Blog — Page 18

Dealing With Manager Stress? Try Not Giving a Crap

When asked about manager stress, I am reminded of when I did my very first gig as a Management Consultant. The company I worked for paired me up with one of the wise old owls, whose job it was to show me the ropes, and make sure I didn’t say anything too stupid so as to jeopardize the relationship with the client.

His first bit of advice to me was, “never care more than the client.” It was incredibly cynical, and incredibly valuable. I am careful where, and to whom I repeat this advice, but many of the leaders suffering from manager stress I’ve coached over the years should heed this adage.

You can never be the only one who cares about something. In fact, a key survival skill as a leader in the modern organization is to selectively not give a crap about a whole bunch of stuff.

I am reminded of a public sector client I once had who lamented to me that if they only had more resources, they could get so much more done. I think she was genuinely shocked when I broke the ugly truth to her that she would never, ever have all the resources she wanted. It never happens in the private sector, or the public sector – nor should it.

One of the key functions of a manager is to allocate the scarce resources of time, money and talent appropriately. What separates great managers from the average and poor is their ability to manage the conversion of these resources to maximize the output of their group.

A great way to make yourself absolutely crazy as a manager in any organization is to try to get everything done that the company wants, as well as everything you want to do. You need to draw your own line in the sand, and figure out what you need to do to be successful, and forget about much of the other stuff. A great way to accelerate your journey to stress-leave, and make everyone around you hate your guts is to try to be all things to all people.

Of course, doing the above means you will spend a lot of time saying “no” to people, and risk not having anyone like you. It’s called the burden of leadership, and it’s what you signed-on for once you gave up your individual contributor’s role.

So, to recap:

1) Selectively don’t give a crap.

2) You’re never going to have enough resources

3) Don’t do much of the stuff you think you should be doing

4) Don’t even attempt to keep everyone happy

5) Your career as an organizational leader will result in you being in a constant state of marginal “pissed-off’edness”

Wow… that’s quite a bit different than the stuff they taught us in Business School. But then again, how many Biz School Profs have ever had any success in running an actual business?

Management Advice from Monty Python

Some of us love British humour, others not so much. Either way, there is always something to be learned. Earlier this week, Jeff Haden at BNET found some Python video clips with some instructional advice for managers. Happy viewing:

http://www.bnet.com/blog/small-biz-advice/the-monty-python-guide-to-being-a-better-boss

Middle Management Conflicts, and TV Sitcoms

If you’re a regular visitor to this site, you’ll know we like The Office, Seinfeld, Saturday Night Live, and 30 Rock. With only a few other exceptions, broadcast television is an incredible waste of time, and like other recreational drugs, should be used only occasionally and sparingly.

Interestingly, life on the corporate food-chain is not unlike a poorly written sitcom. Perhaps that is why so many of them are set in the workplace. Both the workplace and the crappy sitcoms have protagonists, antagonists, and usually some version of the mentally unbalanced. Bad writing and poor acting are part of both as well. Perhaps the only significant difference is that on a sitcom, big problems can neatly be wrapped up in 22 minutes, so there’s time to sell soap and give you a preview to next week’s silliness.

I decided to do some research for this post, so I sat for an evening to watch some sitcoms to make sure I hadn’t misplaced my contempt, and to bring myself up to date on some of the blubber being offered up on TV.

Apparently prime-time comedy is getting worse. It is also apparent that one doesn’t need an abundance of talent to write this stuff, so Wily Manager proudly presents:

Manager in the Middle

Manager in the Middle is an innovative new sitcom from the people who bring you the Wily Manager weekly podcasts. The primary character (yet to be named, pending focus group results) is a smart, but cheeky manager constantly being offset by his sadistic immediate supervisor.

The supervisor, Cruela (played by Jane Lynch) loves to pit one manager off against another believing this “healthy” competition will better help her run her business. Our protagonist is also matrix-managed by a kind, cautious human-resource manager who always knows the right thing to do, but is unwilling to make a decision, and is incredibly conflict-adverse.

