Are You an Imposter? Don’t Flatter Yourself

This week we’re talking about Imposters here at Wily Manager, so I thought I’d do a bit of research on great imposters of note to see if there was anything instructional for the occasional manager that finds herself with a case of Imposter Syndrome.

As I researched famous imposters, there were four names that kept coming up:

  • Charles Ponzi (after which any crooked finance scheme since has been named).
  • Frank Abagnale Jr. (the guy portrayed by Leo Dicaprio in Catch me if You Can)
  • Milli Vanilli (the duo who won a Grammy in the 90s, only to be discovered later as lip-syncers
  • George Bush Jr.  (The 43rd President of the United States)

Most of the managers I’ve talked to who suspect they have a case of Imposter Syndrome are worried because they don’t do stand-up presentations very well.  Or maybe they’re put in charge of a department where they don’t have the technical expertise.

When you compare these managerial challenges to the accomplishments of the list above, you don’t have anything to worry about.  You’re not even in the same league as these guys.  So don’t flatter yourself!

Based on the infamous list above, an imposter is someone who goes out of his way to deceive people; a person who pretends to be someone he is not, and does so with flash.  True imposters have an over-abundance of self-confidence – something most managers with Imposter Syndrome do not.

So… if you’re going to be an imposter, do it with some flair.  Can you take down a whole country’s economy?  Can you start a war?  Can you separate old age pensioners from their life’s savings?  Can you disgrace an entire industry?

If not, you probably don’t have what it takes to be an imposter, so you’ll have to try to find some other way allow your insecurities to manifest themselves.

If it’s any comfort be aware that everyone has some insecurity.  Many years ago when Johnny Carson was the host of the Tonight Show, a heart monitor was put on him to test his anxiety level right before the show started.

As it turns out, even the mighty Carson suffered some anxiety and self-doubt:  his heart rate doubled right before the curtain came up.

If Johnny Carson can be a bit nervous, surely you can too.  And don’t call me Shirley.

 

The Wily Guide to 2012

It’s that time of year again.  Yep, that right, it’s the time of year when everyone reflects on the year in review, and makes silly predictions for the upcoming year.  This happens mostly because people don’t want to do any real work or thinking in the last two weeks of the year.  Not to be outdone, we offer here:

  • A Wily Manager Review of 2011
  • How and why we started Wily Manager
  • Trends we see in 2012
  • Wily Manager in 2012
  • A special offer – If you couldn’t care less about the other stuff, you’ll want to scroll to the bottom of the page for this.

Wily Manager in 2011

We’ve been dabbling at our web and media presence for a couple of years, but it really came together in 2011:

  • 7000+ people a month listening to the 75+ podcasts posted on iTunes.  Please comment – particularly if you have nice things to say.
  • 6000+ visits to the Wily Manager website a month.  We very much appreciate your feedback here as well.
  • We launched our YouTube Channel
  • Visitors from 60+ countries around the world visit our website, and download the podcast.  Special thanks go out to those from our top five audience countries:
    • USA
    • India
    • UK
    • Canada
    • Australia & New Zealand (Extra special thanks here – because the number of audience members is far higher than the population of these two beautiful South Pacific Paradises should warrant.)
  • We got busted this year.  Yep… we got our first call from a lawyer concerned about some of the information on our site.  It’s an indicator that we’re attracting attention – even if it is sometimes from unwanted places.

How We Started

In working with our clients, we found the following things:

  • In most organizations managers are left to sink or swim on their own.
  • Most managers feel like babysitters many days.
  • We see many of the same issues again and again in different organizations.
  • Managers are under significant time constraints.

So we thought we’d put something together to address these conditions:

  • Something that is informative, but fun
  • Something that is easy to use and understand.  We love Harvard Business School’s website, and encourage you to visit it.  When you want something quick and easy, then Wily Manager is the place to be.
  • Something that removes complexity from managers’ daily lives.
  • Something that uses different media that could really work for many managers

Hence, Wily Manager was born.

Trends we see in 2012

The content police say we have to provide something in the way of original content.  As such, here are the trends we see for 2012.

