Alan Crone
Appearances
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
Every case I've ever been involved in, even if there's intentional discrimination, intentional harassment, there's always this element of bad communication up and down the chain. How does this position fit into the mission of my company? What qualifications do I really need this person to have? How do they need to manifest those qualifications on a day-to-day basis to be successful?
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
I think the first thing is if I'm a mid-level manager and I've got six to 10 people in my organization and I don't know how to manage them, I'd get into a growth mindset and take some classes, get some training, even if I have to pay for it myself. I see managers that have absolutely no idea how to lead someone and coach someone to success other than just saying, here's the KPI.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
If you don't meet it, you're gone. I think that's a deficit. in their training and their understanding of what their other options are. All right, well, that's a certain way of management. That's probably not going to get you, that's not sustainable. That's one thing that can be done is really try to get some training and understanding how to do that. The other is, and I'm a broken record on this,
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
mission. You get somebody to buy into what it means and what that means not just to the business, but you just created 10 jobs, which is 10 families, maybe three kids that weren't going to go to college now are going to college. That is the kind of motivation that gets people up in the morning. Those are the people that you want working for you.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
It's not just me making a quota, but it's me making somebody's life better. They've got a higher motive than just working for the company. So Those are just two ways, I think, that we can solve that problem. It's going to take a mind shift. It may take a little bit of stepping back and saying, look, one issue that I deal with in my law firm all the time, and I think people
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
across the board, there's not many metrics for it, and that is capacity. Because at some point, if you've got a team and that team is trying to do the work of three teams, again, that's not sustainable. But most people have no idea what their capacity really, really is. And you find out someone's capacity when they come to you and say, I don't care what the money is, I can't do this anymore.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
Particularly for small business people, it's okay in the short term, but it is not sustainable long term.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
Be glad to. Well, I wish I could say that I had this burning desire to practice employment law even before I went to law school. That's not true. I went to law school, got out, My first job, I was exposed to employment law, went to work at another firm, and then that's really all I did and really enjoyed it.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
Well, the first thing is, no matter how big your organization is, you need an employee handbook and you need written job descriptions for every position for all the reasons we've been talking about. It's one of those things that you say that to operations people in a business and they, oh, job descriptions. And it's one of those check off kinds of things. No, no, no.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
This is a great business tool because you really need to make sure that what you say people are doing or what they actually are doing. And that is so important, whether it's compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, Title VII, all those things, the first thing that a plaintiff lawyer is going to ask for and discover is, give me the job description.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
If the job description is wrong, a good trial lawyer can just make you look silly because your job description is wrong. I could do a whole show on job descriptions. So that's the number one, job descriptions, employee handbooks, which is another way of saying, communicate your expectations and communicate your standards.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
The second thing is once you've communicated your standards, once you've communicated your expectations, they're non-negotiable. If they're negotiable, then they're not a standard or they're not an expectation. And you should make sure everybody knows.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
If five widgets a month is a non-negotiable and the person can't do five widgets a month, ask them to seek their salvation elsewhere, as they used to say at my high school. It's non-negotiable. That's going to do two things. One, your guys that are doing eight widgets a month are going to appreciate you because they see that you value their effort.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
The people that are doing four realize, I got this really, they're serious about that. And you're going to get better production out of it. The next thing everyone should have is you should protect your intellectual property. My product or my service is not the value of my company. The value of my company is how I do those things. There are agreements that you can have that really tie
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
that stuff down, non-competes, non-solicitation. Those agreements can be enforceable. Most of them are not as enforceable as people think because, again, they're kind of off the rack. Somebody says, well, those salesmen, we need to get a non-compete with them. And so they go to The internets, they pull down an agreement and everybody signs it.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
And then when you have to go and enforce it, there's problems because it's not customized to your situation. And the person who ordered it isn't going to get what they thought they were getting. And they're going to have some lawyer like me say, well, you know, give you that kind of experience, which you don't want. So understanding what your intellectual property is and what it isn't is crucial.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
Part of it may be the cocktail of vendors that you have assembled. The identity of those vendors is proprietary. And that doesn't necessarily mean that it's secret that, you know, somebody couldn't figure out who you use for SEO or who you use for supplying that vanilla that makes your cupcakes taste so good. But somebody doesn't have to do a commercial about it or publicize it.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
