Avoiding Another Dumb Management Mania-The Disposable Worker

January 20, 2010 By 9 Comments

Don't Fall Off the CliffNote from Art: my rant is dedicated to helping keep what is in some circumstances a reasonable business tactic from becoming the latest value-destroying mania.

I wrote last week on “Thoughts on Leading and Managing in the Era of the Disposable Worker.” The post was prompted by an article in BusinessWeek, outlining this latest gem of management wisdom that has organizations of all types rethinking the need for employees and shifting to contract workers.   Positions from the CEO suite to those types of roles that we’ve become accustomed to outsourcing, and everything in-between, are fair game.

I’m traditionally leery of fads of all sorts, as they tend to be driven by hysteria, causing normally sane and rational people to act in a manner that defies explanation. I’m fearful that we are on the brink of another horrendous, value-destroying mania as we embrace the short-term cost convenient fad of creating disposable workers.

A Few Examples of Manias Gone Horribly Wrong:

It wasn’t’ so long ago, that almost everyone wondered for just a moment whether the laws of economics had been suspended as the internet gold rush began. Those of us on the sidelines were left to wonder why we weren’t as smart as everyone else and still valued profits over clicks and eyeballs.  For a short period of time, our world was one where gobs of money flowed to people with ideas that included losing all of it and then some, and market valuations for firms without a single customer exploded from here to Jupiter.  Anyone that dared to question this environment ended up running away from a bunch of options-toting visionaries lest they be trampled in the stampede of outrage. How dare we not understand that clicks and eyeballs were the new replacement for profits and that anyone that could throw around the phrase “data aggregation” was worth funding.

Eventually, the laws of physics and economics reasserted themselves, the dot come bubble burst and we spent a decade creating a new mania in the housing market.  Once again, the rules of common sense and gravity won out, yet tens of millions of normally rational people succumbed to the mania and many have lost much more than paper options.

As a wise teacher once indicated, “There is no such thing as a money machine.”

Opinions, Thoughts and Irreverent Observations on this Potential Next Mania:

All of this brings me back to the latest rage of firing your employees and hiring contract workers to staff your business.  For those of you new Management Messiahs that are leading the charge here, I have a few questions, observations and answers for you:

  • Opinion: Turn core, value-creating roles into contract workers, and you will be selling your soul to pay the number crunchers and analysts.
  • Opinion: You cannot sustain any form of business performance excellence with a transient workforce.
  • Question: How will you replace that invisible but palpable thing called culture and how will you build a high performance culture around nameless, faceless drones?
  • Observation: Once your competitors identify all of the talent that you’ve alienated, it will be open hunting season and you’re what’s for dinner.
  • Observation: your global competitors are not foregoing their futures by emphasizing the numbers in the present.  A short-term time orientation is a powerful dimension of U.S. business culture and thinking, and it is a weakness.
  • Question and Name Calling: Why is this your BEST answer for competing?  Is that all you’ve got?
  • Double-Dog Dare: Study firms that have made a near religion out of valuing the employee.  Start with SAS Institute.  There is another way if you have the courage.
  • You’ve Been Served: in case “maximizing shareholder value” is driving your decisions, consider Drucker’s rebuke of that modern rationalization for the organization: “the purpose of the firm is to acquire and keep customers.”

The Bottom-Line for Now:

The future of business and any company and perhaps of America is based on finding, cultivating and keeping the best talent.  There are no circumstances that I can imagine where shifting core value creation roles to contract workforces will help you succeed in this increasingly complex world.  Resist the urge to follow the herd and challenge yourself and your team to focus on solving vexing customer problems and building value in meaningful ways.

Filed Under: Crisis Leadership, Performance Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Mid-Career Professional-It's Time to Push Out of Your Technology Comfort Zone

January 18, 2010 By 2 Comments

Help!It’s easy to step out of sync with the modern world and find yourself lost in a sea of terms, tools and technologies that are foreign and even intimidating.

I’m working with more and more mid-life individuals interested in reinventing themselves in new careers, and I’m finding that a fair number of them are wholly unaware of or just plain frightened of the ever-increasing array of tools and media for networking, communicating, learning and collaborating.

I empathize with these individuals a great deal.  If you’ve been laboring somewhere in mid-management for the past few years and you’ve become accustomed to the tools of your job, chances are you’ve not been pushed to understand and embrace the new methods for connecting and communicating.

You’re to be excused for the moment if you find Twitter silly.  After all, who wants to know what you’ve had for dinner.  And what’s the big deal with blogging?  I hear you when you are quick to indicate that no one cares what you have to say.  And why would you share your Rolodex of contacts with the world on something like LinkedIn?

Yes, I empathize with you, and now you must get to work!

WAKE UP!

In this most competitive of all environments, it is easy to become technology road kill somewhere on your journey to oblivion. Everything about this world is different now as compared to when you graduated college.  If your degree date doesn’t have a 2 as the first digit, chances are you are technologically obsolete.

