Guess the Procedure, Win a Prize

A job site requested some crucial items from head office but wasn't getting a timely response. Repeated phone and email inquiries got no action, and work at the site ground to a halt waiting for these items. It turned out that the coordinator at head office was waiting for her superior to tell her it was OK before releasing the items to the site. She "couldn't send that without authorization, the site manager should know that."

Digging further, there was no procedure at this company for how the site was supposed to request this kind of item from head office. A previous supervisor had yelled at the coordinator when she had sent items to site that he hadn't approved of. So, to protect herself, the coordinator had, within her own mind, made up a procedure that required her direct supervisor to tell her, in person, to go ahead with such shipments.

Creating a spontaneous procedure is a great initiative, it helps get the job done more easily the next time. But people have to know about a procedure in order to follow it. And, since fear had made the coordinator more concerned with protecting herself than with serving her (internal) customer, she never bothered to tell the site what she was waiting for.

So, lot's of learning points:

1. People will make up procedures, where the company has none. They have to in order to survive. We need to tap into this initiative and have some way to capture, document, and spread the use of these procedures.
2. Procedures need to be known to all parties invovled.
3. People should work for their customers, not for their boss. The coordinator was focused on how to stay on the boss's good side, rather than on how to help the site move the job forward. This is management's responsibility to drive fear out of the workplace.
4. Communication helps, lack of communication hurts. The coordinator didn't tell the site what the next step in "her procedure" was, she just put things on hold until she heard from her boss.

Procedures can be beautiful. But they have to be documented, understood by all involved, and focused on adding value to the customer.

Don't Just Say No

"Just Say No" is good advice when asked to do drugs or to vote for Sarah Palin. But when you're responding to suggestions from employees, from your direct reports, from students, or from anyone over whom you have authority, resist the temptation to "Just Say No."

A couple of incidents this week revealed two common responses to a boss figure who just said "no":

• In one organization, a very enthusiastic, top-performing employee brought a suggestion to management and was shocked that it was abruptly dismissed, with comments like "that would be totally inappropriate", "that's unacceptable" and "this stops here." The employee felt completely shut down and disrespected, and it was pretty obvious that the boss wasn't receptive to further discussion on the issue. Despite this, the employee was convinced that the idea would be very good for the organization. So, with a positive yet rebellious spirit, the employee went underground and worked to implement the idea anyway. The boss soon found out, and came down hard with disciplinary action. Things got ugly. Relationships got damaged. Motivation plummeted.
• In a second organization, employees had gotten quite used to their suggestions being dismissed, with some variation of "we tried that before" or "that wouldn't work here". Over time, the employees completely stopped voicing their suggestions. When management then ran into a problem that they couldn't solve and asked employees for help, nobody would volunteer solutions. Subsequent third-party interviews with staff revealed that they had many ideas that might have been helpful, but were resentful and hurt enough to "let management figure it out for themselves, since they're so smart." 

In both cases, the boss said no. In some cases, there was attempt at explanation, as in "we tried that before." But, in neither case did the boss invest any time in dialogue with the employee to gain common understanding.

In the first case, dialogue with the enthusiastic employee might have allowed the boss to see the value in the suggestion, or allowed the employee to see why it validly needed to be modified to be effective in the organization. If they could have gained common understanding of each others' point of view, they would have been able to come up with a modified suggestion that would have been truly fantastic. Even if the boss had been able to leave a door open for the employee to present a modified suggestion, the toxic ugliness could have been avoided.

In the second case, dialogue with the employees could have helped them see why their suggestions actually wouldn't work, or it could have helped management see how the ideas might work now where they wouldn't have before. Without dialogue, the employees felt ignored and rejected, and stopped volunteering any of their creative energy, even when asked.

So, when subordinates bring ideas to you, invest some time in dialogue, and make it clear that you value their suggestions. If you have to say "No", work to gain common understanding, and draw out and validate the employee's reactions and emotions, leaving the door open for future suggestions and creative input.

When it comes to employee suggestions, just say no to Just Saying No.

Enough With the Standing Ovations!

At an investment company's recent Client Appreciation Night at TCU Place in Saskatoon, the entertainment was good, but not great.

The warm up act was Jimmie Walker, who played Kid Dynomite (J.J. Evans) on the seventies comedy show Good Times. For some reason, Jimmie kept mentioning Moose Jaw as Saskatoon's main rival (it's Regina), went on for a while about the imminent post office strike (it's a teachers' strike, dude), talked about the lousy economy (while Saskatchewan has been booming). A little out of touch with the local scene! There were a few chuckles and smatterings of applause, but noone seemed to really get into it.

