Thinking Faster

Workplace Frustrations

In the Tuesday edition of USA Today there was a small "snapshot" that presented the results of a survey to 1200 workers asking them about their top workplace frustrations.  The top five:

1. Poor communication by senior management - 17%
2. Office Politics - 16%
3. Lack of teamwork - 15%
4. The use of politically correct language - 9%
5. Nosy co-workers - 6%

I was interested in the first three especially.

Many people feel like they have little stake in the place they work, because they don't understand the goals and strategies of the business, and when they do seek out this information they get the run around.  I don't know if most management teams are intentionally indirect about how their strategies and goals, but it's getting a bit embarrassing in some of the consulting work I do to try to map what teams are asked to do back to corporate goals and strategies.  Quite often, people claim ignorance or don't want to acknowledge a corporate strategy.  True, many senior managers are very vague in their communications.  Perhaps they don't want to be held accountable, or they've fallen in love with buzzwords.  Or perhaps they just don't have a strategy, and are uncertain about how the business is run.

The next two - politics and lack of teamwork - overlap.  Where office politics exist there is almost always a lack of teamwork, since someone has decided to get ahead by limiting cooperation or information sharing.  In fact, I think these are really the same issue.  There's only one reason that teams or individuals within a company should fail to work together effectively, and that's when there are incentives to encourage them to do otherwise.  If a business is established to make the best use of its resources, and then builds walls and political machinations that make it less efficient, those failures have to be obvious to the people in control.  So office politics and a lack of teamwork are not just accepted but often implicitly condoned by a management team that can't create clear incentives to work together and seems more intent on creating competitive teams that excel by eliminating team work.

These frustrations point to the fact that many managers simply don't know how to lead and manage people, and are afraid of providing specific, direct goals that are measurable and holding people accountable to those goals.  Rather, they create very indirect and unspecific goals, don't communicate them well and tolerate office politics and silos, then wonder why everyone is frustrated and work is never done as it should be.

Management Throttle

I've been thinking recently about the power of positive and negative thinking, and how it relates to a management team.  One of the things that's become very clear for me in my last few months of consulting is how important a very positive outlook is within the management team for the health and growth of a company.

Basically, a management team serves to provide leadership and direction to the people within a company.  If the management team takes on a positive outlook, leading others to greater growth, exciting opportunities and new adventures, the team will adopt that philosophy and work hard to achieve it.  This is NOT to say that being overly optimistic will create a firm that will follow you through fire, but the power of positive thinking by the management team is catching.

So too, however, is the reverse.  Management teams that are constantly questioning, constantly afraid of change and of new risks or new opportunities create a ceiling for the growth of the company, and impact the thinking and risk taking of the organization.  Without realizing it, a management team that is too conservative or too cynical or too pessimistic breeds and reinforces that thinking within its organization, thus creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

So, your attitudes when managing can be a throttle - in both the positive and negative definitions of the word.  Positive attitudes, reinforcing hard work and rewarding the right failures will obtain more buy-in and will help your company step on the gas - or open up the throttle.  Negative reinforcement, fear of risk or pessimism in your management team will filter down and create fear, uncertainty and doubt.  This creates the alternative definition of throttle - meaning to choke off the windpipe.

Your attitudes and outlook matters as an executive or leader of a team.  In most cases, the team adopts and adapts to the outlook and perspective of the leader.  What is your leadership style and perspective?  Are you helping people "step on the gas" or is your management style choking off initiative?

Management Serenity

I was thinking recently that it's pretty easy to manage people when they are similar in thought and process to yourself - or had at least been trained to mimic your thinking.  That's a strength of the former Big Six consulting firms.  Hey, they didn't call us Androids for nothing.

But that lead to the next topic - does it necessarily have to be difficult to manage people who are different from you?  In this regard I don't mean skin color, religion, musical taste or so forth.  I mean people who are really different.  For example, my desk is constantly covered with paper.  It looks like a blizzard hit my office.  However, I've managed people who were so neat that you could eat off of their desks.  Not that I've ever done that.

