Similarly, the rules for front-line employees can be different than those for the managers. Most public agencies are staffed by a variety of different people who are trained to deal with the public. They all can’t disappear on the Friday before Labor Day. But as long as enough people are in the office to cover the core functions, some can.

Many managers, however, can’t simply disappear. Sure, like everyone else, they get vacation time and sick days. But when a manager takes a vacation, the agency designates someone to cover the daily problems that can’t wait until the manager returns. And when a manager gets sick, people recognize the emergency and pitch in.

But managers can’t just disappear randomly. When people are first promoted to be manager, they have to learn to play by different rules. It’s like graduating from T-ball to a game in which someone actually pitches the ball. It looks almost like the identical game. But it’s not just that the formal rules have changed. It’s not just that the game is a little more challenging. It’s not just that you have graduated from hitting a stationary ball to hitting a moving one. All the informal (and very important) rules have changed too.

Apparently, West Dakota has not recognized that for managers, the formal rules have to be different. In enacting its flex-time law, the legislature appears to have assumed that everyone is a front-line employee. It’s the old assembly-line model of people: When one cog disappears, you can simply replace him or her with another. The legislature has assumed that everyone will benefit from flex-time. True. It appears to have assumed that every job will benefit from flex-time. Not always true. It appears to have assumed that the state will be uniformly better off if every employee takes advantages of flex-time. Certainly not true.

It isn’t always easy to find someone to cover a manager’s responsibilities. Thus, managers ought to have different flex-time rules than front-line employees. At a minimum, they have to do a little advance planning: For example, the flex-time rules might require managers to give two weeks notice whenever they wish to take advantage of their flex-time. (Indeed, all the front-line staffers in the Division of Motor Vehicles have to give some advance notice about their flex-time plans; otherwise the office would be empty on many a summer Friday.)

Perhaps you should lead the effort to convince Vera Wilton and the West Dakota legislature to modify the law. Perhaps you should lead the effort to convince the state Office of Personnel Administration to modify the regulations implementing the law. After all, you can’t be the only person in state government who is struggling to cope with the excessive flexibility in the state’s flex-time policy. At the same time, maybe you ought not to waste your own valuable time tilting at this windmill. What is the probability that the legislature will change the law or OPA will change the regs — particularly if many state employees are gleefully taking advantage of it?

Maybe you ought to devote your time not to fixing the law but to fixing Honsan.

Fixing Flex-Time Honsan

First, you need to give Honsan a quick course in Management 101 — a quick tour of the basic responsibilities of a manager combined with an explicit comparison of the differences between these responsibilities and those of a specialist. Somehow, you have to get Honsan to recognize that, with his latest promotion, the breadth and depth of his obligations have grown significantly. You need to explain to Honsan that some people don’t want these obligations — that, after a brief taste of being a manager, they prefer to remain a super-specialist (someone who is valued for his or her expertise and virtuosity but who doesn’t want to manage people).

This introductory course may never cover flex-time behavior. Indeed, I suggest that it shouldn’t. Initially, at least, you don’t want to focus on any of Honsan’s managerial deficiencies. After all, he has a lot of them. No one told him that he ought to take Management 101; they just promoted him. So, of course, as a new and completely untrained manager, he will have a lot of managerial deficiencies. So rather than examine his managerial talents and inadequacies, keep the initial focus on the abstract — on the general things that managers have to do (and have to not do). If Honsan is smart, he’ll begin to get the general principles, and maybe even get their specific application to his flex-time behavior.

Then, you have to get him into Management 150 — whether its a basic course at the Zenith City branch of West Dakota State University or a residential program out of state. You have to continue to upgrade his basic, intermediate and advanced managerial talents (just as you are, I hope, upgrading the managerial skills of the rest of your division’s leadership team). Promoting top specialists into first-level managerial positions without giving them the necessary training makes no more sense than promoting first-level specialists to the next tier without given them the training necessary to do their new, more specialized job.

All this will take time. But if you think Honsan has a chance to make it as a manager, you need the patience to bring him along. And this means slowly. You didn’t develop your managerial repertoire from one weekend’s readings. Honsan won’t either.

So when should you talk Honsan about his abuse of the flex-time rules? Whenever there is a specific, explicit reason to do so. Don’t wait for the semi-annual performance review. And if this review is next week, let the topic slide; concentrate, instead, on your individualized management development program. Indeed, the worst time to give criticism may be during the formally scheduled performance reviews. People are worried enough — worried about what you will say, worried about how it might affect their next raise, worried about what will go into their formal record. At best, they will be defensive. At worst, they will simply hear “Bad dog! Bad dog!” and have no idea what “Bad dog!” means.

So look for a time when Honsan’s disappearance hurts the division — not when it hurts you, not when it hurts a member of Honsan’s staff, but when it hurts the division. Then make it clear to Honsan that he had an obligation to be on the job, that he had an obligation to be around to deal with the problem, that he had an obligation to know that the problem was coming and thus to be in a position to handle it.

Then use this as an opportunity to crystallize the point that you have been making about the different obligations of specialists and managers. Use this as an opportunity to let Honsan know that he has to make a choice. He doesn’t have to give up the outdoors. He can be a public manager and still ski and kayak. But he can’t do those things as a moment’s notice, dropping his managerial responsibilities for others to handle. If Honsan wants to be a manager, he’ll have to learn to plan both his managerial and his outdoor activities.

And you, as Honsan’s manager, have to teach him how to do it.

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