Nearly every boss has said it. And just about every employee has heard it. Yet it’s one of the most meaningless lines ever spoken in the office:
“My door is always open.”
The statement usually is followed up with some version of, “If you ever have an issue with anything, please come talk to me.”
What’s wrong with this? Isn’t it important for your employees to know that you are open to hearing their suggestions, concerns, and criticisms? Of course it is.
But let’s be real here: In most cases, “My door is always open” isn’t really an invitation to speak up. It’s a cop-out. It makes the boss feel good but puts the onus entirely on the employees. You might as well say, “You find the problems and then take all the risk of interrupting my day and confronting me about them.” How many people have taken you up on that offer?
Your employees have lots of opinions about everything—your strategy and vision; the state of the competition; the quality of your products; the vibe in the workplace. There are tons of things you can learn from them.
But how many of these ideas and opinions have you actually heard? A tiny fraction, I’d bet. The reality is that companies are full of things that are left unspoken. And even when they are out in the open, the CEO is almost always the last to know.
I like to think of myself as a leader whose door is always open. But I recently learned that an open door isn’t enough…
Read the rest of the article at Inc.com
Michael
on 24 Apr 14It seems like the proactive method of questioning works well at a company when things are already pretty good. Have you seen how it works when things aren’t good at all at a company, or in part of a company?
Graham
on 24 Apr 14When you have a toxic work environment, absolutely no amount of communication policies will help. Artifacts like “bottom up reviews” where employees grade their supervisors are completely worthless: at good companies, the managers score high, and at terrible ones, they score high as well, since everyone is afraid of getting in trouble for doing otherwise.
Ted Pearlman
on 24 Apr 14Problems are unmet needs. And needs can be met multiple ways.
When a manager says, “My door is always open,” what needs are likely going unmet? Broadly, two. The manager’s need to know what’s going on. And the need of her team members to be heard.
One way to meet both needs is for the executive to reach out more frequently and more effectively. She can let her team know, unequivocally, that speaking up is deeply appreciated. Here’s the danger in doing this: you may be asking someone to be someone they’re not. Not everyone is a natural people person. Not everyone is naturally warm. Not everyone truly enjoys listening. And that’s OK.
It’s ok for you to be not naturally good at something. Steve Jobs was not naturally empathetic. But I’m sure glad he spent all that time in the prototype lab with Jony Ive instead of doing listening tours or getting sensitivity training. He was fundamentally a visionary, a creative, not a manager, for whom the fundamental skill is empathy.
Here’s DHH-style analogy: If your auto racing team has great cars, but is performing below par, what do you do? Do you train the current drivers to drive better? Or do you replace them with naturally great drivers? Ask any racing team owner which one they’d choose.
This is not about punishing people for not being a natural at their current role. It’s about finding out what each person is a naturally good at and then making that their primary responsibility.
Daniel
on 24 Apr 14Ugh. I hate when my boss says that. I always immediately reply, “Saying that your door is open doesn’t mean anything, it has to be a part of the culture”.
And yet it happens again and again. It usually happens with MBAs.
Thanks Jason, I’m going to write about this as well. Too much office politics lately.
Brent Hronik
on 25 Apr 14Really great post Jason!
I think there was another really key point that you were rather implicit with, but didn’t come right out and say: asking for feedback isn’t enough, those in power need to act upon that feedback so those providing the feedback is not in vain. As a former software engineer at a rather large company, there was nothing more disheartening than coming forward and sticking my head out on the line to provide feedback, only to get a response analogous to, “Thank you for your feedback, we will file that away in the great ideas that we will never act upon cabinet.”
Maybe you took it for granted that companies need actually act upon the feedback they receive, but, alas that is not the case. Keep up the great work you guys are doing on this front over there!
Andrew
on 25 Apr 14Nate Silver had a great piece of advice along these lines during his SXSW talk this year. I’m paraphrasing, but the gist was: when you’re the boss, you need to amplify the negative feedback you do get by several factors. He’s found that by becoming the guy in charge, people tend to stop calling him on BS. So he’s had to re-adjust how he engages with the same sort of people who previously may have been his peers and co-workers, and may have been more inclined to say something. The nature of the relationship changes how you have to engage, as a manager or leader.
Jason Fried
on 25 Apr 14Andrew, that’s great advice. This is a constant learning process for me. I’m figuring all this out as I go. I’ve been making some adjustments, but have more to make.
Jess Rudder
on 27 Apr 14I worked for a number of years at a company where the CEO truly embodied the ‘open door’ concept. Rather than say his door was open, he wandered the halls, striking up conversations with people (on a regular basis).
Almost everyone at the company remembers him coming to their office (within their first day or two on the job) to discuss the company’s most pressing issue of the time. Some freaked out thinking it was a test that they were failing because they didn’t ‘onboard’ fast enough. He wasn’t testing anyone though. He truly believed that he had hired smart people and those people had valuable input to share (regardless of their tenure or stature at the company).
He would also go out for lunch with team members on a regular basis. Not to do ‘one-on-ones’ or any sort of evaluation, but to connect and to discuss the company’s most pressing issue of the day (because he was always down for discussing that). As a result, when you had ideas, concerns, issues, etc it was really easy to approach him. Everyone was already very used to speaking to him (and seeing him act on those conversations).
In the time since then, I’ve worked with CEOs that give the big “My Door is Always Open” speech which is invariable followed by them going into their office and shutting their door. It’s a bit ironic. I realize that the ‘openess’ is understood to be a metaphor; however, their actions (spending most of their time behind closed doors because they have important and private business to attend to) speak much louder than their words.
This discussion is closed.