The main act was Michael Winslow, the cool sound-effects guy from the Police Academy movies. He made some pretty remarkable noises with just his mouth and a few effects pedals (the Jimi Hendrix solo was great), but also spent a whole lot of time on lowbrow "man walking out of theatre footsteps" and "man taking a leak" bits. Again, a few chuckles, a few impressive moments, but mostly mediocre filler.

Yet, at the end, the crowd of a couple thousand feet was up on it's feet for a standing ovation! Why? Why is it, that no matter how average the event, we feel obligated to honor the performers with what used to be reserved for only the best? Why pretend it was excellent when it wasn't? Don't we value excellence anymore? Have we lost our ability to identify excellence?Are we trying to be so darned nice that we never criticize mediocrity?

I've been noticing this in the world of business awards lately. Now some award recipients are truly deserving, and I mean no disrespect to those individuals and companies who are honored for their accomplishments over the years. Just staying in business for 25 years is actually a pretty amazing accomplishment.

I'm more concerned with all of the awards competitions that are mostly about "Ain't We Great". Three companies apply, or are nominated, and one gets the award as the "best this or that" in the city, or the province, or even the ENTIRE COUNTRY! One Saskatoon technology company proudly displayed an Excellence in Quality Management Award in their lobby, yet the company was a chaotic mess, with inconsistent products, huge turnover and terrible morale. They looked good on paper, and had a great award application, so with this public award as the supporting evidence, management was vocal and proud of their track record.


Not all management approaches are equal, either, nor are they all excellent. Bullying isn't good management. Winging it isn't good management. Loudership is not good leadership. And chaos is not really a business strategy.

So, don't give an ovation unless the show was truly excellent. And don't pretend that your management team is excellent, if it ain't.

Trying Harder Loses the Championship

Bantam hockey. Pretty good season. Team working together. Team having fun. Team starting out strong in the playoffs.

Then, a few rabid hockey parents throw in a bunch of comments...

• "This is the most important game of the season."
• "You better be motivated for this."
• "Damn right there's pressure!"
• "Make me proud!"
• "Quit fooling around, think about the game ahead."
• "Be a winner."
• "Give it all you've got, this is the playoffs."
• "Try your hardest, the whole team's counting on you."
• "Get serious."
• "You've got to win this one."

Watch all the kids try to be heroes. Watch all the kids "try their hardest" to score a goal. Watch the team collapse.

Watch the team stop passing. Watch the team get down on each other. Watch the team stop joking and laughing. Watch the team stop enjoying hockey. Watch the team get serious. Watch the team become ineffective. Watch the team lose.

If the team had played the way they usually played, in a fun, relaxed enjoyable way, working together without real concern for fame or the Big Win, they probably would have also won - they had the skills, they had the track record, they were the better team. But when they were all corralled into thinking that being serious, being individual heroes, being individual winners would somehow be more effective than good, fun,  relaxed team play, they crashed and burned.

In hockey, in business, if you've built a culture of relaxed, engaged teamwork to get you where you are, don't suddenly think that serious, individual heroics will somehow work better when things get challenging. Use what's worked. Good teams are more successful, and more enjoyable, than a bunch of heroes.

Does Fear Really Work?

The owner of a small print shop had six pretty happy employees and a thriving little business. As things got busier, the owner brought his wife in to help run things. She was a bit of a tyrant, and was a fan of the good cop, bad cop approach to management. She was the bad cop.

As the work environment deteriorated, several of the employees quit. The remaining employees were unhappy, and one expressed concern to the bad cop, saying that everyone was afraid to make a mistake, afraid to try anything new, afraid for their jobs. Her response was that "fear works for me," she was OK with having fearful employees; that was part of her strategy, her management philosophy.

Within months, all of the previous employees had left. Within a year, the company had folded. The bad cop manager, to this day, still laments the difficulty of "finding and keeping good employees."

Does management by fear really work for you?

Leadership Not Loudership

A military commander with thirty years under his belt described the huge changes in how the Canadian military manages its people.

"When I joined up in the 1980's, it was all about Loudership, with officers yelling at you, spit flying, veins popping. Terrifying really. And that's how I learned to manage, that's how they taught us to lead."

