One thing a manager has to be able to do well is prioritize. I'm finding myself pulled in a number of directions these days, and working on this blog has become more of a chore than a pleasure. Given the low traffic and low yield of discourse, I'm going to pull the plug for a while and see if I miss it.
Apologies to the 30 or so of you who followed; and I trust that if I resume publication, you'll forgive me and check in to see what's new.
Thanks, everyone.
All week, Arwen has been writing about television shows that have been remade into movies. I wish I could tell you I had seen the new A-Team movie, or had gone to the Miami Vice movie, but I had my fill of those in the 80s. Once John Taylor had played with Power Station on Miami Vice, I was finished. Shark was jumped. They were never going to be able to top that. Nothing topped John Taylor when I was 15.
You know what else I loved when I was 15? Stirrup pants. I saw a pair of designer stirrup pants in the store last week, and when Arwen told me what her theme was, I thought of them immediately. Just like the A-Team and Miami Vice had their day, so has 80s fashion. For that matter, so has 60s and 70s fashion. I defy you to show up at work looking like Marcia Brady. That wouldn't even work for Marcia Brady these days!
Retro fashion does have its place outside the office. Wear your pompadour with pride on the weekends, and get down with your disco self after hours. But on the clock? Let's be honest, okay? No one likes to be honest about this. In the corporate mothership, you want to blend to get ahead. In any profession you want to blend. Why? Because your professional reputation depends on your ability to convince your higher-ups that you are enough like them to lead their company in the direction of their choice, and if you are a maverick, your career depends on your ability to make your higher-ups feel comfortable enough with you as a person to take a chance on your ideas. To a large extent, that means costuming yourself to appeal to their subconscious minds. Working Girl, a movie that went on to be a television show (Sandra Bullock starred, can you believe it?), is an excellent case in point.
Tess McGill is able to completely remake her career by remaking her image to match her corporate brains. Is a wardrobe change all that is needed? No, but would you have taken Tess' Jersey hair seriously? Of course not. You would have been wondering how much Aqua Net went into that remarkable mass. It is much easier to read her as a trustworthy source of information once she has transitioned from the unspoken uniform of the secretarial pool, into the unspoken uniform of management.
I write all this and then feel compelled to tell you that I don't always blend perfectly into the sea of black and navy. I am professional and dress code compliant, but if you put me in a line-up, I would stand out. Oh, I wear my pencil skirts and heels, and I have my suit jackets and blouses, but I am mad about accessories, color, and retro styling. You won't catch me wearing day-glo 80s, or Pucci prints from the 70s, but I rock the 40s and 50s Girl Friday look frequently. To my point, that look is office friendly and it is appealing on a subconscious level. You can trust a peplum jacket. You can feel good about a Peter Pan collar. You know those spectator pumps are going to walk over to you with the right spreadsheet. It is different from what you see every day, but it is still clearly professional and not costumey at all. That is everything to do with the fabrics and the fit.
So while I urge you to blend in with your higher-ups, I also hope you will find ways to be creative with your look. If you love the 80s, suit up in pink and gray, but kill the shoulder pads and avoid the Capezios. Trust me. You will never be able to wear Capezios as well as a member of Duran Duran. Don't even try.
Lane Buckman has been in love with fashion since she realized that her first Easter dress came with matching gloves, shoes, and purse. Growing up in the entertainment industry this former beauty queen, model and actress turned corporate career woman understands that dressing for success is just another form of costuming. And, since she has run the size gamut from 2 to 18, Lane understands dressing a variety of shapes. She has written dress codes and conducted Business Style and How to Dress seminars for Fortune 500 and finance companies, boutique agencies, and an international non-profit organization. She gives her stylish Southern mother credit for teaching her everything she knows.
Sam Gerard in The Fugitive is a U.S. Marshal on a mission. Inspired by Inspector Javert from Les Miserables, he spends his time chasing Richard Kimble, a man we know to be wrongly convicted. It makes for compelling viewing, watching two good guys duke it out.
And not for nothing, pitting Tommy Lee Jones against Harrison Ford was pure marketing genius.
