The Business Sensei

There Can Be Only One

The other morning, I noticed one of my cats running around with her catnip mouse. Now, this isn’t such an unusual occurrence. However, the difference this time was that the other two cats also wanted to play with the mouse. This is unusual: normally, when one cat gets the toy, the others ignore it.

It wasn’t until the cat dropped the mouse that I realized that either it wasn’t a catnip toy or the cat had been playing with a Pinocchio mouse that had picked a very unfortunate moment to become a Real Mouse.

As soon as the mouse was on the ground, it immediately tried to run from the cat. The only thing that saved the mouse was when another cat got in the way. It was a bit hard to tell, but I’m pretty sure that the cats were more interested in competing with one another over which one would get the mouse than in working together. It reminded me of an old Tweety and Sylvester cartoon.

What was particularly interesting, though, was how the mouse behaved whenever a cat did catch up to it: it would open its little tiny mouth, raise its front paws, and try to look fierce. It was pretty funny watching a mouse trying to intimidate a cat that outweighs it one hundredfold. Oddly enough, though, every time the mouse did this, the cat would hesitate, which usually gave enough time for another cat to get in the way. At that point, the mouse would run and the third cat would quickly chase and catch it, causing the whole process to repeat. Eventually, I managed to trap the mouse in a container and release it outside.

To be fair, one can hardly blame the cats for taking an “every cat for herself” attitude. After all, in this situation, we’re talking about a very fixed pie, or mouse. Only one cat will get the prize. Whether that prize is then eaten or proudly left as a gift on a bedroom pillow, there can be only one winner, and it’s not the owner of the pillow. For cats, this is quite normal. Unfortunately, it is also quite normal on far too many so-called teams. Indeed, it is quite disturbing how often teams work together almost as well as did the cats.

Like the cats, though, in a very real sense you can’t blame the team members either. When there is only one mouse, or pie, suddenly the priority becomes getting it. Put another way, whenever team members are in a position of “I win, you lose,” you don’t really have a team; you have a mob or a horde of cats out for themselves.

It doesn’t matter whether there’s a fixed amount of money being given out to the “best” members of the team, or bottom ten percent are being fired. Quite simply, when members of a “horde” are competing with one another for the rewards, performance is drastically and dramatically reduced compared to a strong team. How bad can this be, you ask? A team outperforms a horde by at least tenfold, and can sometimes outperform by a factor of a hundred or more. What is that level of performance worth to you?

Like the cats being “intimidated” by the mouse, members of a horde are also more likely to be flummoxed by relatively simple problems. By behaving in an unexpected fashion, the mouse could startle the cats, in large part because each cat was devoting the bulk of its efforts to competing with the other cats. Thus, they were less able to focus on the mouse. Similarly, when team members are devoting the bulk of their efforts to competing with their supposed colleagues, they spend less effort solving problems. After all, the reward is not for finding the best ideas, but to finding an idea that looks better than the ideas that other team members came up with. In some cases, just being good at making someone else’s ideas look bad is enough to win. Well, at least the individual wins; the team, and the company, end up with a dead mouse on their pillow.

Competition on the team also means that you, the manager, have to spend most of your time keeping your cats walking in the same direction and focused on your goals. This can be exhausting, as anyone who has ever taken their cats for a drag can attest. Team members will only care about the goals of the team when no other way of getting ahead is available. As for taking risks, forget it. Why take a risk when that means someone else gets the mouse? It’s smarter to play it safe and let another person make the mistake.

Far better to eliminate competition within the team and focus team members on competing against other teams, preferably teams at other companies. Use the competition to bring them together instead of driving them apart. If someone on the team isn’t carrying his weight, it’ll become obvious and can be dealt with simply and directly at that point. Building a strong team takes effort, but it sure beats herding cats.

The Perils of Perception

I was flying through the air. Unlike the common experiences of flying, this did not involve an airplane. Rather, I was practicing jujitsu and my partner had just executed a very well-timed throw. As I went over, I suddenly realized that my partner had turned the wrong way and was throwing me off the mat and onto the concrete floor.

Needless to say, the landing was painful. I started to say something to my partner when I suddenly realized that I was still on the mat. While I thought my partner was throwing me onto concrete, he was, in fact, throwing me exactly where he was supposed to: onto a nice, soft mat. Believing that I was about to land on concrete, however, was enough to cause me to take a hard fall.

Perception, in other words, is reality.

Now, it is easy to argue that maybe the expectation of falling on concrete was enough to make me tense up and hence take a bad fall. On a separate occasion, I really was thrown off the mat and onto the concrete floor. I didn’t realize it was happening and fully expected to land on a soft mat. Far from being a painful shock, the landing was completely comfortable, exactly how I’m used to feeling when I hit the mat. It wasn’t until I stood up that I realized that I wasn’t where I expected to be.

Perception is, once again, reality.

