FrontLine Guide to Mastering the Manager's Job (Front Line Guide Series)

The Front Line Guide to MASTERING THE MANAGER’S JOB

Woodrow H. Sears

HRD Press, Inc. • Amherst • Massachusetts

Copyright © 2007, HRD Press, Inc.

Published by: HRD Press, Inc. 22 Amherst Road Amherst, MA 01002 800-822-2801 (U.S. and Canada) 413-253-3488 413-253-3490 (fax) www.hrdpress.com

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this material may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.

ISBN 0-87425-936-3

Production services by Jean Miller Editorial services by Suzanne Bay Cover design by Eileen Klockars

DEDICATION To Roy Edward Trotter, master manager

Table of Contents Preface .............................................................................. vii Introduction .....................................................................

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Part One: Rediscovering the Manager in the Middle Chapter 1: Preparing to Master Your Job ................... Monkeying Around with Some Powerful Concepts... Managing Your Job .................................................... Where have all the jobs gone? .................................... The Moment of Commitment .....................................

3 4 5 7 9

Chapter 2: Remembering Six Sigma ............................. If You Can’t Measure It….......................................... Show them the numbers! ............................................ The Manager’s Real Role ........................................... What numbers? ...........................................................

11 15 17 20 23

Chapter 3: Overcoming Fear in the Workplace........... Managers as Enforcers................................................ Coming to Grips with Trust Issues ............................. Create the Right Environment .................................... Cultural Jujitsu............................................................

25 28 30 33 34

Chapter 4: Working with Others................................... A Diversity of Opinions.............................................. Group Dynamics......................................................... Working with Volunteers ........................................... Your Manager is Part of the Group ............................ In Closing…................................................................

37 37 39 48 50 56

Chapter 5: The Whole Ball of Wax ............................... 59

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Chapter 6: Setting Goals and Standards....................... The Importance of Vision........................................... Aligning Forces and Energies for Success ................. What business are you in? .......................................... Raising the Bar ........................................................... Standards, Behavior, and Job Mastery .......................

65 65 67 69 73 76

Chapter 7: Planning Work and Scheduling Resources....................................................................... Mapping Your Work Processes .................................. Work-Flow Planning .................................................. Getting Started ............................................................ Scheduling .................................................................. Estimating and Budgeting ..........................................

79 79 83 85 87 90

Chapter 8: Managing Time and Prioritizing................ Is not managing time the real problem? ..................... Making the Most of Your Time.................................. Closing in on Priorities ............................................... Priorities and Sequencing ...........................................

93 94 96 101 101

Conclusion........................................................................ 105 Recommended Reading .................................................. 109 About the Author............................................................. 111

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Preface This book was written to achieve two purposes: First, I wanted to present the idea that mastering the manager’s job involves more than simply writing reports, building teams, and reaching productivity quotas. It requires ways of thinking that focus on the present and the near future, your team members and clients, your manager, and your company. Mastering your job as a manager also requires a comprehensive understanding not only of the technologies involved in your work, but also of every action taken by your employees, from the time a sale is made to the time when a product or service is delivered to the customer or client. In a way, it’s like playing four or five chess games simultaneously. These ideas are not usually covered in supervisory or managerial training courses. We have slipped quietly out of the post-industrial era into something entirely new in the march of civilization: a fastemerging international culture based on knowledge. This expanding knowledge culture must be managed carefully. In this new knowledge economy, fewer and fewer people will be hired to perform routine, repetitive tasks that haven’t yet been taken over by machines. Therefore, every employee has to be a thinker as much as a doer, a problem-solver as well as an individual who can manipulate parts and pieces according to a prescribed pattern. The manager must provide a nurturing corporate home for each employee, support them as they refine their skills, and keep them goal-focused. These activities require familiarity and competence across a broad band of managerial areas, including the often-overlooked areas of group dynamics and team functioning. This guide will provide an overview of such considerations. vii

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My second purpose for writing the book is to familiarize readers with some tools, techniques, and behavioral strategies used by those individuals who have truly mastered the art. “Mastering,” a word that’s not commonly used in the field of management, was chosen to highlight the extra effort and the intentionality characteristic of top managers. If the people who work for you like you, they will give you a lot of latitude to make mistakes. But rather than rely on the “charm school” approach to being a manager, what if you could work the “hard” issues and still win? Hard fundamentals lead the list of competencies needed for managerial success: goal setting, prioritizing, planning, scheduling (few people realize that they really are different processes), and that old specter, time management. These competencies pretty well frame the manager’s job. But there’s another issue behind this guide and its title. Researcher Scott Parry interviewed nearly 100,000 managers during the late 1990s as part of a major effort to define which competencies individuals must possess for managerial success. Unlike other researchers, Parry didn’t try to scratch up all the obscure competencies he could find. Instead, he wisely chose to synthesize and simplify, identifying only three sets of skills critical to mastering the manager’s job: 1. Setting Goals and Standards 2. Planning and Scheduling Work 3. Managing Time and Prioritizing Even now, there are people who believe that if you can perform satisfactorily in a role at work, you will be effective in managing others who do that same kind of work and perform the same kinds of tasks. That assumption, like so many others we make about what “anyone can do,” has not held up. viii

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The old ideas about management and managing were based on military-style command and control techniques that no longer work. Times have changed. Some managers still seek success by applying extra energy and time, but extra effort does not automatically lead to supervisory or managerial success. The more closely you examine the manager’s job, the more obvious it is that what you see is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to skills and knowledge. Being able to talk coherently about the simplest planning model (plan-doevaluate) is not the same as being able to create a credible and detailed plan for doing work that involves many people, significant resources, and a number of interdependencies. This guide will point the way to developing those competencies, and help identify areas where you will need further input and practice. Mastering the job of manager in an increasingly complex business environment will require a lot of judgment regarding the kind of help you look for. Frankly, many good professional development programs have all but disappeared from the market because they were priced out of reach of most corporate training budgets. The amount of time away from work, in addition to expenses for travel, lodging, meals, and tuition, made those programs economically unjustifiable. Generally, the longer the training’s duration, the lower will be the probability of a positive return on your company’s investment. Contrary to what you might think, longer programs are not necessarily better, because participants vary widely in terms of skill level and need for formal training. But perhaps more importantly, you can’t solve performance problems simply by sending people away to get “fixed.” ix

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Total quality management (TQM) was all the rage in the 1980s. A colleague working for a major airline told a mutual friend that the president of the company banned all training that he had not personally approved. TQM was being embraced as if no one in the airline knew how to do their jobs (regardless of length of time with the airline)—until, that is, they were put through extensive and expensive off-site seminars. Nothing in this book will divert you from your work for hours or days. Everything I’m suggesting will be an extension of your normal managerial tasks and duties. There is a bias to the book, however: I personally believe that workers at all levels must be given more autonomy, and managers must be proactive about involving direct reports in as many decisions as possible. But not all at once! Part of your success strategy will be to phase in participation so that it feels natural to all involved. It certainly should never feel like some kind of gimmick to get people to work harder. Reading through this book is no substitute for participating in competence-building training, but familiarity with the concepts and basic ideas provided here will help any training you decide to take “stick” and enable you to more quickly begin to perform at a higher level—that is, more profitably. Yes, it still comes down to making money for the company. Those who do it best are those who manage resources with precision and who are quick-witted problem solvers, manipulating situational variables in ways that minimize losses and maximize profits. This is key: Get the people who report to you to focus on goals while they create value for the company every day. Most of the tools you need for skill acquisition and mastery of the manager’s job are in the pages that follow. x

Introduction In preparing to write this book, I spent some time remembering mentors who contributed greatly to my understanding of what management is and what managers ought to do. Specifically, I remembered them in their roles as trainers and coaches, and wondered what they would say to this generation’s managers. Would they be talking about the same themes today that were popular decades ago, when keypunch operators entered data on paper tape or cards—when we were standing with one foot in the industrial age and the other in the post-industrial age? I’m sure you know this already, but organizations and technologies have changed beyond anything we might have imagined a couple of decades ago. But the job of managing people, as my colleagues see it, is still as much an authoritarian muddle as it was back then. Technology has provided the means to access and share tons of information about individual employees and their experience and credentials, but all that detail is still no substitute for empathetic conversations between managers and direct reports. In fact, all that information can fool us into thinking that we don’t have to dig into the details of individual performance or look at performance in situation-specific terms. Highly specific information about work performance is easier to come by in environments that are being managed at a serious level of detail. In the past decade, some amazing managerial breakthroughs have occurred in such settings. One result has been an enhanced awareness that people at work need information and numbers beyond anything my own mentors might have imagined. This guide will present the xi

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subject of numbers as a way to tell stories, to explain to your people what numbers mean, and to get into this nontraditional approach to staff development as an extension of what you’re already doing. Along the way, you’ll be encouraged to think about the cultural and social setting in which you work and the resulting behavioral dynamics as a natural extension of how you apply your managerial competencies. In the pages that follow, you will find a “go do it” level of information about three competencies: setting goals and standards; planning and scheduling; and managing time and prioritizing. Admittedly, self-study is not always as effective as participating in a seminar, but if you read this guide carefully and discuss its contents with colleagues, you will have a better understanding of these competencies, and you’ll find yourself with renewed confidence to act on them. My experience has enabled me to simplify some of the underlying concepts and to remove the intellectual clutter that often gets in the way of real people acquiring useful information. What you will find in the following pages is useful information and ideas that will allow you to perform with more precision, whether you’re a new manager or an old hand. Incorporate the ideas that follow into your own philosophy. You’ll be surprised by the things you begin see, and how quickly you are able to reach the elusive goal of mastering the manager’s job.

Woody Sears Vilnius, Lithuania

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Part I: Rediscovering the Manager in the Middle

Chapter 1 Preparing to Master Your Job

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hirty years ago, training courses for managers and supervisors frequently included an exercise called “The Man in the Middle.” People seemed to identify with the idea that they worked in a sea of often-conflicting pressures. The facilitator would begin the exercise by writing the word “manager” in a circle in the center of a flipchart sheet. Then, participants were encouraged to name the pressures they were under, which the trainer would record along with an arrow zeroing in on the “man” in the middle. For some participants, the key issues were disagreeable: learning to use computers, worrying about hiring minorities, dealing with unrealistic deadlines, and so on. For others, it was basic laments such as being overworked and underpaid or not getting enough respect from subordinates and managers. The more thoughtful participants identified demands from customers and other departments to which they had to respond without time to plan how to manage the interruptions in existing schedules. There were a number of directions a trainer could take at that point. The one I preferred was to divide all the pressures into two lists: Things the participants could control or influence, and things that the participants could not control. Of course, the list of forces that could not be controlled or anticipated was the longest. It seemed that the participants saw themselves as powerless, vulnerable to forces they could not control. What a sad thought: Coming to work every day knowing that you were expected to focus on administrative trivia instead of leadership, and on compliance issues rather 3

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than on ingenuity and invention. These managers always spoke of their long hours, their lost weekends, and the thankless tasks they had to take care of just to keep up with the workload.

Monkeying Around with Some Powerful Concepts There must have been reasons why so many apparently competent men (almost never any women participants back then) felt that their work was overwhelming them. Perhaps they were incompetent managers of people, processes, and procedures, incapable of thinking at the high levels of detail that permitted management and control. Perhaps they were putting in extra effort and time so they looked dedicated and diligent to their superiors, when in actuality they were just working the system. Perhaps they were going through the excess-effort routine to justify adding more people to their staffs. After all, back then, the route to promotion in many organizations was to increase your area of responsibility by increasing the number of people you supervised to do all that extra work. But the most likely scenario is the one attributed to the late motivational speaker Bill Oncken, who advised participants in more than 200 seminars each year to “Get the monkeys off your back!” He told the story of an overworked manager in a beautiful new plant located next to a golf course, who took a break from his labors one Saturday afternoon to look out the window. He saw several of his subordinates teeing off, some 100 yards away. The manager had a breakthrough insight: There’s something wrong with this picture! Every time the manager’s subordinates came across a problem that would require extra effort, they came to him, asking 4

Preparing to Master Your Job

for help. Totally misunderstanding his role, the manager took the “monkeys” off their backs and then accepted them as his own. He worked nights and weekends while his “trusted” subordinates played golf. To change the picture, the manager had to become more competent in delegating, coaching, counseling, and using performance appraisals. It was a funny and effective presentation that made powerful points in memorable ways. Oncken’s consulting firm survived, and somewhere out there today, someone else is telling the story about inviting the monkeys to climb onto your back until you learn how to return them to their rightful owners.

Managing Your Job Oncken’s stories came from years of experience in real factories and manufacturing plants, as well as his time in the U.S. Navy as a civilian training officer. With humor and insight, he distilled the failure-prone experiences of thousands of real managers into a morality play about the necessity of taking control of your job. The worst thing that can happen to employees is to work for an incompetent, indifferent manager who fails to push them into developing their capabilities and competencies. Under those circumstances, work becomes a matter of going though the motions to produce some lowestcommon-denominator result. Senior non-commissioned officers are the backbone of the military. The managers and supervisors who stand in the middle, between the workers and the executives, are the backbone of corporations. It’s through such managers that the values, ethics, and morals of the enterprise are transmitted and enforced. Executives stand out there as the public face of

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the company meeting the press, but the managers in the middle are the true role models and the “muscle” of management. The corporation will be as strong as they are. Workers will never be more effective than managers permit them to be.

That brings us to the essence of the manager’s job. The late Peter Drucker, probably the most widely quoted management guru of them all, predicted that by the 1990s, American managers would have rediscovered what we taught the Japanese after World War II: People are a resource, not a cost. The Japanese got the message, and we lost it. Despite all his accurate projections, Drucker missed on that one: Instead of celebrating workers and their contributions, organizations in the 1990’s were notorious for their people-dumping through downsizing, right-sizing, restructuring, reengineering, outsourcing, and wholesale layoffs. Worse, it seems to be continuing: From 2000 to 2003, more than 100,000 industrial jobs were lost in the Detroit area alone. Ford expects to lay off another 6,000 workers by the end of 2007, General Motors 20,000, and Volkswagen 30,000. Such wholesale job cuts are said to be based on major dollar losses and structural inefficiencies. Maybe there’s nothing workers and work groups can do about it, but is it possible that there was a time when workers could have made a difference? That managers, shaping the performance of the people they supervised, could have made a difference? Can managers and workers ever become more effective, productive, and profitable? Managers still stand as men and women in the middle, between jobs for themselves 6

Preparing to Master Your Job

and their people, and layoffs. The manager’s burden is greater than ever.

Where have all the jobs gone? Globalization is celebrated for bringing prosperity to impoverished parts of the world, but it’s nonetheless a mechanism for taking work and jobs to the places where workers perform most cheaply. Arguing whether that is good or bad is irrelevant, because that’s how it is. The question I ask readers of this book is this: Are you able to manage, train, develop, and involve your team members in setting goals and standards? Time management and prioritizing? Planning and scheduling work? These are the master competencies that lead to managerial success. Fail to master these competencies, and your workers will do only those things they are told to do (and do them inefficiently) and your organization will drift into ineffectiveness, losing its competitive edge. I’m not suggesting that performance management is the answer. Performance management is only about getting people to do more work, and no one wants to do more work or to work differently without a good reason or some personal benefit. Managers don’t want to give reasons; they want to mandate, to give orders. Supervisors and work leaders don’t want performance management, either, because it puts them in the middle and in the role of enforcer. But if all you want is performance, here’s a way to get it: 1. Tell people what must be done differently, as well as how and when and WHY.