Our hero (played by Frankie Muniz (he’s all grown up now)) has four peer managers who all report to Cruella. Rounding out the cast is:

Vlad: The hard-working, smart, reliable foreigner who is easily pushed around for fear of losing his work visa (played by Fez from That 70s Show)
Dianne: The single mom who is just trying to make it through the day, but is in constant conflict with Cruela, as she struggles to make it to the daycare on time to pick up her two kids. Cruela would like to fire her for not working insane hours, but unfortunately (for Cruela) the work she does is outstanding.
Don: The smarmy, but oddly likeable young single guy who doesn’t know near as much as he thinks he does. He also loves to take credit for other people’s work.
Vera: The jaded, cynical, sharp-tongued middle aged woman who has over ten years until retirement, but can tell you how many days are left in her working career.

Join us in the first episode when Cruela asks her team to stay late to meet a useless last minute request that everyone knows will go nowhere… and hilarity ensues.

Think we could get Fox to air it after Glee?

The Most Effective Interpersonal Communication? Don’t be an A$$hole

OK… we’ll start this week by talking in code. Even though the inappropriate word above is now widely used on network television, and even Bill Cosby has uttered it from his lips, I’m pretty sure if I repeat the word several times in one post, a number of firewalls will catch it, and I won’t be able to spread the gospel this week.

For our purposes, the code word will be “O-ring”.

I was once told that in this world there are two types of people: Idiots and O-rings. Your label is determined by your behaviour, and everyone has acted as both an idiot and an O-ring at various points in their lives. Some particularly talented people have managed to be both simultaneously, earning the title “idiot-hole”.

When asked if I thought I was an idiot or an O-ring, I struggled for which term I found less offensive, and more importantly what sort of behaviour qualifies one for membership in each category. The definition of “idiot” is reasonably clear. Anytime you’ve made an unbelievably stupid choice, you qualify as an idiot. In my case, I was clearly an idiot when I agreed to sit through a “short video presentation” (with a complementary cocktail) when I was on vacation in Mexico many years ago.

The definition of O-ring is somewhat more illusive. I canvassed a number of people to try to determine exactly what would qualify someone to be labeled an O-ring. As it turns out whenever someone else does something we don’t like, they are an O-ring. Case in point: traffic. Of all the people driving within a 100km radius of your vehicle, there is you, and all the other O-rings on the road.

This revelation naturally led me to examine my own behaviour when I was an Operations Manager with many direct reports. I arrived at the unmistakable conclusion that I was a tremendous O-ring. I’m not talking about an occasional O-ring maneuver, but rather a full-time job of simply being an O-ring. My entire work world was an infinite series of actions and decisions that at other people didn’t like. If I could go back in time, I’d change my title to AC (O-ring in charge).

So, is it possible to be a manager without being an O-ring? Probably not. Would you want to be a manager that’s not an O-ring? Only if you want to be an idiot.

This week we talk about how improving your ability to communicate constructively, you might avoid being labeled an O-ring.

The SMART Goals Acronym, BHAGs, and Other Silliness

“My goal now: to be the all-being ruler of time, space and dimension…. And then, I want to go to Europe.” – Steve Martin

For the low price of about $5000, you can spend the weekend with some screaming hucksters (who you would run far away from in a normal social setting), who will guide you to the perfect collection of personal and professional goals that will change your life, and provide the happiness that has always alluded you. Your registration also includes a coffee mug, and a handsome leather portfolio for all your hand written notes.

It seems that the SMART acronym (Specific, Measureable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-phased) is not the stuff of which great goals are based. You can also dispense with BHAGs (Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals) made famous by Jim Collins. Nope, the only way to achieve greatness is to pay your $5000, and lose a weekend of your time.

I’m thinking about advertising on the same forum a one-hour seminar on how to avoid rip-offs, but only charging $2500. I would assume I would be marketing to the same clientele.

Don’t get me wrong – I think goals are important. However, I don’t believe their commodification is necessary. You can write your goals in whatever format you wish on the back of a napkin, and get everything out of it your would by paying your $5000. The reason most goals fail to be achieved is because people lack the discipline to follow up on their goals – not because of how they are written.

I do believe everyone should have goals, and I do believe you should write them down. The SMART acronym can help you write higher quality goals, and Jim Collin’s idea of BHAGs can help you to write something inspired. If you don’t buy into either of these, write them as you see fit – just write them.

