Thinking Faster

Intense Ambiguity

I heard a new phrase on a conference call with a client this morning.  The client claimed they were suffering from intense ambiguity.  I knew immediately I had a post in those two words.

What the client meant was that there was significant pressure from the management team to do something - especially new and interesting things.  However, there isn't necessarily a corresponding amount of clarity about what those things should be.  So, there's a lot of pressure to get things done, just no one is really sure what kinds of things should be done.

This is known, my friends, as a failure to communicate.  There are only three possibilities here:

1. The management team wants new and interesting products and services delivered, but hasn't communicated the strategic goals of the company.  Either they don't have clarity around that themselves or they are waiting for a couple of really bright people to present them with a strategy that works.
2. The management team has no ability to generate a strategic vision and is hoping and praying that someone in the organization has a compelling vision that they'll present, so the management team can champion.
3. The management team has communicated a vision that was so tissue thin and unimpressive that everyone missed it and is still waiting for the "real" vision.

So, here's the dilemma:  Would you rather be led by a madman with a very clear strategic vision that may not be correct but is well formed, or would you rather be "led" by a group of senior managers who cannot or will not provide a clear strategic vision?  In the first case you know specifically where you are going, you may not agree but it isn't hard to align vision and resources to those goals.  In the second case, there's a significant amount of pressure to do something, but no one is clear what that "something" is, and so a number of different teams acquire different interpretations and work at cross purposes, or nobody does anything, waiting for clarity.

As for me, hoist the Jolly Roger any day.  I'd rather work to a clearly flawed but clearly articulated goal than an ambiguous plan with no clear strategy any day.

How's that intense ambiguity working for you?

Three Failures of Management

I was talking to a colleague, who works as a consultant to management in a field different than mine.  Interestingly, he seems the same issues related to decision making as people in my organization often see.  When we boil down the reasons why managers fail to do what should be obvious to do, or when they "need" consultants to do what they ought to do or ought to decide, the reasons come down to three things:

1. Lack of vision.  Either there's no clear strategy or mandate from on high, so that excuses them from making a decision or they are unwilling to advocate for a new strategic direction, so they continue on in the gray areas, doing the regular daily business without any strategic insights.
2. Lack of time and bandwidth.  They are too focused on attending meetings and getting done the daily regular work that they neglect to take time, or simply don't believe they have the time, to do the big picture stuff, which goes lacking.
3. Fear of failure.  In this environment, everyone believes they are on the tightrope, and one false step or decision could be a career killer, so no one wants to make a mistake.

For all three of these failures, a consultant - for better or worse - can fill the gap.  A consultant can claim to have more vision or better insight, and therefore can recommend a course of action.  A consultant can bring more people to bear and more bandwidth - after all, people and bandwidth are a consultants stock in trade.  And a consultant can bear the blame of a possibly incorrect decision - after all, we just took the advice of consultant X.

As a person who makes his living as a consultant, I understand these things, yet it galls me that so often mid and senior level managers will not take the course of action that makes sense for their teams, their people and their company.  Almost inevitably the rationales boil down to one or more of these three failures.

OK - if they are consistent failures, what could managers do?

1. Ask for a clear strategic direction from the senior executives, and failing that, develop a clear strategy for your product line or group that details your intentions, and your efforts to meet those goals unless instructed otherwise.  Rather than work in the dim gray areas of strategic intent, why not create one small bright light for your team to follow?
2. Delegate whenever possible, refuse to attend meetings unless they are absolutely necessary and budget time for the important, not the urgent stuff.  Next company I go into I'm taking in fire helmets, since the most consistent excuse for failing to get things done is "fighting fires".  If we are so good as managers, why are we constantly fighting fires?
3. Make the tough decision and live with the results.  If we want to do things differently, and better, then we need to take decisions that will on occasion be new or different from what everyone else does.  A good manager shouldn't fear for their job if they have a good rationale for making an interesting decision.  If so, then let's just hire robots to make the decisions.