  1. Managers will continue to feel like babysitters.  Call it the burden of leadership, but managers will continue to be both rewarded and frustrated by the ongoing care and feeding of those that report through to them.  The secret is to manage and lead differently to make this easier.
  2. Everyone will be an “International” Manager.  Even if you don’t manage across borders, it is likely that your team will have one or more members that come from another culture.  As such, we are all “International” managers now.
  3. Demographic issues will continue to plague UK, Canada, Australia, and even the US.  In these countries, the baby boom phenomena means that the majority of the workforce is over 50 or under 30.  This presents it’s own unique leadership challenges, and it’s a condition that’s not going away anytime soon.
  4. More conservative risk management.  We thought we were through the economic mess – but guess what?  It’s back, and even if it’s not as bad as people think it might be, there is very little change you will be awash in resources (capital, human or other) this coming year.
  5. Mayan apocalypse prophecies.  This is the year it all ends – on the winter solstice of 2012.  OK… maybe you don’t buy in to 2012 thing, but you should be ready for whatever unpredictable events are in store for us.  You can’t plan for every contingency, but you can continually improve to be better, cheaper, faster and more agile.  If you do these things well, you’ll be ready for anything… even the Mayan apocalypse.

Wily Manager in 2012

  • We want to add more virtual tools to the ones we already have:
    • FastStart
    • Leadership Boot Camp
    • Conflict Dynamics Profile

We would also greatly value your feedback as to what types of tools are going to be the most useful to you.

  • Increased interaction amongst our members.  Thank you to all those who reach out to us by email, or on iTunes, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Linked-In or on the Wily Manager website.  We will work in 2012 to encourage further interaction with us, but also to facilitate interaction amongst Wily Manager members.  We want to create an online community of managers.
  • A tropical retreat.  Yep… we’re going tropical.  Details will follow, but we encourage you to join us in November of 2012 for a Wily Manager in person week-long meeting hosted by Jed & Bob.

A Special Offer

We want to get our numbers up for the end of the year, so between now and December 31st, we’re offering the following deal:

Wily Manager Annual Memberships are 50% off (or $49) for the balance of 2011.  Become a Member now for half price.

  • Access to the web tools we mention during our podcasts
  • Full length versions of podcasts and accompanying podcast notes
  • Seamless navigation around the 800+ pages of content
  • Access to all topic-bundles

All the best for the holidays, and see you all in 2012.

Jed & Bob

How to Destroy Trust and Alienate People

There are certain things I trust.  I trust the sun to rise in the morning.  I trust the lady who does my dry cleaning to always wish me a “more-nice day”.  I trust that Justin Beiber is past his 15 minutes.  I also trust that the word “trust” is a loaded word.

Often, people think that the only way to lose or violate trust is to do something very clearly wrong or dishonest.  It is actually much easier than that to destroy trust.  Trust is quite simply, managing expectations in others, and then delivering on those expectations.

This is how it goes horribly wrong for politicians – large segments of the population demand that politicians lie to them during a campaign.  Any political candidate that dare speak an uncomfortable truth, will be marginalized immediately.  Then once elected, the disconnect between the expectations that have been set, and those that are delivered becomes patently obvious, and the public feels betrayed.

Just so you don’t end up being viewed like a politician, here are five ways to quickly destroy trust:

Say one thing and do another.  Much like the politician above, this is the fastest way to ensure that no one will trust you.

Try to please all the people all the time. Life is a series of trade-offs – particularly for people in positions of leadership.  As a leader, there should be some contingent of your followers that should be marginally pissed-off at all times – because it is impossible to keep everybody happy.

Pander to your audience. Targeting whomever you are communicating to is a good idea.  However, if you find yourself targeting to such a degree that your message is fundamentally different amongst different stakeholders, you’re going to alienate someone (if not everyone).

Fail to tackle difficult issues. Every leader bears the burden of dealing with difficult issues.  They will not magically disappear or solve themselves – in fact, an issue ignored is most often one that grows out of control.

Under-value giving credit, and over-value assigning blame.  Leaders need to be humble – give away credit when things go well, and step up and accept more than your share of blame when things go poorly.  You gain a whole bunch of trust by doing so.

 

Managing Measurement by Best Seller

Performance metrics often provide an excellent illustration of how a really good idea can be made difficult and useless by poor implementation.  It’s a lot like watching your favourite sports franchise consistently snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory.

Usually it goes down like this:  someone in some position of authority will read the first fifteen pages of a book about measurement.  Without reading the following 250 pages, he concludes that his organization needs to get everyone on the measurement bandwagon.  Then he strikes a committee, or hires a consultant to go forth and make this happen.