A certain company was experiencing explosive growth. Their hot new product enabled them to dominate the niche they had created. As their product became more and more successful, the senior management team became more and more concerned about the future. They focused on the consequences of failure and the decisions they made were based on protecting their turf, not continuing to innovate and expand. Despite their successes, they viewed themselves as fighting a doomed battle against encroaching competitors. Over time, just as they envisioned, their competitors chipped away at their market share and they saw their revenue decline.

Perception can become reality.

The company was seriously stuck. They knew they had a good product, but they couldn’t get any traction. Engineering teams were spending all their time arguing over minute details; everyone was so afraid of making a mistake that making a commitment to any course of action was seen as high risk behavior. Even when they did make a commitment they made almost no progress: every decision had to be reevaluated and rejustified at every meeting.

Rather than focusing on what could go wrong, the management team had to learn to focus on what could go right. Rather than viewing every decision in terms of avoiding failure, they had to plan for success. The only way to never fall off a bicycle is to never get on one in the first place. If you want to ride, though, you have to risk falling over. This company needed to stop being afraid of falling off the bike and simply start pedaling. They needed to perceive success around the corner.

As management started to change their attitudes, the rest of the company followed. We always assume that the person highest up the ladder can see the furthest. In this case, once the people at the top started perceiving success, everyone else could perceive it too.

The company regained its dominant position. Were their mistakes along the way? Of course there were. At one time, those mistakes would have led to heads rolling and projects being canceled. Even worse, the mistakes would have led to interminable meetings arguing over the causes and making elaborate plans to avoid any possibility of failure in the future. However, with the new mindset that success was inevitable, mistakes were merely feedback, opportunities to collect information and adjust strategies.

Change perception and you change reality.

What you perceive determines how you act. This isn’t some sort of magic, it is simple psychology. Teach people to perceive success at the end of the journey and they perceive the opportunities to get them there. Teach people to perceive failure and they avoid anything that might be risky, including the opportunities to succeed.

Hard landing or soft landing, it’s up to you. What are you doing to make sure your team perceives success?

What Are You Avoiding?

The amazing thing about train wrecks is that they are obvious in hindsight. However, while they are happening, everyone involved is gripped by some horrid fascination that, if not forcibly interrupted, leads to the inevitable conclusion.

By the end of this particular train wreck, a member of the senior management team had resigned and the CEO had lost the trust of many of his formerly extremely loyal employees.

The newly hired VP of Sales was given responsibility for supervising a particular product manager, someone who had been with the company for years. They did not hit it off and the relationship went downhill from there.

The PM was charged by the CEO with getting a particular release of the software out the door. The VP of Sales wanted the project manager to be working on something else. The CEO kept promising to straighten things out with the VP of Sales, but never quite got around to it.

The VP of Sales became ever more frustrated with the constant “insubordination” of the PM; the PM, meanwhile, was increasingly frustrated with getting one set of instructions from the VP and one from the CEO.

The VP of Sales eventually went to the CEO and told him that he was planning to fire an employee. The CEO shrugged and didn’t think much about it. “It’s your department,” was his only response.

The VP told the project manager to leave, that she was suspended without pay pending completion of the paperwork to fire her.

At this point, the CEO noticed that the PM wasn’t in the office, found out what was going on, and “unfired” her. While she was happy to be unfired, she was also furious that he’d let it get to that point. The VP of Sales, meanwhile, was just a tad miffed. He felt he’d received carte blanche and ended up feeling much like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football as Lucy jerks it away.

The CEO’s attitude was that, “these things just happen.” He was, of course, wrong.

Teams are not a group of people operating in their own silos, independent of one another. Rather, they are an interacting system and sometimes parts of that system don’t work quite the way they should. When something goes wrong, it’s important understand the system and how different players contributed to the problem.

The Project Manager was nobly perhaps, but foolishly, focused on the assignment she’d received from the CEO. Her attempts to explain to the VP of Sales just why she wasn’t focusing on his objectives were either insufficient or simply missing. She may have assumed that the CEO would explain things to him, but didn’t force the issue when it became obvious that he hadn’t.

The VP of Sales walked into the company and made a number of assumptions about how work was done and how authority was implemented. Rather than take the time to find out how people worked in the company, how rigid or flexible the lines of control were, and what other projects might be going on, he assumed that an employee put into his department could be assigned to his projects. He didn’t listen to the PM and he never made the effort to go to the CEO and found out what was going on. He assumed the CEO was paying attention to issues in his department that were, quite simply, not where the CEO’s mind was. Even when he went to the CEO to explain that he wanted to fire someone, he didn’t bother to explain the situation.