Thankfully, I think few individuals will adopt these principles, keeping us consultants in business.

Taxing or Demanding?

I'll diverge from my normal productivity and managerial discussions to address something as a libertarian I find disconcerting - the discussions in our local, state and federal governments about changing the behavior of individuals and corporations.  Just yesterday there were several announcements on this topic that seem on the surface to be reasonable but their implications could carry severe consequences.

Item One:  The US Federal government seems interested in defining appropriate levels of compensation for executives, not just within the financial services industry, but in any industry.  What would cause the government to believe it should provide dictates, or even guidelines, to a private industry (at least those that did not take federal support money?)  And why should we be surprised when the government, having given money to firms, now believes that it can dictate management practices and principles?  From an organization that is hopeless about managing its budget comes dictates on private industry?  The next shoe to drop will be overall compensation for any employee - including salary and - wait for it - health care.  If the government can dictate salary guidelines, then it can soften the blow by offering better or more extensive health care benefits as a tradeoff.  Or so it will seem.

Item Two:  San Francisco now requires citizens to sort trash by type:  food waste to be composted, recyclables and "trash".  The collection firms have been assured that they will not be required to be "garbage" police, but there are fines on the books if you place a pizza box (compostable) in the recycling or trash bin.  Now, this is not a lot of work necessarily for the individual, but an entire infrastructure has to be created to manage the outcome.

In both instances it would be easier and simpler to create tax incentives to address these issues.  There would need to be less government and bureaucratic oversight and the outcomes could be achieved much more efficiently.  In the case of San Francisco, one could argue that addressing the packaging issues in many cases would be a more prudent approach, or creating taxes on individuals or firms with higher usage of the land fill.

Creating incentives and identifying the kinds of behavior desired by lowering or raising the cost of the activity has direct results.  Gasoline prices rise to $4 a gallon and people buy more hybrids.  Nothing changes in the environment and gas prices fall and hybrid sales drop.  Why do we insist on creating all of this oversight when we can achieve the same goals with less effort, less oversight and less bureaucracy?

Raise the cost of the activity and let the market decide how to address the issue.

Thanks for letting me get that off my chest.

Waiting for the ax to fall

In tough economic times, it seems, most businesses (and by extension most people) are uncomfortable making decisions, since the future is so murky.  I guess in some instances it makes sense to avoid making decisions when the future is unclear, but currently so many businesses (and people) are dithering on making decisions that two things are occurring simultaneously:

1. The organizations, businesses or people with the fortitude to make a decision are leaping ahead, not just moving slightly ahead.  Most of us won't be able to catch up with these very decisive firms and organizations.  Examples include the Federal Government in the case of the automotive firms. Who would have thought the government could move that quickly and decisively.  The decisions being made now will ripple through our economy for decades to come.  Other examples:  WellPoint and larger health insurance firms, who aren't waiting for the decisions from Congress on health care, but are getting out in front.  Those insurance firms not willing to make decisions now aren't simply losing ground, they've lost the ability to even negotiate the manner and timing of their demise. 
2. The organizations, businesses or people who are unwilling or unable to make decisions are rapidly reaching obsolescence.  There's really no strategy for simply standing still while the rest of the market goes through a wrenching change.  Whether you believe the recession is "V" shaped, "U" shaped or "L" shaped, or that we'll never come out of the recession again, you should be acting on those assumptions.  A complete failure to act is a failure to lead, or to take control of your own destiny.

Simply sitting around waiting for the ax to fall is not a strategy.  It is an abdication of any decision making.  Whether you are an individual contemplating your future in an organization, or an organization contemplating your future in a market, it's time to get out the crystal ball and make some decisions about what you believe the future holds, and then act on those decisions.  Believe the recession will be over by Christmas?  OK, then what should you be doing now?  Believe most auto production is going to transfer to hybrids and electric vehicles?  Then get training on building those vehicles, or more importantly, recycling the batteries of those vehicles when they are depleted.

