Blog — Page 21

Your Smart Phone Could Get You Fired

There’s lots of media coverage this week of smart phones – iPhone for the continuing saga of the iPhone 4, and Blackberry for the UAE’s refusal to use them based on security concerns.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should come-clean now on the fact that I came late to the smart phone party. I had a perfectly good cell phone, and no one was able to convince me that a smart phone would make my life any easier. In fact – quite the opposite:

“You need a smart phone so you can get your email anywhere, and always be connected. The only thing I don’t like is that my phone reception is not very good.”

Sorry – that’s at least two strikes against the smart phone

1) I don’t want to always be connected. In fact I look to actively be disconnected

2) Why would I buy a phone with the limiting function being the telephone itself? It might make a mean frappuccino, but I would prefer it to make phone calls.

I finally relented and bought an iPhone because it effectively condensed four devices I regularly carried on business trips into one (phone, iPod, Palm Pilot & GPS). The bonus feature was that as a middle-aged white guy, I instantly felt cooler with a gadget from Apple.

So once I had the new smart phone was I perpetually connected, as I feared? No.

Not because the technology limited me in any way from staying connected, but because I often either ignored it or turned it off. I am able to do so because I’m not part of a big corporate food-chain where I would be lead to believe that my very existence on the planet is contingent upon me being absolutely indispensible to my employer.

As a contractor of services, I am generally exempt from things like anxiety about job security (because I don’t have any). But it got me thinking about why people feel they need to be connected all the time. It is nothing more than illusions of grandeur if you think that no one else can do what you do. If you are one of the few that has made yourself indispensible then your business is not sustainable, and we should probably fire you anyway.

Either way, if you’re one of those managers that is constantly connected to your workplace, you should work to wean yourself off this addiction. Work, like all other recreational drugs, should be used only in moderation.

Selecting Managers

Some kids grow up wanting to be a fire-fighter, a police officer, teacher or doctor. I wanted to be Mr. Rogers. No eight-year-old will tell you she wants to be a manager when she grows up (and if she does, get her into therapy top speed). Yet there are more managers than there are fire-fighters, police officers, teachers and doctors combined by a factor of ten or more.

So how does this happen?

If management were a profession like others, someone would go to school to study the vocation of management, apprentice for some period of time, and then be deemed fully capable of executing as a manager. MBA schools have failed to do this effectively, and the vast majority of companies develop their managers in a haphazard fashion.

Most people end up as managers by going into to some line of work for which they show some aptitude, and then are promoted to oversee others doing similar work. Somewhere along the line, they might take a course or two, and some companies may even send their high potential new managers to business school.

Most organizations make the critical mistake of assuming that because someone is a proficient practitioner of a certain trade that she will be a good manager. Organizations need to change their focus away from the technical aspects of a particular function (or group of functions), and instead focus on what skills a manager will need to be successful in that environment.

If more than half that list of competencies is focused on technical aspects of the industry or job, then it has been done wrong.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not a big fan of pulling people with no industry experience, and placing them in key management positions. I don’t think this approach has worked very often. If organizations are serious about having great management, then they need to select people for management positions with the core competencies required to manage in that environment, and then continually develop them.

Either that, or select tall guys with brown hair, who wear blue shirts. That works too.

Summer and Pretending to Work

One of my favourite work assignments was a project based in Philadelphia that was a joint venture between an American Company and a British one. One would think the similarities between these two countries would keep cross-cultural issues to a minimum, but as anyone who has worked in both countries will tell you, the differences are more than merely adjusting to funny accents.

One of the first wrinkles that needed to ironed out was the fact that Americans take about 3 weeks vacation a year in increments of no longer than 5 days, and their British counterparts have two or three times that holiday entitlement.

While the Brits would jet off to Southern Europe for 3 weeks at a time during the summer, the Americans would be at the office working the same excessive hours as always. Interestingly, the productivity of the two groups was about the same.

This got me to thinking about how we work in North America, and how much of the time we are pretending to work. Lots of people will take offence to the notion that they are not really working, but in reality the bulk of the work at many organizations takes place in just a few weeks per year.

January through May are good production months, except for a few days around Easter and Spring Break. June through August, many people are not at work at all, and those that are working show up, but really have one eye to the outdoors and their next BBQ. September and October are usually about budgeting and planning, and while some will argue they are critical to the business, it distracts from the actual running of the business, and often adds far less value than it costs in time and effort. Finally November and December work gets done, but with the distractions of Christmas and (for the Americans) Thanksgiving.