The CEO, for his part, also contributed in a major way to the final, unsatisfying outcome. He knew he was giving an employee instructions that might contradict what her manager was telling her. He also knew the project manager was extremely frustrated with her new manager. He didn’t act on that knowledge. He was busy, and explaining things to the VP of Sales was not a high priority for him. Even once the situation had reached its climax and the project manager had been fired, the CEO didn’t really address the problem. He simply pulled the rug out from under the VP of Sales and did not consider how that might make the VP look to his other subordinates.

At every stage of the game, the CEO, the PM, and the VP of Sales each had opportunities to address issues that each of them wanted to avoid: the CEO didn’t really want to deal with the disappointment of the PM at having her project cancelled, nor did he want to upset his new VP of Sales. The PM did not want her project cancelled and really wasn’t all that interested in the project the VP of Sales wanted her to take on. The VP of Sales had his own views about power and authority and didn’t really want to find out that the company did things differently than he believed they should be done. He was angry, blamed the PM, and wanted to punish her.

Right up to the end, stopping to address the unpleasant issues and recognizing how each person was contributing to the impending train wreck could have changed the results. Instead, each person operated in a vacuum, and managed to achieve one of the worst of all possible results.

What difficult situations or awkward conversations are people in your office avoiding?

The Sign of the Fours

During the month of January, my wife and I were attending parent-teacher conferences for one of our children. We walked into the building and went to sign in at the desk. There, my wife pointed out the odd date on the sign in form. Instead of reading, “1/15/13,” as one might expect given that the month was January, it read, “4/15/13.” Given the freezing temperatures outside, one might be forgiven for assuming that this represented some sort of wishful thinking. In fact, though, closer examination of the sign in sheet revealed that someone earlier in the day had written the date using a stylized number “1,” such that it looked vaguely like a four. Everyone after that simply copied down the date as they saw it written, apparently without giving any thought to the fundamental lack of logic inherent in the situation. In other words, even though it was January, even though it was freezing cold and there was snow on the ground, even though we weren’t even a month past New Year’s Day, even though, in other words, all the data screamed “January,” people were writing April for the date.

Now, if this phenomenon were limited to people signing into meetings, it would be quite unremarkable. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. This sort of automatic pilot behavior happens all too often in businesses. In businesses, though, it’s rarely quite so benign as writing down the wrong date on a form. Rather, it can involve misreading or misunderstanding critical instructions, with results that do not become obvious until much later in the product development cycle.

At one company, engineers assembling a set of medical tools would quickly glance at the notes left by the person who worked on the previous step, and then take the appropriate actions based on those notes. Alas, the “sign of the fours” played in quite frequently: when the notes were ambiguous, people would often interpret them in ways that made no logical sense given the nature of the product or the point in the development cycle.

At another company, a senior person gave a rather bizarre presentation to a client because he was quite convinced that was what he’d been told to do, even though logic would have suggested that just maybe he was misinterpreting his instructions. In a famous example from WWII, a young pilot mistook the humming of the general sitting next to him in the cabin as instructions to raise the landing gear, even though the plane was still racing along the runway. As a result, the plane crashed. Time after time, we’ve all seen people make apparently nonsensical decisions or take actions that appear to make no logical sense simply because they are reacting to the “sign of the fours”; we may even have done it ourselves from time to time.

So what is going on here?

In virtually every one of these situations, the common element is time. “So what?” you might ask. Time, after all, is a common element in every situation. The key, though, is in how we perceive time. When we perceive themselves as being rushed or short on time, we tend to make snap decisions based on whatever is in front of us. That number looks like a four? Okay, write down a four for the month even though it’s January. The general gestured with his hand? Clearly he wants the landing gear up even though we’re still on the ground.

Ironically, this perception of time is often an illusion. We talk all the time about “saving time,” but no matter how much we save, it’s never there when we want to make a withdrawal. Time is money until we actually try to get a refund. We all get sixty minutes to the hour, 24 hours to the day. Nothing we do can change that. The only real decisions we have are how we allocate that time and how much we can get done during the time available to us. Counter-intuitively, the more we try to schedule, cram, and pack our days, the less we actually do: we become more prone to distractions and mistakes. Athletes who feel rushed moved very fast, but lose more often. Athletes who have learned the trick of feeling like they have lots of time tend to win, even in such high speed sports as fencing.

The secret, therefore, is to structure our time so that we don’t feel so rushed. It’s not that we’re changing the amount of time we have, merely how we perceive it. The master fencer perceives time in slow motion, and thus appears to always be in the right place at the right time. Since all of us have a tendency to underestimate how long projects will take, one trick is to change our perception of the deadline by creating a series of challenging, but realistic, deadlines that we can miss and still be ahead of the game. So long as we take our self-imposed deadlines reasonably seriously, we will get a great deal done, yet when we don’t make them, we still feel in control and able to focus. It’s when we feel events rushing down upon us that we become most vulnerable to the “sign of the fours.”

Of course, this whole discussion does beg the question of how many of those people who wrote “4/15/13” instead of “1/15/13” then went rushing off to deal with their income taxes.

