Blog Posts — Page 5

4 Secrets to Management Success

‘Distributed Leadership‘ is the latest management buzzword. Is it a good idea or just another ‘Flavor of the Month’ management mistake? Discover the pros and cons of Distributed Leadership and the potential pitfalls that could derail both your company and your career by becoming a Wily Manager Member today. Our newest video and cheat sheet gives you the scoop. You’ll get instant access to this career saving guide and over 90 other vital management topics immediately.

I once did a one-year project for an enormous insurance company.

They had some significant challenges – they were hemorrhaging cash, it took them way too long to process a claim, they had ridiculously high levels of staff turnover, and they had a remarkably poor public and brand image. This organization was to insurance what Twinkies are to fine pastries.

They tried a number of things to attempt to improve the situation.

They reorganized every few months, thinking that if they arranged the boxes on the org-chart differently, it would magically change results.

They read the latest management books, and within a five-year period, they implemented:

Self-directed teams
Democratic leadership
Co-managers (having two managers cover one portfolio to ensure adequate coverage)
Business unit autonomy
Total quality management
Continuous improvement teams
Lean manufacturing methodology
Six-sigma

After working in the organization for several months, it became clear to me that despite significant rhetoric to the contrary, the single most important organizational value was to maintain the status quo.

The entire organization, from the CEO to the janitor, desperately wanted different results – as long as they personally didn’t have to do anything different to get those results. It’s kind of like yelling in anger at the speedometer in your car, because you’re going too fast.

Flavor-of-the-Month management practices work about as well as a chocolate teapot. If they really wanted to succeed as an organization, they would need to do a few simple, but fundamental things:

Value leadership – you need to hire, develop, promote and reward people for being great leaders.
Set clear direction, and create crystal-clear expectations of people.
Hold people accountable for those well-understood expectations.
Continually reward and reinforce the things you want.

Most of the “Management by Best-Seller” crowd get parts of this right – but they think that the latest stuff the gurus are talking about is going to somehow make the four things above easier.

It won’t.

The truth is, there’s NO flavor-of-the month technique that will make your job easier. The only route to management success is to diligently focus your efforts on the basics.

You can safely ignore what the latest best-seller is saying…that’s just a distraction you don’t have time for.

You won’t have to worry about missing anything important, because we read all the latest management books and journals, so we’re up-to-date with what’s new. Every week we focus on a different management or leadership topic, and give our members bite-size chunks of information and advice about that topic. It’s quick to digest and easy to understand, and you’ll keep up-to-date in less than 20 minutes a week.

It’s the best of both worlds – you’ll save time and energy by zeroing in on what’s really important, but you’ll still be informed about the latest management trends.

Try out a Wily Manager Membership – it’s only $17 per month or less, and it’s absolutely risk-free

Next week we’ll be talking about Performance Appraisals. These don’t have to be stressful time-wasters – you’ll learn how to structure them so they lead to the behavior changes you really want to see. You won’t want to miss out – become a Wily Manager Member today.

Conquering Career A.D.D.

Avoid the 8 Fatal New Manager Mistakes if you’re considering or recently made a career move. Often it’s sink or swim, and Fast Start ensures you properly position yourself for longer-term career success in 90 days or less.

In the old days ( i.e. 1850 – 1995), you’d get an entry-level job, work your way through an organization, and peak just above or below your highest potential skill level.

You’d then begin your transition to cranky old (usually) man — counting the years and months to retirement, until such time as you were presented with a gold watch that you took home to help you keep track of the relatively short time you had before you died.

That concept of work looks more outdated than orange shag carpet, and acid-washed jeans – and about the same level of comfort, too.

There is a credible argument that this all changed because of the decline of large employers, and the increasing irrelevance of labor unions.

But I wonder if it’s a result of our collective Career Attention Deficit Disorder (A.D.D.)