So as a manager, how do you reconcile that the few people that do show up in July and August are probably just pretending to work? You don’t. It’s part of the deal, and most organizations don’t fall apart as a result. The real question to ask is whether the work being done the rest of the year, when the entire staff complement is in place and working at capacity has any value.

Anyway, I better take a quick lap around the office floor (holding a piece of paper, and walking quickly) so as to maintain the appearance of work, before someone figures out I’m part of the masses pretending to work during the summer months.

Why the FIFA World Cup Doesn’t Matter

In most corners of the world, South Africa is currently the center of the universe, and bars and restaurants on six continents (and perhaps a research station on the seventh), are packed with crazed fans cheering for the team or nation of their choice. Even in North America, where Football (not Gridiron) rarely attracts any attention, people are paying attention to the World Cup.

Some time in July, there will be a new world Football champion, and the sport will then fade into relative obscurity for the next four years. This is because Soccer doesn’t matter… at least to people in the United States. The Canadians have a marginally more international view of the world, but they are largely stuck with the baggage their big-brother to the South leaves them with.

Business in North America is largely conducted the same way. It stands to reason that when the world’s largest single economy by a wide margin is located on the North American continent that people would not be compelled to look beyond their own neighborhood.

However, the times are changing. Much like the disintegration of the Roman Empire, the economic dispersion precedes the rest of the empire, and businesses in North America would be well advised to look abroad – not only for market opportunities, but for management help as well.

This may seem like heresy to many Americans and Canadians, but there are European, Asian, and South American organizations that are exceptionally well run – they may even do some things better than their North American peers.

Health care industries are an excellent example. Both the United States and Canada have incredibly dysfunctional health care systems. If you don’t believe me, look at any global ranking, and see where these two countries place. In most northern European countries all their citizens have access to care (unlike the United States), and they have a mixture of public and private care that ensures the rationing of care is kept to a minimum (unlike Canada).

If Governments and businesses in North America could see past their own myopia to other parts of the world, a great number of business and social problems could be addressed.

Tell me I’m wrong….

Airport Security Screening and Employee Performance

Something happens in an airport or on an airplane every few months that makes us collectively lose our minds. In the past year, restrictions have been put on air travelers that are only slightly less obtrusive than being bound in straight-jacket while in transit.

At any given time there are literally hundreds of thousands of people in the air. Of all of those people, some tiny fraction of one percent want to do harm. Regardless of how small that deviant population is, all air travelers are subject to slow, invasive, and somewhat ineffective security measures.

Many workplaces manage their employees the same way. They put restrictive policies in place to thwart the occasional employee that may abuse a corporate directive. One example was a client of ours who had a proposal to put people on a per diem expense when they were travelling, and thus eliminating the need for the collection and auditing of hundreds of $10 lunch receipts.

Ultimately the proposal was turned down because there was some history of one or two employees abusing their expense accounts. Rather than properly discipline the offending employees, it was decided to stack policy on top of policy to eliminate any chance anyone could abuse their expense account.

In the process, they created an abundance of unnecessary work for countless employees, cost the shareholders more in compliance-related costs, damaged any atmosphere of trust in the organization, and ultimately didn’t stop dishonest employees from taking advantage of the situation. Not a very smart decision.

In the airports, we don’t have much choice; in the workplace we do. Managers need to be accountable for managing. If an employee behaves poorly, then address the behavior – don’t write a policy. In the example above, the offending employees should have been fired. They then could have instituted an expense allowance that is easier to administer and saves everyone time and money.

I can already hear the HR and Finance people objecting, but at some point pragmatic common sense must prevail.

Number One Rule of Leadership: Everything is Your Fault

Poor Tony Hayward – he just wants his life back. OK – that’s officially the stupidest comment of the year, but he’s apologized now, so it should all be OK. Like most important life-lessons (whether it be business or personal), the fundamentals were taught to us in Kindergarten, we’ve just chosen to forget, or not apply them.

I was watching Disney/Pixar’s A Bug’s Life with my son the other day, when Hopper (the chief antagonist, and all-around bad ass) reminded Princess Atta that the number one rule of leadership is that “Everything is Your Fault”. Apparently Mr. Hayward hasn’t watched any children’s programming lately, or he might have gotten some of this right.

If it’s any consolation, BP is not the only company to have reacted to a bad situation by making it exponentially worse. Just a few months ago, we were watching Toyota come unglued like an Egyptian mummy in a swimming pool. It seems that every organization to have screwed up (or just had plain bad luck) seems to go into ass-covering mode with the exception of Tylenol in the 1980s, and Maple Leaf foods just two years ago.

