This is the short version of an article that was accepted for publication by the Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership. The full version will probably be out in a month or two.
It’s not enough to say that if you want to keep the best people when the economy improves, you just need to communicate more. It matters what you say and how and when you say it. Communication occurs in the context that you’ve created over time, and how your communications will be received will depend a great deal on that context. If you want to keep your best people, then you need to do your homework. (Or, conversely, if you want to recruit someone else’s key people, find companies that did not do the homework suggested in this article.)
Read the rest at Ere.net
January 2nd,2010
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Personally, I wouldn’t even know him if I saw him. –Estragon,Waiting for Godot
Some years ago I was sitting in a product design meeting. The discussion kept circling around some particularly knotty issues that no one in the room actually knew much about.
In one sense, this wasn’t a serious problem given that the company was still actively hiring and there was a recognition that more people were needed. Someone finally commented that we’d have to make sure to hire someone with the particular expertise in question, and in one fell swoop, that task was assigned to a non-existent person. Again, this is not necessarily a problem … yet. It became a problem, however, as the meeting progressed:
“We don’t have anyone on the team who can handle […technology…] either.”
“That’ll be the next hire.”
“Wasn’t the next hire supposed to be […original problem…]?”
“We’ll need someone who can do both.”
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This was just published in the CEO Refresher. Full text is provided here since the link expires after a month or so.
“She doesn’t know how to lead!”
“Clearly, we picked the wrong person when we brought him on as CEO. He’s just not a leader!”
“We don’t need a leader. We’re all equals.”
These are all comments I’ve heard from Boards of Directors, senior management teams, even groups of college students. Okay, to be fair, college students don’t refer to any of their number as a CEO, but otherwise the sentiment is the same. In each case, the first reaction of the group to any difficulties or controversy is to accuse the leader of being unable to lead. The groups with no leader do avoid that problem, but at the cost of not actually managing to get anything done. Sooner or later, a leader emerges, whether or not openly acknowledged.
Fundamentally, the problem with effective leadership is that most people have no idea what an effective leader looks like or how an effective leader actually leads. I am told over and over by managers, board members, and the like, that what the leader really needs to do is stand up and tell everyone to shut up and do as they are told. Of course, should the leader actually do that, those same people are the first to scream that they are having their opinions ignored. What they really mean is that they want the leader to tell everyone else to shut up and let them speak.
I worked with one company that fired a team leader because the CEO didn’t see that he was contributing anything. He seemed to spend all day doing nothing at all. Once he was gone, though, it became painfully obvious to the company that he was doing far more than nothing. By the time the CEO accepted that he’d made a mistake it was too late to get the team lead back.
The image of the leader as the person who tells everyone what to do, approves all decisions, and controls all aspects of the group has just enough truth in it to be dangerous. When a group is first assembled, there is frequently sufficient uncertainty about the goals of the group and about how the members all fit in that they are quite happy to have a certain amount of very directive leadership. Indeed, a leader can get away with quite a bit at this point, in large part because the members of the team don’t yet actually care all that much about the team’s goals.
At this point, the leader needs to be helping the members of the team build a sense of team spirit and team identity. That means getting to know one another and appreciate each other as individuals, not necessarily for what they bring to the team. As paradoxical as it may appear, you build the team by not focusing on the team. Instead, you focus on the individuals by building a strong foundation of trust and camaraderie. People want to be appreciated for who they are, not just for the skills they bring to the table. The more team members can celebrate each others accomplishments, whether those accomplishments are work related or not, the more likely that team will be successful. That level of cohesion and trust does not come about through telling people what to do.
The toughest moment for the leader is when people start to care. Now that they care, they will actively work to bring about the success of the team, which is where things become challenging for the leader. When they didn’t care, they accepted the leader’s directives with little question. Now that they care, they want to bring their own perspectives, ideas, thoughts, and approaches into the mix. That means that many of them will start to question the leader, argue, and potentially become confrontational. Should the leader respond by squashing the apparent dissent, he also squashes the nascent sense of caring about the team and the company. Instead, the leader needs to slow down, invite opinion, and explain his actions and reasoning. The leader must be open to making changes if someone comes up with a better idea of how to do things. Otherwise, the leader is not fully taking advantage of the resources available to him: the eyes, ears, hands, and brains of his team. Unfortunately, this team strengthening behavior is all too often seen as weakness by many people, including the leaders themselves. As a result, they refuse to do it, and thus limit the capabilities of their team.