"That's not OK anymore. Now, it's all about leadership, about talking, and listening. There was NO listening before - it was hard to listen when you were screaming at someone. It's way better now, but it was a hard change."

"Discipline is different, it's less now, and that's a little harder, but performance is way up, retention is way up. It's better."

Intimidating Supervisors Get Better Results. But...

Do intimidating supervisors produce better results? Do nasty bosses who agressively hold their people accountable for mistakes get better performance than more enlightened, respectful leaders? Yes. But...

A health-care study by Amy Edmonson (one of many she's led on fear and silence in the workplace), examined the error rate in eight different nursing units, and looked for a correlation between the number of errors and the style of leadership. The hypothesis was that units with aggressive, intimidating leaders would produce more mistakes, while the units with enlightened, supportive leaders would make less.

The researchers were shocked to find that the units with the best leadership (enlightened and supportive) reported TEN TIMES as many errors as in the more fear-based units. The bullying worked - aggressively holding people accountable for their errors resulted in one-tenth the number of errors! Hooray!

Unfortunately, if you'd like to use this evidence to justify your evil-boss philosophy, you're out of luck. The research also showed that, in the units with more aggressive leaders, people were scared to report any errors because they knew they'd be criticized, belittled, and humiliated. So, they only reported errors if they absolutely couldn't avoid it. In the supportive units, nurses felt free to report mistakes, with a common focus on finding root causes and improving patient safety. So, they reported all errors, without filtering them to protect themselves.

So, the numbers were dramatically better in the units with nasty, intimidating supervisors. But the numbers did not reflect reality. The numbers in the units ruled by fear, were distorted by that fear, distorted to minimize the exposure to the supervisor's wrath.

There is ample evidence to show that supportive, positive leadership produces better results. That a more civilized workplace produced better results. But if you don't care so much about results, and just want better measurements, you might try being an aggressive, bullying, fear-based, nasty, intimidating boss.

For more on this, check out The No Asshole Rule by Robert Sutton, a quick read that led me to this interesting and revealing research.

A Real Live Dinosaur

I just saw a real live dinosaur. President of a successful industrial company, this fearsome creature roared his mighty roar, in a throwback to prehistoric management practices:

"If somebody makes a mistake, I fire them! Nobody makes a mistake twice here."

"Discipline is everything. If the union ever gives me trouble, I wait a bit and then fire a couple of them."

"I've never lost a union dispute. I just send my accountant with a checkbook to settle it. Way cheaper than a severance package!"

"The only thing workers care about is money. They don't understand anything else."

This superb example of  Tyrannosaurus Wrecks was terrifying; the blood-red wine flowed, chicken bones crunched, and it took every ounce of courage not to run screaming from the darkened restaurant. Well, it wasn't that bad, but lordy it wasn't that good.

We've all had tyrannical bosses at some point in our lives, but few match the ferocity of this specimen. His proud reliance on fear, intimidation and discipline bring to mind the horrors of slavery and serfdom. Yet despite the offensiveness of his managerial approach, his company, his empire, is financially successful and has a good reputation in the industry.

There are many management styles, both in terms of personal approach and in terms of policy, and all work to some degree. Indeed, in a well-controlled study of CEO management style, Bertrand and Schoar found that the financial and investment policies of the leader accounts for only about 4% of the variance in a company's results. In terms of personal style, the research is scarce, but it's clear that some bully managers succeed, and some bully managers fail. Some respectful managers succeed, and some respectful managers fail.

In my own experience, aggressive bullying management seems to make all the good people leave. And those that stay behind tend to keep their heads down to avoid the teeth, and constantly look for increasing compensation, either within the company, or in greener pastures. Aggressive bullying can work as a management style, but there are good reasons that dinosaur managers have been going extinct. Hopefully, the remaining few will soon follow.

Twelve Leadership Tips That Really Work

Are your people taking too much initiative? Do they solve problems spontaneously, and apply their creativity to problems that arise? Are they functioning effectively as a team, with great communication and conflict resolution skills?

If so, there is no time to lose. Here are twelve proven techniques that are guaranteed to reduce motivation, and inhibit those pesky spontaneous problem-solving activities that sometimes arise amongst your staff.