Fast forward in time six months, and a significant portion of everyone’s work week becomes dedicated to counting the number of paper clips they have consumed since last week, and calculating the annual impact of that paper clip consumption.  They then have a meeting to discuss how to reduce paper clip consumption, thereby reducing annual operating costs by $48.50, or roughly 1/100th the cost of the first meeting about paper clip consumption.

OK… that might be a bit harsh.  But here are some actual examples of performance metrics gone horribly wrong:

  • The technology company that measured sales success exclusively on dollar volume at the end of each quarter.  THE RESULT:  A whole bunch of clients went somewhere else because they were tired of being sold things they really didn’t need.
  • The grocery retailer that measured check-stand effectiveness by calculating the frequency of cashiers using customers’ names.  THE RESULT:  the customers went to stores where they measure how much time was spent waiting in line – something the customer actually cares about.
  • The restaurant owner that attempted to reduce cost by reducing the number of paper napkins provided to each customer.  THE RESULT:  I don’t know… probably sticky fingers and dirty tables – this one just seemed really silly to me
  • The lumber manufacturer that measured how much fibre it recovered from each log, as opposed to how much money they made on different dimensions of lumber.  THE RESULT:  Very few wood-chips, but a yard full of garden stakes that no one would buy (and a whole bunch of trees unnecessarily harvested)

Some people will tell you all that matters at the end of the day is how much money you make.  Not true – if you focus exclusively on this, you are in a never-ending cycle of sub-optimized decisions that forbid any long term success.  Most obviously, if you ignore safety while focusing exclusively on how much money is make, it is only a matter of time before you injure or kill someone, which beside being ethically reprehensible, is very expensive.

Here’s the bottom line about measurement:  The great thing about measuring performance is that people will adjust their behaviors to affect the outcome of the measure.  Unfortunately, the really scary thing about measuring performance is that people will adjust their behaviors to affect the outcome of the measure.

So measurement (like other recreational drugs) should be used cautiously and in moderation.  Second, you should never have only one number you are tracking.  And finally, you need to understand why numbers are trending the way they are, as opposed to (over)reacting to one data point.

Let’s be careful out there.

 

Changing the Paradigm of BS

When I first started researching the Elevator Pitch for publishing this week, I was amazed to find out it was a whole industry.  People take this stuff seriously – there are even whole companies dedicated to help people and organizations perfect their Elevator Speech.  Then I came across this one:

“We add value to our customers by maximizing the value of human capital to leverage their assets to change their paradigms in order to transform their business.”

Wow… that is just exquisite bullsh!t.  If I were playing Buzzword Bingo, I would have won the grand prize with that single sentence.

I suppose a certain amount of BS jargon is inevitable in a knowledge-based economy.  It not as easy to describe what we do, as when we were all making something tangible.  So, as a public service to Wily Manager readers, I’d like to deconstruct this sentence.  For the record, the irony of a having guy who makes a living chatting with his buddy about how managers should manage comment on this, is not lost on me.

We add value to our customers. This means you may or may not serve any useful purpose, so you have to make sure everyone thinks you “add value” by stating it explicitly.  It’s quite possible that no one is more amazed than you that you’re getting paid to do whatever it is you do to “add value”.

Maximizing the Value of Human Capital.  This necessarily means that most of the people you work with hate you.  You’re either involved in reducing headcount, or annoying the crap out of people to get them to do more with less resources.

To Change Their Paradigms. Really?  I didn’t know anyone still used the word “Paradigms” anymore.  What this probably means is that you stand up in front of groups of employees and rant at them like one of those ethically-challenged Sunday morning televangelists who asks for money to refuel his personal challenger jet.  You have about the same level of credibility, too.

To Transform Their Business.  A transformation is when a caterpillar becomes a butterfly.  In the business world transformation means that you’ll recommend and initiate a corporate reorganization that will result in the good people quitting to go work somewhere else, and the poor performers promoted three levels past their threshold of competence.  Then when it goes horribly wrong, you arrange to hire back the good people as consultants at three times what they were getting paid previously.

You should be able to describe what your business does in concise terms – just make sure it doesn’t set off the BS meter ever time you open your mouth.