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2. Show people some numbers: sales-per-person, revenues per-unit-per-week, revenues against targets, and so on. 3. Ask for input and suggestions, and answer all questions. 4. Develop an action plan (involve the workers). 5. Implement the action plan. 6. Reward compliance, and coach anyone who needs it. 7. Recognize small successes. 8. Continue the rewards, and get rid of people who can’t or won’t comply. 9. Give workers information about their performance on an ongoing basis. Work with them on ways to improve, and continue to ask for their input. 10. Hold special events to celebrate targets met. 11. Don’t stop. This seems a lot like a prescription for a perpetual motion machine, doesn’t it? Actually, it’s a remedial scheme to allow managers to recover from productivity shortfalls and to produce the numbers that lead to short-term profits and returnson-investment that will please investors. Yes, it’s a strategy for pushing workers to conform to requirements, but because you ask for their input, they might be for the first time ever getting an opportunity to participate in shaping the work they do. Still, it’s yet another piece of evidence that many American companies are stuck in ineffective ways of dealing with employees. 8

Preparing to Master Your Job

Suppose that by some flash of insight or other conversion experience your company decides to make a dramatic change in the ways it deals with employees in order to become more inclusive. Would the managers go along, or would they feel threatened if the apparent balance of power is shifted in the direction of employees? Often, the greatest resistance to change comes from the people in the middle—that is, those who have learned how to cope with things as they are. Senior managers will have to help them confront their fears about losing control or losing face and show them how to grow beyond such concerns.

The Moment of Commitment Some years ago, I came across a widely quoted statement about commitment by W. H. Murray. I’m including it here as a way to zero in on the decision you’ll have to make about mastering the manager’s job. Read the quote several times, and let it sink in. Focus on the word boldness. People don’t respond well to a tentative, timid hand. They want certainty, confidence, and direction, and that’s what this guide is about. When you finish reading Murray’s words, you’ll have a sense of what certainty, confidence, and direction have to do with mastering the manager’s job. You’ll also begin to appreciate the power of the three job-mastery competencies presented as natural vehicles for building positive, productive, and profitable relationships that transcend the old barriers of corporate rank and hierarchy.

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Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves, too. All sort of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, Raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets: ‘Whatever you can do, or dream, you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.’

Remember, non-supervisory employees want to survive and succeed on the job just as much as you.

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Chapter 2 Remembering Six Sigma

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astering the manager’s job begins with measurement— knowing how long it takes and how much it costs to perform all your team’s tasks. Six Sigma, which we will talk about in this chapter, was first used in statistics to refer to six standard deviations away from the norm. It is the de facto standard for quality and managerial excellence. There are six steps managers can take to get started in that direction, which we will talk about in this chapter. But first, how did Six Sigma come into the manager’s lexicon? Through the daring of the senior management in a company famous for its innovations, at a time when it found itself stalled at the dawn of a new technological era. If you don’t know already, the company is Motorola. To regain its leadership position in the high-tech world, Motorola went beyond Six Sigma, adopting “Plus Six Sigma” as its performance standard. Motorola University was created to train employees in those principles; all managers, including the CEO, had to participate in Six Sigma training. Once that standard was institutionalized within the company, Motorola required all its vendors—companies providing parts or pieces for Motorola products—to also participate in Motorola University’s training courses, so they would be able to replicate the quality program and results in their respective organizations. Motorola management realized that you can’t produce “Plus Six Sigma” products with components that don’t meet the same standards. (Motorola University also established itself as a provider of services outside its subcontractor net11

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work, and that was how I got to participate in a one-day briefing at the Phoenix, Arizona facility.) And what is the standard? Statistically, Plus Six Sigma means six standard deviations to the right of the median point. In manufacturing and production, it means that you can produce 1,000,000 units with no more than 3.4 defects. For management and administration, it means analyzing and failureproofing all processes so that a comparable level of certainty is achieved. A number of other companies adopted the Six Sigma standard, including GE under Jack Welch. Today, there are consulting firms competing with Motorola University to get your company’s productivity and performance up to the Plus Six Sigma standard. A lot of information about this managerial concept is now in the public domain. This is important, because much of what you need to master your job is in the logical foundational elements of Plus Six Sigma: Steps to Achieving Plus Six Sigma 1. Identify the product you create or the service you provide. 2. Identify the customers for your product or service, and determine what they consider important. 3. Identify your needs (to provide the product/service so that it satisfies the customer). 4. Define the process for doing the work. 5. Mistake-proof the process, and eliminate wasted effort. 6. Ensure continuous improvement by measuring, analyzing, and controlling the improved process.

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Whether your goal is Six Sigma or a less-demanding level of precision, this simple set of steps makes a lot of sense. If you are involved with a long run of products or ongoing services, stop what you’re doing and do the following: 1. Examine the product or service as though it’s still in the proposal stage. With your co-workers, analyze its benefits and shortcomings. Why is the product or service necessary? What is its benefit? What makes it a good value for the price? Is your product or service something you are proud to be associated with? Something that you would want your mother or others you care about to have? If not, how can you get serious about doing something that has no meaning for you and that you can’t believe in? 2. When you identify your customers, do you really understand their needs and wants and what they consider most important? Who actually makes the purchasing decisions? What’s important to that individual or group? How well do you know your client organizations and where they plan to be in a year? And do you know how their businesses might change in that period of time? 3. Is your company doing everything it can for its clients and customers, as well as possible? Is it possible to give your customers more value without raising the price? What do your co-workers think? What if you asked your clients or customers for their input? What would you do if you were able to reduce production costs? Would you pass the savings along to your clients? Or put the added value on your bottom line? Maybe there are things you can do to enhance the value of your product or service and create greater value for your customers. 13

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4. When was the last time you examined the workflow? Has your company adopted new technologies elsewhere that could be used in your functional group? Are there ways to shorten the production process that would yield quicker turn-around and more profit, or more service to clients without additional costs? If you were to begin anew, would you make the product in some new, more cost-effective way? Could you reconfigure your product or service now? 5. As a part of your analysis, try to identify areas where mistakes are frequent, areas where rework is required too often, and areas where the process can be smoothed and accelerated. If your processes haven’t been scrutinized closely for more than a year, there is a high probability that improvements are there, just waiting to be made—if only someone would look for them. 6. Do you measure everything, including how long it takes for your process to convert raw input into a product or service? If you don’t measure, you can’t know whether or not you’re performing as well as you planned. The hardest pill for most managers to swallow is continuous process monitoring: It’s relatively easy to get early improvements of ten percent or so, but getting the next five percent is a lot harder. Then, when most of the fat has been cut away from your processes, getting further reductions one percent or less is even more difficult. It requires real managerial discipline and the support of workers to continue the push for improvements. It demonstrates serious intent to manage, even when improvements are down to fractions of a percent and measurement and analysis continue just the same. 14

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One manufacturer’s representative wanted to sell an entirely new police communication system to a Texas city. “I met with the mayor and the police chief, community leaders—anyone who was interested,” he recounted. “And everyone was! But no sale. It took me eight months to discover the real decision maker, an about-to-retire captain on the midnight watch. He bought the system.” Think about this man’s experience for a minute, and what you can learn from it.

If You Can’t Measure It… What does measurement have to do with mastering the manager’s job? Just about everything! If you can’t prove that you’re working through a protocol and you can’t demonstrate the improvements your managerial competence is producing, what is there to distinguish you from other managers? An analogy: As the price of automotive fuel goes up, how is your car performing? When is the last time you checked? Clogged air filters, dirty spark plugs, and leaking electrical connectors (relatively inexpensive repairs) can make a difference in the mileage you achieve. If you drive enough, performance maintenance (such as proper tire inflation) will be worth the effort. But some people, just like some managers you know, will decide that since they can’t control gas prices, there’s nothing for them to do except to pay more for the privilege of driving. It’s a rare organization that can go from being relatively ineffective to being effective within a few weeks or months. For some, change is unimaginable. Past practice, unchallenged, is too powerful a magnet for the status quo. Here is a real-life example: 15

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A friend who has an MBA is the maintenance superintendent in a company whose name you would recognize. His wife wondered why someone of his status had to work so often at night and on weekends. I was intrigued myself. So I asked him to tell me what he does. “How does your day start and how do you spend your time?” I asked. “Well, the first thing I do is get a cup of coffee,” he replied. Okay, then what? “Then I go to my boss’s meeting.” Your boss is a vice president? “My boss is VP of production.” And how long does that meeting last? “Sometimes the meeting lasts until noon.” How can a vice president spend four hours with a bunch of down-line managers? “Well, he doesn’t always attend. Sometimes he has to go to his boss’s meeting.” And what do you and the others do when he goes to his boss’s meeting? “Then we wait for him to get back and give us the word.” And what are your supervisors doing while you’re waiting for “the word”? “Oh, they’re waiting for me to come back and give them the word!”

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What do you and your colleagues talk about while you’re waiting for your boss to come back from his boss’s meeting? “We talk about football, hunting, stuff like that.”

This is a bright man who is caught in an organizational culture that approves of working overtime (and paying for it), but puts no premium on analysis, improvement, controlling costs, or improving processes. Again, this is an honest recounting of the conversation, so can you imagine anywhere in that entire corporate system that there’s anyone who focuses on competitiveness, customer needs and satisfaction, process, and performance improvement? Perhaps the imperatives that matter are social—that is, going along to get along, being conversant about football, basketball, and baseball, and having a repertoire of titillating stories. Somewhere out there, across oceans or south of the border, there are people who never talk about frivolities at work. They work for a pittance for ten or more hours a day, and make products that Americans used to make. And perhaps the saddest thing of all is that when you remind American workers of such inequities, they just get angry at how unfair it is that all those overseas people are taking their jobs away. Being a victim is easier when you have somebody to blame.

Show them the numbers! “Open-book management” refers to a practice by which a company’s financial information is shared with its workers, who are considered partners in the enterprise. Open-book management represents the far end of employee involvement, offering a solution to a major and universal corporate 17

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problem: The majority of employees have no real understanding of the economics of their workplace. They do not see a clear link between their daily activities and the company’s survivability, nor the link between having and acting on that kind of economic acumen and globalization. To win as a manager—that is, to master the job—you have to close that knowledge gap. The individuals who work for you must see how their efforts connect to the ability of your corporate parent to provide all of you with job security. When you begin to look at the manager’s job through such a lens, it will change how you approach your job and think about the organization and its employees. You’ll begin to: Share the tasks. The ham-fisted, bull-of-the-woods boss has been replaced by men and women who know how to use computers and take courses at night to complete advanced degree programs. The effective manager needs a full repertoire of technical and interpersonal skills, and the discipline of academic work can help you acquire them. Even so, many educated managers are blind to the opportunity they have to delegate some of their tasks to team members. But more than that, they fail to see that the numbers associated with their work tell stories. If the manager shares those stories with coworkers, important learning is taking place. Worker curiosity about their roles in the stories will evolve. Think about management as a process. Management is not a one-person job. Yes, one person has the title and has to sign off on documents, but when management is viewed as an ongoing, daily process that affects everyone and everything, there will be plenty of opportunities to involve others in collecting data, monitoring work in process, and using all these activities as teaching tools. Management should not be a 18

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secret process (though salary information may need to be kept confidential). Look at your organization. Is it just a place where you were able to get a job? A stopping-off point on the way to your ultimate job? No matter. Why not turn your stay there into a teaching/learning experience? Why not use your managerial competencies to involve others and tap into their experiences so you can collectively serve your organization more fully? And have more fun doing your job? Look at the people who report to you. Are they just doing a job? Just basically hanging out, indifferent about their responsibilities? Are they married, do they have kids, do they have aspirations to advance in the organization? Do they bowl or teach Sunday School? Are they active in civic clubs, PTAs, Scouts? What are their talents? Who do they know, and what do they know that might be useful to your group and your job as manager? How much effort on your part would it take to pull them together so they will pull together for you? Involve and train your people. Participation takes more time than simply giving orders, at least initially. Some people don’t want to be anything other than a worker with no additional responsibilities. But what if you pretend that you and your co-workers are going to be together for a long time? Wouldn’t it be more fun to see how fully you can involve them, and to watch individuals blossom? What have you got to lose? Numbers are your storytelling tools, and when you begin to relate the numbers you collect to the real work people do, you’ll be surprised at how quickly they will want to know more. Most people want to be good at what they do and to be 19

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part of a winning team. You’ll be surprised at the extent to which even a really ragged group can improve—if, that is, the manager wants to involve them, include them, partner with them. But that requires a focus other than control. Let’s return to our discussion of the manager-in-themiddle exercise. Most of the participants attended these seminars without thinking about learning goals or what they would do differently back on the job. This suggests that the people to whom they reported had no expectations either, and that no one discussed learning or performance improvements with them when the training authorization was signed. They didn’t expect anyone to sit down with them on their return and ask what they learned from the seminar and how it could be applied in the organization. In such circumstances, there’s zero chance of a return on the company’s investment in training. But the individuals involved are victims, too: They were offered new ways to demonstrate their capabilities, but were not required to approach their managers to “show and tell” better, faster, and cheaper ways to get work accomplished.

The Manager’s Real Role Managers often lose sight of their real role when they get dragged into the rat hole of “people” problems and motivation. What is the manager’s real role? Working managers are still surprised (and occasionally confused) when they’re told, Your job is not to manage people, but to manage only three things: schedules, costs, and quality. Managing schedules. Is work on schedule? Do necessary resources (people, materials, money, special equipment) come together as needed? Will work be completed on or ahead of 20

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schedule? If schedules slip, do managers find out soon enough so they can maintain the end date? Does work move smoothly, without “emergency” overtime or other unplanned effort? Managing Costs. Are resources being expended as planned? Are elements of the work taking as long as planned? Will the work be completed on budget? Do resources have to be diverted from other tasks so that work can be finished on schedule and within budget? Do workers reflect concern for cost containment in their activities? Managing Quality. Are products or services meeting predetermined quality and quantity commitments? If there are discrepancies, how soon does the manager find out, so remedial action can be taken? Where do the workers fit in? They’re resources. Depending on their skill levels and competencies, they’re valuable resources that contribute significantly to meeting targets for schedule, cost, and quality. But the fact remains that they’re just resources at the manager’s disposal, to be used well or used poorly. How these resources are used will determine how effectively people work and the extent to which they are committed to supporting their manager in meeting the manager’s targets. The fact that people are resources does not diminish them in any way. Neither does it mean that they shouldn’t be involved in making decisions that affect them or get an opportunity to make decisions for or against the manager, or even to do more work or less work, depending on how they’re used and the feeling-tone or nature of their relationships with the manager. If they have positive relationships with the manager, they tend to work better and smarter. 21

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If they have negative feelings toward the manager, they can be predicted to do less than their best. Nearly fifty years ago, Frederic Herzberg proved that motivation revolves around how workers are “used” and how they are “treated.” Used refers to the work they are given to do. Treated refers to working conditions, pay, and other socalled hygiene factors. Herzberg’s research led him to several important conclusions, which he used as the basis of what he called his “motivation/hygiene” theory: 1. The things that motivate people are not opposites of things that demotivate. 2. The #1 thing that satisfies people is being able to do meaningful work, not the pay they receive. 3. The #1 dissatisfier is being treated disrespectfully. 4. Workers will deliver 10 to 15 percent more productivity if managers don’t make them angry. These are powerful arguments for involving people in the decisions that affect them, for giving them a chance to have a voice in how they (and their talents and energies) will be used. If managers accept this view, they’re likely to find their management styles revolutionized in ways that will lead them to higher levels of performance and effectiveness. To manage in this way presents the manager with an array of tools and opportunities for discovering truly creative and innovative ways to accomplish assigned tasks. Otherwise, managers will be limited to using only what’s in the motivator’s failureprone bag of tricks. Motivation is an attempt to substitute your needs for theirs, buying compliance with social pressure, kind words, or 22

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inexpensive trinkets—manipulation in the meanest sense of the word. Remember this about motivation: You don’t have to motivate people who are doing things that make sense to them.