1. Give Orders - When someone presents you with a situation, make sure to tell then what to do and what not to do. Direct them and give them commands to make sure they know who is supposed to do the thinking.
2. Warn and Threaten - A little fear goes a long way. In no uncertain terms, lay down the law. Something like "If you don't shape up, then ... blah, blah, blah ... dumpster diving and food stamps ... blah, blah, blah ... cattle prod."
3. Preach the Gospel - Where fear falls short, guilt can save the day. Talk about responsibility, and duty, and should's. Make it a moral issue. If necessary, beg, and appeal to their conscience.
4. Advise and Solve - Suggest a different approach; tell them what would be best. Whatever you do, don't let them come up with ideas on their own. That's just asking for further creativity in the future.
5. Persuade and Argue - Especially when there's conflict, make sure to present facts and arguments explaining why they're in the wrong. If they stubbornly try to have their issues heard, try speaking louder or covering your ears.
6. Criticize - Point out how they are being foolish, or overly sensitive. Identify how their thinking is skewed, how they're wrong, and why what they're saying is, at best, wrong, and at worst, stupid.
7. Praise Them - Butter them up with compliments, and try to put a positive spin on their complaints. Let them know how intelligent they are, how they've always managed to succeed in the past. Just make sure you don't let them talk about how this challenge might be different.
8. Ridicule and Shame - Call them a whiner, or a sloppy worker. Or dismiss what they're saying because they're a typical engineer, or accountant, or a woman, or Ukrainian, or whatever. Labelling is an effective tool, because it quickly addresses their delusion of being an individual by lumping them into some arbitrary group.
9. Interpret and Analyze - Let them know that you completely understand them (even though you really don't have a clue and honestly don't care - you just want them to do their job). Imply that you fully understand their inner motivations - they're just jealous, or have a problem with authority, or they're angry. Just make something up - it still works.
10. Reassure and Console - Especially with interpersonal problems, a kindly "you'll feel different tomorrow" goes a long way towards dismissing the importance of the issue. Platitudes like "every cloud has a silver lining" are also useful for avoiding their snivelling.
11. Interrogate - Challenge everything they've told you with lots of questions. Why did you do that? Why didn't you come to me earlier? How long has this been going on? What have you tried? Anything to imply that they were wrong and should change their behavoiur. If you have a bright light you can shine in their eyes, all the better.
12. Distract and Divert - Tell a funny story, or, better yet, tell them about your own problems. Sometimes a cup of coffee or a shiny trinket can take their mind off the situation, and save you from having to hear about it. Whatever you do, don't let them focus obsessively on the problem at hand - that's unhealthy.

All of these techniques contain the powerful message that they need to change; they need to think, feel or act differently; they are not OK. All of these techniques are wonderful for showing people that we don't accept them as they are. And, as we all know, feeling unaccepted is the perfect environment for poor psychological health, personal stagnation, and poor communication.

Of course, if you're a bit of a wingnut, and actually want to encourage creative problem solving, team work, and good communication, you might want to avoid these behaviours. These are the Roadblocks to Communication outlined by Dr. Thomas Gordon in Leader Effectiveness Training. Surprisingly, he actually recommends NOT using these techniques, in favour of other, more effective leadership techniques. Go figure!

Boss Botches Bag, Nurse Nags Nicely

1. Intravenous solution causes a red track up the patient's arm.
2. IV disconnected, and replaced with new bag.
3. Shift supervisor prepares a form to send to the lab to see if it's contaminated.
4. Nurse says "I think we should send the name of the patient with it as well. The lab might have to talk to them, if they find something."
5. Supervisor overrides her, saying "They don't need that."
6. Not much later, the lab phones down and says they need the patient's name.
7. The nurse informs the supervisor, and does very well not to say "I told you so".

How often does the hierarchy interfere with the daily work at your business? Usually, the people who do the work are truly the experts. If you're the boss, stop telling the workers how to do the job, and start asking them how you can help them do it better.

I've Only Ever Worked for Idiots!

After a couple of beers, an articulate and well-educated teacher, with years of experience, great relationship skills, and a reliably positive attitude, lamented that, throughout his career, he had "only ever worked for idiots!" As examples he gave:

• One administrator awarded managers a 14% pay increase, then, citing poor economic conditions, was shocked when the teachers' union balked at a 4% raise for them.
• Another bureacrat required weekly reports that took up to three hours a week to prepare, when the teachers already didn't have enough time to prepare for their classroom lectures.
• Another manager allocated half a million dollars a year for research stipends, and then created such a large administration staff for the program that less than $25,000 / year was ever available for research.
• At another job, the boss would request that skilled and professional workers wash the manager's shoes when they got muddy in the construction around the facility, because "his time was too valuable."