The challenge in working with people who have a different perspective than you at work is trying to harmonize what's important to you as the manager with the results you need to get from the team.  I happen to be (as you may have guessed) free with my opinions.  Some of the people who've reported to me over my lifetime as a manager have found that difficult to take.  I can be a bit sarcastic and have a dry sense of humor.  Never a good match for people with thin skins.

Most difficult of all though is a mismatch between a micro-manager (which I am not) and a person who wants to own or control much of the direction of her work.  Many people I've known who were micro-managers never developed the trust that others would do the job in the way they would do it, and so would constantly badger their reports with leading questions.  This is a recipe for disaster.

When you manage people who are different from you, you must keep three things in mind:

1.  What's important to get the most out of the people who are working for you?
2.  What's critical to getting the work done successfully?
3.  What biases or complaints do you have that will impact the team but not the result?

You're paid as a manager to get the most from the people who are on your team.  That does not mean molding them in your image, but using their capabilities and talents to accomplish the task.  Sometimes people won't do the work in the way you'd have done it.  The real need is for them to finish the work on time and on budget, with a high degree of quality.  There are many paths to the ultimate goal.  You should direct them on things that matter to the result, and ignore the things that don't matter.  You should also get out of their way - sometimes you'll find their approach may work even better than your approach.

I think there should be a version of the "Serenity Prayer" for managers.  It would go something like this:

Grant me the insight to let others work as they are most effective, the willingness and ability to change only the things that are necessary, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Ultimately our goal as managers is to get the best effort and result from each person - focused more on the quality and the timeliness of the end result and less in the day to day process.  Except when necessary, of course.

Treat me right!

I think the next big evolution in productivity is staring us in the face - will we be smart enough to see it?  The evolution I'm talking about is a complete reworking of the employment contract - we need to start treating our employees as valuable, important contributors rather than as costs which can be cut.  This concept is true regardless of the industry or the type of work accomplished.

Some good examples come from industries where high turnover has been the rule.  In industries like high volume retail or hotels, high employee turnover is baked into every plan.  Most firms enter the year expecting to replace more than one-half of their employees!  Why is this a problem?

1.  Constant turnover means the teams never achieve optimal efficiency.  You simply cannot be effective as a team if the members keep changing.  There's no common bond - no trust - built in a team in which the members constantly change.
2.  The team members are constantly on different parts of the learning curve - there's little expertise and most people are just learning their jobs.  Of course the fast food places have taken care of some of this problem - the people in many fast food places are merely transportation vehicles for food cooked and prepared by machines.
3.  Constant turnover indicates a lack of loyalty to the organization (and probably indicates that the firm expected and planned for high turnover).  However, this means that the employee has little or no incentive to go "above and beyond" to win or keep a customer happy.  Ever wonder what happened to customer service?  It left with the attempts to keep employees happy and loyal.
4.  Recruiting and training costs are higher than necessary.  In a firm with 50-100% turnover, someone or some group within the firm is constantly screening candidates and training those candidates.  These costs, and the mistakes and rework that these candidates and new employees make, are avoidable costs.
5.  Most of these folks are not happy and don't feel rewarded or challenged in their work, and it shows in their effort. 

Some firms have begun to take a different approach.

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal really rang true for me.  It argued that happy workers are the best workers - that treating your employees well, compensating them effectively and constantly encouraging them makes those workers part of the team.

Starbucks, for example, has one of the lowest turnover ratios in its industry, and high customer satisfaction.  Some might chalk that up to a dedicated coffee-drinking work force, but others in the know recognize that Starbucks pays very well and provides benefits and stock options for employees who work at least 20 hours a week.  Treating people well means they are willing to do more, work harder and endure more than when they are treated as just another hourly employee.

