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30 Ways to be a Butt-Head Boss

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1. Trust no one. Not your superiors and not your employees. Especially not your employees. They’re probably out to get you anyway.

2. Believe that all of your people are lazy, good-for-nothing slackers. Remind them of that frequently.

3. Get mad and shout a lot. This will reinforce to your “workers” that you mean business.

4. Never grant special favors. Having babies, being sick, taking time off to go to weddings, funerals or 50th anniversaries are just ways to get out of work. Don’t let them get away with it.

5. Try not to make decisions. Decisions will only give your boss a reason to fire you. If a decision is absolutely necessary, try to postpone it as long as possible.

6. Do not tolerate errors. Of any kind or any size. Even the smallest of errors just reinforces the fact that your people are screw-ups. Fire people for minor infractions.

7. Criticize. Never be satisfied with any of your employees’ work products. If they were trying at all, they would be doing better.

8. Refuse to listen to suggestions. Your subordinates are just trying to get you to do something that will get you into trouble. They don’t have the sense god gave a goose anyway. Your way is the right way.

9. Complain to various employees how bad the others are. Try to get them on your side so they’ll group together and force the really worthless people to leave.

10. Change your mind often. About everything – policies, procedures, work assignments. Don’t let your employees become complacent with the way things are.

11. Come into work late and leave early. Take long lunches. Show your people that you’re the boss and can do whatever you want.

12. Prohibit office celebrations and parties. No birthdays, no holiday parties or decorating, no nothing. This is no place to be goofing off. There is work to do.

13. Never praise your people. They’ll just expect more of it. Besides, no one ever does anything that’s worth recognizing anyway.

14. Never tell any of your employees exactly what you do. They’ll use it against you.

15. Refuse to discuss the status of the company with any of your employees. Finances and future plans are none of their business. They need to focus on just their jobs.

16. Do not train your employees. Give them only the minimum information they need to do their jobs. Let them prove themselves by figuring out the details.

17. Definitely do not cross-train your people. That will only cause them to get big-headed about how much they know. Don’t give them a reason to complain about their miserable wages.

18. Give the easy jobs to the employees who always agree with you. They’ve earned it.

19. Give the really cushy jobs to the really “friendly” people – the cutest or best looking ones who aren’t afraid to show just how friendly they are. Being a boss is tough. You deserve your perks.

20. Petty cash is your discretionary lunch money. Enjoy it.

21. Cut company expenses by firing whoever you want. Demand increases in productivity from those remaining. Maybe they will eventually get the idea that they need to get to work.

22. Never show your people that you care about them. It would make you look weak and erode your status as a boss.

23. Display your power. Sit behind a big desk. Make sure all the other chairs in your office are much lower than yours.

24. Never go to employees’ work stations to discuss anything – unless you need to chew them out. You’re much too important to leave your office. Make them come to you.

25. Use meetings to intimidate your employees. Be loud, be forceful, pound the table – show them who’s boss.

26. Do not accept the blame for anything. When your people screw up, it’s completely their fault. Never yours.

27. Take full credit for everything good that happens in your group. None of your employees are smart enough to have done it by themselves.

28. Never, ever make your own coffee. You’re much too important to spend your time doing that.

29. Tell your employees that you’re reading ALL e-mails whether you do or not. Do not permit them to make personal phone calls for any reason. Make sure they know that you are watching their every move. You can’t trust any of them.

30. Never, never, never give any of your people access to the Internet. They’ll just waste their time accessing porn sites or maybe even self-improvement sites like NuPathz.com.

My colleagues and I get asked a lot about licensing. Frankly, Microsoft doesn’t have a great reputation for keeping it simple. And to be totally transparent – I, like many of my colleagues, would usually rather stick a fork in my eye that talk about it because it can get complicated. And confusing. And just…ugh.

So you can imagine my joy when I was asked to write a newsletter editorial about simplifying licensing. Exactly.

Then I had a very enlightening conversation with Terry Choquette, Licensing Marketing Manager at Microsoft and she pointed me to a few resources that got back to the basics and laid it all out very simply. I like simple. And I decided that this simple information was as blog worthy as it was newsletter worthy. While details about software licensing is not everybody’s favourite reading material, stick with me on this.

Ways to buy a license

First of all, there are 3 ways to buy a license as illustrated in the slide below: a full packaged product from a retail store, an OEM product on a new computer or a volume agreement from a reseller.

Volume licensing agreements

While you could simply walk into the nearest Best Buy or Future Shop and make your purchase, most organizations that need 5 or more licenses can benefit best from volume licensing agreements. Why? Well, there are some pricing advantages, there are more flexible options based on size and type of business, payment structure, ownership of software, etc., there are additional use rights for cross-language and reimaging machines, and there are use rights to new product versions, support, training, tools, etc., with Software Assurance (more about this below). 

For this post, I’m going to limit my discourse to those organizations who want to license less than 250 devices or users, which I would hazard a guess applies to most of you reading this blog. If you need help with licensing options for 250 devices/users or more, lemme know and I’ll put you in touch with people who can help you or you can check out these online resources.

Below is a great 3.5 minute video that lays out the volume licensing options that are part of the Microsoft Open License program for small and medium sized businesses:

(Please visit the site to view this video)

 

Basically, there are 3 volume licensing agreement options: Open License, Open Value and Open Value Subscription. Now if you want more detail than the video gives (you did watch it right? C’mon it’s only 3.5 minutes long and it’s pretty entertaining!), you’ll want to take a look at the Open License Program Guide. It has a very useful chart on page 8 which compares what you get with an Open License agreement compared to an Open Value agreement.

Software Assurance

Software Assurance is something that can be added to your volume license agreement which provides 24x7 support, deployment planning services, training, and the latest software releases. Although once viewed as simply an insurance policy for free software upgrades, Software Assurance has now been recognized by analysts as an essential tool for getting the most out of your licensing purchase.

Below is a screen shot from an interactive PDF listing the benefits of Software Assurance with each type of licensing agreement.

For more information about Software Assurance and what it can do for your organization, check out the Software Assurance site.

Let me know if this was helpful!

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