 

5 Reasons Performance Reviews Suck

In the past fifteen years, I’ve been in and out of dozens of organizations, all of which had some process for conducting Performance Reviews.  Of all of them, only one organization did them consistently, and did them well.  The rest of them conducted performance reviews that ranged between ineffective, and highly offensive.

This got me to thinking what all these organizations have in common when it comes to Performance Reviews, so here are the top five (of several dozen) reasons why Performance Reviews usually suck:

1)   Everybody wants more feedback – as long as it’s good. Yep… as much as your Gen Y types tell you they crave feedback, they really only want it if it confirms their worldview that they are beyond fantastic.  Any suggestions for improvement are usually met with a thud.  It is only the most elite of corporate cultures that have overcome this aspect of human nature.  These organizations train and encourage people to constantly seek out feedback that will make them better – which sometimes requires facing up to the fact you don’t do some things well.

2)   Performance Reviews are non-specific. They often contain broad sweeping statements about someone being “good with customers”, or “needing improvement on follow through”.  These observations are about as useful as a chocolate teapot.  If it’s not specific, don’t bother.  Bring data or specific behavioral observations.

3)   People are too polite.  Most supervisors hate performance reviews more than the employees.  So they try to get through them as quickly as possible, without hurting anyone’s feelings.  Great organizations, and great leaders use performance appraisals as catalyst for improvement.  This actually requires giving people feedback on how they can improve – rather than just trying to keep the peace.

4)   Performance reviews are structured too much like report cards. If the performance review is simply “the year in review” without any mention of the future, or developmental opportunities, then it is a waste of time.  Even more of a waste of time is a 4 or 5 point rating system that employees are graded on with little thought or explanation.  No wonder people hate them.

5)   They are disconnected with what people do every day. The big problem with performance reviews is that they are designed by HR people, or external consultants who have absolutely no idea what people in a particular role do everyday.  Hence people are assessed on things they rarely or never do, and the bulk of their efforts are not captured by the criteria or format used.

Employees don’t have any accountability for the Performance Review process.  OK… I said five reasons, so this one is a bonus.  In most organizations, the employee merely shows up for a performance review meeting, having lent no thought or effort to outcome.  Great organizations and great managers insist that employees complete some form of self-assessment in advance of the meeting so that the success of the process is shared.


 

You Can’t Always Get What You Want

Mick Jagger was right – you can’t always get what you want.

One of the dynamics that managers face is weighing off short-term objectives against longer term ones.  This sometimes results in seemingly poor decisions being made.

Often, I get to hear people in organizations complain about the seemingly silly decisions that are made.  It is so clear to them, that by investing $100,000, you can recover a $1m.  They’ve done the cost benefit analysis, and the answer is clear.  The only problem is that they haven’t figured whether there is $100,000 to spend in the first place.

Think of it like this:  If you replace the windows in house with better insulated ones, install high efficiency furnaces and air conditioners, and put new insulation in your attic, you will undoubtedly save thousands over the lifetime of those renovations.  However, you may not have the $25,000 required now to do those modifications.  Further, you may not be sure you’ll be in the house long enough to recover the investment.

It is the same for organizations.

Don’t get me wrong – I’ve seen lots of examples of corporate stupidity, too.  My favorite one is the company that decreed in blood that all travel occurring within an operating division must be by surface, and that air travel was restricted to those going across operating divisions.  This made a lot of sense in Northern California, where the decree was issued.  It didn’t make a lot of sense in British Columbia (about twice the size of Texas, and full of mountains).  It turns out to drive from one side of this division to another was a four or five day exercise.  Surely a plane ticket would be cheaper?  Nope – the policy stands.  Truly stupid.

The dynamic of measuring the short term and long term costs and benefits is not easy.  Leaders need to do the math and figure out the right thing to do.  But sometimes, the right thing to do is deferred to what can be done.

You might not get what want, but rather “get what you need”.  Thanks Mick.

 

Laundry Lists and Diffused Focus

The fun part about our job is being exposed to a number of different industries and organizations.  One of my favorite things to say is, “I’ve worked in Nuclear Power Stations, and in grocery stores, and 90% of the management issues are the same.”  I usually get significant pushback from the Nuclear Engineers on this one, but it’s true.

Often the response I get from this statement is a question about the most common thread that weaves organizations and their performance together.  The answer, quite simply, is “Focus”.  The great performing organizations define and continually refine the limited number of things they need to do well, and then execute those things.