What numbers? Throughout this chapter, we’ve been talking about the importance of numbers and measuring. Where do numbers come from? Measuring schedule, cost, quality. The results of those measurements tell the story of group effectiveness and the accuracy of estimates. The more frequently you measure, the more accurate your projections will be for pending work. Regular measurements allow you to analyze trends and make evaluation discussions more useful. How close did we come to our projections? Where did we miss them and by how much? Why? These how and why questions are essential for continuous performance improvement on the part of any group doing any kind of work. You conduct periodic evaluations on job completions, don’t you? American corporations and managers did not learn to value their workers as Peter Drucker predicted they would. Maybe by the second decade of this new century.

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Chapter 3 Overcoming Fear in the Workplace

T

he degree of trust that exists between workers and their managers plays a critical role in managerial effectiveness. This chapter looks at two powerful energies, polar opposites that predict much about productivity and other work outcomes: fear and trust. Several colleagues and I, working at a plant nestled in the mountains west of Washington, D.C., encountered the most laid back assortment of managers in our collective experience. It was not clear whether the low energy that characterized our meetings with them individually or in groups reflected their normal pace, or whether it was calculated to serve as a kind of passive resistance. Truthfully, it was like meeting with a group of good ol’ boys sitting on the porch of a back-country store. We were never obstructed in our datacollection efforts, but no information was ever volunteered to us, with the exception of a few occasions when someone would mumble, “He ain’t going to like this.” The “he” turned out to be the plant manager. He was away at various corporate meetings, so we hadn’t had a chance to meet him until it was time to present our preliminary report. I was literally only minutes into our presentation when the plant manager, red in the face and screaming obscenities, jumped up from his chair, flailing his arms, and turned on me. “What are you trying to do?” he screamed in my face. “Get me fired?” I explained that our report represented raw data and had not been formatted as a formal report. I told him that the 25

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content was what the three of us found, and explained how we interpreted what we had seen and heard. However, I added, we could write any kind of fiction he wanted. But what we also saw in that moment were the expressions on the faces of the three good ol’ boy managers. They showed no surprise. Obviously, they had seen this performance before, because they worked for a man who didn’t want to hear anything about problems and would not approve any actions that could be construed as remedial. There’s always a reason for behavior, and there was a reason for the plant manager’s over-the-top behavior: We discovered that he was a highly-educated professional who had been banished to that back-water plant after being blamed for the circumstances that led to a major industrial accident. He was desperate to avoid any further taint of malfeasance. Everyone in that plant was affected by his fear and the rages that erupted when that fear was triggered. Now the behavior of the managers we had interviewed made sense. Rather than being backwoods bumblers, they were trying to survive and keep their jobs, doing what they could to step gingerly between their boss’s rages and the consultants, whose findings were certain to trigger another uncontrolled outburst. Fear like that can contaminate entire organizations, but it is more common in the workplace than you think. Everyone is vulnerable to job loss these days, and the higher up you are, the more visible and vulnerable you become. When we’re threatened, we’re programmed biologically to fight or to take flight. When flight (running away) is not an acceptable option, fight behavior (rages, firings, dishonesty, passivity, aggression, and so on) results. 26

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Let me give you an example of passivity as a fight response. There’s a foundry in Eastern Europe full of skilled technicians trained by the Soviets. The foundry was unable to compete economically, so their plant was selected to be “saved” by a gang of consultants paid by the U.S. government. The consultants’ strategy was a classic slash-and-burn “turnaround,” straight from the playbook of corporate raiders (of whom Sunbeam’s “Chainsaw Al” Dunlap was a colorful icon). The trouble was that they couldn’t get the plant manager to go along with their plan. I offered to meet with him, and was escorted in by a competent translator. We had a cordial meeting in his office. I would ask a question such as, “Do you have another way to protect this company, other than the one being proposed by the consultants?” He would respond by talking about how beautiful the surrounding forest is in the spring, and the wild boar that could be hunted in autumn. The next day, I engaged the translator to send a letter to the plant manager. I told him that I was aware that he had not wanted to answer my questions, but perhaps we could share a cup of coffee and just talk like a couple of guys with a common interest. I received an invitation by return mail. The story that emerged made me feel embarrassed at the aggressive, one-strategy behavior of the U.S.-paid consultants. The plant manager explained why he was resisting the proposed plan. “I did that in another plant. I sold off all the excess stock and old equipment and fired 300 workers.” The plant manager looked away, then returned eye contact and said, “One night after that, when my wife and children were at home alone, someone drove by and sprayed the house with

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a machine gun. Thank God, my family wasn’t hurt, but I’m not going to do that a second time.” Once again, I learned how much you can discover if you just talk with people instead of trying to sell them something. The consultants were not happy to have their strategy rebuffed, and they weren’t happy that I obstructed their campaign. But in due course, another strategy was devised, and the foundry and its staff survived. From these recollections, it’s possible to abstract some general statements: •

Punishment of any kind is a regressive tool, and managers should eliminate it from their behavioral repertoires.

•

The dynamics of trust and mistrust between workers and managers are powerful determinants in how effective any manager can be.

•

In the wake of punishing managers, some work environments will not be conducive to productivity, so some social reengineering may be required.

Managers as Enforcers While it’s not politically correct to highlight it, enforcement is a shadow element in every manager’s job, including the need to “get rid” of people who can’t, won’t, or don’t perform. With the emphasis on short-term returns on investment, some managers may not feel that they have the luxury of “developmental time” for individuals whose performance is marginal. Such a feeling is unlikely to be hidden from employees.

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What does a mistake represent to you, as a manager? Do you treat it as an opportunity for coaching, for mutual discovery, for strengthening a relationship, for competency development? Or does an employee’s error elicit from you a rebuke or a flash of anger, and embarrassment for everyone around? If you respond in any of these last three ways, you send a powerful message to workers: You don’t want to make a mistake in this company! That kind of message will put everyone on notice that they had better pay attention to the work they do and do it perfectly, or there will be consequences. Is that a message you want to send? Definitely don’t send this one, either: That you’re scared, too. That you worry about what your manager will say if anyone fails on your watch. Why should a mistake, an error, a small failure be so upsetting? A scared manager can’t command much respect and confidence, nor get people in gear to work toward higher performance. No manager wants to encourage carelessness, but the reality is that overemphasizing the costs of making a mistake leads to a loss of productivity because workers will perform routine tasks at a slower rate, just to be careful. We’ve all had experiences with the over-cautious clerks who demand far more documentation than is necessary or who take far too much time with each customer while six or seven others in line seethe with frustration. Employees who are fearful of making a mistake can have a profoundly negative impact on any group’s productivity. They can slow the pace of work so imperceptibly that managers can’t see it until the numbers come in.

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Coming to Grips with Trust Issues Something like the dance described above seems to have happened in every organization, because I see patterns of mistrust everywhere I go. At least, that’s been my experience in the 200+ organizations in which I’ve worked. What do you see? Employees avoid eye contact in hallways. Workers nod noncommittally when receiving requests or instructions. People tend to look slyly at others and raise their eyebrows in staff meetings. You can see employees shrug their shoulders in response to comments by others when they leave meetings. People whisper conspiratorially in lunchrooms and at coffee machines, and stop talking when a manager comes toward them or passes by. Managers eat alone or with other managers, often in a separate dining room. (One of the best tables in San Francisco was considered to be in the executive dining room on the 52nd floor of Bank of America’s World Headquarters.) Outsiders find employees cautious or guarded when approached, and always in interviews. Employees’ body language, as they walk or sit at their work stations, does not reflect enthusiasm. No one seems to be having fun.

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What it comes down to, most of the time, is that workers don’t trust their managers. This causes them to be guarded with each other and with outsiders. They also withhold information from managers (like you!) because they aren’t sure what you’ll do with the information they share—and they think it might come back to them in some punitive manner. Workers in such circumstances know that they have little ability to influence what happens to them on the job, so the best way to protect themselves is to withhold information from you because they won’t be punished. They withhold their commitment to the organization to demonstrate that they do not trust you. It’s a cycle of mistrust, and once this pattern is set, it’s difficult to break. Only the manager can break the cycle of mistrust and create a new culture in which workers consider themselves part of a team. They should feel comfortable communicating with each member of the team, including the manager, knowing that they have input into decisions that affect them and into what happens to them on the job. When they see that their manager truly considers them colleagues capable of making major contributions, they will feel free to commit to you, to the job, and to the company. In organizations in which every worker is committed to their managers, to their tasks, and to the company, success is a high probability, and trust is reinforced.

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Trust

Open Communication

Commitment to You and the Job

Ability to Influence

Turning mistrust into trust is critical, but it is not a onetime event, and it won’t be easy. In fact, it must be an ongoing effort. Keep in mind that you aren’t the first boss most of your workers have had; their experiences might be with managers who have taken advantage of or abused them, and those memories aren’t going to be erased. They will be alert for any sign that you are pushing them back into the mistrust cycle. That might be the last thing on your mind, but people who have been mistreated won’t give you complete trust until you build a strong pattern of trust and respect. Develop a routine of positive reinforcement to keep your people “tuned up” for commitment to you, to each other, to the work you’re all doing, and to the company that employs all of you.

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Create the Right Environment Mastering the manager’s job means creating a very specific kind of environment: an environment of openness and trust. A Healthy Work Environment It is possible to overcome a climate of fear and mistrust. Here are the characteristics of a workplace that is open and trusting: Failure is a result of honest mistakes, and can be remedied. Failures are reported early enough to limit negative impact. Repeated errors call for coaching and support. Criticism is constructive, not an indictment of wrongdoing. Colleagues and co-workers deserve respect from each other and get it. Problem solving involves anyone with relevant experience. Priorities are understood and respected. Schedules reflect intelligent allocation of resources. Goals are understood and accepted. The entire group gets involved in planning. Measurements of progress (the “numbers”) are posted or are otherwise available for everyone to see. When the numbers aren’t “right,” there is a quick huddle to create a fix. 33

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If you intend to master your job as a manager, you will have to achieve these key results, but they will elude you until you confront the issue of trust and do things to overwhelm the culture of fear.

Cultural Jujitsu A common element in self-defense is to turn the opponent’s force against him. Why not use the same strategy to overwhelm the culture of fear? Turn that negative energy to positive by shifting the emphasis from failure avoidance to expectations of success, from fear to fun. Here’s how to get started: Say a major piece of work for your unit is coming up, something that happens monthly or quarterly. Get your people together around a flipchart and ask, “How long is it going to take us to get this project out?” (Write down the date.) “What’s the longest it’s ever taken?” (Write down the number of days.) “What’s the fastest it’s ever been done?” (Write it down.) “Now, looking at these numbers,” you continue, “what’s your best guess of the actual number of days it’s going to take this time, and why?” This creates the opportunity for team members to express opinions, to give reasons, and to disagree with each other. That’s a pretty good approximation of dialogue. You can use the same approach when there is a new task. With new work, team members’ experiences can be highlighted as they argue about duration and resources, and begin 34

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thinking about the work they will have to do. The next logical step, of course, is to get them to plot their estimate with a plan and a schedule that highlights points at which the schedule is most likely to slip, and why. As team members then move to neutralize the problematic points in the schedule, their commitment to meet or beat their own estimate is being reinforced. Probabilities? Success! The next mandatory step is for the manager to host or to initiate a celebration. There is a cynical saying that circulates in everyone’s organization these days: “No good deed goes unpunished.” That attitude has to be eliminated so that employees new and tenured, young and old know that good deeds, good work, exceptional efforts, and noteworthy support will be appreciated and rewarded in some tangible way. Without fail! If you allow good work and exceptional performance to go unnoted, you will soon see less of it. How good does it have to be to be rewarded? How about every time actual completions come in ahead of schedule and below budget! Celebratory coffee and cake breaks are cheap rewards, but they are absolutely necessary to keep the “success machine” in operation. When there’s been a big breakthrough in the numbers (and that’s what this is all about), a bigger, better celebration is required. Belt buckles, ball caps, dinner or ball-game tickets, letters of commendation, barbeques in the boss’s backyard for team members and families (or a park if you live in an apartment), and so on. Use your imagination. But don’t forget to ask what the people who do the work would like. Some people don’t want to go to a motorcycle race or a heavy-metal concert. Or a Mahler concert, either.

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This is about energizing people at work and turning them into high-performance teams. But trust me: if you don’t believe in your people and can’t get the kinds of excitement and enthusiasm you want them to feel, you will not win with them. You might not fail in a literal sense, but you won’t win—just like most of the managers you know haven’t won, becoming instead just caretakers of functions that someone, sooner or later, will outsource. At a not-too-high level of abstraction, an organization is an energy-exchange system. And more to the point, that energy is not self-renewing. There have to be people designated to crank up the volume and keep the energy flowing— people who engage workers in a continuing contest with the numbers to keep the shops open and everybody’s jobs secure. Maybe no one ever explained it that way, managerreader, but this is what the manager’s job is all about. Everything else is just an administrative footnote.

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Chapter 4 Working with Others

O

nce you have identified the outcomes you want to achieve, it’s time to consider the setting in which you are working. The trust issues discussed in the previous chapter are on the surface. What lies beneath them, however, is a swirling mass of currents deriving from recent and past history, individual performance and ability, and the volatile issues of ethnicity, gender, education, and culture. The manager must exert some control over these factors by not allowing them to rise to the surface in an out-ofcontrol and destructive manner. Diversity issues operate in every social setting, so it’s hard not to be aware of them. The challenge is to be attentive to potential problems and to channel the associated energy constructively to achieve positive outcomes. Job mastery requires more than simple awareness; it requires interpersonal acuity that will enable you to work with and counsel individuals when contentious issues arise, and to help them re-focus on the group’s purpose, targets, and goals. When workers are performing their jobs well, there’s less chance of disruption. Remember: Success is a prerequisite to security, and secure people have less need to be divisive.

A Diversity of Opinions The issue seems to be one of what “secure” means. It does not mean preferential treatment, nor acceptance of requests to be treated in ways that are extra-ordinary. Having been married to an equal employment opportunity officer for the U.S. 37

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government, having spent hundreds of hours discussing rights, abuses, and remedial strategies (and all this following years of conducting civil rights workshops), I find myself with a bias: Specifically, that diversity protection is a divisive force in corporate life. It is important only when managers fail to provide clarity about roles, responsibilities, and standard-based expectations and are not even-handed in dealing with individuals and the issues that individuality creates. In the same way that it’s said that companies deserve the unions they get, companies get the diversity troubles they deserve (if only by ignoring ineptitude or malicious behavior on the part of some managers). Corporate emphasis on creating workforce diversity and giving special dispensations in order to meet diversity targets is divisive and inefficient. These things serve small groups of special-interest-seekers, and do little to enhance the strengths and capabilities of the corporation. HR managers in particular should look for knowledge, skills, and abilities and scrupulously keep their personal biases out of all hiring and promoting transactions. Diversity in the population is a fact, and it is also a fact that competencies are not evenly distributed within any population. Common sense, intelligence, fairness, and discretion are what you need to make sure that every applicant has a fair chance. If, that is, you are committed to the success of your organization. Because of my experiences, a friend asked me to meet with two women who were writing a book on diversity. That was in 1992, and their book has done very well, probably because they ignored my counsel to write about universal performance standards, giving everyone a level playing field, and teaching managers how to maintain a focus on performance. (My perspective was and is that the problem was not 38

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created by bigotry and bias, but by managers.) Federal, state, and local legislation has gone about as far as possible in providing employees with security from discrimination, leaving a corps of diversity specialists in well-paid roles who need a constituency for their work. Their work actually comes from managers who create the constituencies by being unfair, insensitive, or ignorant of labor and employment laws. Don’t be one of them. Make certain you know your company’s diversity staff, and don’t be shy about using those staff-level individuals as resources. While they are in place to represent all employees, the hard facts are that their roles are shaped to provide counsel to managers and to assist in quelling outbreaks of emotionally-charged episodes. Make certain you know how to protect yourself and your staff from unfortunate episodes. Some of the information that follows probably will be helpful, but do remember: If you mishandle these issues and become a central figure in an embarrassing episode, you might find yourself all alone, out on a limb.