Changing Corporate Culture — the show about nothing

In January of 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded on take-off killing all seven crew, and grounding the American space program for two years. Of the exhaustive investigations that took place (that led to a significant number of changes for NASA, and how they conducted their business), perhaps the most important change was that for the first time, talking about changing corporate culture was fair game.

The engineers and investigators determined the technical causes of the explosion, but when they dug deeper to understand why those technical issues were not addressed in advance, they ended up in the uncomfortable place of changing corporate culture. It turns out NASA had a culture whereby many qualified people knew there was a significant risk of disaster, but none chose to voice those concerns, even if they would have been listened to.

I call this an “uncomfortable” conclusion because highly technical people in any organization want to discuss things they can see, touch and/or count. Changing corporate culture is something that nebulous and messy. It’s difficult to define, impossible to measure, and probably the most important element of performance in an organization — as NASA found out the hard way.

So how do you go about changing corporate culture?

You don’t.

Much like Jerry Seinfeld dominated television with a show about nothing, organizations need to get about doing what they do. I was recently in the NBC store in New York, more than a decade after Seinfeld left the air, and discovered that a significant portion of the wares were dedicated to Seinfeld’s “nothing”. The Soup Nazi, Vandalay Industries, and Kramer’s hair all testify to the enduring quality of Seinfeld’s “nothing”.

Changing corporate culture is a lot like the show about nothing. What people do, how they interact with each other, how they manage conflict, what gets rewarded, who gets promoted, how success is measured and a score of other things all add up to your corporate culture.

The silliest thing you can do is to declare a change in corporate culture to some virtue you read about at some other company. The culture you have now is a product of the things above. If you want to change your corporate culture, you need to address those things.

And don’t think it will happen in a hurry. It will be a decade more before Seinfeld is replaced at the NBC store.

A Guide to Ace Your Annual Performance Review

In many organizations, Annual Performance Reviews are about as popular as Ike at the Tina Turner Fan Club meeting. They are done sporadically, if at all, and they typically have very little impact on organizational performance.

The last big multi-national corporate organization I worked for as an employee had a fascinating “system” for the annual performance review. I would suggest it’s very typical to what is seen in other companies, so in the interests of demystifying the whole process, here is a list of definitions and translations to sort out some of the vernacular that accompanies the annual performance review:

Annual: In the case of the annual performance review, “annual” means maybe once every 18 to 24 months, or maybe never at all.

Performance Review Meeting: This is where both manager and employee avoid eye contact and share some awkward small talk before the boss launches into his/her diatribe of the last year in review. Similar to a bad sitcom in format.

Coaching: This is the organizational equivalent of Batman. You might see it late at night after a signal (usually a corporate memo) has been flashed, but if you see it at all, it will be in a poor light, and you’ll never be sure if it happened or not.

Developmental Opportunities: These are the things you will get fired for, if you don’t fix them. If there were no employment laws, they would revert to what they used to be called: threats.

Pay for Performance: Managers who get along well with people, take the amount of discretionary salary dollars they have, and divide by the number of direct reports they have. Managers who don’t care how well they get along with people give it to the people they like the most. In the rarest of cases, there is a good measurement system in place that everyone understands, and it truly is pay for performance. It is about as common as spotting a unicorn at the fall carnival.

Performance Appraisal Documents: This is a template that bears little resemblance to your actual job, written by someone in HR who has never worked in the core business.

Performance Review Meeting Preparation: This describes the immediate 30 seconds prior to the meeting starting

The Sandwich Method of Feedback: This is where poorly trained managers slip some “constructive” feedback in between two compliments. For example, “Nice shoes; you’ve got some significant improvement to make on your analytical skills, but I like your socks. Also known as the “Sh*t Filled Twinkie” method.

Performance Management Philosophy: This is the same affliction that causes writers of annual reports to declare, “Employees are our most important asset” without the implied disclaimer, “unless they cost us money, or otherwise inconvenience us.”

Seek the Employees View: This is the final 30 seconds of the meeting where the employee is expected to thank the supervisor for the constructive feedback, and declare his/her intentions to act on it. Only trouble-makers would disagree with the feedback. Under no circumstances should an employee ever speak his mind here.