While Kimble has the harder job of eluding the fuzz and coming up with exonerating evidence, he also only has himself to answer to. Gerard, on the other hand, leads a team of investigators who run the gamut from seasoned and no-nonsense to fairly young and impressionable. He is every inch the authoritative hardass manager.
Gerard offers us our first management lesson in his first appearance on screen: (Watch to 1:27)
Valuable tip: If you have a weakness, such as an inability to remember names, make sure your subordinates' skill sets compensate for it. Now, watch how he handles this confrontation: (Watch to 3:54)
As I said yesterday, there are very few times I recommend calling someone out in public. But if you have to do it, this is a brilliant approach. Be deferential, don't raise your voice, call the guy "sir." Give your antagonist plenty of rope to hang himself ... and then? Give him a little spin by the toe just for good measure.
Gerard also sticks to his convictions -- perhaps to the point of folly. (Watch to the end.)
Gerard saves the guy's life, and then has to justify his actions to the guy. In so doing, he manages to be a hardass while also being sympathetic to an alternate point of view, which is no mean feat. I've long wondered if there's an alternate version of that scene that has him also whisper, "And. I. Don't. Miss."
But if you are going to be this rigid in your code, you have to accept the fact that those who work for you are not always going to fall right in line. (Watch to 8:04)
Much as I sympathize with Gerard's dyspepsia on words that aren't real words, I have to confess that I'd probably react much the way Biggs does here. And I'm not sure I'd do it under my breath. Maybe, though. It is Tommy Lee Jones, after all. Carrying a firearm. And it doesn't get much more authoritative than that.
Miami Vice, which was pitched to executives as "MTV Cops," was noted for its hyper-stylish and artistic ouevre, and for plots that focused on the glamorous and sexy Miami underworld life of illegal sex and drugs. The sets, the music, the camera angles all took a relatively routine cop show formula in a new, pretty (and for the most part, sort of cheesy) direction. The writing was a little flat, but the colors sure popped, especially Sonny Crockett's trademark outfits.
Lt. Martin Castillo is the counterpoint to the rest of the show. He is button-down and wears dark suits. (We'll let the hairstyle go. It was the 80s.) He is quiet and deliberate, not splashy and wisecracking. Castillo is, to some extent, a Latino version of Frank Furillo in that he is a humane and sympathetic leader who adheres to a strict code. But where we learned a lot about Furillo's personal life, Castillo is even more laconic with his staff and he is pretty much a recluse outside of the office.
(There's nothing wrong with this, I'd like to add. Depending on who you are and what your work situation is, sometimes keeping your personal life personal might very well be the best thing you can do for your staff.)
This is probably not surprising, given that co-executive producer Anthony Yerkovich worked on both shows. If a formula works, why would you mess with it? Right down to the -illo surname suffix, if you please.
We learn a good deal about Castillo's formula early on in the series, when his group is re-assigned to the robbery division to help crack a home-invasion case. Crockett came from robbery, so he is the bridge between the two lieutenants. It's an interesting dichotomy: the good ol' boy visiting his old stomping grounds with his uptight by-the-book boss.
It's also a lesson in how to bigfoot a meeting. Ordinarily, I'd advise against this sort of behavior. There's not much to be gained in taking a guy down in front of his people. Even if you're right, this sort of thing will make you wrong in the eyes of many people and create enemies unnecessarily.
As the episode progresses, Castillo essentially conducts his own investigation and does his own legwork, which does help advance the case, but also makes things a bit awkward for Crockett as he is left hung out to dry with his old boss.
This competitive police work and calling out of shoddy work escalates -- if you can call it escalation; Castillo isn't exactly a volatile guy, so there are never any huge altercations. But right about here is where any normal person in Crockett's position starts bitching to both sides and, if at all possible, starts refusing to stand in the middle.
(Also note, please, how Crockett's coat pulls down the stripes in the patio umbrella in the photo above. This sort of attention to artistic detail was really what made this show.)
Ultimately, of course, Castillo demonstrates his superior ability to crack the case, but it is a group effort.