The goal of the leader must be to create a team that is more capable than any individual member of the team. Otherwise, why bother having a team in the first place? By building up a sense of team identity, trust, and appreciation for one another amongst the members, each person will be free to ask for and receive help from one another. As MIT’s Ed Schein points out, it is only when each person, including the leader, feels that they can accept and give help freely that the team has the potential to become stronger than any individual member. It is only through the asking and giving of help that the team can determine which member or coalition of members are best suited to solving any particular problem that comes up.
Thus, we come full circle. This process of mutual helping contradicts the image many people have of leaders. Rather than working to build up their teams, far too many so-called leaders act like the leaders they see on television or in movies. Others do not even seek leadership roles because they believe that being a leader means acting in ways that they find repugnant. If they do seek leadership roles, they may be ignored by team members who have bought into the fictional construct of the leader.
The leader who has to constantly tell people what to do is not doing a good job of leading. The leader who has to get out of the way so that his team doesn’t run over him in their rush to accomplish the goals of the team is the true successful leader. What sort of leaders do you have in your organization?
It’s easy to put together a group of knowledgeable and skilled individuals, but a team of high performers is not the same as a high-performance team. Just think about the Olympic Basketball Dream Team of 1992, made up of top American players. While they certainly played great basketball, the team never performed at the level people expected, given the skills of the individual players. Transforming your group from a set of people who happen to be going in roughly the same direction into a high-performance team isn’t always easy, but the results are always worthwhile:
Read the rest in The Imaging Executive
December 7th,2009
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Imagine for a moment that you’re sitting down to your Thanksgiving dinner when suddenly the roof of your house swings back and you find yourself looking up into something huge and incomprehensible: the eye of a hurricane perhaps, which I suspect is a lot less comprehensible close up than it is on TV.
I was unexpectedly encouraged to think about this today when I went out this morning to start smoking the Thanksgiving turkey. I flipped open the top of my grill and what should I find inside but a mouse nest. Needless to say, the mice were not at all thrilled at having the roof of their house flipped up, but I’m guessing that these mice thought they were getting a pretty good deal on the place and didn’t imagine that their house came with a detachable roof. Let’s not even talk about the central heating…
To make a long story very short, the mice booked out of there and we cleaned out the grill. Half an hour at 500+ degrees did the rest. I figure that any bacteria that can survive that treatment is going to take over the world anyway so I’m not going to worry about it.
Meanwhile, back to the mice. Much to the annoyance of our cats, who sat at the window watching, we let the mice scurry off. Their odds of survival are pretty good, even if their next home is likely to be a real hole in the ground.
Someone recently told me that he was former biology teacher and thus believed strongly in the survival of the fittest. The mice got me thinking: what does that mean? Drop a human in the forest at the end of November and their odds of survival aren’t all that good. The mice, though, will do just fine. Who is more fit to survive, the mouse or the human? Granted, the mice aren’t likely to find any other mice that will take them in or help them, but mice are individualists. They won’t even remember being a family before too long. They’ll survive, or they won’t, on their own.
One untrained person alone in the forest is in trouble. Put several people together, though, and their odds suddenly get much better assuming they can cooperate. Granted, that can be a big assumption sometimes, but it’s vital if you want to survive in the forest or in business.
I once read the statement that, “Teamwork was invented by the weak in order to beat the strong.” I’ve also heard some form of that argument put forth many times, usually by the person who is trying to make sure that no one can compete with him. Let’s face it, the biggest, strongest person has a vested interest in convincing everyone else not to form a team. The fastest, most skillful programmer might well see a real short-term benefit in a fractious and divisive team. In the short-term, there is a real benefit for some in keeping people divided: remember, it’s “divide, then conquer.” The results for the business, though, of such a dynamic may not be quite so good.
Over the long term, being able to work as part of a team confers a distinct advantage on the entire group. Members of the group can support one another, assist one another, and watch out for one another. New members can be taught the skills and accumulated knowledge of the group, so that they don’t spend their time reinventing the wheel. Over time, a cohesive group can outperform any individual or collection of individuals.
Mice don’t form teams. They don’t even have the concept. When disaster strikes, they’re on their own. They don’t help one another. They think only about themselves.