So you want to make sure that if that vendor relationship is important, that you protect it either through exclusive contracts with the vendor or non-disclosure agreements or whatever it is. Of course, part of that means you've got to understand what it is, and then, you know, communicate that to everybody else.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
So the third thing I would say from a legal standpoint is have a relationship with a lawyer. Have a relationship with an accountant, with a banker. You know, you should be going to lunch with those folks once a quarter at least to keep them apprised of your situation and ask them for advice and so forth. Keeping good tabs on on those professional relationships and advice.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
Your employment relationship is probably one of the top two most important relationships you have in your life. You've got your significant other, your spouse, and then the way you make your living. And in America, what you do is a big part of who you are. Very early on,
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
And then finally, I would say, be fair. Be fair, be real, be human. When you start a business, you're not starting a family. We're not family. But you're a good team, you're a collaborative team, have values, have a mission, have a reason other than just making money that you come to work every morning. I find that when I put my focus on that vision, and my professional mission is
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
is to transform the American workplace, one client, one case at a time. That's not something that's going to happen overnight. That's why we have that disclaimer at the back of it. But when I keep my focus on that mission, great things happen. When I'm concentrating on me, how much money I'm going to make, how much growth my firm has and that sort of thing,
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
That's when it all kind of falls apart because true success is elevating other people. And so if you do those things every day, then every day you're going to be a little bit better. And you're going to look up after a year, after five years, after 10 years and say, man, we really have come a long way, although I don't remember getting here. Those are the things I would do.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
You know, I think everybody, every reasonable person would agree that you shouldn't make business decisions based on accidental factors like race and gender and sexual preference and all of those things. And I really think that if I was a decision maker, I would be thinking every day, okay, how can I eliminate the implication that that might even be a factor?
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
And I think one of those things is in order to create, first of all, I say diversity in a business is death. And by that, I mean true diversity. And true diversity is when you have a diverse opinion on what the mission of the organization is. Now, color, gender, all those things are accidental in the true scholastic definition of accidents, right?
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
I mean, as long as you have people that are mission-focused, then it doesn't matter. All those other things don't matter. But if you're a white guy like me, I got to go outside of my sphere of influence to make sure that those accidents are purely accidental. In other words, I've got to go out and go where other people are more diverse areas and make sure that I'm recruiting at HCBUs.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
I'm recruiting in the Latino community. I'm going to the women's lawyers organizations and meeting people and making relationships so that when I'm recruiting, I'm recruiting across the vast spectrum. Because again, the number of people who meet my mission is a limited number amongst the universe of everyone on the planet.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
I realized that how incredibly important it is to folks' lives that they have a fair workplace and they have a clear path to be able to provide for their families and provide for their own personal self-actualization. So it wasn't hard to kind of fall in love with employment law from that standpoint. At that time, early in my career, I was a politician with a law license.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
I've got to really expand my scope of recruitment just beyond my little circle of friends. And that's the way that you really do increase diversity in terms of those accidental characteristics that people have is to really expand your view.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
Stephanie, I appreciate it. Really enjoyed talking with you.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
I'm now a recovering politician. In the mid-90s, I went to work for the governor in Tennessee and was the chief counsel for the Department of Employment Security. And among other things, we did workforce training and unemployment compensation. I did some work for the governor's office in employment law. And so when I left government service,
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
Ask that question in an interview, and if you get a good answer, that's where you need to work.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
Employment law was kind of hard-baked into my professional DNA, and over the years, I've become more and more of an employment law specialist. The book, The Law at Work, People ask me, well, how long did it take you to write the book? If I'm truthful, 30 years.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
And I wanted to write the book to give non-lawyers a playbook on how to deal with some of these employment law issues out there because there's a lot of misinformation. People think they know what the law is, but they really don't. A lot of people just don't think about it until it's on top of them.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
Whether you're a decision maker at a company or a employee or executive trying to figure out what your rights are, Hopefully, it's a good first place to go to begin to formulate a plan on what you should do next.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