Group Dynamics A vast amount of research has been done on how we behave in groups, and particularly in work groups. It might not have been a large part of your academic preparation, but no other area of our lives seems to have been so thoroughly researched. Even so, we tend to ignore all that valuable information and allow people in pivotal organizational roles to blunder along, churning up ineffective performance and excessive costs. You can blame this on “going along to get along” or on managerial ignorance regarding organizations as social systems, but when a manager alienates his or her group, removing the unpopular manager doesn’t always solve 39

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the problem. Sometimes, the behaviors and attitudes necessary to put up with an ineffective boss become part of a group’s norms, and those behaviors are likely to be carried forward when a new manager takes over. Even an imperfect status quo has staying power. Mastery of the manager’s job means managing the dynamics of the group.

Philip Harris, author of Managing the Knowledge Culture (2005), identified ten dimensions of group life that lend themselves to analysis. Harris asserts that it’s a foolish manager who charges in to make changes in a group without first doing a lot of headwork and homework about the group, its history, and its members. Harris’s ten dimensions are: Group background, participation patterns, communication patterns, cohesion, atmosphere, standards, procedures, goals, leadership, and alignment. In the next few pages, we’ll show their relevance to job mastery. Group background. Some teams will come to you with a reputation for being marginal producers or difficult to manage, or for disagreeing among themselves, or otherwise causing interpersonal problems that escalate to involve managers of their own and other teams. But such teams can be turned around. A team I once worked with played a key role in a Canadian refinery, but its members were so fractious, so aggressive, and so profane that no one else wanted to work with them. The members of the team were smart, clever, and colorful, representing a half-dozen different cultures. So, given my experience in conflict resolution, I was assigned to 40

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work with them. Their turnaround came in a surprising way— I showed them a more-effective and more personally satisfying way to view their role: Instead of thinking their job was to be on call to handle emergency repairs, they were told that their redefined role was to prevent or reduce the numbers of unscheduled outages that interrupt production. One role description was reactive, and the other proactive. Almost overnight, they made the transition from being somewhatdemonic emergency technicians to being almost-friendly internal consultants whose expertise was appreciated by the managers with whom they interfaced. Both these new consultants and their clients had to go through a period of trying on new ways of interacting with others. There will always be a transitional period, but until someone analyzed the group’s history, considered the backgrounds and skills of its members, and acknowledged its contributions, the chances were good that the company would fire them all and form a new team—which would have been an enormous waste of talent. They just needed a little “re-concepting” and a small amount of skill-building to overcome their reputation. Group participation patterns. Someone skilled at observing groups can sit through a meeting and produce a “map” of interactions that reveals, often with startling accuracy, how the group works, who the play-makers and the reluctant participants are, which participants are alert and which ones are signaling boredom and disinterest. Sometimes the mostverbal people have the least to say that’s worth hearing, while others who have to be coaxed to speak sometimes contribute the most. Effective managers learn to read the signs and “orchestrate” the performance of the group for maximum 41

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effect. When a group turns into a team, the manager will have people to help keep the group working well. This is a great indicator that the group’s abilities and other strengths are important elements in achieving its goals. When managers are able to work with team members and their individual patterns of participation to bring about this kind of awareness, job mastery is close at hand. Group communication patterns. Again, a skilled observer can note who speaks to whom, who doesn’t speak at all, who is not spoken to, and who speaks most often. These observations are particularly important when a group is in the start-up mode: Everyone should have a chance to speak and to be heard quickly, and those who are shy or reticent should be encouraged to speak and participate during group formation. Participation is a learned activity, easier for some than for others. Effective managers pay attention to the participation styles of individuals around the table in order to find the best way to get them to feel part of the team. As teams develop, team members often assume responsibility for gate keeping— that is, for seeing that everyone has an opportunity to participate. Their willingness to do this will depend on the extent to which the manager encourages and rewards participation. But until this ability is developed, there’s nothing wrong with the manager asking for input from individuals. It might take this form: “Dave, you used to work in maintenance. What is the best way for us to approach them to get a higher level of support?” It makes sense to ask people who know. And there’s this reality: If you don’t ask, you don’t get!

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Group cohesion. Some groups are tight and cliquey, with a lot of in-jokes and non-verbal communication. Other groups are not nearly so bonded to one another, yet are just as effective. Such differences can depend on variables such as age, time with the company, national origin, personal style, and even religion. One manager told me that he once worked for a well-known company that, back then, didn’t hire Roman Catholics, and that he and the few other Catholics hired for their specialist skills often had to share the same table in the company’s cafeteria. Of course, what matters is how well group members support one another when working against short deadlines and the pressure is on. A good manager knows immediately when a group is not working together as well as it should; this kind of manager will get them to talk about this right away, asking each member for their input on why there are road blocks. Members are encouraged to share ideas on how they can pull together more effectively. You can be sure that they have answers for both questions. Maybe you as manager have some ideas, but you’ll get more and faster results by letting the answers come from them. Group atmosphere. Are people in the group generally open and friendly? Cool and remote? Sometimes hostile to each other and outsiders? Some groups create an unapproachable atmosphere when their members get too close, too bonded, and too self-protective. The power of the group to close out others diminishes the group’s value as a unit of production. The manager has to use a good bit of skill and political capital with the group to get members to consider their behavior. Sometimes it’s even necessary to remove those informal leaders who benefit from being exclusionary. The personal43

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ization of “my team” and “our team” can lead to stringent qualifying tests for new members, or outright rejection. A Navy SEAL officer was my escort while on a consulting assignment in Puerto Rico. We stopped by the base so he could greet some comrades. All conversation stopped when I entered the room. My escort had brief conversations with his colleagues, and after one drink, we left. As soon as I was out of the room, I could hear their conversations resume. My escort said, “Don’t take it personally. That’s how we are.” But I’ve encountered the same insider vs. outsider behavior among physicians, firefighters, and electric utility crews, with xenophobic attitudes as obvious as a barbed wire fence. Subcultures are not always the most constructive or productive, and some managers are afraid to confront them. Life at work should not be a life-or-death situation that requires such harsh boundaries! You must be prepared to use any number of interventions to modify group behavior. If you are confronted with an especially difficult situation and you are a new manager, I advise you to get counsel or intervention support from a qualified third party. It’s not an act of cowardice, and it’s no time for an ego contest. The meter is running, and the real issues are performance and productivity. Group standards. Do they look sharp and smell good, or have group members adopted a dress code more fitting for an outlaw motorcycle gang? One team leader I encountered at a California refinery, who used to be a Marine Corps drill instructor, contrived to get matching red jackets for everyone on his team. As a former Marine, I thought that was a good move toward team discipline. Nevertheless, while they were recognizable and a bit exclusionary in their social behavior, I 44

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was disappointed to find that when their work was subjected to analysis, this team performed rather poorly. Looking good might be desirable, but it certainly isn’t sufficient. There should be standards for attire, work habits, punctuality, and communication. Inheriting a strong group that’s been together for several years does not necessarily mean that you won’t have to make major changes in the way people look or behave while they’re on the job and representing the company. (If safety gear is required on the job, are workers sent home if they show up without proper equipment? If they aren’t, you’re going to find other casual attitudes toward performance and compliance.) An effective manager knows how to get the team’s standards aligned to meet current performance expectations. Group procedures. Some groups or teams have highly regimented procedures for everything they do routinely. Consider the crew on a fire truck: Their roles have been defined to support specialization in the use of the truck’s equipment. Whether they’re working quickly in the face of a fire or more leisurely after the emergency, returning tools and equipment to the truck’s many compartments and coiling the hose are all routines perfected through practice. By contrast, teams whose roles are not so neatly defined by the equipment they use usually gather to consider the task, when someone will say, “What do you think? Where do we start?” After a discussion of options, the group eases into a procedure that everyone accepts. If procedures are important, the manager might have to help the team develop the discipline for self-direction and show people how to shape or reshape procedures to fit current tasks. Sometimes, all that’s really needed is permission, stated explicitly. 45

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Group goals. One of a manager’s key jobs is to align personal and group goals with corporate goals so that everyone can work together to achieve a small collection of goals. It’s a nice ideal, but it’s sometimes difficult to achieve because teams do have their drawbacks. They tend to be competitive more than collaborative, and sometimes that puts “teamwork” in opposition to corporate goals. This is one of the reasons why it’s so important to focus on goals, and why it’s necessary for managers to pay attention to the “goal-striving” of teams. In truth, work can be repetitive and boring; a dull workday brightens up considerably with a little oneupmanship that embarrasses another team. Teams and welltrained work groups are powerful social mechanisms, but the manager needs to keep that power focused. Group leadership. This is a perennial problem for managers, because even though the team or group reports to a manager, it is not unheard of for competition to arise between a team’s leaders and the designated manager. It might be subtle at first, but team members will soon sense the struggle. If it becomes a contest, a senior manager or someone else in authority will have to step in, and someone will lose. Sometimes strong teams with strong leaders can defeat a manager—even a good one. I observed something like this in the Marine Corps. A fellow candidate in the officer candidate school, a handsome and almost charismatic young man, had obvious leadership qualities and was someone to whom people just naturally gravitated. Only 44 percent of the candidates who began that class were commissioned, but that young man was the first one to be removed from consideration. The drill instructors didn’t want anyone who could compete with them for atten46

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tion! Something similar was played out in a small northern California bank I did some project management work for. The new president, an outsider, found himself with an embittered senior manager who had expected to become president and who had the allegiance of most of the other managers. At the second executive staff meeting, the bitter man was absent. The president said, “You will notice that Larry is not with us. I was elected president of this bank by the board of directors, and I will succeed in that role with or without your support. But it will be more fun for all of us if it’s with your support.” And that’s how it turned out. They had fun, they made money, and they turned a local bank into a regional competitor that produced big rewards for stockholders—once competition within the management team was resolved. Group alignments. Team members (and people in general) can be fluid in their allegiances. This is apparent in workplaces when, say, formerly isolated members are suddenly brought into one clique or another during lunch breaks. Like teenage infatuations, these cliques usually don’t last. Stability in productive groups comes with success as leadership problems get resolved and the emphasis shifts from being noticed to being effective. Any group with two or more informal leaders is fortunate: If the group drifts off task and the goal focus slips, one of the leaders will inevitably notice and get everyone back on track. The effective manager is always aware that this is happening, but he or she doesn’t get involved; it should be enough to tell the team’s informal leaders what is going on. Groups often work out alignment problems by themselves.

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All ten of these factors must be addressed if you truly want to master the job of manager, as effective managers will readily tell you. The more authoritarian your management style, however, the less likely it is that you will be troubled by the way the group interacts—but this presents a dilemma because unless you deal with the group’s interactions, you will not achieve the productivity of which your people are capable. A successful manager deals with messy people problems! Managers who understand people know that there will be small interruptions on the long climb to record performance. Fish were the last to discover water, and managers all too often are the last to discover that we all exist and work and succeed in a sea of social dynamics.

Working with Volunteers For another example of how the dynamics of a group affect results, consider this example: One of my best friends and mentors was a retired Anglican priest who accepted a parttime role with a community of dissidents who wanted to build their own church. The building committee, unable for many months to launch a building project, agreed to accept a third party to sit in with them on a meeting. My friend called on me. Among those involved was an older man and original member of the community. Joe was a member of the church’s governing board and a member of the building committee. Even though I was fairly junior as a consultant, it didn’t take long to spot the committee’s trouble. It was Joe. Each time the committee gained momentum, Joe would interrupt with homilies that blocked them. It was curious to me that no one in that two-year-old group was willing to confront Joe. Instead, people looked away to mask their frustration while 48

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Joe droned on and on. After the second blocking episode, I pointed out what Joe was doing to the group and told them that they were behaving as though they were powerless. Despite my comments, the committee members and I all were stunned to see Joe raise his right hand, forefinger pointed to the ceiling, and begin to preach again: “But God said….” Before he could proceed with another sermonette, I interrupted. “Joe, your need to be in control is killing this group. Please do everyone a favor. Stay on the subject, or leave.” Joe was startled, but when he looked around and found no support from his friends, he left. Half the people in the room wanted to chase Joe, but I asked them to remain seated for a few minutes so we could take a look at what they had just experienced. It was odd to me that among a dozen accomplished business people and civic leaders, no one had felt free to ask Joe to stop monopolizing so that they, collectively, could be effective. I asked them to consider that fact and what it predicted about their ability to be successful as a community. Then I called for a coffee break and sat in the back of the room for the rest of the evening. Several months later, there was a groundbreaking celebration for the new parish house. Removing Joe as an obstacle was uncomfortable for committee members, steeped as they were in religious principles about tolerance and inclusion. But getting Joe out of their way set them free to achieve their goal. Their release was made possible by a classic intervention. The technique is there for you to find in the literature or in an academic course or training program; do a little research and add it to your toolkit. If you want to test some of your leadership skills, there are many volunteer and non-governmental organizations that could use you as a consultant. Take advantage of the opportu49

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nity to look at group interaction and hone your skills in a place where your career isn’t on the line. Of particular interest (and a bit of a challenge) is the fact that volunteers generally don’t respond to authority very well. Instead of giving orders, you will probably have to learn to work with people—even the difficult ones (trust me on this). It will be a humbling but important learning experience.

Your Manager Is Part of the Group Your own manager’s biases, beliefs, experiences, and expectations are an important part of the mix of people and values that shape the dynamics of your group. (In fact, those preferences might be shaping your choices more than you realize.) Even so, people senior to you frequently want their influence to be expressed explicitly, and to be able to see or hear evidence that their influence is being manifested in daily operations. It’s not a smart move to keep your manager at a distance, or worse, to signal that he or she is being intentionally ignored. Good headwork dictates letting your manager know that you consider him or her part of the team. That’s why people say that the dumbest thing you can do at work is to propose something to your boss that you know he or she is dead-set against doing. That’s probably good counsel, but even better advice is to be sure you know what your boss really wants from you. Of course, the job you hold should be executed competently. Your behavior in that role should be above reproach. It goes without saying that your direct reports should also conduct themselves in ways that do not attract criticism. But beyond these generic standards, there frequently is something in particular your manager wants or hopes you will do: If you 50

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can figure out what he or she wants from you or help solve a continuing problem or do something that will give your boss a political boost, you will earn your manager’s support and be free to engage in the developmental activities that produce the results you were hired to achieve. New managers don’t usually get this piece of advice, but it’s wise counsel! It may be the key to your ability to get the other success-producing ideas in this guide to work for you. Here are a couple of suggestions: Maybe your boss has a strong commitment to equal employment issues and making sure that minority employees get fair treatment. If so, it might be an opportunity to do some strategic positioning so that one of your own minority employees gets to lead a special, highprofile project team or otherwise demonstrate his or her competencies. Choosing one person among several for a special assignment generally involves subjective decisions, and knowing what’s important to your boss is one of the factors that will have to be considered. And then, it’s not immoral to make a decision that you know will please your boss. Suppose your boss is passionate about cost-reduction. Figure out ways to demonstrate that your team is saving money for the company. Or maybe your boss is a fiend about punctuality: You could consider holding five-minute stand-up meetings that begin first thing in the morning. That way, your people are not only at work on time, but already into their work. Consider holding a brief meeting each morning that covers what didn’t happen yesterday that should have; what won’t happen today that was scheduled; and what’s the plan to get back on schedule and budget.