Costco, one of the mega-market giants, has a similar philosophy.  They intentionally pay higher wages and better benefits than their competitors.  Read a good article about them here.  There are a few other examples of firms that have begun to make a change in the way they view employees and the value they bring to the table.

Why is this important?  With the advent of technology and computerization, many jobs left in this country are service related positions.  This means that for many firms, compensation is the highest cost item they face.  Rather than simply "manage" that cost, I think they should flip the equation and ask - how do we get the most benefit and value from the people who work for us?

Don't get me wrong about this however - one of the big problems with constant turnover is that teams are by definition larger than they should be.  In many of these firms where better wages and better benefits are extended, more is expected of the employee, and the employee has a greater chance of advancement.  I think there's a balancing act - we employers should provide better wages, benefits and opportunities for advancement as employees provide more loyalty and longer tenure, with the willingness to do even more than we've asked for in the past - because now they have a stake in the outcome.  We've got to redefine the employment contract to expect more from employers and more from employees if we want to improve customer service, become more effective and efficient with the employees we have, and over the long run become more profitable.

The thing that makes me chuckle about the article on Cosco is the fear that "employees will be treated better than shareholders".  This opens up the expectation by the writer that employees aren't shareholders - that somehow the "employee" class is different from the "shareholder" class and that they should be treated differently.  Well, as someone who is often a "customer" I can tell you an improvement in customer service will lead me to spend more money at an establishment, which will increase profits and make both constituents happy.

Man your stations

I wanted to write a short post about something I read on another blog - David Lorenzo's blog .  He has a post where he talks about some research that Gallup has done about how engaged people are  at work.  Reading over the post entitled "Employee Engagement is Local" I found myself nodding in agreement in a few areas, and disagreeing with David and with Rob from Business Pundit in some other areas.  Rob's question was "How can you effectively lead losers?"

I found myself agreeing with the Gallup research - noted on David's blog - that indicated that  29% of the people in an organization are actively engaged in what their firm is doing.  That is, they are working hard to support the progress and the direction of the firm.  55% are not actively engaged - they are there to punch the clock for the eight hours or so that is necessary.  They are neither particularily helpful or harmful.  According to the research, 16% of the folks in your business are actively disengaged - working against the corporate interest.  This is compelling stuff and jives with what I've experienced over the years.

Where I disagree with what Rob wrote is in the question - Can you lead losers?  I guess my question is - why would you try?  It seems to me that as consistently and effectively as possible a good manager will try to understand who is committed to the success of the business and is giving his or her best efforts.  In the three categories of engaged, not engaged and disengaged, there are three different management strategies.  For those who are actively engaged, reward and encourage them.  Use them as examples.  Find ways to compensate them appropriately.  For the not engaged segment , determine the reason for the lack of engagement.  Some people want to do more - they just need better leadership.  Some people are in the wrong job and can give more in other areas.  Some people are just lazy and need to kick up their productivity or find something new to do.  For the actively disengaged group, there's an easy answer - improvement or the door.  Why keep someone aboard who is actively working against your interests?

I used the "man your stations" phrase as a title for a reason.  Suppose we are in a lifeboat, the remaining survivors from a wreck at sea.  Do you want 30% of your survivors rowing aggressively, 55% rowing half heartedly and 16% actively working against your survival?  In my view, a manager's job is to motivate those that he or she can, improve the skills of those where he or she can, and remove obstacles for success where necessary.  A manager does not lead losers - he converts them to people on his team or helps them find another team to play for.  In the long run this approach works best for both parties.

