Minions carry out small, but necessary tasks within the team. Helpdesk support staff, incoming post sorting workers, ledger clerks are good examples. VERY IMPORTANT: if you are lucky enough to have a secretary or PA, he or she is not a Minion, he or she must be an Extension or better still a Dependent. Unless their role is confined to opening junkmail and booking hotel rooms, secretaries and PAs have real power over how you are perceived. Do not underestimate this by undervaluing their importance to you.
There is usually only one containment strategy necessary with Minions: make sure they don’t screw up. This is a consequence of their roles, which are rather like telephones. Everyone takes telephones for granted, and assumes they will always be functioning. Have you ever had yours fail? Suddenly you are cut off, and it is maddening. A more common and similar experience occurs with mobiles when the reception goes bad. “Hello, hello?….. Hellooooo? Are you still there? …. F***ing thing. Bloody useless technology.” The activities of Minions are usually like this. You absolutely do NOT want to be the manager responsible for the Chief Exec’s post containing that contract not arriving this morning do you? The Chief Exec doesn’t even notice when his post is on time the other 364 days.
So Containment is simple. Put an Extension in charge of the Minions, and make sure he or she establishes two things. One, some basic checks e.g. always sending an item of mail to him/herself every day and verifying that it arrives. Two, create a perception amongst the Minions that they are always being watched. Take a couple of random minutes each month to appear silently in the post-sorting room, look around briefly, and depart. Make sure your Extension does the same thing a little more often. Then appear occasionally (once a quarter is often enough to leave the impression) checking the Chief Exec’s post out of the sorting room and upstairs to the Exec’s corridor. Once again, you will succeed in creating the impression of the Holy Ghost continuously checking the Minions for sin.
As a slight digression, a very effective technique for dealing with Minions (and others for that matter) who appear to stray a little too often is to tail them. Pick a time when you would naturally want to be networking or generally loose in the building, and keep appearing in the same office as the Minion. It is surprising how intimidating it can be to find your boss continually behind you.
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