People are capable of forming teams, forming what Ed Schein calls “networks of mutual helping.” We don’t always manage it, but we’re stronger when we do. Whether we’re talking about business challenges or about responding to the next Katrina, our ability to form teams is our greatest advantage if we choose to use it, if we choose to reach out and help others and let others help us.
So here’s my Thanksgiving question: are you a man or a mouse?
November 26th,2009
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We like to think of ourselves as highly rational beings, but the fact is we’re just not that good at being rational.The recent Star Trek movie demonstrated the normally imperturbable Mr. Spock making foolish decisions based on emotional reactions. Later in the movie, Spock’s reasoned, logical approach is less than sufficient to rally the crew. Certainly they follow him, because he is the legitimate commander at that moment — but they are not excited. When Kirk takes command, however, it is another story. Kirk engages them on an emotional level, a level deeper and considerably more powerful than logic.
I hear all the time about how there is no room for emotions in the workplace.Yet, the companies where I’ve seen this implemented are about as unemotional as Mr. Spock: in other words, they put on a good front. Under pressure, though, they are as emotional as anyone else. I still remember, from early in my consulting career, the manager of a team screaming at me that he did not allow emotions to influence his behavior. For some odd reason, the irony of the moment was lost on him.
Read the rest in the Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership
November 6th,2009
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There is an old and hoary claim that if you put a frog in boiling water, it will immediately jump out, but if you put it in cold water and slowly increase the temperature, the frog will sit there until it cooks. In fact, this happens only if the frog is equipped with little frog cement galoshes rendering it unable to jump: frogs are too smart to be boiled alive. They leave long before the water gets hot enough to cook them. Why, then, does this story have such longevity?
Read the rest at the CEO Refresher.
October 25th,2009
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There’s an old joke about a man searching
in the gutter under a streetlight. A passerby
asks him what he’s doing.
“Looking for my car keys,” replies the man.
“Where did you drop them?” asks the passerby.
“Over there,” says the man, pointing into the inky darkness
down the street.
“Then why aren’t you looking there?” responds the passerby
in amazement.
“The light’s better here.”
Although ludicrous, like many jokes its humor comes, as it were,
from the light it sheds on an important aspect of human behavior.
Given the choice between poking around blindly in the dark or
looking in the light, most people will choose the latter.
I can already hear the cries of, “But wait a second! That’s
nonsense. Why would anyone in their right mind deliberately look
where they know the keys are not?”
Why indeed? The fact is, we already have our answer: “the light’s
better.” The real question is what does that actually mean?
When working with businesses, I frequently encounter teams
There’s an old joke about a man searching in the gutter under a streetlight. A passerby asks him what he’s doing.
“Looking for my car keys,” replies the man.
“Where did you drop them?” asks the passerby.
“Over there,” says the man, pointing into the inky darkness down the street.
“Then why aren’t you looking there?” responds the passerby in amazement.
“The light’s better here.”
Although ludicrous, like many jokes its humor comes, as it were, from the light it sheds on an important aspect of human behavior. Given the choice between poking around blindly in the dark or looking in the light, most people will choose the latter.
I can already hear the cries of, “But wait a second! That’s nonsense. Why would anyone in their right mind deliberately look where they know the keys are not?”
Why indeed? The fact is, we already have our answer: “the light’s better.” The real question is what does that actually mean?
Read the rest in the Messenger.
I recently had the CEO of a certain business very proudly tell me that she was so busy looking for clients and helping her staff deal with the economic crisis that she didn’t even have time to sleep. Was she serious? Yes, she was. Were things actually working out for the business? That was less clear, however it didn’t matter. They were Taking Action, and that’s what really counted.
When we’re feeling stressed, the instinctive response is to take action. Taking action feels good; it provides an outlet for our energy and a feeling of accomplishment. It just may not actually be useful. Sometimes it really is better to follow the advice of the old joke, “don’t just do something, stand there!” After all, if you take the wrong action too frequently, you may well find yourself without the time, money, or energy to take the right actions.
Now, it’s certainly true that sometimes the toughest problem is just to get started. It’s sometimes the case that taking some action is better than taking no action at all. However, it does help if the actions being taken are those that have at least some chance of moving the business forward. It helps even more if the CEO can clearly evaluate the success or failure of each action and adjust course as necessary. That’s hard to do when you aren’t sleeping.