I hope this translation helps. For ideas on how to cope with, and ultimately succeed at your Annual Performance Review, download this week’s podcast.

Avoid Procrastination — and Coffee Shops

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 spent 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.

On this week’s podcast, Jed and I talk about why you might find yourself procrastinating, and what you might do about it. Here’s a hint: Nike had it right – Just Do It.

I’ve also pasted in a video clip below that’s a bit longer than normal. It will be perfect if you’re putting something off, and you want a 3-minute reprieve from actually doing something. We know we have a loyal following at Wily Manager, and if we can’t help you with your challenges, we’d like to enable you having fun while you wallow in them.

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

Bad Bosses? Not to criticize, but you’re stupid!

Larry was my boss back when I had a real job – the kind of job where you show up every day (in body, at least), work as part of a cog in a huge corporate wheel, and try to attach meaning to mundane tasks.

The world was black and white for Larry: if he thought you were a hard worker, he could be charming and funny. If he didn’t like the way you worked, your life at work quickly descended into a living hell. In the core skills and talents of the business we were in, there was probably no one stronger than Larry.

Larry did many things right as a leader; he was not burdened by the need to have people like him, he got lots done, he was an excellent teacher, and he consistently produced the desired results.

As you can imagine, he also did a number of things wrong. His treatment of people he didn’t like would clearly fall under the definition of harassment if it happened today. I still remember the day when he repeatedly shouted at one of his direct reports (in front of many others), “You’re stupid! You’re a stupid, stupid man!”

No one knows how many potentially good people he chased out of the business because his first impression of them wasn’t good. And his volatile demeanor often took a minor incident and exaggerated it into a major crisis that required more time and energy by all involved to finally get resolved.

The company did invest in Larry by sending him off to corporate charm school, where he learned to soften his feedback:

“Not to criticize, but you’re stupid”

When I went on to leadership roles, Larry was a role model for me – both for what he did well, and by serving as a warning beacon for things he didn’t get right. Here are some lessons I learned from Larry, that still guide me today:

If you want a lot of friends, or have a high need for the approval of others, you need to stay in an individual contributor’s role.
You always need to treat people with respect. It doesn’t mean, however, that you don’t hold them accountable.
You need to be absolutely clear about your expectations, and then dole out both positive and negative consequences when things go right/wrong. Leaders who think they can over-acknowledge good performance, and not deal with poor performance, are weak and will fail.
What you do is far more powerful than what you say.
Leadership is hard work

Larry retired many years ago, yet his impact on me (and a great many others) is still felt. I’m sure if I asked Larry, he would have absolutely no idea how profound his influence was on me or anyone else.

So one final lesson from Larry: As a leader, you have a significant impact on people’s lives… perhaps for decades to come.

The Power of Persuasion — How Great Ideas Die

“Selling” is not a bad word – it is an essential business skill. It’s easy to see how some people would think that influencing others is somehow underhanded or unethical:

“Yep… this one’s got really low miles. Only driven to church on Sunday by a little old lady from Pasadena”

In reality, many great ideas die an agonizing death because they have not been properly sold. There also seems to be an inverse correlation between our technical ability, and our willingness to sell. In other words, probably the more technically skilled you are in your area, the less likely you are to want to sell your idea. (With all due respect to the Engineers out there.)

Here’s an ugly truth: marketing is everything. Think of the examples in consumer goods:

8-tracks were far superior in quality to cassettes or records.
BetaMax was most certainly better than VHS
Apple’s Mac has long been superior to any PC.

So if these are any indication, great products and great ideas require great marketing if they are to be adopted.

So what do you do?

First – you have to value the idea of selling your ideas. You need to tell a story about how your idea is going to enhance pleasure, or reduce pain.

Second – Put together a marketing plan. Depending on what you’re doing, it might only be half a page long, but have some idea about what story you are going to tell, to whom, and via what media.

Third – Check out our podcast this week to hear more about Influencing Others

Finally – remember that we are all “in sales”. If you live in a society of more than one person, you will be constantly trying to lobby people to your way of thinking about one thing or another. The sooner we all get comfortable with this reality, the sooner the good ideas will at least seem to “sell themselves”.