“How do you explain your role as a manager, and Curtis’ role as a supervisor, so Curtis understands and can, in turn, explain it to his team? Without throwing each other under the bus?” I asked.

Glenn was thinking, but only to his fallback position. “I am the manager, I design the system. Curtis is the supervisor, he drives the system.”

“Sounds a bit authoritarian,” I observed. “What drives your system, why is it necessary to have a system, in the first place?”

“Because things would be a mess, if we didn’t have a system,” Glenn defended. “I mean we could run around all crazy and put band-aids on things, but we would still have problems over and over. I want to prevent problems, for the long haul.”

“You don’t want to fix the problem over and over, so you created a system. What’s your goal?”

“You’re right. I am not worried about losing a tool on Tuesday. I am working on productivity rates over a long period of time.”

“What period of time? When did you start thinking about productivity?”

“We were in a planning meeting and our CFO showed us a report on labor rates and revenue. He wanted to know if we could improve the ratio,” Glenn explained.

“How long did your executive team give you to make the improvements?”

“The CFO gives me a report every month, and we look at it in a planning meeting each quarter.”

“What’s your goal?” I asked again. “How much improvement do you want, and in what period of time?”