Goal Apocalypse

It’s a new year. That means two things: one, the world didn’t end in the so-called “Mayan Apocalypse” of 21 December 2012; and two, since the world didn’t end it’s time to figure out some resolutions for the New Year. Perhaps a good one is not worrying about Mayan Apocalypses or Aztec Apocalypses or whatever the next apocryphal apocalypse might happen to be! At least that one has a chance of being kept.

Of course, as we all know the problem with New Year’s resolutions is that they never last long anyway; indeed, in most cases a New Year’s resolution has about as much likelihood of coming true as the latest predicted Apocalypse. Even when we move from the realm of resolutions, which tend to be fairly vague, to the more specific area of goals, we don’t see a significantly greater success rate.

Why not?

The major problem most people have with setting goals is that they don’t take the time to really think through what they want to accomplish. They fall back on the SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) formula, and then wonder why it didn’t work. While the formula is a good mnemonic, the mnemonic doesn’t really tell you how to use it.

The trick is to start at the end: what are you *really* trying to accomplish? When someone says they want to “get in shape,” do they mean run 2 miles? A marathon? Bicycle? Play tennis? Lose weight? When a business says it wants to ship a product, again, what is the outcome they are seeking? Who will buy it? Why would they want it?

It’s important, therefore, to describe how the world will be different if you accomplish your goal. By fleshing out that description, you can then identify which pieces you can control and which ones you can’t. You can write a novel, but you can’t force any given publisher to accept it. However, you can engage in behaviors that will make it more likely (researching appropriate publishing houses, investigating agents, getting advice from published authors, researching the steps to get a novel published in the first place!, etc). This will develop into your strategy: a series of steps that move you toward your goal. Those strategic steps will often turn into smaller goals along the way. That’s great: it helps you manage and track your progress.

The time element comes in when you start planning how and when you will execute the steps. You can also define trigger conditions that will cue you to work on your goal: “on Monday after I finish my coffee I will…”

Don’t try to keep all your goal directed behavior in your head: calendar entries, checklists, etc, are all good tools for keeping track of what you should be doing when. Indeed, just the act of writing out your goals at the start of the year can help you focus on them. Silly as it sounds, we tend to not believe ourselves if we don’t write down the goals. The act of writing is what moves us from dreaming to doing. While the complexity and number of people involved will vary depending on whether you are writing out an individual or a business goal, the process is fundamentally the same.

It’s important, by the way, to not set too many goals. If you overload yourself with goals, you will fragment your attention, and that may well make it hard to focus on work or make you short-tempered: you’re using your brain power to manage all your goals and have nothing left to resist the urge to snap at that irritating co-worker. 3-4 large scale goals are usually as much as you want: remember that the process of designing your goal strategy means that a few big goals can generate a lot of little goals!

The challenge is thinking big and simultaneously being realistic about the commitments on your time and energy. The best goals strike a balance between the two.

Stephen Balzac is an expert on leadership and organizational development. A consultant, author, and professional speaker, he is president of 7 Steps Ahead, an organizational development firm focused on helping businesses get unstuck. Steve is the author of “The 36-Hour Course in Organizational Development,” published by McGraw-Hill, and a contributing author to volume one of “Ethics and Game Design: Teaching Values Through Play.” Steve’s latest book, “Organizational Psychology for Managers,” is due out from Springer in 2013. For more information, or to sign up for Steve’s monthly newsletter, visit www.7stepsahead.com. You can also contact Steve at 978-298-5189 or steve@7stepsahead.com

QWERTY Culture

Remember the last time the keys on your computer jammed because you were typing too fast? Neither do I.

The fact is, our QWERTY keyboards are an artifact of history, a solution to a problem that hasn’t existed for at least half a century: typewriter keys jamming when you type too fast. The solution was to design a keyboard which reduced the speed at which someone could type. Even though that problem hasn’t existed at least since the 1960’s IBM Selectric Typewriter, with its “letter ball,” we still use QWERTY keyboards. Better keyboard layouts do exist, but that hasn’t changed the fact that QWERTY still owns approximately 98% of the keyboard market. QWERTY is so accepted that even my spell-checker recognizes QWERTY as a word.

Now, one can make all manner of arguments about how QWERTY persists because there is a significant investment in QWERTY keyboard manufacturing in place, or because most people are comfortable with QWERTY keyboards and don’t want to learn something new, or that learning the more efficient Dvorak keyboard isn’t a transferable skill, and so forth. All of these arguments are even sort of true, albeit of questionable relevance. Fundamentally, they call boil down to tradition. We’ve always done it this way, so let’s keep doing it this way. Everything else arises in response to that.

Maybe this isn’t such a big deal in the world of keyboards. After all, most people are pretty happy with their QWERTY keyboards, and it’s not that hard to use a Dvorak if you really want to. The QWERTY phenomenon can be more of a problem, though, in large organizations where continually solving a problem that no longer exists wastes time, energy, and resources.