Virtually the entire workforce was raised on television — that in addition to encouraging ADD, teaches us some very powerful lessons that we come to expect in the workplace:

Work should always be fun! They told us all we had to do was go to college and study hard, and we’d be ultimately and indefinitely fulfilled by our work.
Any problem can be sorted in 22 minutes. Remember Freddy “Boom Boom” Washington’s drug problem on Welcome Back Kotter? Probably not – but it lasted 22 minutes. He was fine the following week.
Tomorrow’s problems are someone else’s problems. Any episode of The Apprentice will make it clear that you just need to do whatever it takes to win today’s challenge, and don’t worry about tomorrow’s.
If you’re having a conflict with someone, just yell at them. Your passionate argument will win them over, they’ll say they’re sorry, and you’ll be best friends from then on (see #2 for further detail).

After a lifetime of having these messages reinforced, we become part of a workplace that has absolutely no resemblance to a TV sitcom, and we become more shocked than a Wheel of Fortune game show contestant that accidentally ends up on Jeopardy.

As a result, many of us end up with ‘Career A.D.D.’ — we listlessly wander from employer to employer, looking for the Holy Grail of fulfilling work that was promised to us by the TV.

Career and internal role changes are a fact of business life today. Our Fast Start program is a 90-Day Onboarding Plan for the transitioning leader. It leads and supports you through the critical first 90 days in your new management position. Coincidentally, each of the 6 Training Videos included in the Fast Start program is approximately 22 minutes long, just like a TV sitcom…and they will solve critical problems every new leader experiences.

Bullied at Work? Hug It Out!

Bullies don’t disappear when they become adults. They just move to a new playground.

You’d think in an era as political correct and risk sensitive as ours, that bullying in the workplace would be a more distant memory than a stadium full of screaming fans for Huey Lewis and the News. However, it still exists for a variety of reasons – not the least of which is that bullying tactics often work. Ask anyone who has ever worked in retail, and they’ll tell you that the people that most often get what they want are those that are the rudest and the nastiest.

There is only one way to deal a bully, and it requires taking him or her out at the knees before they get entirely worked up and out of control. When confronted by a bully it is good to have some ready-to-go responses that will make the bully more confused than your dog when you pretend to throw the ball, but hide it behind your back.

Here are some suggestions:

“Have you had your rabies shot, because that foam coming out of your mouth is bad sign.”
“If I was as (short/fat/bald/ugly) as you, I’d probably be angry too”
“Does someone need a hug? Come on over here, you big lug.”
“And that’s what happens when we don’t get our meds adjusted right.”
“My best suggestion would be that you move to a jurisdiction where marijuana is legal, and you keep a 3-finger baggy available for times like this.”
“If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands!” (clap, clap)
“Mama always said, ‘Stupid is as stupid does’”
“Let’s use our words in a way that people will want to listen to us.”
“The anger-management class is two floors down, and doesn’t start for another hour.”
“I’m telling my mom”

In the best case scenario, such a comment should shut the bully down. But even in the worst case scenario, it will put them off guard long enough for you to call security.

We’re joking here, of course. A bully in the workplace is a serious issue that causes havoc and stress for everyone involved. However, a skilled manager can successfully gain the upper hand and take control of the situation.

The Dealing With Bullies at Work Video and Cheat Sheet combo was just added to the Wily Manager membership area, and it’s one of over 90 topics available now.

In it, we explain how to deal with the two radically different types of bullies you’ll encounter on the job. Armed with this insight, you’ll be able to shut down a bully’s attack and restore peace at work.

Become a member and get 8 free bonus gifts worth $187, plus instant access to all the existing tools and advice already available in the members-only area. It’s jam-packed with Videos, Cheat Sheets, and other tools…and new content is added each and every week.

Next week we’ll be talking about Career Transitions, and you’ll get the advice you need to ensure you don’t compromise your success by fumbling through critical career changes. You won’t want to miss out – become a Wily Manager Member today.

Managers – The Ultimate Renewable Resource

Many organizations plug a new manager into a vacant position without having done anything to develop the talent required for that job, then insist the manager work 60 to 80 hours a week. When the manager burns out, they replace him with a younger model, and the cycle is repeated. Managers – the Ultimate Renewable Resource.