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This not only starts the day with a sharp task focus, but it will keep everyone’s eye on schedules, costs, and quality. One federal government manager in San Francisco actually had several stand-up tables, such as you might see in a coffee shop, installed in his office for early morning coffee and brief discussions about schedules, problems, and opportunities. A Canadian manager I worked with sometimes held his staff meetings in a room without chairs. His meetings were always short. Remember, the manager’s job is just a role someone has to fill, so put some panache into it, and get noticed!

If you watch and listen to your manager, you will be able to identify his or her “hot buttons.” Pictures on the office wall or the boss’s desk tell you something about their interests. If conversations are peppered with golf or football analogies, that will tell you something else. If the boss is a fitness freak or an avid bicyclist, you’ve discovered a gold mine of ways to please. Once you know your boss’s interests, look for related magazine articles to pass along. Attach a note that says something like, “In case you didn’t see this…” and initial it— not every day, but often enough to let the boss know that you’re an unusually thoughtful person. After some time, the boss will start to think of you as a particularly observant and reliable individual. That can only be to your benefit. Not everyone will like these suggestions, but the reality is that there are a lot of competent people who do their jobs well enough who never get promoted. Nothing suggested here is dishonest, dishonorable, or sleazy; it’s just a matter of paying 52

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attention to the people who are important in your life (one of whom certainly is your boss). Remember, no matter how good you are in your role, other people will decide whether or not you get more money or get promoted or are otherwise recognized. It makes sense to make it easy for those people to see why you’re deserving. And now a word about getting along with the people you work with in your job as a manager. Beyond your direct reports, there is a complex network of relationships you need to create and maintain, and your initiative here is really important. People who are well-liked seem to have more career success than those who aren’t. This is not to say that being popular is more important than being effective, but if you can be both popular and competent, why not? Getting along with people at every level is far more important in corporate advancement than we give it credit for. It might make a lot of difference in how your career plays out. Yes, you’re in a paid role, but you’re expected to perform in a highly social environment in which interpersonal skills are no less important than your technical skills. Don’t underestimate the power of savoir faire, good manners, sincerity, and being thoughtful and considerate. It will keep you afloat in the wash of office society. Now, how well do you know the following people, and what have you done for them lately? Office administrator. Most often, this is a woman, but whoever is in this role knows where all the gold is buried. You really need to have an active and positive relationship with her. Begin with cordial greetings and be sure to express appreciation for even routine distribution of office informa53

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tion. When appropriate, provide compliments. Don’t waste her time, but let her know that she’s prominent on your radar screen. [Note: If you’re a guy, you probably have a lot to learn about paying attention to the people around you—hair styles, hair color, new clothes, engagement rings, no rings, black eyes, broken arms, a new limp, vacations, illnesses, marriages, babies. There’s a story behind each of these, and most people are willing to share theirs with you or at least will appreciate the fact that you noticed. That appreciation often results in a positive return to you, sometimes when you least expect it and when it will really pay off.] HR manager. If you aren’t in HR, there’s a lot you don’t know about laws and company policies regarding selecting, disciplining, promoting, firing, and rewarding your direct reports. Why make a potentially costly mistake when information you may need is available, a phone call or short walk away? IT manager. Self-explanatory. Diversity manager. This is an important person in your professional life, since there are so many ways to “get dirty” in this arena. If you hear any suggestion of inappropriate behavior among members of your staff, it’s a good idea to invite the diversity manager to make a presentation at a staff meeting or a meeting you convene for that express purpose. The presentation does not have to be about alleged wrongdoing on anyone’s part, but an occasional brief refresher 54

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course on rules and roles can prevent a rumor from becoming a responsibility that you must handle. Maintenance manager. Most office air conditioning and heating systems can be tweaked to resolve complaints that it’s too cold or too hot, or there’s not enough fresh air. Taking care of your people includes responding to such issues, and generally that’s not something you can or should do yourself. Managers in other functional groups. There are always opportunities for cooperation and mutual support (sometimes for advancement, but always for information about what’s going on in the larger organization). Over time, you create a resource network of people with skills and knowledge you don’t have who can help you. Also, you become more valuable to your manager when you have problem-solving or information resources. Such referrals often lead to jobenriching temporary assignments for yourself and others. Skilled individuals across the organization. Regardless of their hierarchical level, it’s always beneficial to know smart people. Maybe you connect because of outside interests (biking, hiking, etc.) or because you worked together on a project team, but the more people you know and the more people who know you, the more likely you are to hear things of value and the more likely you will get specialized help when you need it. And do remember that out-of-channels information can sometimes give you a competitive edge; many times, it’s the unexpected call from someone in your network that provides you with a breakthrough opportunity. But also keep in mind this question: Why should anyone give you a heads-up call? It really depends on whether or not you have earned it. 55

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Depending on your organization and the nature of the work you do, there may be others you need to know. But keep in mind that your organization is a social system, a neighborhood, a community of people with a common economic interest: The more people you know and the more you know about the company and its work, the more valuable you become as your leadership potential is enriched by your knowledge.

In Closing… The significance of two of my own life lessons was confirmed one day at lunch when I was interviewing the general manager of one of America’s finest hotels. The first lesson is that people are always important. Here’s the way this fine hotel manager put it: “This is an equal opportunity environment. Every employee has an equal opportunity to displease a guest and drive revenue out of the house. No employee and no task is unimportant.” The second lesson is that no detail is too small to be overlooked. If you choose to overlook it, you erode your standards. As we walked the few meters from his office to the dining room, this same hotel manager spotted a handprint on the glass door into the lobby, some twenty meters away, and dispatched a bellman to clean it. Then, as we were seated by the hostess, he suggested that she change her apron as there was a small spot down in one corner. “And while you’re at it,” he said, “there’s a smudge on that mirror over there. Could you find someone to take care of that?” I had to look carefully to see the offending spots, both on the apron and on the mirror.

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With the exception of a medical setting, I have never experienced managing at such a high level of detail. But as much as the detail was a surprise, I was equally impressed by the fact that my host spotted these discrepancies while escorting and chatting with me. That takes a practiced eye and a level of vigilance that can come only from keeping the standards his hotel must meet constantly in the front of his mind. “For some of our guests,” he said, “our best room may represent a reduction in the quality of their life, and at our rates, guests should not be confronted with substandard performance.” We got through the lunch without his mentioning further discrepancies. Intentional or not, he made a powerful impression about the importance of managing at high levels of detail. A similar story came from a friend who, as a high school dropout, was fortunate to be hired as a busboy in one of San Francisco’s most prestigious restaurants. “My first lesson,” he remembered, “was learning how to set a table, and it took weeks for me to be able to set the entire dining room without something in my performance being criticized, some misalignment of a knife, a fork, or a glass. I’m not talking about inches,” he said. “I’m talking millimeters!” My friend learned and succeeded, and was hired away when he was twenty-one into an impressive and lucrative corporate role. But his success in the restaurant and in subsequent roles began, he said, the day he learned to set a table to his mentor’s satisfaction. The really important point I’m trying to make in these stories if you want to master your job as a manager is not the importance of discipline, as impressive as that is, but that there are managers who insist that standards be observed in all things and at all times. Your job in 57

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such situations is never secure until performance routinely complies with really precise standards. I can only imagine that where you work it would be difficult to discipline employees to perform against those stringent standards. But isn’t that what the companies that have adopted the Six Sigma standard are doing? Getting people to perform at previously unimagined standards, and to do it routinely? If everyone understands that Six Sigma performance represents job security and works with and for managers who know the standards and are involved in compliance, maybe it won’t be so difficult. All the stuff about treating people well and building trust is just foundation material. Once those concepts are in place, you can really start managing. In Part Two, we will focus more tightly on the tools and skills required to permit you to manage at increasingly precise levels of detail, and indeed to master the manager’s job.

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Chapter 5 The Whole Ball of Wax

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or every individual who becomes a manager and gets promoted up the corporate ladder, there are countless others who don’t get the opportunity because one or several key competencies are missing or are not reflected in their performance. The manager’s role is complex, as we will illustrate in this short chapter. Managers must possess a host of competencies, as well as the technical skills specific to their professional or academic discipline. Several years ago, a client and I were trying to find a way to make the point to his managers that there is much more to management than timekeeping and task completion. Our notes turned into sketches and a final graphic illustration encompassing nearly forty subjects. That’s a lot of major and subordinate competencies for anyone to master! It’s almost intimidating, until you realize that there are a lot of interconnections among the elements. Knowing about one thing leads you to having to know (or wanting to know) more about something else within the circle. Pretty soon, you find yourself working on every element because you understand the role each one plays in managing effectively. There are a lot of factors critical or related to your success that do not appear within the “ball of wax” in our illustration, such as organizational politics, your own political sensitivity and skill, career development for larger roles or work in global organizations, and current events that can impact your industry or organization. And don’t forget the psychology of motivation and commitment, interactions 59

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within and between groups, and the important observations that can be made through the filters provided by cultural anthropology. Then, when you think about the global economy, there are a host of cross-cultural issues to consider, too. So, mastering the job of manager isn’t a quick fix: It’s a process that you will have to shape. The best strategy might be to take on the subject in bite-sized increments. Over time, you will find yourself having flashes of awareness that you are developing new managerial competencies; you will become more sure-footed, more knowledgeable, more effective, more intuitive, and more confident about the actions and decisions you’ll be making. WHAT BUSINESS ARE WE IN?

E

G

EX PE IP CT SH R MISSION /IN E F S D I SP N P A A E E EC T NC L S T IAL N O I T P LA STRATEGIC PLANNING AC NN ING T A S R E G V I E CO T TS NS U J EC DIS & C NSEL TIO ) OB OA CI ANCIATION Routine Replication S CHI ING PL S D NG ME of Processes and IN AL (RE O Procedures for Profit

SERVICE REQUEST

REPETITIVE TASKS & NS T ISIO EN DECOLVEM INV

FUN CT PLA NNI

W DIA OR G R KF AM LO W

ETHICS

KSAOs ION

NG

S

IES ILIT SIB RE & A WARD WA S RDS NG I T GE BUD

PON RES

ROLES SCHEDULING

COST vs. QUALITY

W BRE ORK AKD OWN

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G IN

The Whole Ball of Wax

One thing to consider in particular: Every organization needs people with different and specific competencies to help shape the organization and to work together to create and sustain a stable, healthy environment needed to master any job. As you consider “The Whole Ball of Wax,” think about your colleagues in other areas of the organization and the skills and competencies they must have to be effective in their roles. Try to see how they complement your own abilities and how you can help one another collaborate more effectively. Let’s look at some of the terms used in the illustration: What business are we in? This is the most important question a manager can ask. People who have worked in the same place for many years do not respond the same way to that question. They tend to respond by saying what they do, such as “accounting” or “purchasing,” instead of, say, “We’re in the business of providing services to medical rehabilitation and custodial institutions.” What’s your organization’s mission statement? It’s really difficult to build an effective organization until everyone knows, understands, and agrees with the mission statement. Service request refers to the form used to request service. It is analogous to a sales order, providing specifics about the kind of service requested and its level of urgency. As service requests are retired, they can be used to record worker time expended, materials used, and costs. When the same or a similar repair or action (routine maintenance) is required, that information, recorded in a “work package,” will be valuable in scheduling and budgeting.

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Manage performance, not people. This is a key concept: If you try to manage people, you cannot oversee the activities of more than a few (seven subordinates is said to be the optimum span of control). But if you manage the performance of individuals and groups by collecting and analyzing information, you can manage the activities of many people. Consider the manager of a department store who gets information each morning about the previous day’s performance of thirty or more departments (automotive, lingerie, white goods, shoes, etc.). This “management by exception” allows the manager to zero in on those departments and managers where targets are not being met. Most department managers do not need daily supervision, but the senior manager must make sure contacts with department managers or other employees are positive more often than corrective, adversarial, biased, or negative. Knowledge, skills, and abilities. These characteristics needed for competent performance are the “know and knowhow to do” competencies used to define requirements for specific jobs or positions. Competencies are increasingly the currency of job security and advancement, though defining them is still a work in progress in many organizations. Repetitive tasks. Some part of all work is routine, and it is those repetitive tasks that give managers an opportunity to demonstrate that routines can be performed in the most costeffective manner, with time required and costs involved declining with subsequent repetitions. Further, for more effective utilization of resources (scheduling), it’s necessary to know all the details about the tasks within your work processes. This is knowledge that takes time to acquire—usually 62

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months. They might appear to be a deadening influence, but repetitive routines are required for organizational effectiveness and stability. Such routines are the “binding agents” of organizations, the matrix that supports the money-making activities with which most readers of this guide are associated. The tasks and responsibilities seem intimidating, but they can be grouped into three chief managerial competencies. Here they are again: • • •

Setting Goals and Standards Planning Work and Scheduling Resources Managing Time and Prioritizing

The rest of the book will focus on these three competencies. Keep in mind that these competencies are considered significant and extremely important because nearly 100,000 managers in some of America’s largest and best-known companies identified them as being the most important parts of the manager’s job.

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Chapter 6 Setting Goals and Standards

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efore we delve into the weighty subject of goal-setting, consider these few words about standards: Standards make excellence possible and attainable. They put the steel into goals. The higher the standards, the more evident the competence of organizations and workers becomes. When Motorola determined back in the mid-1980s that it could not remain a world-class competitor unless it elevated its manufacturing standards, it reversed its fortunes and launched a quality and management revolution. It was a bold move, based on the vision of Motorola’s president at the time, Bob Galvin. Consider such popular advertising claims as “world leader in its class” and “#1 in our industry.” What do these slogans communicate? To employees, such terms represent job security and the possibility of higher take-home pay or expanded benefits. To consumers, such terms imply that the product is of undeniable quality. That’s the power of brands—they can “promise” quality. What images are invoked by the names Sony, Kleenex, Timex, Rolex, Armani, and Adidas?

The Importance of Vision Operationally, a vision is hard to achieve until it is framed as a goal—that is, put into a short declarative statement that spells out the organization’s intent. Goals are like the front sight on a rifle, which allows the focusing of all the power of the propellant and the shooter’s skill toward a designated 65

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point. But the word goal is seriously misused: It’s frequently attached to such trivial and short-term outcomes as completing a report or compiling project costs. To cast goals in a more appropriate context, consider this illustration: Goal #1

Objective A

Target

Target

Objective B

Target

Target

Objective C

Target

Target

Goals sit at the top of a hierarchy of achievements, accomplishments, or completions. When the organization establishes a goal, it must then define the steps that have to be taken to achieve the goal, and then set up a structure so that progress can be monitored on a regular basis. The departments and divisions within the organization must be vectored toward or aligned with the goal. Division A will have specific objectives to work toward, as will Divisions B and C. Thus, all the steps toward achieving the goal can be covered. The goal is a somewhat broad intention. The steps toward achievement can be considered objectives—specific to-do lists of accomplishments that together allow you to reach the goal. Then, for each objective, there are subordinate collections of work that have to be performed: targets. Targets are 66

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near-term assignments—points at which smaller increments of work will be completed. Objectives and targets are “milestones” in a project plan. In terms of time, goals might be a year or two ahead, objectives 6 to 12 months ahead, and targets up to 90 days. But even if you say, “Our goal for this year is…” you’ll need to set some intermediate points between now and twelve months ahead so you can assess progress, realign resources, and make sure teams and individuals are all focused on the goal. But more importantly, you need some places where you can stop the action long enough to tell the people doing the work how well or how poorly they’re progressing. A year is a long time to wait for feedback, and feedback at that late date is essentially useless as a basis for learning or improvement. (Remember this the next time you hear annual performance reviews being discussed, and you will understand why workers have always resented them.) Periodic checks or reviews of progress are absolutely necessary to support serious goal-seeking. They can help you identify errors or mistakes that will be costly or impossible to remedy further along in the process.