The “way we’ve always done it” is very attractive. It’s familiar, safe, something we often don’t think much about. Doing things the way we’ve always done them feels good, like putting on a favorite coat. Sure, it may not be as nice or as warm as a new one, but it’s comfortable. We’ve grown used to it. Quite frequently, we’ve built up structures or procedures to help us do whatever it is we’ve always done. Those structures and procedures, like QWERTY keyboard factories, give us a convenient excuse to not make changes.

Founded over a century ago, General Motors learned many lessons about how to sell cars. Those lessons were the results of hard won victories over competitors and economic disasters including the Great Depression. Those lessons made GM the most successful auto maker in the world for many years. Those same lessons, unfortunately, also eventually led to a GM executive pointing to a GM parking lot and declaring there was no need to worry about competition because there were no foreign cars in the lot. The world, and the competitive landscape, had changed and GM hadn’t kept up. They were, metaphorically, still happily using their QWERTY keyboards in a world where everyone else had moved on to something far more effective. It took an economic disaster and the near destruction of the company to force them to start facing modern problems instead of hiding comfortably behind old ones.

By comparison, IBM badly misjudged the computer market in the late 1980s and early 1990s. They were so accustomed to being on top that they simply couldn’t imagine any need to do things differently. Thus, the techniques they’d learned selling giant multi-million dollar computer systems to large corporations were the same techniques they applied to selling little tiny PCs to individuals. The results were underwhelming. It took the first loss in the company’s history to shake them out of their complacency. For the first time in IBM history an outsider, Lou Gerstner, was brought in to run the company. He successfully refocused IBM on the market in front of them, not the market they were used to being in.

Giant companies are not the only ones vulnerable to this “QWERTY trap.” It’s a game everyone can play. One Silicon Valley company I worked with asked me to convince all their employees to work twelve hour days. When I pushed them on what they were trying to accomplish, they first spoke about deadlines, fixing bugs, and customer commitments. When I kept pushing, it eventually turned out that they wanted their employees to work twelve hour days because, “This is Silicon Valley and that’s what we do here!” Once I convinced them that a more sane work schedule would make more sense, we saw productivity go up and both the quantity and the severity of software bugs go down. The company actually started hitting its deadlines.

It’s easy to get caught up in the idea that the way to do things today is the way we’ve always done them. It’s also easy to use existing procedures and policies to justify our desire not to change. Doing things the familiar way feels good. However, just because something feels good doesn’t mean it’s actually doing what we think it’s doing. It pays to stop periodically and check to see that we’re doing is actually solving the problems in front of us, not problems that disappeared fifty years ago.

Voices in the Corridor: A Halloween Tale

Even the janitors don’t go down that corridor. Not any more, not for a very long time. The spiders moved in long since, creating a very different sort of website. The old-timers in neighboring buildings claimed that long ago, on a moonless Halloween night, a business had died there.

The last company to use that building tried to have the corridor blocked off. Each day the wall would be put up. Each morning, it was found broken and scattered, a trail of debris leading from the conference room at the end of the corridor all the way to the Keurig coffee maker in the kitchen.

Those who ventured into the corridor reported voices coming from the conference room, sometimes faint, sometimes loud, always indistinct. Always arguing, always debating, though none could say of what they spoke. Only one phrase would, from time to time, rise above the murmur, a phrase that struck fear into the hearts of all who heard it. Then, for a brief time, other phrases would emerge, before fading once more into inchoate argument.

Those who returned from the corridor were always quiet, subdued, as though some darkness had settled upon their spirits, a strange, mysterious darkness not easily dispelled. Either that or they suddenly realized that they had a lot of work to do and needed another cup of coffee. Yet, no force would convince them to walk down that corridor again, to listen to the voices coming from behind the closed doors at the end, heavy wooden portals locked from the inside.

What words had they heard? What phrase filled with horror those who heard it spoken in that cobweb filled corridor?

It was only this: “I call the vote.”

Four simple words. Four words that might seem innocent, harmless, a way to make a decision and move forward. Four words which left those who spoke them trapped forever in argument and debate.

The vote: there are those who claim it is the way all debates should be settled, all arguments brought to a close.

“It is how we do things,” they say. “It is the American way.”

When the vote is called, the tally counted, the argument does not end. It continues, on and on, through vote after vote.

“I didn’t understand the issues.”

“I thought a yes vote meant we weren’t going to do it.”

“We can’t vote on this yet, we haven’t considered all the issues.”

“I don’t care what we voted, that just won’t work.”

“We can’t vote on this. It wasn’t announced ahead of time.”