There are some caveats with this approach.  Often you'll find that the not engaged and even some of the disengaged folks can contribute and want to, they just are in the wrong roles.  Moving these people into the right roles where they can contribute will make a huge difference in their attitudes and in their output.  Many of the disengaged become that way because of what they consider slights from the management team or the feeling of being overlooked or underappreciated.  These emotions boil over and the only outlet is to try to derail the very firm that cuts their paycheck.  Some of these people are recoverable, but only at the expense of a lot of coaching and interaction.  You'll need to weigh the costs and benefits of that interaction.  Finally, there are in almost any business some people who simply don't belong - they are the wrong cultural fit, they have the wrong attitudes, they don't have useful skills, they refuse to update their skills, etc.  The problem with these folks is they don't just impact their own productivity, but the attitude and productivity of the people around them.  Allowing them to stay and to interact with others is a lot like having a small cancer in your body and ignoring it.  It will get worse.

As a manager, take the time to be sure everyone on your team is in the lifeboat, oar in hand, pulling as hard as possible in the same direction.  Anyone who can't get in the boat or pull on the oar should be coached and helped to get on board.  Everyone else...

Managers don't lead losers - they convert them to participants and winners or the remove the player from the team.

Leadership is situational

I realized after my post yesterday that I had more to write about leaders and managers.  My point in all of this is the press and the American public tend to praise "leaders" and ignore or put down managers.  Both are crucial, yet almost all we read about are the Enron types or the Jack Welch types.  Do we really need another Jack Welch book?

Anyway, I thought I would add to my differences list from yesterday.

1.  Leaders worry about WHAT should be done, managers worry about HOW it should be done.  Leaders often don't understand what it takes to actually accomplish something.  In many cases this is good, since they overcome what had been perceived to be roadblocks.  Managers are usually the people who figure out how to accomplish something once the direction is set.  A leader without effective managers is constantly pointing to the future but never getting anywhere. 

2.  Leadership is situational while management is a core discipline.  There is no one effective leadership "style" but all good managers work to some common core principles.  It's been suggested that leadership is innate, something we are born with, yet there are many successful leaders with very different styles.  Compare George Bush and Bill Clinton, or Eisenhower or Patton.  Many different styles of leadership can be successful given the circumstances.  Look to Krispy Kreme.  The new CEO there is a "turn around specialist".  I think leadership is demonstrated differently in different situations and contexts.  Managers, however, have common tools and goals.  A good manager defines the work for his team, ensures everyone is aware of the goals and expectations, builds project plans to help people manage the work, and constantly seeks to provide the help and support the team needs to be successful. 

3.  Leaders are the bull horns but managers are the translators.  Leaders talk a lot, to customers, to shareholders, to partners and to the financial community.  Most leaders of businesses today have defined their roles as Mr or Mrs Outside - talking to the press and building the visibility of the business.  Managers hear and understand what the leaders are saying and try to translate that into actions for their teams.  Managers attempt to parse the instructions and goals, breaking down the larger vision into actions that people can actually begin to do. 

In my mind, leaders and managers in an organization are important, but I can run a business with three or four competent managers and no real "leader", but I certainly can't run a business with several "leaders" and no managers.  After the downsizing of the eighties and nineties, we've eliminated a significant portion of mid-management.  The attention we pay to the CEO has escalated while the pay scale has gone through the roof.  Yet quietly and efficiently, the folks who get stuff done everyday are still not given the credit or attention they deserve, and the pay has not increased much at the manager level - at least not anywhere near the way we compensate CEOs or other well-publicized leaders.

OK - off my soapbox and back to more productivity and innovation focused posts in the near future.  Just had to get that off my chest.

Leaders and Managers - why we need both

It struck me recently that we celebrate people we call "leaders" and often denigrate people who wear the title of manager.  As a person who cares about productivity and innovation, I know we need both equally.

A simple definition that you'll hear frequently is that managers do things right, leaders do the right things.  What this means is that managers are process oriented while leaders are more visionary.  I guess that's true enough, but I think several other factors come into play when considering the importance of each role.

1.  A firm needs several managers but only one leader.  Imagine a boat with several captains or
     an army where each general operated completely independently.  Managers are important
     because the get stuff done.  If there are too many conflicting directions from too many
     leaders, nothing will get done.