And for whatever reason, after all the bad guys are caught and Castillo shows himself to be a steady hand in a shootout, we see that he's willing to let bygones be bygones -- and pay the rare compliment.
I admit, the ending doesn't ring particularly true for me. But even if it is completely insincere, knowing when to be gracious and give the guy an out is also a sign of a good leader. No point kicking a guy when he's already out the door, right?
The Brady Bunch was not the first show to feature a blended family, nor did it do much to point up some of the very real conflicts that arise when you try to smush two households together.
(The original version of Yours, Mine and Ours did much better justice to this issue -- a movie that yielded its own undeserved and far inferior remake.)
The Bradys were, in fact, ripe for parody, a demand met in 1995 with a movie that pointed up the hokier points of the show.
Still, with six kids and three adults, even the most saccharine show was going to stumble over an episode that meets our criteria for demonstrating how a group unit with superiors and subordinates should operate. Early in the second season, the kids point out that they're plenty old and plenty capable to babysit themselves. Here, then, is a template for how to negotiate when you're looking for more responsibility. (Watch to 5:42)
Carol Brady goes on to demonstrate excellent managerial acumen by making sure the whole team is on the same page, allowing the group to air grievances and concerns, settling the matter of who is in charge, and making her decision clear in no uncertain terms. Note that she doesn't just brush off the issues: She gives due consideration to the frivolous claims; she takes note of the more serious problems rather than dump them in the laps of her new managers -- and she knows the difference between the two. (Watch to 7:17)
Of course, then the parental units make a rookie mistake. They don't let the managers manage. They let their doubts get the better of them and decide to check up on the situation. In office parlance, this is usually referred to as "micro-managing." Trust me, that term is never used in a positive context. (Watch to the end.)
... And then the cops came. Ultimately, of course, all ends well. The kids did what they were taught, the parents are moderately embarrassed and learn a lesson, the kids roll their eyes, cue the Brady theme. If your managerial snafus can end with a laugh track, you're doing something right.
Of course, if your office more closely mirrors real life, you'd come home to find the ones left in charge have turned into Little Hitlers and nobody is speaking to anyone else. There's a different lesson in there -- one the new managers will learn the hard way. If you're a good supervisor, you'll still let the managers manage and figure out their own way to fix it.
This week we're going to take a look at TV shows of bygone eras that gained the dubious honor of being ripped off -- pardon me, "rebooted" -- into feature films.
The quality of -- and intentions behind -- these reboots is variable. Some are intentional spoofs. Some are sincere homages. But even the most ridiculous show can always serve as a bad example.
The latest "reboot" is the new A Team flick. I hear it is a hit among 12-year-old boys, and I see it is a washout among reviewers. The original show probably hit the same demographic, though it did stay on for five seasons.
In short, the show features a group of ex-United States Army Special Forces turned soldiers of fortune while running from the military after being branded as war criminals for a "crime they didn't commit". Their leader is Colonel John "Hannibal" Smith, whose plans generally involve some form of theft, lots of guns and more explosions. Yet nobody ever seems to die, or wind up maimed. Gotta love that. Lieutenant Templeton "Faceman" Peck is a smooth-talking con man, the pilot is Captain H.M. "Howling Mad" Murdock and the strong man and mechanic is Sergeant Bosco Albert B.A. "Bad Attitude" Baracus.
Watching how the guys work as a team is not as interesting as watching the car chases, fistfights and explosions, but it is a different take on the usual management relationship. While there is a leader, all the players are there voluntarily and operate on an equal footing.
Even the crazy guy gets a full and fair hearing. Of course, his crazy has some logic behind it, which helps. Hannibal shows a good managerial trick here -- finding something useful where nobody else would bother to look. It's a different coping technique from Baracus:
There is a debate to be had whether indulging such behavior is a good idea. But as long as it works for the team, Hannibal is obviously going to let it go. Then again, one might question whether Hannibal is all there, especially when he assumes false identities. The sane members of his team get abused far more, in situations where they can't possibly retaliate.