The vote settled nothing. No agreement was reached, no consensus created. People took sides, the arguments became more vocal, more strident. The debate less about the issues, more about convincing others or forcing agreement. Without consensus, each vote only convinced those who lost that their error lay in not yelling more loudly, in failing to persuade others. The value of the ideas, the goal of the meeting fell away, the vision of the business lost in the struggle. Winning the vote became the new goal, the new vision. To lose the vote was to lose face. Perhaps the vote was called without warning. Who knows?

Had there been a leader who could make a decision, perhaps that would have ended it. Or perhaps not. Sometimes decisions refuse to stay decided. More precisely, some teams are unable to make a decision and stay with it. They vote, over and over they vote, yet those votes settle nothing. Rather than end the debate, the losers join together to win the next vote. The issue refuses to die until, like a zombie, the debate itself has eaten their brains.

For a vote to work, first there must be consensus. For there to be consensus, there must be productive discussion, effective debate, meaningful argument. This takes time: not just time to argue, but time to learn how to argue. Most votes occur too soon, before the team is ready. Even a strong leader can’t always change that. Strong leaders draw out their teams, involve them in the decision even when the leader will have the final word. When the best leaders make a decision, in truth they are ratifying the consensus of the team. Their strength lies in their ability to bring about that consensus, to argue without being drawn into argument.

“I don’t care what the vote was, I’m in charge here.”

So the debate continues, on an on. Eventually, everyone else went home. Down that corridor, in that room, they call the vote, over and over, and nothing ever gets done.

Happy Halloween!

Stephen Balzac is an expert on leadership and organizational development. A consultant, author, and professional speaker, he is president of 7 Steps Ahead, an organizational development firm focused on helping businesses get unstuck. Steve is the author of “The 36-Hour Course in Organizational Development,” published by McGraw-Hill, and a contributing author to volume one of “Ethics and Game Design: Teaching Values Through Play.” Steve’s latest book, “Organizational Psychology for Managers,” is due out from Springer in 2013. For more information, or to sign up for Steve’s monthly newsletter, visit www.7stepsahead.com. You can also contact Steve at 978-298-5189 or steve@7stepsahead.com.

Dial M for Manager

I am pleased to announce that my next book, Organizational Psychology for Managers, will be published by Springer in 2013.

James Bond movies always follow some very predictable patterns. The movies always open with Bond involved in an extremely dangerous mission, which he single-handedly accomplishes to the tune of numerous explosions. Bond then shows up in M’s office in London to be briefed on the mission that will be the focus of the current movie. That done, Bond picks up his arsenal of tech toys from R (formerly Q), and is off. M, meanwhile, remains behind trying to keep track of what is going on and presumably coordinating other agents and missions.

James Bond is, of course, the ultimate individual contributor. While various people might help him from time to time, he’s basically on his own. Because Bond has a script writer, he’s never going to become a manager: that would spoil all the fun. Of course, we can imagine what might happen were Bond to end up behind a desk running the operation. SPECTRE would hatch some sort of dastardly plot and the agents sent out to stop them would all be killed, except for the dying guy who escapes to tell Bond what happened. Bond would then have to go back into the field and foil SPECTRE himself.

Unlike James Bond, many individual contributors do end up in management. Perhaps it has something to do with their jobs not being as exciting as Bond’s, or maybe it’s just that that’s the only promotion path in the business. Either way, it’s not unusual to see excellent salesmen becoming sales managers, excellent engineers, engineering managers, excellent marketers, marketing managers, and so forth. Like our hypothetical Bond scenario, however, many of them unsuccessfully fight the urge to do everything themselves.

Being an individual contributor means being in the trenches getting your hands dirty. While it’s very frustrating at times, it can also be very rewarding. Perhaps more important is the fact that you get to be the person taking action. You don’t have to sit around and wonder, you know what’s happening. You’re in the middle of it. You are like James Bond, only without the explosions, deadly tech toys, and, of course, the women. On the other hand, odds are pretty good that no one is trying to kill you.

Now, like Bond’s boss, M, you are a manager. Being a manager means not being in the thick of things. It means not doing the work yourself. It means going against years of training because now you have to work through others. Now you have to give instructions to your team of individual contributors and wait to hear back from them. You no longer know exactly what is going on, because you are not doing it. This can be a very stressful and unpleasant experience, especially if your manager is someone who is always asking for updates because she finds not knowing as unpleasant and stressful as do you.

Truth be told, the transition to management can be a very disorienting experience. Unlike a James Bond movie, if you don’t manage your team well and there’s a problem, your direct reports won’t appreciate you coming in to save the day. In fact, such an act would only make it harder for you to gain respect as a manager instead of an individual contributor who happens to sign time cards.

So what can you do to make the transition easier?

Start by embracing your role as someone whose job it is to build up others. You’re now the coach, not the player. Look for opportunities to improve the skills of your team, build their confidence, and foster a sense of team unity. Remember that there really is an “I” in team, so praise both good teamwork and individual initiative.