These kind of power-abusing experiences are shockingly common. These kind of experiences seriously compromise morale and create a toxic environment that damages the effectiveness of even the most positive of employees.

So much of our Human Resources effort seems to be focused on fixing problem employees. This isn't surprising when you realize that management hires HR people to help with the people issues, and HR reports to management. But maybe the focus on employees is a little misguided, a little too much on symptom bandaids and not enough on root cause analysis. Perhaps the Human Resources Department needs to set itself apart a little, and direct a little more energy at finding and fixing managers whose behaviours are destroying the morale of the company's precious human resources.

Who's In Control? Four Ways to Help Someone

There are four main types of leadership that a manager can provide; the same four types of intervention that you can seek from a consultant. All can be helpful in different situations, but it is useful to clarify what you're looking for. The four types vary in the degree of control exercised by both the leader/consultant and the employee/client.

Command

"Do something, or stop doing something. I am in control."  

This is the domain of the expert, the guru who fixes your problem for you. At Superior Millwork, we would fly in equipment specialists from Italy to recalibrate the computer-controlled drilling machines or set up a new production saw. We did what they said, because this was their area of expertise. Outside of specific technical services, or emergency situations, this is rarely the most effective approach.


Consult

"Here's some information. I'll lead, but you can take or leave what I present." 

Here's where a facilitator or consultant is brought in to teach principles, lead a group improvement effort, or redesign processes. They know less than you do about your business, but they know more about process and ways to get better results. Their is a definite element of persuasion and influence, but with respect for your knowledge of your daily work.


Collaborate

"Let's explore ideas together as equals." 

True partnerships of equals aiming to create a mutually satisfying solution. Although the process often requires a facilitator, it primarily involves different stakeholders with complementary or conflicting interests. A good example is the Business Ready Investment Development Gateway (BRIDG), which aims to bring First Nations together with viable business opportunities. The First Nations have capital and labour, but often lack management skills and experience. The businesses often have management skills and experience, but lack enough capital and labour. The opportunities for collaboration are exciting.


Coach

"I will help you on your journey. Where do you want to go? You are in control." 

Unlike the cliche drill-sargent coach who makes you run 'til you puke, an executive coach helps you get where you want to go. With open-ended questions, reflective listening, and group facilitation skills, the coach draws out your priorities, and helps you decide between your options. Working as a coach to another consultant, I help him review his activities for the week, compare them to his objectives, hold him accountable for deviations, and help him find workarounds when barriers prevent him from achieving his goals. He decides where he wants to go, I help him get there. He is in control.


Next time you intervene in the daily problems in your business, consider whether Command, Consultation, Collaboration or Coaching would be most effective at resolving the situation. And, next time you look for outside help, ask about what kind of help they'll be providing.

Thanks to Andrew Bergen of Bergen Coaching for the inspiration for this posting. Andrew speaks about four types of conversation, with a continuum of control ranging from Calibration, Consulting, and Collaboration to Coaching.

This is Not Good Enough

Sometimes you grow too fast, or you lose focus, or you lose some good people, or [insert your crisis here], and all of your talk about Customer Service and Quality goes out the window. For whatever reason, your customers end up getting it in the shorts, even though you swore you'd never let that happen.

Sometimes you have to get tough and tell your people that "This is Not Good Enough!" It may be a supplier, it may be an employee, it may be a manager, or it may be your whole company that needs to hear this message. If your company is facing a harsh reality, your people need to understand that, so they can do what needs to be done.

Speaking at an NSBA dinner meeting, Wally Mah of Northridge Development Corporation candidly spoke of the problems they faced during the intense Saskatoon housing boom in 2008. Paraphrasing his comments, "We failed our customers. We let the busy trades dictate our schedule and decide on the quality of the homes we were building. It came to a crisis. So we gave one of the owner's wives the final word in quality control. She would go to the trades and say 'This is not good enough; you have to come back and fix it.' That way it wasn't just an employee talking, it was an Owner. We had to do this to regain control, to regain the trust of our customers."

W. Edwards Deming told leaders to Drive Out Fear and Eliminate Numerical Goals from our management toolkit. Yet he also made it quite clear that communicating the facts about harsh realities that might be facing a company was totally justified. In words he might have used - "Unless our quality improves by 20% in the next six months, we will be out of business."

Yes, work on your systems. Yes, engage everyone in continuous improvement. And, yes, tell your people when your company faces a harsh reality, so they can pull together to do what's necessary.

