Beware of the heroes

We love heroes

Most cultures venerate heroes. And so we should. Heroes appear when we need them most. They rise to the moment and save us from impending doom. So, why should we be wary of heroes? Why give them the Tony Stark eye roll? Firstly, I’m not talking about all heroes. I’ll limit myself to many heroes I’ve confronted as the owner of my own LSC (Language Service Company). My former company, Advanced Language Translation, was a specialist in technical translation and localization. We did most of our work in finance, machine tools, software, and medical device–providing multilingual translation and localization support to corporate clients. We took great pride in handling complex projects under time and cost pressure, while maintaining profitability and enjoying a work environment that avoided staff burnout. My small company spawned the careers of many excellent translation and localization project managers, many of whom have gone onto long careers in the language industry leading them to management level roles and even into executive management.

As someone without formal project management training, I navigated the long road of experience and along the way had the benefit of working with highly trained PMs whom my company sponsored in their formal project management training and education. Throughout a quarter century’s experience, one of many lessons has been to look at who is being a hero. As an owner-manager, I needed to recognize heroic efforts undertaken by my project managers so that I could sometimes reward them, and other times admonish them.

Symptoms of heroism

Heroic efforts are seen as such because they happen at random. If they occurred daily, they would hardly be heroic, right? As managers we need to care about repeatable, reliable processes that result in a reasonable degree of predictability in our translation production. How else can we plan and project how we can be productive, plan our growth, and be trusted partners to our clients. If on a weekly basis one of your production team must perform some act of heroism (do over time, step in at the last moment into a role they don’t often fill, find and gain sudden mastery in a new tool or technology, etc.) then besides being blessed with highly motivated and customer-centric workers, you also have a problem.

Avoid hero creation

If these heroic efforts occur more than once a quarter let’s say, then you as production manager or owner need to understand why these acts of heroism are happening and take them as opportunities for improvement. The real heroes are the workers who commit the heroic act and immediately follow up with a plan to avoid the situation requiring heroism the next time. You as a manager need to train your staff to be recognizers of heroism and learn to be proactive to not slay the heroes but to save the heroes before they must perform heroic acts.

In life, I love heroes, but in the language business I want to avoid making my workers into heroes.

If you want help learning how to save your team from being perpetual heroes, give LocFluent a no-obligation call.