But as Hannibal demonstrates, when there is mutual respect, a little ribbing and one-upmanship is simply high good humor. Hannibal also realizes that leading a group of volunteers is not the same as running a military operation, and he treats his folks democratically. Everyone gets a vote before they take a case.
And most important, he knows that even when caught offguard, one should keep one's game face on -- and not give anything away.
All in all, The A Team was more a goodhearted romp than a serious examination of interpersonal relationships, but everyone knows that even the best group of friends needs a ringleader, and that the ringleader needs to keep the support of his mates to get anywhere. Be a good ringleader. Choose good mates.
Fashion is nothing if you don't know how to behave yourself. You know the old saying, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig. Well, you can put a jackass in Armani, and it's still a jackass. This week, I am writing about how to behave at an office happy hour or after-hours party involving alcohol.
I think it goes without saying that managers, above all employees, should be very careful of their alcohol in take at office functions. You should never put an employee in the position of having to care for, or worry about you. The last thing in the world you need is to have an employee pouring you into a taxi at the end of the night, or worse, bailing you out of jail on your DUI in the morning. God forbid alcohol should cloud your judgment to the point that you end up telling that intern from Marketing just exactly what you'd like to do to her in the privacy of your office. Managers need to follow very specific codes of conduct in the company of their team members, be it 9 a.m. in the office, or 9 p.m. at the bar. Whether you are standing in the office, or outside, you are still The Boss. Don't kid yourself that your employees are evolved enough to compartmentalize your behavior. Everything you do with an employee is on-the-clock. You'll remember that even Phoebe turned on Chandler when she went to work for him.
Obviously, I am fairly old school about most things. When it comes to alcohol, I don't think a manager should ever risk overindulging. That might mean not drinking at all. Your team members need to trust your judgment, and how you manage your liquor says a lot. If you choose to indulge, two drinks should be the max. Two is usually the number of drink tickets HR will hand out at wet events, and at two drinks a lightweight will be feeling all right, but very few people will be slurring and declaring their love.
Your bartime behavior will set the standard for most of your employees. Unless you want to take responsibility for seeing them all home safely, set the example you'd like them to follow. Also remember that your sobriety might be the only thing that keeps a drunken employee from driving. If for no other reason than that good help is hard to find, you don't want to send your team out into the night drunk as a cheerleader at senior prom. (Should you have an employee over-indulge, then take the reins. Call him a cab, or drive him home yourself, but do not let him drive.)
In short, if you want your employees to respect you in the morning, you've got to be respectable when you're with them in the night. I know it's no fun, but that's why you're getting paid the big bucks.
Lane Buckman has been in love with fashion since she realized that her first Easter dress came with matching gloves, shoes, and purse. Growing up in the entertainment industry this former beauty queen, model and actress turned corporate career woman understands that dressing for success is just another form of costuming. And, since she has run the size gamut from 2 to 18, Lane understands dressing a variety of shapes. She has written dress codes and conducted Business Style and How to Dress seminars for Fortune 500 and finance companies, boutique agencies, and an international non-profit organization. She gives her stylish Southern mother credit for teaching her everything she knows.
It is safe to say that THE consummate professional on the bar scene is Rick Blaine. Unfortunately, Rick is so well-guarded (and well-regarded,) his clips can't be embedded on piker blogs such as mine, so his insights will have to be saved.
If you can't have the sublime, then go for the ridiculous. Cocktail, with Tom Cruise and Bryan Brown fits that bill quite nicely. (The flick even features a nod to Rick Blaine: In one of the more overwrought scenes -- which believe me, is saying something -- a movie marquee in the background advertises Casablanca.)
There are a couple life lessons to be picked up from this travesty. Trust your working-class relatives, but do everything you can to alienate the rich ones. Mentors can also be assholes. If you have sex with Tom Cruise under a Jamaican waterfall, you'll get knocked up.
There are also a few slightly more useful lessons, if you squint hard enough. The first, obviously, is to be smart about choosing your mentors. If someone tries to give you advice that involves working hard and using your brain occasionally, you might want to listen. (Watch through 6:47.)