2.  Leaders can create or change a business culture, while managers reinforce the existing culture.
      Individuals who have the gift for leadership rarely want to follow an existing culture and are
      often trying to implement change.  Managers gain power and security by being the keepers of
      the culture and reinforcing the existing culture.  Both of these roles are equally important and
       help to keep each other in check.

3.  Most leaders are not focused on the short-term.  Managers are generally focused quarter by
      quarter.  Again, leaders are looking over the horizon, constantly interested in what comes
      next.  Managers are very tactical, interested in next quarter's numbers.  Without strong
       players in both roles, a firm is not carefully considering its short and long term health.

4.  Leaders point to a direction, managers get the people there.  Most really visionary leaders have
      no real idea what it takes to actually get people where they want them to go.  Leaders are
      often completely sold out to their vision.  Managers are the folks who break the big tasks down
      into smaller tasks and jobs and get the machinery moving in the right direction.

5.   Leaders can dictate dramatic change while managers change things incrementally.

What's all this got to do with productivity and innovation, my two favorite topics?  Everything.  Building a culture of productivity and innovation requires some vision at the top - a leader to understand the market dynamics and drive people in his or her organization to change.  Once the vision is set, managers have to be on board to get the organization where it needs to be, and to constantly reinforce that culture and vision throughout the organization.

I think a good example is the old Hewlett-Packard.  Hewlett and Packard created a vision and a company culture that exists, to some extent even today after the Compaq merger.  Anyone who's met a former H-P manager can attest that the management structure within H-P understood the culture and their roles in that culture.

For a firm to become more productive and to differentiate itself through innovation, the right people have to be in place in the leadership and the management structure.  Both roles are important and I think often we pay too much homage to the star CEO rather than realizing that both the leader and his or her management staff are required for success.

Short Term Focus

Did you ever hear the joke about the dyslexic, agnostic, insomniac?  The guy who stayed up nights wondering if there was a dog?  I wonder about a different kind of person - the one who is infinitely productive at all the wrong things, driven by the wrong motivators.

I wanted to write about this after reading a story in the Wall Street Journal entitled "When Meeting Targets becomes the Strategy, CEO is on Wrong Path".  This was in the March 8th edition.  You have to register to see the story.

Anyway, the gist of the story is about the pressure sales teams feel to meet quarterly targets and all the day to day tactical stuff that becomes the focus.  The author, Carol Hymowitz, notes that in these environments, "employee loyalty and teamwork erode quickly, along with innovation and risk taking" since many firms are cutting employees to meet quarterly targets and are stepping up pressure on the remaining employees to meet those targets.

A recent study quoted in the article by Susan Annunzio of Hudson Highland Group in Chicago found that the biggest impediment to high performance in an organization is short term focus.  After interviewing almost 3000 managers and knowledge workers in global companies just 10% said they felt they worked in high performing groups, while 38% said they worked in "non-performing groups".

I understand the need to meet quarterly objectives - anyone who has worked in a startup or a publicly traded firm has felt that pressure.  However, we've got to find a way to help people see beyond the quarterly numbers and free them up to take risks and try out new ideas.  Leadership in an industry or product is based on continuous innovation, which requires new ideas and risk taking, some of which will not help achieve this quarter's numbers.  The more we focus on the short term, the more our longer term success is placed at risk.

I can drive productivity to infinity by cutting costs and people and maintaining the same output.  However, this short term focus will derail my ability to deliver for my customers eventually and drive away the biggest resource I have - my people and their corporate knowledge.  It's time to balance the desires of the investors and their short term objectives with the requirement that our firms invest in their people, their ideas and the fruits they'll bear in the future.

Culture as a roadblock

Strong corporate culture is a double edged sword.  On one hand it can be a great enabler, emphasizing the positive, building team spirit.  On the other hand, corporate culture can become a ball and chain, limiting creativity, limiting change and innovation and sapping the strength of individuals in the organization.