I talk to too many firms, and too many executives in those firms, that are simply pole-axed by the situation.  Rather than wait for the mist to clear, start by making some assumptions about the future and looking at the trends and demographic shifts taking place.  Certainly there are opportunities to be had, if one will only look for them.

When you wish upon a czar

Today we've learned that the administration plans to appoint yet another czar.  What's that make, four, five or six czars?  There's the Car Czar, the energy Czar, the education Czar.  Didn't we learn anything from the Russian revolution?

Seriously, let's think this thing through.  The notion of placing one person, one figure head to solve a thorny or intractable problem often makes a lot of sense.  In some instances a problem is difficult to solve because of a deadlock between interested parties and a person "in charge" of the problem can break a deadlock.  Other times a person assigned to solve a problem can bring fresh eyes or a new perspective to help solve a problem.  At other times a stern task master may be able to bring resolution to a problem by forcing the parties at play to get on with it already.  However, none of the Czars the administration has put into place faces the kind of problem that one figurehead can change, and most of them face problems that are highly distributed, with many different players, and that have a wide range of political interests and sacred turf at stake.  So, what we've most likely done is set these folks up to fail.

Let's take one at random.  Carol Browner was named as the Obama adminstration's energy Czar in January, nominally taking the role of Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change.  Now, the Obama adminstration also has a person in Stephen Chu who is the Energy Secretary.  One might wonder why there are two people with what seem to be clearly overlapping priorities.  Now let's also factor in Henry Waxman and Edward Markey, the two members of the US House of Representatives who are pushing the cap-and-trade bill forward.  All of these people, and many more, are involved in establishing the adminstration's stance on Energy and Climate Change.  Yet not long after Browner was appointed, she apparently disappeared from public view and comment.  Why?  Who knows, but perhaps the problem was so interesting and so politically challenging that EVERYONE in Washington DC and elsewhere has an opinion, and turf to defend or take from someone else.  Have we gotten our money from the Energy Czar?  In fairness, it's too early to tell.

However, looking at this from a management point of view, it doesn't make sense to add another level of bureaucracy to issues that are already well understood, especially since Browner doesn't control the levers of power (funding and appointments) that might help this problem get solved faster.  In fact, the problem of global warming is going to be "solved" by Congress with or without Carol Browner.

If we're going to have Czars, then let's either give them the authority they need to make the decisions that need to be made, or let's name them what they really are - figureheads.  Either allow Steve Rattner the ability to dictate to Government Motors what it should and shouldn't do, or don't call him a Czar.  This half-in/half-out model of management meddling is not good for the government and not good for the companies.  After all, even Czars need something to do with their time.

The adminstration seems to have learned its lesson with the "Pay Czar" although it is an easier problem to solve with fewer constituents and a group that is held in very low esteem.  Managing how much compensation firms that took federal dollars can pay is an obvious problem that can be easily solved and the results can be documented.  Now all we need is a Czar for the ports - hopefully called the quay Czar.

We need corporate jesters

Given the amount of information available to most executive teams, it is strangely surprising to discover how insular the thinking is inside most companies.  Even consulting firms, brought in for industry expertise and to identify new opportunities, rarely confront the limited thinking and organizational group think that happens in most firms.

Today David Brooks writes about GM and its problems.  He notes that two senior executives have written about the issues GM faces, most of which are caused by a corporate culture that rejects information from the outside.  While many of GM's financial issues are now behind us, are their corporate issues in terms of cultural arrogance and their ability to incorporate challenging and conflicting information in place?

If the management team can't or won't confront and synthesize what's happening in the "real world" and if management consultants and other advisors are only willing to advocate the party line, then who is going to inject a true third party or external perspective into the organization?  It's fairly clear that most consultants COULD do this but don't want to upset the lucrative financial agreements and projects that exist.  After all, they have a fiduciary responsibility to maintain the relationship with the client.  After Enron and Worldcom, we can't necessarily count on consultants or accountants to alert the world to malfeasance inside the organization, or for consultants and accountants to tell the executive teams that the emperor is not wearing any clothes.