Aligning Forces and Energies for Success Goals have to be part of the organization’s normal functioning. If an organization puts effort into programs or engages in activities that do not contribute to its goals, it’s weakening its ability to meet those goals. You might want to translate this to read: When an organization dissipates resources on activities that do not directly support its core business, its ability to compete effectively and to survive is compromised. This is another driver in the trend toward outsourcing, allowing needed services to be bought from contractors, rather than 67

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having them compete with core-business goals for management’s attention. Goals, objectives, and targets all must be tangible, achievable, and measurable. Think in terms of what’s to be done, how much or how many, and when the results will be seen. Here are some examples: •

Reduce lost-time accidents to no more than one per quarter, beginning immediately.

•

Increase customer sales calls from 5 per day to 8 per day throughout each week of the fall quarter.

•

Reduce cost-per-unit from 25 cents to 21 cents within the next 90 days with no loss in quality or quantity.

•

Reduce customer complaints from 19 per month to no more than 5 per month within the next 60 days.

•

Reduce sick days in this division by at least 15 percent over the next six months.

•

Provide a year-end dividend of at least 33 cents per share for all Class A shareholders.

Each of these statements of intent can serve as a goal or an objective. Even the “year-end-dividend” can be an objective used to demonstrate a positive result from restructuring. Likewise, to turn any of these statements of intent into a reality will require specific actions, efforts, and results by designated individuals or groups, and if results are not realized, individuals should be held accountable. Objectives tend to be interlinked as you move down through the organization. Here are statements that suggest such linking:

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Sales cannot exceed the amount that can be produced.

•

Receipt of products cannot be guaranteed without first reviewing existing commitments and inventories.

•

On-time, cost-effective deliveries to customers cannot be maintained without strict attention to vehicle maintenance requirements and driver retention programs.

•

Productivity goals cannot be met unless equipment maintenance schedules are adhered to and vendor deliveries are managed.

•

Rigorous attention to scheduling, controlling, and anticipating all resource variables must be made a priority.

What business are you in? We stressed in the previous chapter that everyone in the organization needs to have the same understanding about the mission, and preferably with the same, well-chosen words. A mission statement can provide the words, but it must be more than a motto or slogan. Ford’s Quality is Job 1 and the Los Angeles Police Department’s To Protect and To Serve are not mission statements (though they are catchy and effective!). A mission statement describes why the organization exists, what it does, how well it intends to do it, and for whom. (As simple as this sounds, it’s usually very difficult to get a group of people to agree on these four elements and then to turn their agreement into a simple statement.) Mission statements can be as short as a dozen words or as long as 69

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several pages, and may include bullet points or other attention-getting devices. The development of such a statement is a worthwhile exercise: It provides focus, and brings to light interesting misperceptions of functions and roles. I was working at one point in my career with the racially mixed staff of a city’s low-income housing department. They had an acrimonious relationship with the city council, which the staff attributed to racism among council members. However, it turned out that the entire staff, from the director down to clerical workers, were so focused on the citizens they served that they never realized that their primary client was the city council. This amazing oversight was discovered when I assisted them in developing a map of their division’s workflow. When the group proudly presented their work-flow map (the first time they had ever participated in such a process) and described their work step by step, I asked the question that changed their perception of what they did, why, and for whom: Where’s the city council in your map? What followed was a subtle discussion of how city governments are organized. Their department was finally put in a proper perspective. Even the most reluctant of them had to admit that they helped create the hostile relationship with the city council. Therefore, when they crafted their mission statement, they defined themselves as representatives of the city (and by implication, the city council) in delivering their services. Let me assure you that these were “cause-oriented” people who envisioned themselves as doing really important work on behalf of disadvantaged clients. But as is so often the case with “true believers,” their sense of themselves and their mission became distorted. In a similar case, I worked one

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summer with a group of dedicated educators, preparing them for their new roles as aides to classroom teachers in “mainstreaming” or integrating severely handicapped children into ordinary classrooms. After watching and listening to them for several days, I gave them an exercise to perform individually, and then I compiled their responses. The task? Rate yourself and your mission among the other ten employee groups in the school.

The result? They ranked themselves second only to the school principal! We had reached a point at which some serious learning could take place. I asked them this question: How do you think you’re going to be received by teachers, psychologists, assistant principals, and others in the system whose support you must have in order to succeed, if you think of yourselves and your roles as more important than theirs?

You cannot hold such self-perceptions without communicating them, and that will kill the program. Perhaps these are extreme examples, but I am including them here to suggest to you the importance of missions to the success of individuals, programs, and organizations. Here are some mission statements to consider if you haven’t already drafted your own: A municipally-owned electric utility: To provide reliable, cost-effective electric service to our customer/owners. An up-market hotel: To serve our customers and guests in a manner consistent with the highest quality of life. 71

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The U. S. Central Intelligence Agency: We are the eyes and ears of the nation and at times its hidden hand. We accomplish this mission by: •

Collecting the intelligence that matters.

•

Providing relevant, timely, and objective allsource analysis.

•

Conducting covert action at the direction of the President to preempt threats or achieve United States policy objectives.

As you can see, companies and institutions use different styles in crafting mission statements explaining why they exist and what their roles and purposes are. Mission statements are almost always framed and displayed throughout the organization to help employees remember what business they are in, and many even have their mission statement printed on wallet-sized cards that employees can carry. But a caution: Don’t underestimate how difficult it is to develop a mission statement. Be sure to involve representative employees in the drafting process; they not only bring input from across the organization, but they also legitimize the mission statement for those who were not involved. Once the mission statement has been drafted and agreed upon, top management has to go out there and promote it as well as see that it is included in every public relations and marketing document. Otherwise, it’s just a slogan. The mission statement should be a performance driver.

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Raising the Bar Standards for performance, for cleanliness, and for grades of meat and vegetables and milk are measures of quality. They are developed from past practice and best practice by equipment manufacturers, professional and technical societies, and a variety of government agencies. Like targets on a shooting range, standards are needed to assess performance (marksmanship). Of equal importance, they create the foundation for an important kind of workplace democracy: Anyone who is performing competently at his or her job can look anyone else in the eye without apology. There are no unimportant jobs: The people who pack boxes for shipping are just as important in the service equation as the field sales representative and the customer service manager and you and me. Standards are not static; they continue to evolve as time, technology, and competitive pressures drive us to more precision. Likewise, the more precise the standards, the more necessary it is that we recognize our interdependence. In a room full of people who perform their tasks with competence, any individual has the potential to make a suggestion or propose an idea that solves a major problem. In the hierarchical organizations of earlier times, labor and management did not work together to solve problems—social convention discouraged it. Such collaboration can be effective, however, if these four conditions exist: •

All work is measurable against established standards.

•

No work or worker is less important than any other.

•

Everyone knows that recognition comes to those who earn it.

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The manager is unequivocally committed to meeting standards.

When each individual is a necessary part of the whole, when the failed performance of one jeopardizes the success of the rest, and when there is no one on the company payroll who does not have useful and meaningful work to do (however menial it might seem), bosses and workers can sit down over coffee or a beer and solve problems. This is recognition that there are realistic divisions of labor, talent, skills, abilities, knowledge, and an understanding of the “street value” of one’s own bag of tricks. At this point, it’s possible to abstract some principles regarding standards: •

•

The work of the organization—serving customers or clients—is the first priority. Everything else is secondary. It’s necessary to use a correct-it-here-and-now approach to get people to maintain performance standards.

•

When performance standards are clearly defined, anyone who has necessary qualifications and wants to learn and perform can do so.

•

Every employee must not only know how to do things, but why they should be done.

•

Standards can be maintained if every worker knows the organization’s business, market, and preferred customers AND makes sure that every action and every decision reflects these things.

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Deviation from standards can be discovered quickly when work is managed at high levels of detail.

•

Maintaining standards requires 100% utilization of resources for cost-effective performance.

•

Reward those who model the standards of behavior you want to see replicated by all employees.

We live in a world of standards, but too often they’re implied rather than expressed. Let’s use so-called “Casual Fridays” as an example. Some people will fall short of meeting even relaxed standards if they don’t have written or stated guidelines that describe “appropriate attire.” But even when standards are posted, sometimes they’re ignored. It’s the manager’s job to deal with those situations. In the egalitarian traditions that have contributed so much to American life, there is generous support for the underdog and for the loyal but never-quite-successful employee. Sometimes managers overlook performance deficiencies because of the dogged effort that almost produces satisfactory (up-to-standard) performance. Such compassion is commendable, but it’s misplaced. There’s no room in contemporary organizations for people who cannot perform—that is, who do not meet established standards, consistently and without great effort. When fully satisfactory performance cannot be depended upon, your organization loses the confidence that goals will be achieved without a last-minute scramble for recovery. That’s hard on workers and managers, but also damages the organization’s reputation. Standards are your criteria for performance. They separate okay from not good enough, and thus provide ways for managers to discuss marginal performance with direct 75

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reports. Often more implicit than explicit, standards define the cultures of organizations and work groups. Years ago, the standard attire for IBM’s male employees was a dark suit, white shirt, and a conservative tie. Even the handicapped men who distributed interoffice mail wore suits and ties. This visible sign of conformity existed within a context of cultural identifiers, from cars and homes to entire neighborhoods associated with one’s place in the hierarchy (not unlike the social stratification often associated with military organizations). Today, such conformity is alluded to in statements of “corporate values” or standards about “the things we believe” and “the ways we treat employees, clients/customers, and our host communities.”

Standards, Behavior, and Job Mastery Standards underlie every managerial choice and decision, in the same way that Douglas McGregor asserted nearly 50 years ago that every managerial action is based on a set of beliefs about people at work. His conceptualization of Theory X and Theory Y as polar opposites in management style became a cornerstone in the evolution of contemporary managerial theory and practice. His ideas about “hard” and “soft” management (autocratic vs. democratic) provided a window into the ill-defined and subjective issue of peoplemanagement performance standards. Since then, acceptable management practices and civil rights legislation have established standards for inclusion and exclusion, as well as standards for hiring, retention, and promotion. How we behave in any social setting is more or less determined by our understanding of the norms or mores (street standards) that are already in place. One of the ways to 76

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spot outsiders in any group is to look at behavior (including manner of dress) that does not conform to local practice. In a work setting, learning how to fit in and contribute should not be a guessing game! Delay in bringing new people fully into a work group is a waste of resources; managers need to make sure necessary standards are in place and adhered to regarding new employee orientation and anything else that’s important. In an ideal environment, standards and rules would be constructed along the lines that anything not prohibited is permitted. Most organizations have not achieved that ideal, however. In the meantime, it’s useful to remember that most people perform best in situations of relatively high structure—that is, where people agree on routines that can be easily mastered for repetitive activities and on making sure there is no “What do I do next?” uncertainty to frustrate new workers. It does not mean denying or limiting decisionmaking prerogatives. (Quite the opposite is intended.) However, if you’re going to involve others in making decisions that affect them, make sure the decisions are substantive and that they draw on participants’ work experience and intelligence. Mastering the manager’s job means, in large measure, making it easy for members of work groups to do the right things in the right ways at the right times. Begin improving performance by setting clear goals, creating clear standards for performance, and making sure everyone “gets it.” Then coach people, especially new hires, and measure progress. The next chapters will outline the remaining two competencies you must master if you want to master the manager’s job.

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Chapter 7 Planning Work and Scheduling Resources

P

lanning work and scheduling resources are surely the backbone competencies of management, because a manager is responsible for organizing people to do things in some kind of systematic, predictable way. That’s what planning is supposed to offer—an orderly sequence of activities that will allow tasks to be completed at a designated time. Too often, planning takes a back seat to action, despite the fact that intelligent action requires that you have a map before you can plan a trip. That’s why one of the first things a manager should do when taking over a new group is to map its work processes, and to confirm the map’s accuracy with the people who actually do the work. Then, and arguably only then, planning pays predictable dividends.

Mapping Your Work Processes It’s not difficult, and it doesn’t take long. Two colleagues and I created a workflow map of almost 100 elements in a little over three hours on a Saturday morning for a process that was presented as “impossibly complex.” Even more important, when we reproduced and circulated the map among sixty people who actually performed the work, it came back to us with only five or six corrections. We then formatted the map following all the planning conventions, had it reproduced, and circulated it so that nearly 2,000 employees could all see the approved standard for steps to follow in managing the com-

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pany’s primary business: removing hydrocarbon contamination from ground water and soil. What may be of most interest to you is that I have no understanding of soil mechanics or hydrogeology, but I did have some experience with mapping, and I was lucky to enlist the support of two really sharp geologists/project managers. The problem I set out to solve emerged after clients started complaining that reports prepared in different offices of the same company did not conform to a single standard. Of course, defensive project managers said the cause was the fact that eight or nine different remediation techniques were being used in site clean-ups and there were many local variables, which made a standard report impossible. Still, I knew there was a solution, so I undertook this small project on my own initiative (which is why the original mapping was done in my home on a Saturday morning.) I’m including these details with the hope that my experience encourages you to replicate these steps to solve problems where you work. As I read project reports, visited remediation sites, and listened to conversations among the technicians, I became aware of three important facts: 1. The choice of techniques to be used to separate hydrocarbons from soil or water did not influence the basic steps in managing a remediation project. 2. There was no standard protocol for managing projects within the company, so project managers did what they’d seen others do. 3. Therefore, non-standard reports to clients was a logical result. (Note: Reports verifying return to safe use levels of water or soil was the “product” of the com80

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pany’s work. Reports were legal documents, required by local governments to justify issuing permits to develop previously-contaminated property.) The next step was to present my ideas to people who understood the mechanics and science of the work. That was done over lunch on a Friday. We created the map the next morning. The rest of the story is described above. There are some important points in this discussion about the mapping process and the subsequent impact: 1. Anyone who knows the work, with a little help from friends, can do such mapping in hours. 2. It’s necessary to have your map validated by others who know the work and the organization. 3. Your map proves that you understand the work to be accomplished and have defined the way the work will proceed, from start to completion. 4. Your map is a powerful signal that you are serious about managing the work, not just the workers. 5. If there are project delays, you can pinpoint the place(s) in the workflow where the delays occurred. If skill gaps are involved, you can provide shortinterval remedial training (or make corrections if there’s a structural or information-sharing problem). 6. If someone suggests subsequent work-process modifications, those changes can be considered in terms of impact on the total flow.