However, if you find yourself repeatedly in crisis, and repeatedly telling people that "This is Not Good Enough," you need to read Deming's Out of the Crisis. If your people are always "Not Good Enough", it's likely your management approach that is "Not Good Enough". There are better ways.

Managers Need to Play Catch

A large financial services company had built itself on mergers and acquisitions and was planning a big integration project to get everybody on the same page - using the same systems, common procedures across all geographic regions, and scalable reporting. In a sensible move, they brought in representatives from all of the global regions to give input and work through all the issues over a period of months.

This project team came up with a plan that seemed to satisfy most of their requirements and they moved into the implementation phase. Despite having representatives from almost every region on the team, the rollout of the new systems and procedures met with huge resistance in almost every geographic region. Local managers actively fought the new systems, and the top-down initiative struggled and stalled for almost three years.

Even though each region was represented in the planning team, the planning team had never closed the loop with all the other people in the region who would be affected by the changes. The managers of the regions weren't given any real opportunity to review the plan, modify the plan, or run the plan by their own people - the people who actually know what's going on and how the work gets done. And, even if the plan was actually a pretty good fit for most regions, the unilateral directive that "this is the way we're going" put everyone into defensive mode, stalling the project.

Every business is made up of individual people. Every division is made up of individual people. Every manager is an individual person. And no individual person likes to have change imposed on them.

People need to be involved in the changes that affect them. Ideally, they need to create the changes that affect them. The traditional corporate planning approach - gather information, plan and implement - doesn't do that, regardless of how good the initial "gather information" stage is. Just as in any communication, a one-way transfer of information doesn't cut it - we need to close the loop with discussion, feedback and conversation.

Much better are the methods of Hoshin Kanri (also called Hoshin Planning and Catch Ball). Check out this short video about Catch Ball from the 2009 IndustryWeek Best Plants Conference (forgive the slow 15 second intro.)

By the way, the financial services company has now retreated from unilateral implementation, and is working to get respectful involvement of every region; engaging their concerns and suggestions and letting the regions adapt the plan to suit their operations. Interestingly enough, when given the chance to adapt the plan to their own needs, most seem to be choosing the plan as is.

Initiative Dies at a Small Non-Profit

A non-profit board was functioning relatively well as a community of equals. Then, a new member joined, bringing a forceful personality and a strong belief in hierarchy and reporting structures. Within a few months, as this new member worked to establish some "much-needed control and reporting structures", other members started to hold back.

In order to avoid conflict, members began to withhold their suggestions. They stopped volunteering feedback and opinions, and developed a practice of waiting for the "powers that be" to make decisions. These competent, confident people had previously initiated and completed numerous successful projects before the implementation of this structure.

The new hierarchy clearly established roles for various members and committees, which nobody had a problem with in theory. But, in practice, it ended up that everyone waited for the others, waited for the committees to make decisions, so as to avoid conflict. Since the volunteer committees met infrequently, and communication was only "allowed" through the appropriate channels, the entire organization ground to a halt.

Where before, people could make a quick call, make some joint decisions, and take on additional tasks as needed to get the job done, the new hierarchy squelched that initiative. With no mechanism to remove or constrain the new member, the future of this volunteer organization is in jeopardy.

The introduction of the hierarchy, in this instance, has all the elements of old-school command-and-control management. Despite "team oriented language", disrespect for people has been significant, with those who previously ran the whole show now being told that they aren't allowed to make decisions. The "I'm the boss. Do your job." mentality of this new member is seriously abrasive to the other competent professionals who previously contributed their time, energy and expertise. Now, they're just contributing their time and withholding the rest.

This one's still in progress; we'll see how it turns out.

Withholding Initiative, Withholding Creativity

A positive and passionate employee of a small non-profit organization had been routinely taking the initiative and using his creativity to update a display area near the entrance. After a couple years on the job though, he confessed a little sadly that he now reluctantly found himself withholding his initiative and creativity more often than not, more often than he wanted to. He still had a lot of ideas, but his experiences over the previous years had produced a shift in his behaviour.

The non-profit was run by a volunteer board of directors, and board members had widely differing opinions on what was acceptable and what was desirable in this display area. So, whenever he'd take the initiative and update the display, three board members would love it, two would hate it, and he'd end up having to take it down. Then, he'd try something else and two different board members would love it, two would be neutral, and one would protest. The frustration of having so many creative initiatives challenged, and reversed, damaged his will to take new risks, to take the chance of trying something new. He adpoted new lethargic behaviours to suit the environment, to survive in the culture, to fit the reality of how management actually operated.