I once worked for such an organization. We called the head office Jurassic Park because:

It was full of dinosaurs, and
It seemed like an appropriate location to produce a horror film

In this organization, the only way to advance was to have started when you were sixteen years old, and then work excessive hours your entire working life.

Education was actively discouraged. If you had any aspirations to better yourself through post-secondary education, you had to keep it a secret or risk being put on ‘student status’ which meant your benefits were curtailed, and you were ineligible for advancement.

This company didn’t infuse their management ranks with talent from the outside, either. They very much believed that if you did not ‘grow up’ with this company then you didn’t have any experience worth considering. They didn’t believe their competitors had any talent, nor were skills learned in any other industry worth anything.

It was so inbred, it made the kid on porch playing the banjo in Deliverance look like a Rhodes Scholar.

Interestingly, this company was in a highly competitive industry with a number of new, aggressive entrants to the market. Yet I was once told the company was doing well because it only lost 5% of market share and 2% of revenue in the previous year. That’s right – they measured their success by how little their performance sucked.

You can imagine how this all ends.

In such a company, all the highest potential people leave to go where they can advance their skills and their careers. The few who remain become more overwhelmed than George W. Bush at a Mensa meeting, and sooner or later just give up.

Until now, organizations have been able to get away with treating managers as the Ultimate Renewable Resource. But demographics are quickly turning the tables. The Baby Boomer mass workplace exodus has begun, and many companies are shocked to discover that they are having trouble filling those vacant positions, especially management roles.

If you work for a company where the senior leadership looks anything like the characters from Jurassic Park, how can you evolve from the age of dinosaurs?

Smart organizations have realized that they need to proactively develop potential leaders in-house. When a vacancy arises, they have a pool of qualified talent to choose from, instead of scrambling around trying to find a warm body to fill the position.

The first step is an organizational commitment to ongoing development of leadership skills in employees at all levels.

A Wily Manager Corporate Membership gives you and your co-workers practical, ‘in-the-trenches’ leadership advice that’s actually fun, requires less than 20 minutes a week, and doesn’t take you away from the office.

And best of all, your organization pays. They’ll be happy to foot the bill when they see how inexpensive it is, how easy it is to get started, and all the ways it will benefit the company.

You can help – put us in touch with the right person at your workplace, and we’ll suggest a Wily Manager Corporate Membership for you and your co-workers.

5 Ways to Influence Your Boss

Back when I had a real job, I had a boss that just wouldn’t do what I needed him to do. I set out my expectations clearly, I continually clarified and reinforced what I needed him to do, and I tactfully drew attention to those areas where he wasn’t meeting expectations. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out, and I had to let him go. On paper, he was still my boss, but I essentially minimized my relationship with him because he failed to perform.

Oddly, I’m only partially kidding about the above. It did get me thinking about different ways we can influence those over whom we have no control. In ascending order of desperation, here are some ways to influence your boss:

Do what you say you will. To influence, you need credibility. The best way to be credible is to consistently deliver on what you promise. If you have a reputation for being as reliable as a 1970s model Ford Pinto, then you’ll end up the same way: in a ball of flames at the bottom of a freeway off ramp.
Address your boss’s concerns. You need to frame whatever it is you want in terms that matter to your boss. If all he wants for Christmas is the GI Joe with the Kung Fu Grip, then link what you want to that wish.
Go Eddie Haskell: Be a boot-licker. With some people, sucking-up actually works. If you’ve got a boss that isn’t repulsed by oral-anal attention, then pucker-up and go for it.
Frame or blackmail him/her. This option is easiest if you’ve already got dirt on your boss. If you don’t, bring in hash-brownies or poppy seed muffins (shows up as opium in the blood stream), and then tip-off HR and suggest that a random drug test might be in order.
Sleep with him/her. It’s drastic measure, and one that becomes complicated if sexual orientations are not compatible. It is also fraught with moral hazard. However, it may quite likely yield the result you’re looking for.