I can say that from personal experience since I've actually been in both kinds of organizations.  I've worked in firms with a strong culture that emphasized creativity and openness, while never losing sight of the need to delight a customer and make a profit.  And I've also worked in firms where conformity was the rule, you did what you were told and never strayed from the corporate message or mindset.  I didn't last long in the second culture, needless to say.

What got me thinking and writing about this topic was a recent sales call with a prospective client.  As you may know, my firm is developing a software product to help people become more effective in meetings.  To be honest, effective meeting management boils down to about five key criteria:

• planning the meeting
• preparing for the meeting
• establishing reasonable objectives
• good meeting facilitation
• following up on decisions and actions from the meeting

We've built a product that helps firms do these things more effectively and are seeking beta testers and early adopters to try out the application.  If you are interested in beta testing, email me or send in a comment.

We met with a firm earlier in the week which had expressed an interest in improving their meetings.  Several of us visited the firm and met with some senior managers.  We asked about their meeting challenges, and the general consensus was that the meetings were poorly managed and planned, and that not much was accomplished in most meetings.  Meetings were viewed as a waste of time.  Before demonstrating our product, we discussed culture and philosophy and indicated that we'd found most firms broke down into two categories:  those whose culture placed emphasis on good meeting management and etiquette, and those that didn't.  Without the culture to encourage meeting planning and preparation, our application will not be fruitful.

It was pretty obvious in the meeting that planning and meeting preparation would be viewed as "overhead".  Most of the managers we spoke with recognized the BENEFITS of better meeting planning and management, but most were not willing to work against the CULTURE of the firm, which reinforced doing rather than planning.  So, for now, they will continue to hold meetings that are less than optimal, knowing that solutions exist to improve the meetings, but unwilling to force the changes necessary to improve the meetings.

I am fine with that.  As I told one of the managers as I left, you can't push a string uphill.  If the culture won't accept a new philosophy, the tool will not be successful, and there's little reason now to try to change it.  What will change their culture is either a recognition at the very top that their culture creates damaging limits to innovation or change, or a dramatic change in the business itself.  Too bad they have to be reactive rather than proactive, but that's the result when culture becomes a roadblock.

The Courage to Change

Ok, so you've decided.  You've read the Thinking Faster blog and been motivated to become more productive.  You've decided now is the time to get started and you've even begun to evaluate and measure the existing process that causes you pain (creating a baseline).  This is when it gets a little tougher.

We all don't live on islands where we get to do whatever we want to.  We, mostly, work in firms that have bureaucracies and organizational structures and cultures that like to remain the same.  They follow Newton's laws, especially the ones about entropy and remaining at rest.  They will resist change.  But without change, we'll continue doing things the same way, expecting different results, which is what Einstein defined as insanity.

No, it takes courage to stand up and say, "We could do this more efficiently" or "Let's examine how we would benefit if we made this change".  But that often puts the cart before the horse.  Many of the successful people I've worked with implemented change without asking, then presented it as a fait accompli once their idea was up and working.  Sure, it takes some intestinal fortitude to do that, but often the power of results is much stronger than the argument against change.

I'm not a motivational speaker, but I do believe that anyone in any firm can implement changes to the culture or to business processes.  What it takes is a sincere belief that the change needs to happen, the fortitude to go it alone, and either the evidence to prove another method is better or the willingness to take a risk and prove it.  But what's the worst that can happen? 

1) Your idea fails, and you go back to doing things the old way.  If you aren't rewarded for trying something new, maybe you should ask yourself what you are doing there in the first place

2) Your idea never gets adopted, due to fear of change.  Ask yourself if this is really the place you want to work

3) Your idea gets adopted, and provides the benefits you expected.  Now you are like the dog that caught the car.  What do you do now?  Will you be happier in your job?  Will you have a great impact on the business?  Or will you simply get more work since you are now more productive?

Every great change starts with one person and an idea.  Changes in your business will happen - will you be leading the change or will it be thrust upon you?