By working with the board to clarify who was responsible for the display, and to provide a clear guideline for the content they wanted in the display, the frustration of reporting to several rather random bosses was greatly reduced. While there were still some differences of opinion amongst the board members about his displays, the new structure freed him from the immediate conflicts and challenges, and rejuvenated his creative spirit.

People generally want to give you their drive, passion and creativity. If you create an environment that encourages them to withhold their initiative, you'll end up with risk-averse employees who passively wait for you to tell them exactly what you want them to do.

Three Lessons from a Client Visit

At a high-end high-tech firm, a complex project for a large client had gone sour. An emergency trip was arranged for the three most-involved and most-knowledgeable technical staff to go to the client site in an attempt to get the project back on the rails. With one senior technical lead and two junior technicians, they were to clarify the issues, do some in-depth testing and diagnostics, and attempt to come up with a solution during the three-day onsite visit. The meeting was arranged, flights and accomodations were booked and the agenda finalized.

Shortly before the trip, the project manager for these services initiated a conversation with the client's project manager and, out of the blue, decided to:

1. Reschedule the meeting for a day earlier, adding $1,200 to each of three plane tickets, and
2. Change who was going, removing the lead technical person, the one guy knew the most about the issues and most likely to come up with the solution. In his place, they sent a new services manager who had been with the company less than a week. The reason given was so that the client could "put a face to the name" of this new manager.

Since the lead technical person would have driven the entire trouble-shooting project, teaching and guiding the other two, the visit ended up being completely unproductive. Management arranged numerous meetings for the three visitors to meet and greet key people, several long lunches and meeting were held, and zero progress was made on the technical issues. The technical people were completely frustrated and disillusioned.

The service manager and project manager reassured the client that they were "taking the problem very seriously" and were "doing everything possible to find a solution" and were quite proud and vocal about how good the optics were that we "sent a high-level team down to address your issues".  So, the client was able to put a face to the name of the new services manager, but changed the name of the company to "mud," as the technical problem was almost completely ignored on this trip.

Three management mistakes in this scenario, and three resulting lessons to learn:

1. Managers didn't respect the Gemba. Managers need to support the people who are doing the actual, customer-focused, value-added work. In Lean terminology, this is the Gemba, the place where the real work happens. The customer needed a technical intervention, this should have been a technical trip, and the team should have been a technical team. Management face-time is important, but not at the expense of actually solving customer problems and meeting customer needs. This change was disrespectful to the technical team, disrespectful to the customer, and put management wants ahead of the Gemba, of the real work.

2. Managers imposed decisions on workers. The workers were trying to solve a technical problem. The project had anticipated some problems and there was budget for technical trips like this. The client and the technical staff agreed that further remote trouble-shooting wouldn't get them anywhere (they'd been trying to solve this problem remotely for several weeks with no success). Management unilaterally changed this to a management visit, making the trip completely ineffective, and stretching out the customer problem even further. Damage to morale within the technical staff was huge.

3. Managers created barriers, rather than removing them. Effective managers work to consult with staff, and remove barriers, provide resources and help workers get what they need to get the job done. In this case, the managers created barriers and literally prevented the work from being done. Top-down, command-and-control thinking is damaging and ineffective - there are better ways.

The problem remained unsolved for several more months, as this trip had eaten up the remaining travel budget for the project. Eventually, the crisis escalated enough to prompt a repeat trip with the original technical team. On that trip, they were able to solve the problem.

Language Matters. Language Doesn't Matter.

Language Matters...

When you hear your boss refer to you as headcount, doesn't that just make you feel all warm and valued inside? Isn't it nice to be called a resource, an in-scope FTE (full-time equivalent), a pawn, or a warm body? Do you feel trust and loyalty when your manager jokes that you should "clean out your desk" when you've made a small mistake? Do you feel respected and valued when your concerns are dismissed as "high school drama?"

The specific words you choose are important, and different people are triggered by words you might find acceptable. You can dimiss the importance of language, and wish for people to stop being so sensitive, or you can work to habiturally choose language that is more respectful and effective.

Language Doesn't Matter...