After reading this list, if you feel dirtier than a coal miner at a brothel, remember that the best way to influence your boss (or anyone else), is to create expectations of them, and continually manage those expectations.

At the very least, you should expect your boss to:

Offer timely feedback
Communicate the larger picture to you
Assist with your developmental goals

There’s one very easy way for your boss to assist with your professional development – a Wily Manager Corporate Membership for the whole company.

You and your co-workers get instant, practical advice that allows you to confidently handle leadership situations. You’ll be a better boss and get ahead in your career. And best of all, your company pays.

Your company will be happy to foot the bill, because they get an ongoing, relevant, and engaging leadership development program that’s very low cost, easy to follow, and doesn’t take employees away from the office.

Put us in touch with a decision maker in your organization so we can get to work arranging a Wily Manager Membership for you and all your co-workers.

We’ll use our powers of influence…and hopefully we won’t have to sleep with your boss. We’ll try blackmail first.

Deciding What Sucks The Least

Back a few years ago, I was on the road more than twenty days per month.

In an effort to instill some element of normalcy to my life, I decided that every Thursday, no matter where I was, would be ‘movie night’. As a result, I saw some truly awful movies.

I remember one summer evening in particular, standing in the lobby of a movie megaplex in Warrenville, Illinois, staring up at the marquis trying to make a decision about which movie sucked the least. I selected “Planet of the Apes”, and quickly realized I’d made a horrible decision.

This is a parable for two lessons that have been instructional to me as a manager:

1. Sometimes, you don’t always get to pick the best alternative, but you need to choose the one that sucks the least. A case in point: voting. For most of the Wily Manager audience, voting rates are less than 50%, and with due respect to the Australians – yours would be lower too, if voting weren’t required by law. People need to stop looking for the best alternative, and vote for the one that sucks the least. It’s a primary requirement for democracy: reel in your expectations!

2. Delaying a decision often doesn’t improve the quality of the outcome. If I had agonized over the “Planet of the Apes” decision, and sent it to committee, and then deferred it until better information was available, I still would have ended up seeing a crappy movie – it might have just been with different actors.

Of course, the other obvious element to this story is that the movie actually didn’t matter all that much. It was incredibly minor, and the net outcome of going to a movie, or not (or how bad that movie was) matters very little. Yet, in organizations, we see minor decisions agonized over all the time. People end up spending more time debating where to hold an offsite meeting than they would spend talking with a friend contemplating suicide.

New Rule (with full credit to Bill Maher): If you’re going to spend more than one minute on inconsequential decisions, flip a coin. If you end up being wrong, you can correct course quickly.

In my case, I could have left the movie, and gone for a walk along the river in Naperville. But then, I never would have seen Charlton Heston dressed up as a filthy, stinking ape.

Often you’re forced to make quick management decisions that are more consequential than which movie sucks the least. You’ll need to do more than flip a coin, because making quick decisions can be dangerous. If you’re not careful, it’s easy to step right into one of the common pitfalls, like ‘Going With Your Gut’ (which can make you appear reckless).

The Good Decision Making Video and Cheat Sheet combo were just added to the Wily Manager membership area, and it’s one of over 90 topics available now. In it, we show you how to avoid 7 common ‘quick decision pitfalls’, and make quality decisions when you don’t have the luxury of taking a long time to gather information.

Next week we’ll be talking about Influencing Your Boss – you’ll learn how to get your boss to do what YOU want, without being a manipulator. You won’t want to miss out – become a Wily Manager Member today.

The Ugly Truth About Your Time

There are many forms of self-delusion, and “I don’t have time” is among the most common. The truth about how we manage and rationalize our use of time is uglier than Mick Jagger with a hangover on Halloween. Here are some of those truths:

1) You’re not busier than everyone else. Believe it or not, everyone feels time pressure, and in very few circumstances can you claim to be any busier than those around you. If you’re a farmer, or you’re on the London Olympic Organizing Committee, you get a pass. Everyone else needs to stop using, “I’m too busy” as an excuse.