The big difference: both the Tylenol and Maple Leaf disasters killed people, but instead of hiding behind their lawyers, the leaders of these companies made themselves front and centre, and took responsibility for the (in)actions of their organizations.

So what can the middle manager or front level supervisor learn from all the silliness?

First… go rent A Bug’s Life, and listen to Kevin Spacey’s line about leadership responsibility over and over again. When you think you’ve learned it, go listen to it a bunch more times so that when the excrement hits the rotating air-circulation device, you won’t try to cover your ass, but rather step up and take your lumps.

Second… manage your little empire proactively. In areas that could get you into big trouble (health & safety, violence in the workplace, harassment, discrimination, etc.) don’t ever settle for less than outstanding performance. Executives at BP will not only oversee the loss of billions of dollars/pounds of shareholder value, but they may be held personally liable for sloppy process. It’s not out of the question that one or more of them end up in jail/gaol.

Third… understand that taking responsibility is the burden of leadership. This is what we pay you to do. It’s what you signed up for in the first place. If you’re unable to get your head around this, you should get yourself reassigned as an individual contributor. Yep… that right: If you “want your life back”, you should think about that before disaster strikes.

Why Command and Control is Underrated

It seems to me that Command and Control as a management style has gotten a bum rap. You’ve heard the disparaging remarks, “She’s a complete command and control style manager” – implying there is something wrong with that.

I think such comments display a startling lack of understanding of what leaders are required to do in organizations. Command and control is a very useful managerial tool for certain situations.

People love to use fire-fighting as an analogy to describe modern management practice. I would challenge anyone to go find himself a Fire Chief and ask him/her if command and control is a bad idea.

When a building is burning and lives are at stake, the Fire Chief very much relies on command and control as the appropriate management tool for that situation. Can you imagine the fire department showing up at an emergency, and the Fire Chief requesting that everyone break up in study groups, to hold hands and sing camp songs?

“OK – everyone brainstorm ideas for how we should tackle this, and I’ll give a special prize to the group that comes up with the best idea. Make sure everyone participates equally, and remember that everyone’s feedback is valuable. This is an excellent opportunity to reinforce how much we value each other, and I’ll float between the groups to help facilitate.”

Glad it’s not my house on fire. I want the Fire Chief standing on top of chair barking out orders as fast as she can to get the situation under control. I also want the Firefighters to listen carefully to the orders being dispatched, and execute as they’re being instructed to do.

When they are back at the Firehall, and practicing for such emergencies, or doing community outreach, then the Fire Chief would be well advised to pull a different tool out of his box, and to engage his people in a more collaborative style.

The problem for people that disparage command and control is that they confuse this very important managerial style with a lack of respect. Lack of respect is never appropriate, but many times it is a leaders job to tell her direct reports in no uncertain terms what they are required to do. Setting clear expectations, holding people to account for those expectations, and administering the appropriate consequences are what we pay managers to do.

Command and control is one legitimate tool to get this done.

Tell me your experiences – both good and bad – with command and control as a management style.

Why Your HR Department Probably Sucks

So… following a title like the above, I should probably fully disclose before going any further: I have worked in HR, and have done a fair bit of consulting work with HR Business Areas.

Unlike the title may imply, I have met a number of smart, hardworking people in HR. Like any other category of people, there are good, bad and ugly performers in HR.

So why would I suggest that HR probably sucks in your organization?

In many cases, it is because organizations don’t really know what it is that they should be asking HR to do for them, and HR professionals are notoriously poor at “selling” their wares. Many companies want HR to administer the payroll, and arrange the Christmas party. They then staff the HR group with people who are capable of doing those tasks, but do not have the experience or training to make a more strategic contribution to the business.

So, what should we look for in our HR department?

“People Persons” are often the last people you should have in HR. A good HR person knows that her job is to generate returns for shareholders. The respectful treatment of people is a prerequisite to consistently generating those returns, but many “people persons” forget that some of their people may regularly need a kick in the ass.
Your HR people need to have business training. I’m not suggesting you insist every one of them go out and get an MBA, but they need to have some understanding of the business you are in, and how it works.
You need high potential, high achievers in HR. I have worked with more than one organization that has used HR as a ghetto for people who could not make it in the operating part of the business. These organizations have taken the easy way out, and put these poor performers where they perceive they can do the least amount of damage – in HR. This is the opposite of what should be happening – your highest potential leaders should be cycled through HR.
HR people need have well developed skills in sales and influencing. The best managed companies know that the management of the Human Resource is NOT the responsibility of HR, but rather of every leader in the organization. HR’s job is to influence those managers to do it well. An HR professional, without the ability to influence organizational leaders is about as useful as a chocolate teapot.

