by Jan Bolick
March 19, 2008
How do you manage March Madness?
Do you ban office pools and game watching sessions?
Or knowing it will only last three weeks, do you “turn your head”?
Or do you participate just to “stay in the loop”?
Or do you embrace it and enjoy all the opportunities and benefits that come with it?
Or are you even concerned?
Your concern and how you handle it will of course vary by factors such as: the number of people on your team, the nature of their work, the number who are basketball fans, the rules of your company, the culture of your company, your own personal style and of course, your interest in basketball.
Even if you aren’t interested in basketball, I think you will be interested in this snippet from the March 11 Business Section of The News & Observer (Raleigh, NC):
"College basketball’s “March Madness” may cost employers as much as $1.7 billion in productivity, according to an annual survey by Chicago placement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. The figure is based on 37.3 million workers expected to participate in office pools during the NCAA men’s basketball tournament and the 1.5 million expected to watch games online from their desks. “Those who insist there will be no impact are kidding themselves”, said John Challenger, the firm’s CEO. “The key for companies is finding a way to maximize the positive aspects of March Madness so that they outweigh the negatives.” The survey doesn't seem to include the Women’s Division 1 Tournament and all the other divisional tournaments which draw the attention of additional workers. Adding more excitement, more distraction, more lost productivity. Impacting you and your organization even more. The impact doesn't have to be negative though. I agree with Mr. Challenger about the importance of “finding a way to maximize the positive aspects of March Madness so that they outweigh the negatives.”Before trying to find ways to maximize the positives, I must point out that there are more potential negatives than just lost time and productivity during the tournament. AND these negatives can linger long after the National Champion is crowned and bracket winners collect their money. Luckily, the same is true for the positives.
The last paragraph is based not on survey results, but on thirty-four years of exposure to high doses of March Madness. Living and working just down the street from UNC - Chapel Hill and just up the highway from Duke, NC State and Wake Forest Universities; working in partnership with other universities all over the country; soaking in thirty-four cycles of March Madness as a student, an employee, a manager, a fellow manager and the coach of many managers; I have witnessed lots of positives and negatives, made worse or better by various March Madness Management Styles.
I found they could be sorted along a continuum of - well - you'll see what I mean from these four real life situations I've chosen to demonstrate my observations. (Please note that these are not scientifically tested. Though I saw similar results several times from similar management actions, I can't guarantee they would happen the same every time.)
Banning March Madness activities didn’t prevent their occurrence, it just sent them underground. The people involved formed a strong bond with each other and against those they left above - mainly the manager. This lasted long after the tournament was over.
As a first time manager, I chose to ignore March Madness festivities. I did this because we had lots to do, couldn’t see how I could openly support it, had been part of the group that had been banned and gone underground the year before and so I chose to turn my head ....thinking that three weeks wouldn’t matter. It was a very long three weeks. As the action intensified, so did the attention and the impact. But you know how it goes, once you let the rope go, it’s hard to get it back. I had given an inch. They had taken a mile or three. By the way - this was a bonding experience for the team. But I wasn’t part of it this time.
To avoid the first two, I’ve seen managers participate by signing up for the pool or dropping in to watch a game or two. This can work if the participation is genuine. If not, people figure out quickly that the manager is more like a chaperone, just staying in the loop to keep things from going too far. If they see it taking away from their fun, they take it underground. A backfire experience for the manager. Another bonding experience for the team.
Farther along the continuum - a manager who embraced March Madness. She saw it as an opportunity to connect with employees, colleagues and clients. A way to build relationships. A way to build the team and morale.
- If she didn’t know already, she found out which team member pulled for which team in the tournament. She wrote it on her bracket so she wouldn’t forget. She made sure to wish each person luck before the game and made note of the score so she could be sure to congratulate or console afterwards.
- On a separate bracket, she wrote down any clients who were pulling for particular teams and distributed it to all staff members who had client contact. When a client called in, staff members were able to connect in a very personal way. After every game, the client got a victory phone call or a consolation e-mail.
- She set up a television in the conference room, posted a game schedule on the door and asked people to sign up for the games they wanted to watch. She did this to be sure the phones were covered and to facilitate any trades needed. The sign up sheet also tended to keep everyone honest and ungreedy. But on the rare occasion that someone signed up for every game posted, she would talk to him and negotiate a way for him to make up for it later. Or if she noticed a person who signed up for no games, she would later give that person a free lunch coupon or a ½ day off to thank him for covering for everyone else. Whatever she needed to do to be sure that the positives for some didn’t turn into negatives for others.
- If there was a lot of interest a particular game (like when Carolina played), she turned it into a team event by bringing in lunch or if the budget didn’t allow for that, she suggested each person bring lunch or game food to share.
- She never initiated an office pool on her own because she didn’t have the time or the know how. Plus she didn’t want people to feel management pressure to participate. But if there was an employee who wanted to organize it, she encouraged it. And she made a spot for it on the wall so it would be public- like a scoreboard. Each morning, coffee cup in hand, she would wander over to it, calling attention to the standings, nviting others to join in, concentrating the time and attention over coffee time instead of letting it dribble all through the day in private conversations across the office.
- At the first staff meeting after it was all over, the winner of the pool (if there was a pool ) was announced and the money was awarded with a bit of post-tournament posturing and positioning in the background. Then - she signaled the end of the festivities by sharing a March Madness tidbit or two - fun stories about a player’s persistence and about a team pulling together. And then in a way that was borderline corny, she connected the dots with a story about her own team (the one in the meeting with her at the moment) that had pulled together to enjoy March Madness without driving the manager mad.
It could even be as gentle as letting the one basketball fan in your office know that you know this is a special time, that you are willing to help him make arrangements to watch the game and then later, asking him about the game.
Your recognition - your acceptance - is a way for you to connect with that person. It’s an embrace that can melt the negatives away and generate positives that last long after March Madness is over.
©2008, Jan Bolick, Business Class Inc
Jan is a management coach (CUCG, PCC) with thirty years of sales and management experience. She loves helping business owners and managers get through tough situations so that they can make and celebrate the achievement of big goals.
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