One of the most dysfunctional people I've ever had the pleasure to work with constantly used words like teamwork, respect, listening and collaboration. He prided himself on his leadership skills and believed himself to be an excellent facilitator and communicator. Unfortunately, he was also rigidly hierarchical in his thinking, treated colleagues and subordinates with contempt, sucked up to everyone above him, and was abrasive and abusive in every meeting and encounter. Despite his use of all the feel-good language, he pushed people away like the stink on a skunk-sprayed dog (don't ask!).

The specific words you choose don't matter a bit if your actions aren't consistent with them. You can say that you value teamwork, but everybody learns the truth when you try to bully your agenda through without listening to anyone else's point of view.

Language matters - you're talking to real people and real people want to be respected.

Language doesn't matter - your actions truly do speak louder than the words you use.

See also, You Don't Act the Way You Say you Act.

Slashing the Soda Pop Budget

At a large electronics development company, one of the branch offices was in the habit of providing free soda pop for the staff. The staff worked long hours with intense deadlines to complete one hardware design project after another. After a cost review, head office sent a directive to stop the free soda, deciding that the cost was unnecessary and was being abused by the staff.

I met with this company for other reasons three years after this had happened, and in discussion with staff about morale, management, the human resources department, and company policies, people were still very bitter about this unilaterally imposed decision.

The free soda had been a source of pride, a differentiator between this company and other employers in the area. Staff saw it as a nice thing that the company offered them, and it helped a little with accepting the long hours and intensity.

By taking it away, without discussion or consultation, the staff felt disappointed, disrespected and cynical. Heard over and over were variations of "I bust my butt for this comapny. I work long hours and they don't pay overtime. They're worried about the costs of a couple of sodas when I've been giving them my heart and soul!? Well, no more."

Management of the day had been happy with the short term cost savings and patted themselves on the back for their budget success. Needless to say, the losses due to damaged morale, that were still pervasive three years later, were much greater than the savings from stopping the free soda. The losses were unmeasurable though, and the soda savings were easily measured. So management used what they could measure, and made a very poor decision.

You Don't Act the Way You Say You Do

Do you do what you say? Do you practice what you preach? If people watched your behaviour, would they say it was consistent with how you typically describe yourself? Probably not, especially if the situation is potentially challenging, threatening, stressful or embarassing. Like, oh let's say, almost all management and business activities.

Each of us has what Chris Argyris calls an espoused theory of action; what we believe we'd do when faced with a situation; it's how we describe ourselves to others; how we think we normally behave. Our espoused theory of action closely fits our values and beliefs, and supports our self image in a way that's comfortable and consistent with our ideas about right and wrong. Unfortunately, what we think we'd do is usually incorrect, and is quite different from our theory-in-use, the actual behaviours we resort to when the going gets tough.

This disconnect between what we say we do (our espoused theory of action) and what we actually do (our theory-in-use) is obvious to those around us. Yet very few of us are aware of how inconsistent we are; of how much contradication there is between the two.

We say that we value family over work, yet we routinely work late every night, go in on weekends and keep our BlackBerry's on when we're on holidays, neglecting our spouses and short-changing family time with our kids. We say that we treat people fairly, yet we regularly point the finger of blame at our employees whenever something goes wrong. We say that we value input and want engaged employees, yet we impose decisions and change on our people, and discount their comments as whining and complaining.

According to Argyis, when faced with challenge we tend to take actions that allow us to:

• stay in control,
• maximize winning and minimize losing,
• suppress negative feelings, and
• be as rational as possible.

If a problem happens on a customer order, it is so much easier on our ego to blame an employee than to accept that our system of production is out of control; it's so much easier on our self-image to have people think Joe was the culprit, rather than risk them thinking poorly of us; it's so much easier to bury our fears and doubts about our leadership ability and point a finger at someone else; it's so comforting to rationalize that "if only they'd do their job right, we wouldn't have these problems."

We're very inconsistent, and we're blind to our own inconsistencies. To protect our fragile self-image, we believe we act in ways that are good and right, however we define those terms. Yet, also to protect our fragile self-image, we actually act in quite different ways, with actions that are unconsciously designed to keep us in control and minimize our personal exposure to loss and negative emotions. Because of this, we fail to learn more effective behaviours, to actually behave consistently with our values. After all, why should we change if it wasn't our fault?

When crises happen, take the risk to examine your own behaviours, rather than the behaviours of others. Turn off your rationalization programs, and look for the disconnects between how you think you behave, and how you actually behave. Allow yourself to see that they are quite different, and take true responsibility for yourself, your management, your company.