

We could probably come up with a nice long list of ways to spend the money. My list would start with good teachers, books, computers, supplies, furniture, utilities, and building maintenance.

But if we were starting from scratch, how long would it take for someone to suggest that we should spend $200,000 of the money on dental care for teachers’ spouses? That’s not in my top ten and probably wouldn’t be in my top hundred.

Again, I’m not taking sides in the current debate, I’m simply offering this “dangerous” idea: I think employee benefits are a bad way to accomplish what most organizations want to accomplish.

Most organizations use employee benefits to help attract and retain the best employees. They keep people happy. But what if that’s not true? Let’s follow the logic.

Do the best teachers tend to have spouses with bad teeth? We can see the same kind of problem as we examine the most popular employee benefits. On average, companies spend an amount equal to 40 percent of their payroll on employee benefits. Companies spend the most on health insurance, retirement savings, and paid time off.

If a space alien landed in the US and observed this pattern, I’m sure they would ask why we pay so much to attract sickly people who want to get paid for not working.

The idea that benefits help to attract and retain the best employees is certainly debatable. But even if we accept the fact that good employees expect the most popular benefits, we still need to ask: Are benefits the most cost-effective way to “buy” employee loyalty?

The school budget for next year includes about $7.5 million for health insurance. I wonder how many teachers would rather just divide up that pool and take the cash?

Here’s the part where the benefits expert points out that taxes must be paid on the cash but not on the insurance. And the whole idea behind a group plan is to buy insurance at a discount.
That’s true, but I believe that most families can buy perfectly acceptable health insurance plans for much less and would still have some left over to supplement their salaries.

The problem is that we (employees) never shop around. So the cost of the group plan continues to rise, employers continue to pay the premiums because they don’t believe they have a choice, and money gets diverted from the organization’s real goals.

I’m almost to the bottom of the page, but I feel obligated to also point out that I’ve never met an employee who preferred spousal dental care over a positive and supportive work environment.