Well, I think, I don't know exactly when it happened, but I think that there's much more of an even playing field between labor and management now than there used to be. Although, that's not saying a whole lot. But, you know, with the gig economy... and the great resignation and all of those things really has changed the way people approach making a living.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
I'm not even going to say work, because I think people now make a living and pursue careers as opposed to just going to a job. Management can no longer stand at the top of the mountain and just dictate the terms and conditions of employment. You're seeing a lot more strikes now. I don't think that that's a coincidence. Everyone from the writers and actors to
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
The UAW and airline employees are realizing that they've got a lot more bargaining position than they used to have. And they're flexing those muscles because people who are willing to be an employee is a shrinking amount of people. I think it means that companies have to become much more mission driven. They have to hire people that align with that mission.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
That is really what's going to get you a good worker position. is someone who isn't coming to work just for the paycheck, but is coming to help you achieve a mission that they believe in.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
People. People are the constant. When you're talking about any organization, but particularly a business, the people and how they relate to one another, is the constant. No matter how much you train people, no matter how much you have policies and procedures, the human condition is always going to raise its head both positively and negatively.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
I mean, you're always going to have people that don't know how to act appropriately. You're always going to have people that are greedy or that want power or want to manipulate, and you've got to deal with that in your organization. You're always going to have people that Don't know whether it's intentionally or unintentionally.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
Don't know how to navigate the psychosexual relationships between coworkers. And you're going to have harassers and all of those things. People is the constant. And I think that. in the early part of my career, management dealt with that by edict, my way or the highway, or you're going to do this or else and that sort of thing.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
And that still works to a certain, you know, you got to have standards. But I think that dealing with that human element now is dealing with the psychology of leadership and the psychology of followers. Dealing with that is so much more of a priority now, whereas, you know, 10, 20 years ago, Managers thought they could just ignore that and be authoritarian about it.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
So people would be the first constant. And then I think the other constant is a lack of communication and positive confrontation in the American business place. Management students, when they come out, they don't understand. They're not taught how to communicate. properly confront and enforce standards. And I think that causes a lot of people to be not very confident in their management style.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
They don't know how to get people on the same page, so they just lay down the law. The other thing that hasn't changed is how devastating turnover is to an organization. If you're in an organization and you're constantly turning over, that's probably more of an indication about your management than it is about the people that you're hiring.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
If someone comes to work for you, I would say there's that moment, that honeymoon moment when you offer the job and the person accepts. Everybody in that transaction has hope. And then when that relationship deteriorates and you have turnover, now you're back to square one. huge, huge cost to the organization, both financially and psychically, right? I mean, nobody enjoys getting fired.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
Nobody enjoys firing people. If you do, then you're probably psychotic and should be doing something else. And when that happens, that's a failure of the recruitment process. It's a failure of management. It's a failure of the employee.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
Now, more and more, as we get into all kinds of different management tracking and KPIs and all of that, we're having to figure out how to avoid that from happening because we can see in real time how much that turnover is costing us.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
The number one. is the inability to answer this question. What do I have to do to be successful here? Again, I don't think we communicate our expectations very well to employees. Every case I've ever been involved in, even if there's intentional discrimination, intentional harassment, there's always this element of bad communication up and down the chain. Again, it goes back to mission.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
How does this position fit into the mission of my company? What qualifications do I really need this person to have? How do they need to manifest those qualifications on a day-to-day basis to be successful? I tell people all the time, ask that question in an interview, and if you get a good answer, that's where you need to work. Again, I think lack of good confrontation.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
People don't want to correct other people. They don't know how to go about it. And so if you haven't expressed those expectations correctly, that's one reason why people are hesitant to confront because they kind of realize either consciously or subconsciously, they really never told this person that whatever the part of this job is, is important.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
I represented a man who was a 65-year-old black guy. We'll call him Jesse. Jesse had worked for this company for 30 years. It was not an upper-level position. He was kind of a supervisor, but very important for the company. He was supposed to be at the job at 8 o'clock, but for 30 years, he got to his job between 8.15 and 8.30, mainly because of the public transportation system in Memphis.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