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7. The map provides a way to orient new people to how the group’s work is done, explains how each person fits into the flow, and how delays at any point in the flow can impact the scheduled completion date. 8. It facilitates planning and scheduling, because you’ll want to continuously monitor the duration of each activity and the time required to make decisions in order to make sure that workers are getting the work done effectively. Further, if work is delayed because decisions are not being made on time or because there’s a political or a competence problem, you’ll be able to address the problem immediately. 9. The work-flow diagram will help you make sure that no steps are overlooked when you begin planning, scheduling, and budgeting new projects. 10. Mapping and planning should be done at a high level of detail. The more steps or activities you include, the more detail you’ll need. The more visible your work processes become, the greater your ability to monitor and improve times and costs associated with each task and sub-task. 11. It will be easier to ensure that no steps in the process are overlooked when planning, scheduling, and budgeting for new projects (and this does happen, as will be illustrated below). Pitifully few managers take time to do this kind of planning, yet it practically assures success at mastering the manager’s job.

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Work-Flow Planning Now that we’ve made a case for mapping your organization’s work flow, let’s delve into more detail about the process, beginning with a simple definition: A plan is a description of the steps to be taken to get from one point to another, from “here and now” to “there and then.” A plan should be an ideal representation of how you want things to be. Lay out the work the way it ought to happen, even when you know that the ideal plan isn’t going to work, so you don’t overlook anything. Plan like you mean it! (When you have to change your plan, there’s another process that kicks in at that point. It’s called scheduling.) A plan can be written, but that’s cumbersome. Better it should be a kind of map or chart that shows the activities/steps in relationship to each other. Better still is a sequence of activities connected across a page, with a timeline across the bottom of the page so you can see time and activities together. (The famous Gantt chart, invented about 1905, was important because it used horizontal lines to show times alongside a vertical list of activities. This was the first time that tasks and times were demonstrated on the same piece of paper.) Gantt charts are still used and are considered generally effective. Look at charts and graphs in publications and check your software programs for sample project-task lists. A planning document is most helpful when it depicts a left-to-right network of two or more chains of activities constrained by fences—that is, points at which no further work can be done until activities on the constrained chains have been completed. It will look like this:

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B A

D C

Time

/

/

/

/

/

This small graph shows several things: 1. Neither activity B nor C can begin until Activity A is complete. 2. Activities B and C can start at the same time. 3. Activity B does not have to start at the same time as Activity C, which takes twice as long. Therefore, B can start when C is fifty percent complete. (The extra time B has is called “float” since the activity can float along to permit optimal resource scheduling, just as long as it completes at the same time or sooner than Activity C). 4. Activity D cannot begin until both Activities B and C are complete. 5. The chain A, C, D is the critical path (the shortest path through the network). This approach to planning, known as the “precedence method,” is used universally because it’s really straightforward, and the logic is compellingly simple. In their relationship to one another, activities can relate to other activities in only one of three ways: Some activities must precede other 84

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activities (A must precede activities B and C); some activities must follow other activities (D must follow activities B and C); or some activities can be in process at the same time (B and C can go on concurrently). That’s it! That’s all the options there are, whether you’re dealing with 30 activities, 300 activities, or 3,000 activities. Paperwork projects, power plant projects, new product introductions—the logic is the same. Want to plan a wedding? The logic is the same, even in project-management software programs. (For more information on this approach to planning, track down the Mulvaney book listed under Recommended Reading in the back of the book.)

Getting Started One of the easiest approaches to creating a workflow diagram is to use flipchart paper and Post-it notes. It’s a good way to allow others to participate in crafting the plan, because if there’s discussion about more-logical steps, the sticky notes can be rearranged. Instead of arguing in abstract terms, you can say, “Look, if we do it this way, we can save time and make three other steps unnecessary.” This is participation at its best—hands on and people off their butts and on their feet, involved! Other than being able to move them around on flipchart paper, what’s so magic about sticky notes? They can represent cards printed in this format, and they are easily replaced if you want different text.

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Activity #:

Resource:

Activity description:

Duration:

Person hours:

Imagine that every one of the sticky notes is formatted this way: •

Top left: Activity number (your numbering convention, or assigned by computer)

•

Top right: Resource (Who will do the work? Carpenters? Programmers?)

•

Center: Activity description (a simple task description of about four or five words)

•

Lower right: Number of resource hours

•

Lower left: Duration (How long will this activity take, start-to-complete?)

With this kind of information, you can manage. If you intend to put your plan on a computer using project-management software, this is the information that the computer needs (minus the activity number—the computer will assign it). Some elements of all jobs have been done so often they are routine, so be sure you know how long routine tasks take, who can do them, and how much they cost. Effective

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managers want to know that every activity in the workflow is being done better, faster, and cheaper. Are the numbers accurate? Will they get better? Tracking the results allows you to find out. Sticky notes can be a planning manager’s best friend. A desk top or conference table can become an instant planning board, with a network created in minutes that converts hardto-follow abstractions to a picture of task relationships. Networks for repetitive activities or maintenance procedures can be stored in the computer to reflect changes from the most recent replication and be there ready to use when a task needs to be replicated or a piece of equipment crashes or comes up for routine service. A sailing friend came up with a clever application: He writes on separate cards each step involved in pulling his boat out of the water and winterizing it. Then, he laminates each card, punches a hole in the top-left corner, and puts them all on a steel ring. When fall decommissioning time comes, he follows the cards. In the spring when the boat goes back into the water, he follows the cards in reverse. When there are a lot of important details and procedures to follow, this is a good way to avoid costly errors. There’s a quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln that comes up every so often: “If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I would spend six hours sharpening my axe.” That means preparation and planning. (Have you heard of the Six Ps? Prior planning prevents pathetically poor performance.) Save yourself a lot of grief and pay attention to this: Plan first and fully. Then schedule. Do you know what a schedule is? It’s a plan expressed in time. Therefore, if you do a halfhearted job of planning, you will end up with a schedule that you cannot maintain. That’s why most over-busy managers are busy cleaning up work others should have done. 87

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Scheduling Regardless of your plan, the thing that really determines when work gets done is resource availability. Sometimes the people and the equipment you need just aren’t available. When they are, sometimes it makes more sense to use them someplace else. As the saying goes, the best laid plans of mice and men have to give way to larger realities, to facts that didn’t exist when the plan was being drafted. Life happens. A key player’s parent dies and he’s gone for five days. A colleague’s child is seriously ill and she’s out for several days at a critical point in the project. The company picnic was scheduled for today, but there’s a tornado warning. This is why it’s important to have a good back-up plan or someone who really knows how to scramble to use available resources to the best advantage. That person could be the manager, but more likely it will be a very experienced worker who has a knack for scheduling. (Some say that planning is a science, but scheduling is an art. Skilful scheduling can extend resource utilization by as much as twenty percent without causing anyone to work overly hard or work overtime.) A new manager who hasn’t really mastered the work flow and doesn’t know the primary and back-up skills of all staff members and who isn’t keeping up with the progress of all work in the shop is not in a position to optimize available resources.

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Effective scheduling means knowing this specific information: •

Which tasks are involved

•

What kinds of skills are needed

•

People who possess those skills that are needed to get the work done

•

Materials and equipment needed

•

Lead times for getting materials and equipment

•

Dates when resources are needed

•

Availability

•

Whether or not it is useful to double-up a resource (and which ones) and/or reduce activity duration

•

Which workers can be pulled off other jobs (if necessary)

•

Stop-points if work has to be interrupted

•

If there are budget impacts, how you will be able to cover them

•

When a piece of equipment is scheduled for maintenance

•

Which materials will be available when, and which materials will be difficult to get or will be delayed

Most of the people I’ve met who are best at this don’t have a college degree, but they all have years of experience (generally in several functional departments). As I watch them work, I suspect that they possess deep knowledge about the tasks for each job, including allowable durations and costs. They also seem to have a kind of intuitive ability for arranging tasks in ways that allow people to get surprising amounts of work done in a normal, unhurried manner. 89

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One of the secrets of effective scheduling is to force tasks to early closure and then report each closure immediately. Then, people and equipment can be shifted to another task. In much the same way that your computer begins to choke down when you have too many programs running at the same time, work groups begin to slow down when too many tasks are left open or unfinished, waiting for something or someone. Tasks left open tend to end up causing further delays; this consumes resources, which impacts costs as well as productivity. The time to get input from your co-workers is during the planning process. In fact, it presents a great training opportunity for your staff: What if you not only allow them to participate in planning, but also get them to do the scheduling? That’s learning in real time! Scheduling is like almost everything else in the manager’s job: You don’t have to do it yourself—you just have to see that it’s done. And the more eyes, the better. It seems something always gets overlooked when one busy person tries to remember and do everything himself. Here’s a classic example of a scheduling failure: Power plants have a turbine deck, from which turbines that generate electricity can be serviced. Above the turbine deck is an overhead crane that travels the length of the building. To perform major maintenance, the heavy steel jacket that covers the turbine must be removed, requiring the overhead crane. If you fail to schedule the crane in advance, it might be tied up somewhere else. In one turbine overhaul I observed, 45 contract technicians, each being billed at $100 per hour or more, stood on the turbine deck for over an hour waiting for the crane. On a project as expensive as an overhaul, $5,000 or so is not a lot of money. But $5,000 is a huge penalty for a small oversight—failing to schedule the overhead crane. 90

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Estimating and Budgeting It doesn’t make sense to talk about plans and schedules without also spending some time talking about budgets. First, a simple definition: A budget is a plan expressed in dollars. It’s developed by adding up projected costs. Suppose you have an activity that calls for six hours of carpenter work, and carpenter work costs $25 per hour. What’s the labor cost for that activity? $150. When you go through your plan and add up labor costs for each activity, cost of materials, and license fees or other administrative costs (such as staff time to obtain permits), and then add the profit target and 5 to 8 percent for contingencies, you will have a fairly accurate budget. Remember, the best budgets are based on plans developed at high levels of detail. The more details, the more accuracy in the accumulated numbers. When estimating for competitive bidding, there’s no substitute for knowing the work, the workers, and a host of other variables. This is one of those places where mastering the manager’s job pays big dividends. Let’s now turn to the last set of critical managerial competencies.

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Chapter 8 Managing Time and Prioritizing

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his chapter on time management is about using common sense at work. Compare time management to the parental edict to do your homework before watching TV or playing computer games. Maybe a twelve-year-old can’t always be expected to appreciate the priorities associated with that parental edict, and maybe he or she will think it’s just another authoritarian gesture. But in an intelligent organization, whether a family or a for-profit corporation, priorities must be respected and served. And by the reckoning of management gurus and researchers, understanding and responding to priorities is a corporate “soft spot” in all kinds of organizations. Performance deficits often get stuck with the generic causelabel of “poor time management.” As you might infer from these introductory comments, I’m not a fan of time-management training as a corporate expenditure, for one simple reason: Believing that working adults cannot come to grips with priorities and thus need time-management training as a source of discipline is just a step away from treating them like the 12-year-old who can’t “get” why algebra homework is more important than TV. And isn’t that what’s happened in many organizations? Let me suggest a correlation for you to consider: The more authoritarian the organization, as defined by low levels of participation, the greater the need for time-management training.

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Is not managing time the real problem? Okay, who buys time-management training, and why? Managers and organizational leaders turn to courses and workshops on time management because they’re looking for ways to get their workers to focus more clearly on their assigned tasks and duties, and to be more effective and productive. My experience as a consultant—and before that, as a worker since age nine—tells me that the problems addressed in such courses usually cannot be solved by those who attend them. Among those problems are: indecision, lack of organization, lack of attention to detail, failure to prioritize, and low productivity. Let’s take them in turn: Indecision about what to do next. Employees should always know what to do next. Before a manager decides that there’s a “time management problem,” he needs to gather information about the circumstances: Have the next tasks been scheduled? Is there an element of the task being performed that was not explained properly? Is there a checklist or set of instructions to follow? Is there anyone close by who can be asked to resolve the issue or answer the question that’s causing the indecision? Maybe the problem isn’t the employee after all. Lack of organization. In this instance, we’re talking about being disorganized: no files, procedures, places for everything, logical systems for moving or placing documents— something more than simply putting in-boxes and out-boxes on each desk and a wastebasket nearby. How can you handle each piece of paper only once if there’s no obvious and designated place for all the paperwork that crosses your desk?

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Employees need task-completion structure, and it’s a manager’s responsibility to provide it. Lack of attention to detail. If details cause frustration, many people will avoid tasks that are detailed and put them off until later. Why do we procrastinate? Because the task is something we don’t want to do, don’t like to do, don’t get any reward for doing, or don’t get punished if we don’t do it. Maybe the task seems useless, and we just get angry when we have to deal with nonsense. This reluctance to perform can only be resolved on-site, not in a training room. If we hear, “We fill out this form because the boss wants it!” we’ll do it first and dispense with it. Failing to prioritize. Before a manager concludes that an employee is not prioritizing, he needs to step into the employee’s shoes for a minute. What, exactly, are we supposed to do first? Which order/request from someone senior are we to honor? The first directive? The second order? Or the most-recent request for a right-now response? And what does “right now” mean? Does it mean ‘when you’ve finished your current task’? Or does it mean, ‘Stop everything and serve me now’? Some people are not very flexible and have difficulty with multiple or seemingly-conflicting requests, but a good manager should know how to work with all his or her employees’ strengths and weaknesses. Problems related to productivity. If productivity is the problem, it will not be solved by talking about time management. That’s only a symptom, and treating symptoms generally allows problems to get worse. The manager should be 95

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looking and listening more closely in order to identify why people aren’t productive. Here’s my point: Managers need to address any failure to produce desired results, and to understand that the majority of employees do perform up to standard—if there’s a standard they understand and accept. In my experience, failure to perform as the manager expects is directly linked to the manager’s attitude and approach; that is, if people at work respect their manager, work gets done. When you and I don’t respect a manager, it’s probably because he or she doesn’t respect us! In that situation, if there are other problems like those mentioned above that we can’t resolve ourselves, we aren’t going to tell the manager. You know the response: “That’s not my job!” And if it’s a fact that people aren’t working up to standard, rewarding them with time off to go to a timemanagement class hardly seems like an effective strategy.