The reason people lose focus is because they get so busy managing tasks, they forget to look up every now and then and make sure they are doing the right things.  Or, as I like to say, “They are so busy doing their jobs, they forget to do their jobs.”

As a busy manager, the next time you feel more overwhelmed with work than the bartender on the Kennedy Compound, spend a couple of minutes to review what your top 3 to 7 objectives for the year are.  What are you doing to achieve those objectives this week?  Better yet, review your top objectives every day before you start diving into tasks.

If you find yourself involved in meetings and activities that have nothing to do with those 3 to 7 objectives, then you need to question what you’re doing.  Worse yet, if find yourself with 25 or 30 objectives, you need to go back to drawing board, and transform your laundry list into a more manageable, critical action list.

Achieving focus is conceptually very easy, but requires a lot of discipline to do well.

 

Bias for Action, Absence of Thinking

“A bias for action” – this has become a buzz-phrase I’ve noticed lately, and it makes my skin crawl the same way as when some one uses the word “irregardless”.  This is the curse of several years of studying English at University.

I’ll be the first guy to encourage people to actually get things done, but if I’m going to have a bias for something, I’d prefer it be a bias for thinking.  Simply put, any action you take that is not preceded by some thinking is a waste of time that will ultimately cost you much more time in the long run.

In many situations, the thinking involved need be brief.  Unless you’re planning a moon landing, the amount of time writing and refining plans quickly hits diminishing returns.  To spend even a few minutes thinking about something, and perhaps handwriting one page on what you are trying to achieve, the benefits, risks, and involvement required from others will save you a huge amount of time in the long run.

Here are some of my favorite business moments that demonstrated a bias for action, and an absence of thinking:

New Coke:  Turns out people liked the old coke better, and the company spent millions to undo their action

Moving Jay Leno from the Tonight Show:  NBC had a problem as to what to do with Conan O’Brien, but didn’t think too long about any of these decisions.  Oh well… what’s $40 million between friends?

Ford Motor Company and the Pinto:  It seems it was cheaper to pay wrongful death suits than it was to recall the exploding Pinto.  Apparently the guys running Ford at the time had the Wizard of Oz trifecta:  No brains, no heart, no courage.

US IRS and tax evaders: The US Revenue Service has decided recently to go after tax evaders in Canada and the UK.  Newsflash: people looking to evade taxes don’t move to higher tax jurisdictions that have comprehensive tax treaties with the United States.  If any thought had been put into this, they would realize the housewife who moved to Canada as a child probably isn’t as promising a source of revenue as the corporate executive that moved to Grand Cayman.

Think, then act.  You’d be surprised how well it works.

 

How to Make Sure People Don’t Care

There is so much stuff out there telling managers what they should do to be more effective, and how they can be better leaders of their people.  This week, I thought I’d take a different approach, and suggest to managers how they might make sure that none of their people care.

It seems that many leaders will read an article or attend a seminar and them come back to the office and do the same thing they were doing before.  They then find themselves stressed-out and miserable, as they can never seem to get a grip on their jobs or on leading their people.  It seems something is lost in the transfer between reading or hearing something, and applying it to our own circumstances.

As for the people those managers are leading: they all start out with a different level of giving a crap, and they are then pushed towards the mean (or average) of “giving-a-crap-edness” of the culture around them.  The great managers push that average line up, and inspire people to come along for the ride.  Bad leaders, push the line down, and tacitly encourage people to give a crap about far fewer things, and at far lower a level.

So here are some things bad leaders do to ensure no one cares:

  1. Enable unnecessary bureaucracy. This is why many public sector organizations suffer with poor morale.
  2. Not dealing with performance issues.  I’m not going to work all that hard for you if I know my peer is doing nothing, and not getting called on it.
  3. Not administering consequences.  People need to know that both good and poor performance will be recognized and “rewarded” as such.
  4. Micro-managing.  If you are going to redo all my work anyway, I’m not going to put much effort into it.
  5. Playing favorites.  OK… maybe a meritocracy only exists in a University Professor’s textbook, but you’ve got to at least try to give the appearance of fairness.
  6. Reinforce a blame culture. People’s best work comes from taking risks, which they will not do, if they get crucified every time a small error is made.

There are lots of other ones, too, but leaders should start with these ones, and determine to what degree they do these things.  The further away you are from these things, the more likely you are to be pushing that mean line of discretionary effort upwards.

 

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