2) Society has not conspired to give you less leisure time. With the exception of the United States, leisure time has steadily increased since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in developed nations. The fact that leisure time is completely overscheduled is an issue of how it is managed, not an issue of quantity. It’s kind of like confusing a Big Mac with actual food.

3) You do, in fact, do what is important to you. I’m always amazed that people claim not to have time to do something “important” like volunteer at their children’s school, but do have time to watch 8 or 10 hours of crap TV shows a week. Ultimately, you do do what is actually important – and it’s reflected in your schedule.

4) You can’t have it all. This is an insidious myth we all use to rationalize each other’s dysfunctional behavior. If you work 80 hours a week, you are missing out on something else in your life – like having quality time with your family. To think that you can dictate “quality time”, is to imply that all the other potential time is wasted, and that somehow you have a magic switch that can mystically transform time into “quality”. These are the same people that put “baby to take first steps” into their calendar for a weekend, when they’re around. You can’t schedule quality time.

5) The world will not slow down. Regardless of how long you think humans have been on the planet, there is one constant: the rate of change has continually accelerated. If anything, the rate of change will increase, so strap in, and wear a cup – it’s rough out there.

If you want to gain control of your schedule once and for all, we can help….but only if you’re ready to face the ugly facts about how you currently spend your time.

The Time Management Skills & Techniques Video and Cheat Sheet combo were just added to the Wily Manager membership area, and it’s one of over 90 topics available now.

In it, we show you why most time management techniques don’t work, and how to ruthlessly zero in on your critical tasks and responsibilities while fearlessly ditch the rest.

Next week we’ll be talking about Quick Decisions, and you’ll learn how to make decisions without regrets when you’re forced to think on your feet. You won’t want to miss out – become a Wily Manager Member today.

You’ll get 8 free bonus gifts worth $187, plus instant access to all the existing tools and advice already available in the members-only area. It’s jam-packed with Videos, Cheat Sheets, and other tools…and new content is added each and every week.

World Hunger and Kim Kardashian

The word “project” is probably one of the most misunderstood terms in business today. The term is used interchangeably to describe a wide variety (and often contradictory) of activities in the workplace. As a service to Wily Manager readers, we look at a variety of types of “projects”, and their actual definitions:

Projects Around the House (domesticus disasterus). The primary habitat of these projects are suburban cul-de-sacs where professional males live, who took no more than one shop course in high school, but think they are Bob Villa.

People Projects (exercisus futilitus). To be clear, we’re not talking about making some suggestions to tweak certain behaviors, we’re talking about trying to change the very nature of another human being. These projects are most often documented and heard about in female groups of 4 – 6. The best place to observe such a conversation is in the lobby of a movie theatre following a Nora Ephron film.

Guilt-easing Projects (glad-I’m-not-him-us). This type of project is where people address the symptoms of a huge (usually social) problem, knowing full well they have done little to rectify the root cause of the problem, but enjoy the illusion of having done something. Primary Habitat: North American and Western European urban settings – wherever less fortunate people in affluent societies are to be found.

Phantom Projects (projectus impotentus) This is the project where a group of people (who you would typically rather avoid at cocktail parties) take over a conference room for the better part of a year to build a project plan. The unfortunate part is that project never starts, much less finishes, and the project plan requires a dedicated server, and a whole room to house the hard copies. Such projects are most often found in public sector organizations.

World Hunger (projectus ambitious). This is a commonly misunderstood project. It is often used as an example of a project that is unachievable, where in reality, world hunger is a problem that is easily solved — we just lack the desire to do so. Perhaps a more appropriate example of an unachievable project is getting Kim Kardashian to show a trace of dignity or intelligence.

You heard it here first, the unachievable project is now the Kardashian Project.

Don’t Waste Your Time Debating a Nuclear Free Workplace

There are three types of things people can expend energy on:

Things they control
Things they influence
Things for which they have concern.

The blessing/curse of living in an affluent society is that we have time to bother ourselves with things that we have absolutely no control or influence over.