Making the Most of Your Time Another reality in dealing with people is that it’s usually easy enough to correct small errors in their performance if you spot those errors before they become set in an individual’s work pattern. Managers have actually told me, “I don’t have time to be a nursemaid to these people,” to which I always respond, “What do you do with your time?” The answers I’ve heard over the years lead me to suggest a few ways to optimize the use of a manager’s time: 1. Know what you are paid to do in measurably specific terms. Many people at work have only a vague idea about their exact responsibilities. That’s why many things fall through the cracks. Don’t be a task 96

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collector, working overtime and weekends doing things others won’t do. Stay out of others’ job responsibilities to keep roles clear at work. When you do the work others should be doing, you’re doing what they’re paid to do, but you’re also rewarding them for ignoring their responsibilities. Worse still, managers who do the work of others usually are doing things compensated at a much lower level. Job descriptions can and will change, and sometimes quite rapidly. Be sure that the changes in your responsibilities are documented and formalized, perhaps with a signature from your manager. 2. Delegate. Don’t do anything that someone else can do. Learn to delegate tasks to direct reports who will learn from the experience, or delegate to people who have special expertise and are happy to help you. You need time to coach, counsel, think, and plan, and this is one way to get it. 3. Find the courage to ask for help. Many managers are reluctant to ask for help, and end up spending hours on tasks others could have handled in minutes. Organizations are full of people with specialized expertise; use them. Be clear about the help you need, and ask for help early on, so that your work gets into the helper's work schedule without creating a crunch for either of you. And be sure to express appreciation in some tangible way that’s reflective of the interests of your helper. Maybe it’s an article of interest, a used book, a bottle of wine, or just lunch in the company cafeteria. But do something that suggests that

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you have made an effort to reciprocate in some small way. (This is important. See the next item.) 4. Build your own support system. Once you've mastered the art of asking for help, it's natural to extend the process to develop a broad range of resource relationships. People love to be asked for advice, but do your part: Don't ask for help until you have packaged everything they’ll need to help you. Be prepared to reciprocate, and when asked to do so, don’t hesitate to say yes. This kind of informal networking makes a lot of sense. 5. Block out your day. The routines of most jobs can be divided into three categories: morning work, afternoon work, and homework. Interoffice mail and other routines will take time to deal with, so don't fight the system. Most morning work can be done in an hour, so do it right away. Afternoon chores can be left to last, leaving a six-hour hole to be filled with high-energy activity. Whatever the pattern, formalize it and allow yourself enough time to complete and close each task. If you take public transportation, use commute time for planning and scheduling. 6. Don't apologize if you’re busy. Much productive time gets chewed up with impromptu visits from colleagues in which the main agenda is office gossip or non-work activities. The people who generally organize the office football pools are not the high achievers! If someone stops by to chat, don’t be afraid to say, “I’m really busy right now. Can we talk later, maybe at five o’clock?” Maybe you can get a 98

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“Do not disturb” sign for you door, like you see in hotels. Your managers should disturb you, of course, but the sign might keep away the pesky hall walkers. Remember, they’re not just stealing work time— they’re also stealing your peace of mind by preventing you from closing tasks and getting them off your mind. 7. Cancel every meeting you can. Meetings can burn up incredible numbers of hours. The problem with meetings is that they involve too many people who don't have the data or authority to do anything about problems being discussed. Don't use meetings to solve problems. Instead, use them to identify problems, and then to assign responsibilities and due dates. (That's do-able in 15 minutes or less.) Then, if a problem needs immediate attention, stay with the few individuals who have relevant information and involvement, and let the rest return to work. Don’t make others waste their time listening to discussions of issues with which they are not involved. Set time limits for meetings, and stay within the schedule. Start on time, end on time. Earn a reputation for being a tough meeting manager; it might be more important than you imagine (and it’s one sure place to demonstrate time management.) Remember this, too: Meetings aren’t cheap. Multiply the average salary of participants by the number of participants by the duration of the meeting, and add 10 or 15 minutes transit time on both ends of the meeting. The meter is running faster than you think!

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8. Give everyone a chance to succeed. The first and greatest managerial responsibility is to make sure everyone knows what he or she is expected to do, and what constitutes satisfactory performance for each task. Most people can perform successfully if they know these two things, but in truth, many people don’t have that kind of certainty, and so they continuously look over their shoulders for a signal from the boss that they’re doing okay. Even the people who cut grass along roadways have more independence than most office workers—they at least know what they’re supposed to do and how much grass they have to cut. They know when it’s cut enough, and when it looks okay. Shouldn’t office workers have the same security in knowing what’s okay and what isn’t? Not knowing wastes time and limits productivity. Give them the information they need to succeed. 9. Quit taking each other to lunch. Use lunch hours for learning or selling. Meet a customer, read a book, sleep if you can't read—anything but waste time with cronies rehashing office gossip. Set up a brown bag study program with colleagues to improve skills. Exercise or do something else that’s constructive, rather than sag into the discontent that rehashing office gossip feeds. 10. Remember that you have to manage only three things, regardless of organizational level, industry, or technology: schedule (Will work be performed within the allotted time?); cost (Will work be completed within budget?); and quality (Will the completed 100

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work meet technical specifications?). When it comes to people, manage data about their performance and resolve any performance problems when they arise. This will save a lot of time. If you have people who need your close attention, wean them away from close supervision or remove them. But if you need people to be dependent on you, that’s a disaster waiting to happen. Such chains of mutual dependency do exist, but they’re always problematic. A final suggestion that pertains to most of these tips: Use checklists. Why risk looking stupid, careless, or disorganized? A clipboard or electronic device will help you create checklists to cover all routine or promised results. Lists are a manager's best tool. Airline pilots use them before, during, and after every flight. When details matter (like lowering the landing gear on descent), checklists go a long way toward preventing disaster. To err is human, but to make an easily preventable mistake is inexcusable.

Closing in on Priorities Let me call your attention to something you may not have noticed: One priority in your organization—and across the country—should be to come to grips with low morale. As long ago as 1976, longshoreman-philosopher Eric Hoffer warned that we were in a period of low morale, and we’re still in it. Look at the time-management issues we just talked about: low morale, low self-esteem, and lack of respect almost jump off the pages! Writing in his wonderful book In Our Time, Hoffer said the only antidote is esprit de corps, bringing to mind the U.S. Marines and their motto, Semper Fideles, always faithful. Given today’s prevailing attitudes, 101

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that might not be the imagery many want to adopt, but there are a host of corporate and civic issues that will not be resolved as long as low morale is an impediment. However, Hoffer offered something hopeful: You and I and others who are capable of enthusiasm have unparalleled opportunities to be influential, to be leaders, to make a difference in how we work with others and infuse them with our positive energy. It’s really up to us, because as Hoffer read the recent past and probable future, this is not going to be an era of great galvanizing leaders anywhere in the world. His insights from thirty years ago seem to have been prescient. Many times the boss, too, is without a clear idea of priorities and is dancing as fast as possible to please an even more senior manager who is working by whimsy, rather than by plan or schedule.

Priorities and Sequencing “What’s my priority? The last thing my boss told me to do.” This old cliché notwithstanding, the issue of priorities comes down to three questions: What task do we do first? What task must be completed first? If work must be interrupted, when does it make sense to do so? Again, managers manage only three things: schedule, costs, and quality/quantity. One of those is of prime importance and one is least important. There are no exceptions! A manager’s priorities can and will change, but there cannot be more than one #1 priority. 102

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From this assertion come other realities about priority tasks. •

Schedules drive cost. The quicker something must be done in the usual organizational setting, the more it will cost. If the schedule slips, there are limited ways to regain the original schedule. You can spend more by paying overtime or pulling people off other work. You can modify quality/quantity criteria by delivering fewer items than scheduled, or reduce the qualitative specifications. You can go to the client and apologize, and hope that he or she will accept a change order.

•

If cost is the priority and the original estimate proves inadequate, you can either allow the schedule to slip, change the quality/quantity criteria, go back to the client with a change order, or accept the associated costs.

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If quality is prime and non-negotiable, as it would be in a medical or pharmaceutical setting, both schedule and cost have to yield to quality.

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If resources have to be diverted from other tasks in order to meet a commitment, do not bury or hide the additional costs in order to avoid blame. Eventually, resource expenditures will have to be accounted for. If there’s dishonesty, it will have to be dealt with in some way (i.e., you will have to hold someone accountable, or you will have to bury the costs and allow dishonest accounting to go unreported).

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Never interrupt work in progress until you have brought it to a natural stopping point and “locked down” all the parts and pieces. Then, when work is resumed, you won’t lose more time looking for and recovering loose pieces.

Lack of managerial respect for priorities and failure to respond to their internal drivers (agreeing on schedule, cost, and quality as primary, secondary, or tertiary) is confusing to workers. The financial sleight-of-hand that follows leads to disbelief in any of the posted numbers; no one is sure what anything costs, so they have less commitment to efforts at cost-effectiveness. Understanding priorities, in the manner described above, is necessary in the quest for profits. But so is the support and commitment of workers, and these are negotiable qualities. Workers are not stupid, and they’ll respond in kind to the way they are treated by managers. They can be misled by managerial smokescreens a couple of times, but pretty soon they’ll realize that someone is fudging. If schedules, costs, and quality don’t matter to managers, or if managers don’t partner with workers to set and meet those performance targets, why should workers care? Morale and organizational performance are casualties. How do you break such a cycle? One honest and disciplined manager at a time.

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astering the Manager’s Job was written with one objective in mind: To offer ideas that you can implement independently, without asking anyone’s permission. All organizations are full of constraints and reasons why you must not do anything outside the boundaries of daily routine. It’s always easier to stay inside the box of local customs and practices than to experiment with new ideas and new ways of getting work done. If you have to ask permission to be a more participative manager or to be more inclusive of others when you’re making decisions, or you need permission to hold stand-up meetings at 8:00 a.m., the chances are good that you won’t do these things—why risk hearing the word no? Workers in fear-based organizations are afraid to go along with participative management because they have learned long ago that it’s safer to keep their heads down and avoid being noticed. If you want to master the manager’s job, however, you don’t have to master the status quo. With a little effort and persistence, you should be able to show your colleagues how to distinguish themselves as outstanding performers and contributors without their having to ask for permission. The suggestions for job mastery offered in this pocket guide are presented as natural extensions of things you should be doing as a manager: Becoming more inclusive; providing growth opportunities and pushing people to take them; setting targets and measuring results; giving supportive feedback; celebrating when people try something new and succeed; and studying the examples provided by the country’s best managers, as well as examples set by people in your own organization. 105

Conclusion

The three core management competencies that came out of Scott Parry’s research are essential for success in mastering the manager’s job. However, there are two things that managers commonly overlook: ethics and simple honesty. Unfortunately, these values are not part of daily operations in many organizations. There are few things at work more discouraging than hearing your manager lie to co-workers or clients or customers. That’s truly poisonous to relationships, respect for the leadership, and for morale—and it’s not a rare occurrence. “White lies” to cover mistakes, late deliveries, failure to get awards or rewards for deserving employees (“Sorry, Fred, they just didn’t go for it” when Fred knows no effort was made), and so on. Small stuff? Not really. Beneath the headline-grabbing misbehavior of large corporations and their leaders and the sweatshops that exploit illegal immigrants in nearly every large city in the country, there are countless daily violations perpetrated against the interests of individuals and groups in companies large and small. This is not a new phenomenon, but there are those who say the situation is improving. A major step in that direction was taken when Kenneth Blanchard and Norman Vincent Peale collaborated to write The Power of Ethical Management in 1988. Their small, easy-to-read book became the basis for discussions of ethics in staff meetings and training rooms of hundreds of organizations. The authors came up with a simple and comprehensive way to assess proposed actions and decisions. The Blanchard and Peale “Ethics Check” consists of just three questions:

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1. Is it legal? 2. Is it balanced and fair to all? 3. How will it make me feel about myself if my family and friends find out? Perhaps it’s just coincidence, but since that book was published, many companies have added to their mission statements a code of ethics and set of statements of belief. But even before 1988, Rotary International was sending out its own ethical message on ballpoint pens: Four-Way Test of the Things We Think, Say, or Do: Is it the TRUTH? Is it FAIR to all involved? Will it build GOODWILL and better friendships? Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?

Either of these useful screens for managerial decisions and actions can help prevent you from doing something that might be perceived as racist, sexist, or otherwise dishonest. Believe it or not, both Machiavelli and Attila the Hun have been touted as management theorists in recent books. It’s unlikely that any contemporary manager could be held up as a role model for using tyrannical tactics that put others at a disadvantage. Today, even an isolated incident is likely to result in litigation against the manager and the company. This has repercussions beyond reputation, affecting morale, productivity, and profitability, in that order. 107

Conclusion

We talked earlier about Bob Galvin of Motorola, who possibly more than any other individual was responsible for bringing an entirely new focus on quality and management into the public domain. An early convert to participative management in the 1960s, Galvin was a believer in scrupulous honesty; he once admitted that Motorola was doing a poor job of manufacturing management. He was a manager who truly mastered his job. Successful managers who have become public figures have a lot to teach us. It might be interesting to collect information on such leaders and compare their styles, contributions, and philosophies. If you have friends or colleagues who want to take job mastery to the logical next step, consider studying the achievements and advice of these super-managers. It would be a great theme for a series of brown-bag lunches. As you travel along the road to mastering the manager’s job, you’ll see that helping others learn is just a natural extension of your other duties. To return one last time to that most basic managerial duty, planning, consider the words of a contemporary industrialist-turned-consultant, Sir John Harvey-Jones, former chairman and CEO of ICI in the U.K.: Planning is an unnatural process; it’s more fun to do nothing. Sometimes, the nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression.

Mastering the manager’s job is possible. You just have to decide to do it. 108

Recommended Reading Blanchard, Kenneth and Norman Vincent Peale. The Power of Ethical Management. 1988. New York: William Morrow and Co. This book provides a platform for talking about some of organizational life’s most compelling issues. Harris, Philip R. Managing the Knowledge Culture: A Guide for Human Resource Professionals and Managers in the 21st Century Workplace. 2005. Amherst, Massachusetts: HRD Press, Inc. This is a resource-rich book, useful for managers, HR and training professionals, and students. Add it to your library. Herzberg, Frederic. The Managerial Choice: To Be Efficient and to Be Human. 1976. New York: Dow-Jones-Irwin. This is a powerful and still-relevant voice in releasing human potential, with a surprising and thoroughly validated model. Hoffer, Eric. In Our Time. 1976. New York: Harper and Row. Maybe the last philosopher unafraid to be politically incorrect in public and in print. Hoffer was an unapologetic advocate of the integrity and innate wisdom of working people. McGregor, Douglas. The Human Side of Enterprise. 1985. (Twenty-fifth anniversary printing). New York: McGrawHill/Irwin. The original text was published in 1960, but is still fundamental in discussing management styles and methods.

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Motorola University. Participant’s manual for a one-day briefing on Six Sigma at the Phoenix, Arizona facility (taken from SSG PG-11-1 6/15/88). As presented and currently, Six Sigma is the standard for quality and organizational excellence. Mulvaney, John. Analysis Bar Charting: A Simplified Critical Path Analysis Technique. 1989. Bethesda, Maryland: Management Planning and Control Systems. This small, easy-to-read manual is a planning master work. Murray, W. H. The Scottish Himalayan Expedition. 1951. London: J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd. Perhaps this is remembered most for its insight into commitment. Oncken, William. Monkey Business: Are You Controlling Events, or Are Events Controlling You? 2000. Provo, Utah: Executive Excellence Publishing. An innovative tutorial, now reaching a third generation of managers, but still fresh. Senge, Peter. The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. 1990. New York: Doubleday. This author has been widely quoted and studied for his innovative ideas on achieving organizational potential. Stack, Jack (with Bo Burlingame). The Great Game of Business. 1994. New York: Doubleday/Currency. This is the most useful book on management and organization I’ve ever read. A decade later, the authors released A Stake in the Outcome (New York: Doubleday/Currency, 2003), to validate their achievements. Read them both. U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Mission statement, posted April 25, 2005 at http://www.cia.gov/information/ mission.html. 110

About the Author Woodrow H. Sears earned one of the early doctorates in human resource development, studying under Leonard Nadler at George Washington University, the man who coined the term and created the professional and academic discipline known as HRD. Before beginning his career in management, Woody was a photographer; a newspaper reporter; a Marine officer; and later an editor with the Cooperative Extension Service at North Carolina University, where he earned a master’s degree in adult education. He worked at Leadership Resources, Inc., one of the country’s first behaviorallyoriented consulting firms, and served as HR manager and later the director of training for an environmental company. He has provided consulting services for a broad range of industries and technologies, U.S. federal agencies, and Canadian crown corporations and provincial governments. After extensive Civil Rights, EEO, and police training, Woody Sears shifted his focus to project management, developing project-management systems for domestic and international clients and lecturing at universities. The author of Back in Working Order: How American Enterprises Can Win the Productivity Battle (Scott Foresman, 1984) and co-author with Audrone Tamulionnyte-Lentz of Succeeding in Business in Central and Eastern Europe: A Guide to Cultures, Markets, and Practices (Butterworth-Heinemann, 2001), Woody was in Slovakia as a volunteer with the International Executive Service Corps in 1998 when he was asked to go to Lithuania for a one-month assignment. He is still there. Contact Woodrow Sears by e-mail at: woodysears@ yahoo.com. 111