Of course, I could go on and on, but I better get back to work before I get caught, and someone wants to send me to work in the HR group. So now that I’ve offended every person who has ever known anyone in HR, I’d love to hear what you think about the HR group in your organization: Are they good? Are they bad? Are they the highest potential employees?

It has been said that populations get the governments they deserve. In organizations, we end up with the HR departments we deserve.

High Potential Leadership – Accelerated Development Programs

So it’s time to select who will participate in your Accelerated Development Program and your thinking about your team and who might be the best of the best to put forward, who deserves the opportunity. You start looking through your teams performance reviews and 360 results, you start planning for the talent review meetings … HOLD ON! I love the enthusiasm you have for developing people but I need to ask you to back it up.

Contrary to common practice, do not start with a process aimed at identifying the high potential talent in your organization. Start by determining the leadership requirements that exist for the organization; start with the identifying your Business Requirements.

What competencies (knowledge, skills, abilities and behaviors) are going to be required in order to successfully execute your strategy over the next 3–5 years?
Where is your bench weaker/stronger?
Where is the company growth going to come from that will require new leadership?
Where are the likely future vacancies going to be?

When you are considering who will be selected to participate in your Accelerated Development Program ….. start with an organizational assessment rather than a talent assessment.

If you’re like most companies there is a limited amount of resources of time and money that you can spend on Accelerated Development Programs. In a larger organization leveraging traditional identification process will still likely lead to a large number of candidates who are labeled as High Potential. Don’t misunderstand, everyone should have development plans and be supported in their development, however the truth of the matter is that organizations should be proactive in allocating additional development resources against those individuals who are most likely to meet the leadership requirements of the organization. You need to make sure you are getting the biggest benefit from your development efforts.

Leverage your organizational analysis in determining some of the criteria for selection. If your bench strength is weak in the sales department and really strong in operations then concentrate your selection to the program by choosing individuals interested in building a career in sales. YES, even at the expense of not including a high potential individual from Operations. If your business requirements for leadership are heavily weighted in a specific geography you may consider not including some individuals that have indicate that they are not willing to relocate, in favour of some who are. The goal of accelerated development programs is to accelerate the development of selected individuals to meet the needs of the business. Don’t invest more money and time where it’s not needed at the expense of where it is needed.

What Toyota can learn from OJ and Barack Obama

There hasn’t been a fall from grace like this since the OJ trial. Ok… maybe this recent Tiger Woods thing, or the fact that people set the expectations for Barack Obama way too high could be close seconds, but the fact that Toyota isn’t absolutely perfect seems to be disturbing a lot of people.

Toyota is a well run company – despite their recent setbacks. What separates well run organizations from those not so well run is the ability to respond to challenges, not the absence of any troubles.

I have no doubt the marketing people at Toyota are freaking out, but they do have some credibility they can spend on this issue. What they shouldn’t do, is announce to the world there isn’t really a problem, and carry on with business as usual. This is the corporate equivalent of OJ going out on his own to look for the “real” killer.

Toyota needs to step-up, acknowledge what went wrong, tell everyone how they intend to fix it, and then get back to completely dominating the global automobile industry. Too much spin, and they’ll lose even more credibility.

And while we’re talking about supposedly world class companies, can we have a reality check? I have studied and held up organizations like Southwest Airlines, General Electric, and Disney myself as examples for managers to look to. In many cases I would stand by this advice. However, we need to realize that even the best run entities are not going to do everything right all the time. In fact, it is probably closer to the truth that these companies really only do things right marginally more than every other organization out there.

Don’t get me wrong… much like I find President Obama to be an impressive guy, watching people’s unrealistic expectations of him be constantly deflated, people need to look to the Toyotas of the world in the proper context. They are not perfect, and they will make mistakes. They also can’t be all things to all people.

I bought Southwest Airlines stock about 8 years ago, because they were such an impressive company. So impressive, that I would lose my shirt if I sold those same stocks today. I also bought Southwest stock before ever flying with them. I have no doubt they serve their niche well – I’m just clearly not one of their target customers: “What do you mean you won’t assign me a seat?”

Leaders in big organizations and small should watch Toyota very carefully in the coming weeks and months. They will either come through this stronger than ever, or crash and burn horribly. Either way it will be instructive.

How do you think this will end? Will Toyota recover like Tylenol did after the poisonings, or will Mr. Toyota end up driving down an LA freeway with a gun to his head?