A huge part of Bri-Guy's problem, in fact, is he spends too much time looking for the quick fix and not enough time using his brain. He falls in with Mentor Doug, an aging lothario who wants to be a kept man. There is supposed to be a contrasting scene wherein the college professor's ability to impart knowledge isn't a patch on what Mentor Doug has to offer. (Watch through 3:53.)
What that scene should really tell you, though, is if you don't know what a money multiplier is, go to the professor's friggin' office hours while remembering your part-time job is the means to the end, and that if Mentor Doug really had much to offer, he wouldn't be tending someone else's bar. Or, you know, go ahead and learn you have a knack for the short pour and the long pour. I gotta say, though, if I ordered a drink and I had to sit through a Cirque du Soleil bottle act for a watered-down G&T, I am not sure I'd leave much of a tip.
Anyway, this being a bartender movie and all, there has to come a breaking point with school. It is conveniently provided by a particularly obnoxious and unpleasant teacher, who starts out nasty and flies into an obnoxious and unpleasant snit when Bri-Guy challenges him. So, yes, on first viewing, here is how not to teach a class: (Watch to 1:40.)
Take a moment to think about this, though, and you'll see a different problem with this scene. Foremost among them: If our hero is the Class-A bartender we are supposed to believe (not to mention having spent time in the service and theoretically gone through basic training,) shouldn't he be completely immune to taking crap from jerks like this? Shouldn't he be trained in defusing volatile situations instead of pushing a bunch of buttons to make the guy go off? Are we supposed to believe Bri-Guy has weighed the consequences of his actions, or is he just mouthing off like a stupid teen-ager? A point to ponder.
So our hero runs off and has a series of bartending misadventures with Mentor Doug, who boosts him to a bigtime establishment and promptly steals his girlfriend, mocking all self-improvement efforts every step of the way. Bri-Guy reacts to this by "going to the beach" as his uncle suggested in the first clip. He spends three years there before finding Elisabeth Shue (Jordan Almond -- well, Jordan Someone,) in a highly improbable scenario wherein our hero hurdles a bar and delivers a quip about a drunkass girl on the beach instead of just, you know, handing our heroine a phone to dial 911.
So, boy meets girl, boy bones girl, boy reunites with bad influence Mentor Doug and ditches girl for richer Old Girl, who treats him like the gigolo he is until he ditches her (with the aforementioned Casablanca shoutout,) and goes back to Miz Almond. Only, surprise! She wants nothing to do with him, even though he comes on bended knee to her place of employ. And, surprise again! She too handles difficult situations like a teen-ager. Here, then, is a scene on how not to mix your work and home life if you want to keep your job and/or earn any tips:
Additionally ... where the hell is her boss? She's getting pissy at customers who apparently have been waiting an age for her to take their order, she's dumping perfectly good food that costs good money on other customers, and her boss is nowhere to be seen? Bad management!
Our hero persists ... and it turns out Miz Almond is Miz Moneybags! (Which might explain why she is such a lousy waitress, if not why she is allowed to keep her job as such.) And Daddy Moneybags tries to buy off our hero! Who tears up the check and shows how much he cares! And how little Dad thinks of bartenders! All with really, really painfully bad acting! (Watch to 2:35. No, really, all the way through to the end of the scene. You'll be howling.)
Note to would-be suitors of knocked-up rich girls: Talking to anyone's dad this way is not going to gain you any allies. Seriously, if Bri-Guy had gone in there with an ounce of preparedness or any line worth selling, Pops probably would have been a bit more sympathetic. I mean, how much could he really want his unwed daughter dealing with 3 a.m. feedings at the penthouse? And where's Almond's mom for all this drama?
Fast forward some more. We learn Mentor Doug is a loser! A failure! Bankrupt and dissipated with a slutty wife, who leaves Mentor Doug passed out drunk on his yacht while she comes on to Bri-Guy -- giving rise to Bri summing up his morals in what might be the most eloquent line in the movie (It's the first line, but the scene runs to 0:30.):
"I can't make it with my best friend's old lady." Really? Well, you sure can't make it with her now, Bri-Guy; no woman wants to be called an old lady! Another scene badly acted and another situation badly managed. Every time Bri has a chance to bow out of something gracefully, he prefers to flail around knocking things off the shelves and smashing the dishes. Maybe that makes the scenery easier to chew, what do I know? Anyway, we return our attention to Mentor Doug -- who is now Dead Mentor Doug, having opened a vein with some busted Baccarat crystal.