As you and your team build out goals, make sure you mark logical checkpoints on the calendar. That way, both you and they will know when you expect an update on what’s going on. Then make sure they know that if someone is having trouble, you’re there to act as a sounding board, help brainstorm, or just bounce ideas around. You may not have the answers, but you can help your experts figure out the answers.

If you do have to solve problems for the team, don’t just give them the answer. Let them see how you work through the problem to arrive at a solution. Then, the next time around, have them solve the problem while you coach from the sidelines. Sometimes you have to teach your players new moves. That’s okay.

If something goes wrong, make sure they know that you’re there to help them fix it, not to yell at them. You want people to feel comfortable bringing problems to your attention early, while they are small, rather than after they’ve had time to get large and unwieldy.

Finally, periodically take the time to see how far you’ve come and celebrate your progress with the team. The positive feedback will build your skills as a manager, and their skills as team members.

Good luck!

Stephen Balzac is an expert on leadership and organizational development. A consultant, author, and professional speaker, he is president of 7 Steps Ahead, an organizational development firm focused on helping businesses get unstuck. Steve is the author of “The 36-Hour Course in Organizational Development,” published by McGraw-Hill, and a contributing author to volume one of “Ethics and Game Design: Teaching Values Through Play.” Steve’s latest book, “Organizational Psychology for Managers,” is due out from Springer in 2013. For more information, or to sign up for Steve’s monthly newsletter, visit www.7stepsahead.com. You can also contact Steve at 978-298-5189 or steve@7stepsahead.com.

Following Prince Charming

“Don’t worry, I’ve got a solution to that.”

I was sitting across a table from Joe. We had just finished dinner and he was trying to convince me to join his new company. I had some doubts about the feasibility of what he was proposing.

“I really know this area,” he continued. “And I’ve already worked out several possible solutions. It won’t bottleneck the project.”

You couldn’t fault his confidence. He was calm, focused, and intent. He spoke with a definite air of authority. He knew how to start companies and he knew he knew it. A lack of self-esteem was not one of his problems.

Over the next two years, some odd events took place.

Although we had regular code reviews, somehow Joe’s code was never looked at. It’s not that he refused or said, “I’m the CEO, no one looks at my code.” Rather, he confidently reminded us of his expertise, and was always very willing to help others, or at least have the code review time be focused on more junior engineers.

Joe finally decided that writing code was taking away from his ability to do other CEO-like things. When we eventually got a look at his code, it was rather like a software house of horrors. He did things to software that should never be done. We now knew why we were seeing those weird bugs and mysterious problems.

As we came closer and closer to our ship date, we realized that one of the earliest problems had never been solved. Joe was working on that. He was always so calm, so confident, he projected such authority, that we never doubted that he’d deliver.

He didn’t.

Why hadn’t we pushed sooner for a solution? In hindsight, it seems like the obvious thing to have done. Yet, it never happened. Joe didn’t share information, especially information that he thought was valuable to him. He simply didn’t share so smoothly and with such charm that no one ever noticed.

The company folded. Joe, however, did extremely well for himself.

Joe looked like a leader. He acted the way leaders are supposed to act: calm, confident, authoritative. He was not, however, a particularly good leader. But he was very good at keeping anyone from realizing that until it was much too late.

Lest you think that this is a phenomenon reserved to small tech startups, let us consider a certain giant pharmaceutical company. In 2001, Pfizer’s board appointed Hank McKinnell CEO. McKinnell was widely perceived to be strong, confident, and charming, if sometimes abrasive. Rather than the last being seen as a negative, it was seen as strength: He was someone who could get things done. McKinnell had no lack of self-esteem. Karen Katen, the other candidate for CEO, was seen as quiet, but effective. However, she lacked, at least in the board’s estimation, the necessary authority and toughness to get things done.

Five years later, McKinnell’s confident, strong, charming, occasionally abrasive, style of leadership led Pfizer into serious financial trouble. The board forced McKinnell into retirement. However, don’t be too quick to offer Hank a hanky. He did quite well for himself. He did so well for himself, in fact, that Pfizer was hit with several shareholder lawsuits over the size of McKinnell’s compensation package.

A New Jersey woman once learned that her next door neighbor had been arrested as a spy. She famously commented that, “She couldn’t be a spy. Just look what she did with the hydrangeas.”

The pretty colors of the hydrangeas are a superb way of distracting people if you’re a spy. The moral equivalent of those colors can be a great distraction when you’re not exactly the best leader around. If you can look enough like a leader, you can often win the rewards that go with leadership and dodge the consequences of failure. Sometimes, you can dodge the consequences all the way to the top. The company, however, doesn’t get to dodge the consequences of that poor leadership: just ask Pfizer. Following Prince Charming can be extremely expensive for the organization.

