Management is hard work, don't let anyone tell you different and don't let the scoffers get you down. You have to deal with unhappy staff, you have to protect your staff from unhappy outsiders. You have to step back and let people succeed or fail on their own merits, and be prepared for either outcomes. You have to sit on your hands and let other people do their jobs when it would be infinitely faster and easier to just brush them aside and get the work done yourself.
But that's part of what makes it interesting, right? If all you had to do as a manager was show up every day, wish everyone a cheery good morning and then go play on Facebook til it was time to go home, that might be fun, but not very fulfilling.
One of the hardest things a manager has to do is monitor her staff. Who's whipsmart? Who's a workaholic? Who's burned out and bitter? Who's the loose cannon?
Pity poor Lisa Cuddy -- she's got one guy who fits all those descriptions. On the one hand, 9 times out of 10 she can correctly guess where to go first when trouble arises. On the other -- how do you deal with that? How do you take this exceptional outlier employee and justify letting him get away with murder (almost literally!) where you'd fire other, lesser mortals? How do you know when to let him go and when to pull him back? How do you sleep at night when you never know what mess you're going to discover happened in those four-six-eight hours you were unconscious? And how do you get the rest of your job done when this one guy is such a time sink?
Well, that is management. Time management, personality management, team management.
Obviously, we can look at Gregory House's management style as well -- but he's dealing with a different set of issues and that's another post.
Bossing someone like this -- I don't actually know how you deal with a guy like this in real life, because I don't think I'd have the courage to hire someone like that in the first place. I don't like drama, and I don't like unpredictability. I certainly wouldn't recommend knowingly keeping a drug addict on the payroll. And this is only the beginning of Cuddy's problems. Brilliant troublemakers take up a lot of time and energy. You have to keep them out of trouble, and you have to keep everyone else from thinking they can go rogue in the same fashion. I'm not sure it's worth the effort.
You don't prescribe medicine based on guesses. At least we don't since Tuskeegee and Mengele.
A former boss of mine referred to these people as "constipators." "They mess with how crap flows. I don't have a high tolerance for that and I'm not going to knowingly wish that affliction on anyone else," was how he explained it.
Executive to Cuddy: He makes you miserable. Eight years he's worked here, never made a dime for you, never listened to you.... You have no idea how many times he's lied to you, undercut your authority, made you look like crap to other doctors.
Cuddy: Yes, I hate him, and here I am, desperately trying to protect his job. What does that tell you?
Executive: That you don't hate him.
Cuddy: I do not protect people I like. I protect people who are assets to this hospital.
On the other hand, clearly there are some excellent payoffs. House saves lives, he is gifted and clearly loves what he does, he isn't a complete sociopath and does have his moments of redemption. That makes it worse, frankly. If these qualities weren't there, it would be much easier to kick him to the curb. (And don't let that quote above fool you. Of course she doesn't hate him.)
Cuddy: You're actually talking about killing her.
House: Just for a little while, I'll bring her right back.
Cuddy: Oh, well, in that case go ahead. Why are we even talking?
It is my assessment -- or maybe just my projection -- that Cuddy struggles with her job. I don't know that I'd say she's bad at it, but I don't think she really loves it, either. She's running an outfit where people can steal drugs from the dispensary, where babies disappear, where dictators get murdered. If she truly loved her job, she'd have a better grasp of how to run her outfit. Instead, she is always stretched too thin, this season she is having work-life balance issues, she is too softhearted to fire people who deserve it and she rarely acts like the grownup in difficult situations. And she spends waaaaayyyy too much time focusing on this one tiny employee of a huge medical concern.
It's not going to work. You know why? Because this is fun. You think of something to make me miserable, I think of something to make you miserable: It's a game! And I'm going to win, because I've got a head start. You are already miserable.
It also seems like she is in an administrative position when she'd probably have more fun doing the doctoring in the trenches with her friends -- which is another issue: She is far too chummy with her staff. As a manager, even the manager of a lunatic, the last thing you want to do is enlist the lunatic's best friend as your confidante and counselor on how to deal with him.
And as Lane has pointed out, her outfits do her no favors. Seriously, nothing screams "insecure with my authority" as loudly as "Hey! Look at my boobs falling out of this blouse!" If Cuddy were truly in control of anything, she'd have started with her cleavage.
It occurs to me I've given negative marks to the two women I've spotlighted here. I need to work on that, don't I?
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