The board of directors could do this, but there's too much clubby interaction and not enough true debate at most board levels.  This follows the "I scratch your back, you scratch my back" relationship of most board members.  While board members could bring this third party or market perspective, they often fail to do this as well.

Even industry analysts don't take a strong enough stand when they have the data they know can make a difference.  Gartner, Forrester, Yankee and a host of other firms too often couch their published material and tailor their private consulting findings to align to the expectations of the sponsor.

So, who should be the true third party voice and perspective?  Perhaps it's time we require a corporate jester - a person paid to tell the king (CEO and board) that they are naked.  Court jesters, while comics, were also the few people who could communicate to the king a different message than what he heard from his courtiers.  Perhaps we need to require a professional court jester for every company, to introduce what's really happening out in the market.  Bloggers and others can serve this function, but only if we can get the executives to listen.

In a world where I can buy products and services from anyone, at almost any time, through almost any channel, the firm with its finger on the pulse of what's happening in the market will thrive.  Contrary, firms that are insular and ignore or disdain what's happening in the market will fail.  Brooks argues that's one of GM's problems.  Given the fact that most GM executives were provided with free cars and in many cases free gasoline, is indicative that they did not understand the issues facing most car buyers.  Too many executives are too far removed from the reality of the market and don't get true, unadulterated facts about their products, their customers and their markets.  This has got to change for US businesses to be successful.

Twitter management

Somebody's got to do it, so it may as well be me.  One of the big questions we need to ask ourselves as we prepare to bring aboard a work force that is more accustomed to texting the person next to them rather than engaging in a conversation is - how do you manage a completely internetworked and constantly online population?

The point above, about texting someone just next to you - is both a real comment and somewhat tongue in cheek.  Yet, having watched my daughters text each other from across the couch, while listening to their iPods and reading/doing homework/watching TV, I am constantly amazed at the amount of information they can process and the filters that must exist in their heads to pick out what's important and what's vital.  And they do this often without reading too much into the dialog, written in a jumble of letters, numbers and emoticons that my wife finds similar to ancient greek.

Ignore for a moment whether or not these tools "should" be allowed in the organization - they are already there, whether you know it or not.  Instant messaging is almost as important in many organizations as email or the telephone, and soon concepts like Facebook Walls, tweets, discussion forums and a host of other social networking/social media and communication vehicles will increase in importance.  There are several reasons for this:

1. Social.  It's fun to be part of a group, and to share in what the group thinks is important.  I can be a member of several different groups, exchanging information and learning what other members of my group think is important.
2. Immediacy.  If someone is available, I can get a very quick yes/no answer using IM without creating the whole conversation necessary for a phone call.
3. Hip.  If everyone on my team is twittering and tweeting, and I'm not, then I'm not only unhip, but out of the loop on what might be important information.

So, just as we ask for all cell phones to be deposited in a basket each night for family time and to ensure they aren't being used when sleep is of the essence, so to might each leader or team need to set down some ground rules about how to communicate and which channels are appropriate.  What happens if somone on your team isn't a Tweeter?  How do you communicate if someone doesn't respond to text messages or doesn't have Facebook?  What are the appropriate communication vehicles and channels for your initiative, team or project, and what are the challenges if someone is left "out of the loop" because he or she doesn't want to use the messaging tools favored by the group?  When are these tools appropriate?  Should Twitter be used to make significant design decisions or to organize the weekly brown bag?  Do informal channels like Twitter and Facebook introduce informal communication like :>) or other emoticons or begin to blend the personal and the professional?  What information should be shared over these channels versus the corporate communication channels, especially in light of the fact that Facebook and Twitter, to identify two, happen in the open, rather than behind secure firewalls?

As a manager in a time of rapidly growing communication devices, you have two choices.  You can try to hold back the tide, or you can establish the appropriate uses of each tool and technology and align them to the working style and culture of your team.  By the way, the tide is already in, way in.