So how do you tell the difference between a real leader and Prince Charming? It’s not enough to just look at results. Joe and Hank had a history of results. It’s just that when it really counted, their companies suffered while they profited. So, you really have to ask yourself some important questions:

Are Prince Charming’s methods sustainable? What is the burnout or turnover rate in his team, division, or department? The higher they are, the more likely you’re dealing with Charming.

What happens to his team, department, or division after he’s promoted or moves somewhere else? Does productivity increase? If it does, you should be asking why it wasn’t higher when Charming was in charge.

How does information move through Charming’s department? Is there a great deal of open discussion, a sharing of information, perspectives, and knowledge? Does the leader seek out input and invite people to challenge his ideas? If so, you have a real leader. If not, Prince Charming is in charge and odds are he’s so full of himself that he’s not going to listen to anything he doesn’t want to hear. Quite simply, a good leader facilitates discussion by asking questions and periodically summarizing the discussion. Prince Charming is too full of himself to do that. He’s only interested in what he has to say.

When you follow a real leader, the entire company benefits. When you follow Prince Charming only one person lives happily ever after. What steps do you have in place to make sure you have the real leaders in your company?

Spotting the Gordian Knot

Fans of cycling’s Tour de France might recognize the name of Johann Bruyneel, the coach who helped Lance Armstrong  become the first man to win the Tour seven times in a row. Lance Armstrong is undoubtedly one of the best cyclists alive today. What can a coach offer him?

Simple. Lance can’t see the back of his own head. Johann can.

In other words, Johann provides external feedback. He is the person who can step back and see the big picture and provide Lance Armstrong with knowledgeable, expert feedback. That feedback, in turn, enables Lance to improve his cycling skills and consider strategies that he might never have imagined on his own. Johann’s not magic of course; as the 2010 Tour demonstrated, even Lance can be defeated by age and bad luck.

Nonetheless, the advantage of having that person showing you the back of your own head is invaluable. As part of a management training exercise, I provided participants with a variety of items and each person had to obtain various different items to accomplish their goals. As expected, the participants immediately started trading with one another.

Where events became interesting, though, was when they started to notice that no one had certain items, or at least would not admit to having them. The people who needed the “missing” items became convinced that other people were holding out on them. They then responded by actually holding out on other people, until eventually no one would trade with anyone else. Before long, the group became paralyzed; they were unable to accomplish the relatively simple task they had been given.

What made this scenario particularly intriguing, though, was that the group was so focused on its initial assumption about how to solve the problem that they were apparently incapable of considering alternatives. For example, the person who needed an apple could have obtained one from the cafeteria. The person who needed leaves from a tree could have walked outside and picked some off one of the many trees visible through the windows, and so on.

Stories of Alexander the Great tell of his being confronted with the Gordian knot, a knot so complex that it could not be untied. Alexander solved the problem by slicing it in two with his sword. When I pointed out to the participants in my exercise some of the alternative paths to solving their problems, their reaction was comparable to what I imagine was the reaction of those who saw Alexander slice the knot: stunned silence, followed by head slapping and cries of “Why didn’t I think of that?!”

To be fair, the inhabitants of ancient Telmissus probably didn’t do Homer Simpson dope slaps, but I suspect they had a very recognizable equivalent!

The key point, though, is that the people actually involved in the exercise were no more able to see the alternate solutions than Alexander’s contemporaries were capable of thinking of cutting through the knot. Confronted with a knotty problem, as it were, they locked into one approach to solving that problem. It took an outsider to consider something different.

In sports, locking into a strategy can be devastating. One top US saber fencer gained quite a reputation when he launched a series of attacks, and promptly got hit. So he did it again, and got hit. He lost the match because he couldn’t see the back of his own head: he couldn’t break out the mindset that the particular strategy he was using simply wasn’t working against that particular opponent. He was so sure that it would eventually start working that he refused to consider anything else.

In a business environment, this sort of blindness can be even more expensive. At one company, a belief about how client training should be conducted was costing the company business. They were losing engagements left and right. Their attempts to reverse the losses were focused on sales campaigns and aggressive marketing. Even though the company was filled with experts in the business, no one could see the real problem; instead, they were locked into an ineffective delivery strategy. It wasn’t until an outsider looked at what they were doing and informed them that the fundamental problem was that the training was ineffective that things changed. Quite simply, how they taught wasn’t working: clients felt that they were wasting their time and money and not learning anything. Once they understood what was actually going on, they were able to cut their particular Gordian knot and business picked up rapidly thereafter.

So how do you see the back of your own head? One way is to find someone who isn’t steeped in the assumptions of the organization, someone who will ask the “stupid” questions because they don’t know what to take for granted. Another method is to spend some time looking at what you are doing and brainstorm alternate methods of accomplishing each task. You do this whether or not the task is already completed or on going. The key is to view how you’re doing things as merely one suggested method instead of as holy writ. Best of all, of course, is to use both methods.

Once you have the perspective of the back of your own head, it’s amazing how easy it is to spot, and cut, that Gordian knot!