They're Just Lazy

Some points of view just aren't that helpful. Recently, I've been hearing "They're just lazy" far too often, from parents about their kids, from managers about their staff, from over-worked employees about their coworkers. Other phrases that fit the same mold are "They don't care", "They're not trying" and "They don't have any common sense". The implication that's hidden in these comments is always some variation on "I'm OK but there's something wrong with them."

Interestingly enough, whenever I talk with "them", I don't get the impression of laziness or apathy. Usually, with the vast majority of workers I interview, I get the impression of people who care deeply about what they're doing, people who are trying hard to do a good job, and people who are doing their best to succeed in the circumstances. There's a big disconnect here - on one hand, employees who are trying hard, often to the limit of their capacity - on the other hand, managers who are seeing their people as lazy.

Once we've labelled people as lazy, and decided that they don't care, aren't trying or lack common sense, what can we DO about it? How can we get better results from them? The logical approach is to try to fix these perceived problems directly; to try to fix these people; to cure them of their laziness. So, we use cookies to entice people to work, we use golden handcuffs and velvet hammers to whip them into action, and we resort to training to adjust their attitudes and instill common sense. But, unfortunately, if people are already working hard, trying hard, and doing their best, all of these interventions will be ineffective as there's little room for improvement in those directions. And managers, seeing little improvement and feeling frustrated and powerless, will escalate their efforts to fix the people, causing further problems and perpetuating the cycle.

To become more effective at creating positive improvements, managers need to set aside this ineffective thinking. When we can shift our thinking, and honestly believe that our people DO care, DO have intelligence and sense, and DO want to do a good job, then we can become more powerful and effective. With the same amount of effort, we can now begin to produce better results. We start looking for deeper causes - causes built into the systems, policies, culture, tools, procedures that we as management have set up - we start looking for deeper opportunities for growth, and begin to see all of the barriers, limitations, and stresses that have been preventing our people from doing what we expect of them.

If you've lived through a major corporate transition, either from good work place to bad, or bad work place to good, you'll be able to relate to this. You'll know that an engaged, high-performance individual can magically become a lazy, cynical dropout if you put them in a toxic work environment. And you'll know that supposedly lazy, apathetic workers can become engaged, high-performers when you fix a broken work place over time.

If you want to be more effective as a manager, stop seeing your people as lazy, and start honestly looking for the structures and stressors in your workplace that are the real sources of your problems; those are the real sources of your opportunities as well.