County follows Casey Stengel’s example of bad management

How do Miami-Dade officials really regard the job waste workers are doing? Last week bosses praised them to the skies for great work. But two weeks earlier officials took turns in dumping all over them and threatening their jobs.

Last week was national Waste and Recycling Workers Week. “Their hard work and commitment are essential to the health and quality of life of our community, and we are incredibly grateful for the vital services they provide to residents year-round,” Mayor Daniella Levine Cava proclaimed.

Two weeks earlier County Commission Chairman Anthony Rodriguez had taken the opposing view. “Take pride in your work, or if not we don’t want you to be part of this community,” he said in complaining at length about trash-filled neighborhoods.

“Our employees, contractors, and recycling partners are truly the backbone of the essential services we provide to our community,” said Solid Waste Management Director Aneisha Daniel last week. “They show up every day with dedication, professionalism, and a strong commitment to serving our residents.”

When the department picks up garbage, workers let the bin fall on its side and leave it there, Commissioner Marleine Bastien had complained two weeks earlier. “The culture needs to change…. We cannot keep giving contracts to companies that are doing a bad job.”

“We are proud to recognize and celebrate the dedicated waste and recycling professionals who are helping keep Miami-Dade County clean and safe every single day,” the mayor said last week.

But two weeks earlier the mayor had said, “Of course there are bad employees, and we have a very good system. We could certainly always improve, I’m not denying that. But this is not about personnel. This is about resources to do the job that we all want to feel proud of.”

Employees making pickups ignore trash a few paces away, Mr. Rodriguez said that day. “It’s about the culture of the employees, of the staff. And it’s not all of them. Some of them are fantastic. But the culture has to change.”

“The culture of once you enter Miami-Dade County you just never get fired, that mentality has to change, because you’ve got to have pride in what you do in our community. And the examples are over and over,” he said, adding that he goes around taking pictures of what workers aren’t doing right when they remove trash.

Without taking sides – reality lies somewhere between the bad apples and the ultra-dedicated workers hailed last week – I doubt berating thousands of workers in public is very productive.

The standard for managers is praise in public, condemn in private. Let the world know when the team and its members are doing wonderfully, in the manner of last week’s announcement. When they’re screwing up, talk one on one, without embarrassing them in front of others, if you have any hope of raising performance levels.

But if you dress them down in public – either in person or in a formal meeting like this month’s – you can write off improvement. Between embarrassment and bitterness, you’ve lost those workers as team members.

It famously happened in baseball with the New York Mets in their first season in 1962 when Manager Casey Stengel, who had been accustomed to winning championships for the Yankees year after year, looked at his hapless players and asked acidly “Can’t anybody here play this game?” Given that vote of confidence by their leader, they went on to set a record for games lost in a season at 120.

Those Mets weren’t good enough to be champions. But with encouragement and coaching instead of a public dressing-down they might have lost fewer games. We’ll never know.

Just as we’ll never know if the effusive praise and encouragement in the Waste and Recycling Workers Week publicity might ever have helped improve performance, because it came directly on the heels of a public dressing down for the world to see, which undercut worker morale and goodwill.

Threatening loss of a job is never a motivator – especially since we are talking about unionized workers whose jobs, as Mr. Rodriguez implied, are secure. Pride and motivation are not built through threats and public disparagement. Take a lesson from the 1962 Mets.