A lack of sleep leads to more than just a desire for an extra cup, or ten, of coffee. There is a reason why athletes want a good night’s sleep before a big game and why legendary investor Jesse Livermore stated that one his secrets of success on the stock market was being well rested. Lack of sleep interferes with motivation, judgment, and planning. It makes one more reactive, less able to stop and look before leaping. Worst of all, lack of sleep very quickly degrades a CEO’s ability to recognize a losing strategy and replace it with one that might work.
As anyone who has taken a first aid class recently will recall, the first thing you need to do in an emergency is evaluate the situation. That’s difficult to do when sleepy. Part of that evaluation involves determining how quickly you need to act. Even if there’s a wall of flame rushing toward you, a few seconds of thought can still make the difference between life and death: caught in a massive forest fire, firefighter Wagner Dodge stopped and thought. He survived the fire while those around him were engulfed. Wagner Dodge had only seconds to come up with an innovative solution to his problem. The good news: he did. The bad news: he had never developed strong bonds of trust and loyalty with his team. Under pressure, they ignored him and perished in the flames.
Today, many businesses are still facing the financial equivalent of that wall of flames. Instead of stopping and thinking, they are leaping into action. In many cases, those actions are not working out so well. The CEO who isn’t sleeping isn’t helping her company or herself. She is, however, giving herself the opportunity to undermine her own credibility with her staff. The longer that goes on, the more likely they’ll give up on her at just the wrong moment.
So what should a CEO do?
- Build up a reservoir of trust and reinforce it daily. Help employees understand your decisions. Invite employee feedback, ideas, and suggestions.
- Build and maintain loyalty: this is the worst time to cut employee benefits or have an opaque layoff policy. As demonstrated by IBM’s Tom Watson or HP’s Hewlett and Packard, building employee loyalty makes a tremendous difference in tough times. Without it, they won’t follow you when you most need them.
- Don’t just react to the crisis. Stop and think. Brainstorm solutions with others. Find someone who will give you unbiased feedback. Take full advantage of the eyes, ears, and brains around you.
- Take care of yourself. Exercise and sleep are critical to maintaining perspective and functioning effectively under pressure. Despite the failing equipment around them, even the Apollo 13 astronauts took the time to sleep before attempting their return to Earth.
- Anticipate success. Never pass uncertainty down to your team members.
Many companies will survive the current economic tsunami. Fewer will prosper as the economy turns around. It will be those who know when to stand there before they act who will be in the second group.
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October 15th,2009
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I believe it was Dilbert (or more likely Dogbert) who commented that “stupidity is like radiation. You don’t want to get it on your clothes.”
When writing games, we used to joke about the cosmic stupid ray problem: the tendency of inexperienced writers to create a story in which people acted in ways that simply could not be explained by any other means. Unfortunately, it seems that cosmic stupid rays are not a product of the imagination, as I can’t really find any other explanation for this article from the NY Times:
It’s a Spoon, It’s a Fork, It’s a… Weapon?
The article tells the story of a six year old who was suspended and sent to reform school for 45 days because he brought a Spork to school. A spork is one of those all-in-one utensils. The kid received it at that bastion of violence, the Cub Scouts. As we all know, Cub Scouts are trained to use sporks as deadly weapons in order to take down entire armies equipped with modern weaponry. However, a Cub Scout with a spork (or lightspork, as they are known to cognoscenti, due to the fact that they are almost always made from plastic) can bat bullets from the air with the tines, and catch missiles in the spoon bowl and fling them back. As for the knife edge, best not to think about that, but let me just say that if you happen to be made of soft butter, you’re in trouble.
I could go on, but I think I’ve made the point.
What is even more amazing in the article is the argument by school officials that they must have ZT because otherwise they might make unfair or discriminatory decisions. Instead, they will guarantee that they will make unfair and stupid decisions.
If you’re worried that your employees will not make good decisions, the answer is not to take away all decision making power, and hence all requirement to actually *think*, but to train people in sensible decision making.
In typical bad management fashion that is fully worthy of Dilbert, the response from the president of school board was this: “There is no parent who wants to get a phone call where they hear that their child no longer has two good seeing eyes because there was a scuffle and someone pulled out a knife,” said George Evans, the president of the Christina district’s school board.
This is known as a straw man argument and is being used only to scare people. Rather than attempt to lead, the incompetent manager seeks to coerce obedience through fear: “You can’t question us because something terrible will happen.”
They are right: something terrible might happen if ZT goes away. School officials might have to learn to think, to do their jobs competently instead of copping out, and the ones who can’t might just get the boot.
October 12th,2009
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