At the personal level, I have am now in an age range where males become bald and fat. I have absolutely no control over my rapidly retreating hairline, so I don’t expend any energy on that. I do have significant influence over how fat I become, so I work hard to manage to the outcome I want.

On a societal level, I find it fascinating the degree to which we dwell on things that we have absolutely no control or influence over. A couple decades ago when I was living in Vancouver, there was a raging debate on whether to declare the city a “Nuclear Free Zone”.

Other than making the gortex-wearing granola-heads feel good about themselves, this seemed about as relevant as cream rinse conditioner for Captain Picard.

There’s no chance a nuclear power station would ever be built anywhere near a city of such a size; the city had absolutely no jurisdiction to allow or deny visiting military ships into the harbor, and I’m assuming if there was ever a full scale nuclear Armageddon, that the inter-continental ballistic missiles would not discriminate between those cities that declared themselves nuclear free, and others (that presumably welcomed radioactive destruction).

Civic politicians really need to stick to filling potholes. It’s what they control, and has a far greater impact on their citizens’ lives.

There is an old adage, that roughly paraphrased says, “Give me the strength to change those things I can change; to accept those things I can’t change; and the wisdom to know the difference.”

There is also a version that talks about having the skill to adequately dispose of the bodies of all those people that piss you off – but I digress.

As a manger, it’s easy to get caught up in things over which you have very little control – like deciding whether your workplace should be declared a ‘Nuclear Free Zone’.

Most managers have more demands on their time than they can possibly satisfy, yet spend far too much time and energy worrying about things they ultimately have little influence over. Managers who focus their efforts where they can actually make a difference are far more successful.

We just added the ‘Get More Done by Focusing on Your Circle of Control‘ Video and Cheat Sheet to the Wily Membership area, and it’s one of over 90 topics available now. in it, we introduce the ‘Circles of Focus’ tool and show you how to conserve your valuable time and energy by targeting activities that are truly important.

Next week is Project Management 101 – we’ll show you how to keep your projects on time and on budget. You won’t want to miss out – become a Wily Manager Member today.

Busier Than a Squirrel on Speed

I once worked with a client who was perpetually behind the eight-ball – and not in the “everybody is busy” way, either. She was busier than a squirrel at harvest time on a triple-Starbucks, and a double-hit of Speed. She claimed this busy-ness extended to her personal life too, where she never had the time to do those things that were truly important.

Then she told me about her addiction to non-scripted television (I refuse to call it “reality TV” because Stargate is closer to reality than The Apprentice). As it turns out, her problem was not one of too much work, but too little discipline.

She’s not alone.

Back when I was in University, I elevated procrastination to an elegant form of art. Around the time every semester when I was supposed to be producing term papers, I would find just about any excuse not to do them. I would do the requisite scheduling of time to get them done, and lock myself in either the school library or my bedroom so something would get done.

As it turns out, I would have been better off going to the pub (where at least I would have had some fun) because those long lock-down periods produced either:

a) a thorough reading of the complete poetry works of Ezra Pound (more fun than managerial economics) when I was locked in the library

b) the cleanest bedroom ever, if I was relegated to home.

Luckily, twenty-five years later I’m starting to understand procrastination for what it is: a total and complete lack of discipline. Dr. Piers Steel recently wrote a book called The Procrastination Equation to help further understanding of this systemic problem. According to Steel, procrastination affects 95% of the population (I assume the other 5% are buddhist monks who spend upwards of 20 hours per day in meditation).

Dr. Steel spent about 10 years researching procrastination for his book. He probably could have gotten the research done in five years, if he was more disciplined, but I’m sure his room was as clean as mine was as a university student. Interestingly, he tags coffee shops as a huge enabler of procrastination. Add to this ubiquitous internet, television, video games and other people, and it’s remarkable we don’t all live in a catatonic state that Captain Christopher Pike found himself in in the original Star Trek series.

Now… I better get back to my writing – before I head over to the coffee shop.