Well, for years and years and years, nobody had said anything to Jesse. He had had an African-American supervisor. They all got along well. At one point, he got a new supervisor who happened to be white. This fellow noticed, well, Jesse's coming into work 15 to 30 minutes late every day. So basically, he went up to Jesse and said, look, you're late one more time, you're fired.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
Sure enough, the next day, he was 15 minutes late and he was fired. And Jesse came to my office and I said... why did they tell you that you were fired? And he said, well, it's because I was late. I said, what was the real, what do you think was the real reason you were fired? And he said, well, the only thing I can think of it is because I'm black.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
I've been late for 30 years and nobody ever said a thing. Now I get a white supervisor and I'm fired. The facts of that you can argue with. And ultimately we settled the case, but it was a good illustration of this, this thing I have of confrontation. I'm not saying that being on time isn't important, but nobody had ever communicated that with Jesse. And rather than
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
sit down and talk to him about it and find out what was going on and maybe how they could change it. The guy just fired him. The supervisor thought that he was enforcing a standard. But what ended up happening is they lost an employee with 30 years of institutional knowledge and a lawsuit and a big settlement.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
Again, going back to expectations, let's say that you're going to hire an accountant or let's say you're going to hire a banker. You say, okay, I need a commercial banker. You find someone who's been in the commercial banking industry for 20 years. They got great reviews and you put them in just because they've been a successful commercial banker somewhere else.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
Doesn't necessarily mean they're going to fit into your culture. Doesn't mean they're going to have your values. Doesn't mean that they have your priorities. And doesn't mean that they're going to do the job exactly the way you want it to be done. The hiring person has a vision of what it is to be a commercial banker.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
The commercial banker has 20-year maybe experience of what he has been as a commercial banker. And for whatever reason, those don't align. Maybe the decision maker just says, you've been a commercial banker for 20 years. Don't you know? As opposed to, here's what we really need.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
Greg.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
What a great question. What a great question. Employment law compliance is not just good legally, it's good business for precisely the reason that you're talking about. And I think, again, it requires some thought and attention. Well, first of all, the employment laws are not written to make you a better business. to make you more profitable or anything else.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
The employment laws are written to give minimal amount of protection. And when I say minimal, I mean minimal amount of protection to certain workers in certain circumstances. But there's a way to take those requirements and supercharge them for business.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
One of the things overall that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 brings is this idea that you have to treat everyone the same, that you can't have discrimination, that you can't have harassment. You know, not harassing your employees is good business.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
Again, if you take that and you take it to heart and you say, okay, how can we take this legal requirement and supercharge it into making our business better? And so one way you can do that is to, you know, take that, those trainings that, that right now are kind of pro forma, you know, watching a video of some guy come over and say something inappropriate to some woman and,
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
Oh, yeah. Aretha Franklin's birthplace.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
Okay, what should they do now? That sort of thing. To go on beyond and talk about awareness of body language and sexual cues and all of these things. What is appropriate and what isn't appropriate in the workforce and turn that into a communication opportunity.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
Progressive discipline, essentially this notion of getting written up and then you have a warning and then, you know, that you get an opportunity to change or correct your behavior before, you know, something bad happens to you. what the law calls an adverse employment action, right? You should have that be not progressive discipline, but progressive training.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
So, you know, the law doesn't say that you have to have progressive discipline, you know, that you have to have three strikes and you're out, that sort of, that's just something that's kind of evolved.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
If it's clear on the face of your communication, your lexicon, what you do from the moment that you begin to discipline or coach or train or whatever you want to call it, that the real goal is not to set you up to be fired, but is to give you every opportunity to succeed.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
At the end, you can either show demonstratively that either you just didn't have the capacity to do what was right, or you didn't have the
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
Thank you. Next time you come, let me know. I'm a little plugged into this town. I'll be glad to make sure you have a good time.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
willingness, then that becomes a pretty clear signal to everybody, the employee, management, and a judge or jury later on, if it becomes to that, that the company did everything it could to salvage the relationship, make the person successful, and they just weren't able to do it. I tell people, look, I can tell you how to never get sued for an employment violation. Very easy, never fire anyone.
The Action Catalyst
The Law at Work, with Alan Crone (Legal, Employment, Management, Business)
It starts with Designing the position, understanding that unicorn that you need in that position, recruiting to that, and then train, train, train. It takes some time. It takes weeks and weeks and weeks of training, of mentoring to get that person up to where you want them to be, but it's worth it.