An interesting dilemma, no? Does leaving your despondent drunk friend alone while you wander off with his slutty wife count as bad management? Or just bad judgment? If your judgment is that off, should you be trusted to do anything right?
Dead Mentor Doug still has one last bon mot in him, though, delivered via USPS, when Slutty Widow forwards Bri the suicide note. Because, no, that's not totally weird and creepy or anything. Not at all. I suppose you could construe it as effective communication -- it's written out longhand, it's pretty concise, and if the recipient doesn't read/understand/follow the thought, well, who cares? You're dead! (Watch to 3:42)
We wrap up with another positively dreadful scene wherein Bri and Miz Almond have a passionate, albeit extremely abbreviated catching-up chat while Daddy Moneybags proceeds to demonstrate every single stereotypically bad thing a parent can do when dealing with an emotionally overwrought offspring in love with the "wrong" person -- and calls in the doorman and the butler for backup. WTF? Note to would-be rich dads of knocked-up daughters: Delivering ultimatums while her version of Benjamin Braddock is howling "Elaine! Elaine!" in her ear is not going to sway her to your side. (Watch to 6:50)
An interesting side note -- watch the facial expressions during the ass-kicking scuffle. Don't the Moneybags both have looks on their face like they're upset about the property damage? Or was that just me going, "Well, good thing you've got some money saved, Bri, cos that weird art thing you just destroyed either cost a bazillion dollars or was some lame-ass creation of your future wife, and either way you're pretty much hosed."
What is the life lesson, here? If you judge by the final scene, wherein Uncle Pat comes through with a loan and Bri gets his bar, the lesson to be derived is "save up some money, find some family member willing to give you a loan even though you blew them off over three years ago back in the first 15 minutes of the movie, get a girl knocked up and you'll get a happy ending. Oh, and you'll get to recite really bad poetry and your bar's entire clientele will love it."
Serious management fail, y'all. I'd love to see the sequel to this -- I envision it where he's mouthing off to beer distributors, she's smashing bottles over the heads of customers who piss her off, and their kids are all, "Yeah, we don't know these people. We're gonna go find some wolves to raise us."
But that's a different movie.
Bartenders do not have an easy time of it. Liquor licenses, entertainment schedules, drunk patrons -- it's a lot to take on. If you can manage a bar, odds are you can manage just about anything. Problem is, ever since Archie Bunker bought his own bar and grill there aren't very many good examples of stellar bar management out there. What do you suppose that is about?
For a bad example, we can always look to The Simpsons. Poor Moe is a pathetic case with the worst judgment on the planet. How many errors do you spot here?
Don't lose your cool. Don't leave your responsibilities unattended. Don't, don't. On the other hand, at least Moe stops short of assault, and he is master of his own domain -- unlike the poor slob working for Tony Soprano, who has an extreme way of rectifying bad hiring decisions.
Valerie Malone (no relation to Sam, as far as I know), in contrast, had the good sense to treat her business on 90210 like a business -- even when she was using it to machiavellian ends, and even if she spent 99 percent of her time messing around in other people's business, to unhappy ends.
But honestly, the award for savviest saloonkeeper of all time has to go to my old favorite Al Swearengen. Deadwood's patriarch is a shrewd businessman, a master showman, he responds quickly to emergencies and he communicates effectively (if violently) with his staff when they drop the ball.
One must bear in mind that there are as many different managerial styles as there are managers -- and people to be managed. Bar management is a completely different animal from the white-collar college grad office environment. You can be a little looser, you can have a little more fun. But you also have to be a lot more careful to keep things in line. Frankly, all I've learned from this week is that I'd be right awful at running such an establishment. A toast to those who do.
Mid-level manager, executive couch potato. I watch and parse TV into management lessons to save y'all the time.
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