What having a good manager looks and feels like: hitch-a-ride on ill-fated USA Flight 1549.

Typically, journalists like to write about the unusual…you know, the man-bites-dog stories, not the ordinary narrative of merely the expected, the kind where the dog-bites-man.  So I make the confession right up front:  in some ways what follows breaks the rules of good writing. 

Nonetheless, if you’ve ever been responsible for an operation of any kind that involves people rendering a service to other people—the setting can be almost any place…a hospital, a commercial venue, a university, a fire department—then you know the feeling of what used to be referred to on ABC’s Wide World of Sports as the “thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.”  I’m referring to those events where, in some instances, matters went from bad to worse and, in other circumstances, where events were not promising at all but turned out very well.  In each of those kind in instances, the outcome pivots, typically, on the decisions and actions of one person. 

Lucky is the organization that has the sound judgment and good fortune to attract, hire, and retain good people, those who know what they’re doing, even in trying situations.  Like me, you may have had the opportunity to know what it feels like to observe good people at work—individuals who can save a bad situation and make it a good one, those who can avert disaster and bring a good ending to a troubled set of circumstances, those who are able to make you and the organization look good when all the arrows are pointing in the opposite direction. 

One of those settings for USAirlines was when Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger averted almost certain catastrophe on January 15, 2009, when he saved the lives of 155 people by having the required expertise, professional competence, and presence of mind to snatch success from the jaws of almost certain failure by landing his aircraft in the Hudson River after hitting a flock of Canadian geese in mid-air after only a short time after take-off.  Most organizations don’t have enough individuals like him; being able to observe how these kind of events unfold is, indeed, a rare occasion and, when possible to be a part of, worth sharing—if only to point to what the ideal looks and feels like. 

We frequently focus on what poor managers do--here's how a good one operates!

Often as critics we carp and complain about what this or that person, or executive, or organization should have done in this or that trying set of circumstances.  By contrast, what’s depicted below shows how a bad situation was handled--exactly as it ideally might have been—but it's the unpromising tale I alerted you to, of the dog-bites-man story—but well worth the seeing and telling and observing nonetheless. 

Here, then, is a compelling glimpse of what it looks like to see good people at work, making the best of a bad situation.  Consider it a sort of celebration of someone doing a superb job when it could have turned out to be a different story entirely. 

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