While I am by no means a technology whiz kid, as a 48 year-old professional, I’ve forced myself to learn a host of technologies that I now incorporate in my practice everyday.  Two years ago, I wondered what blogging was all about, and I’ve been thrilled to reach thousands daily at my Management Excellence blog.

Two years ago I wondered how anyone could have a good education experience in an on-line setting.  I’ve now taught on-line courses at the MBA and undergraduate levels and recently launched this site and business, Building Better Leaders, to offer on-line professional skills development blended with personalized mentoring.

I’ve met some of the greatest professionals of my career via blogging and twitter, and I’ve learned that the old world of marketing along with old style marketers now belong to the ages.

If I can manage a good part of my professional life from my iPhone and engage thousands daily via a variety of social networking tools, you can certainly bring your skills and knowledge up to speed.

Some Guidance on Joining the Modern Era

  • Find some favorite blogs and discover RSS and feed readers. Don’t know where to look for a blog?  Visit Alltop.com and Guy Kawasaki will help you.
  • Got something to say?  Sign up for a free wordpress or blogger blog and experiment.
  • Get a twitter account, but don’t sign up and then do nothing. You have to build a profile, seek out people that share your interests and engage them in discussion.  I know people that signed up and then gave up because nothing happened.  Of course, they didn’t put anything into making something happen and the outcome was predictable.
  • Build a professional profile on LinkedIn and help past colleagues and customers find you.  Learn how to use the power of LinkedIn for professional networking and brand building.  Again, you have to provide input to get output.
  • Sign up for an on-line course and learn how to use the tools of a Learning Management System and the benefits of adding the vast resources of the web in real time to the learning experience.
  • Sign up for a Building Better Leaders course and discover the power of on-line learning plus professional mentoring! (Shameless plug, but it’s true!)
  • Buy and use a PDA or mobile phone with the ability to access the internet and to take advantage of applications.  Hint: they’re not just phones anymore.  They are pocket computers.
  • Buy a Mac and discover how enjoyable and powerful and stress free the digital experience truly is.

The Bottom Line for Now

If you are fearful, take baby steps on the above and build your confidence.  Beware of the potential for the wrong technical activities to suck you into the black hole where time moves on but you don’t. Focus on gaining new skills to help advance your education, build your brand or network your way into a new job. And in the process, you’ll enjoy almost catching up to your kids!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , ,

Leadership Caffeine-Improving Your Leadership Effectiveness on the Fly

January 18, 2010 By 11 Comments

A Cup of Leadership CaffeineIt probably comes as no surprise that the primary excuse that many leaders cite for not focusing on important priorities like coaching, feedback and development is, “ lack of time.”

I’ve heard this “excuse” over and over again in workshops and mentoring sessions. And while there’s little argument over the importance of engaging in these and other positive leadership behaviors, many individuals shrug their shoulders, admit guilt, express frustration over their inability to carve out time and cite administrative, transactional and span of control issues as impediments.

I’ve attacked this from a number of approaches ranging from preaching the virtues of getting this right (I gain agreement but little behavior modification) to various approaches including re-orienting calendars, rethinking attendance at many meetings and taking advantage of lunch, opportunities to grab coffee, early mornings etc.  Many have reported achieving some progress by reorienting their priorities, but almost all indicate a desire to do more.

What’s a harried, over-worked, time-stressed leader to do?

6 Ideas for Improving Your Leadership Effectiveness On the Fly:

We all have a finite number of minutes in our lives and days and while one important approach to consistently improving performance is to carefully select the use of those minutes (meetings, meeting length, downtime, task priorities), another is to find the way to use every minute more effectively. While the description here may sound subtle, the impact can be profound.

1. Prepare your attitude to be a real-time leader. Walk in the door intent ready to solve issues and create value for your team members on the fly.  This is a very different attitude than walking in the door, strapping ourselves into our seats and firing up our calendars and then navigating the day according to other people’s priorities.

2. Don’t bank (save up) feedback-spend your feedback in real-time. A thoughtful, behavioral sidebar after a meeting or instant guidance in a one-on-one setting makes great use of your contact time.

3. Respond to “can we meet?” questions with, “Can I help you now?” answers. For some reason, many employees feel compelled to meet as part of their attempt to gain support, persuade or highlight a vexing issue.  A manager’s tendency to say “sure,” and then pull up the calendar forestalls an opportunity and reduces effectiveness.

4. Use my “3 Key Questions” early and often.  What’s working? What’s not? What do you need from me to help you make it work?  Then do it.

5. Teach your team to focus on the core. Structure your communication activities with your team members (groups and individuals) to constantly emphasize business priorities and to encourage people to “just say no” to issues that are not core to achieving priorities.  Of course, you should create mechanisms to capture feedback, gauge performance, identify and communicate lessons learned and capture innovative ideas.  Nonetheless, emphasize focus on the core.

6. Teach and delegate decision-making. I’ve written on this extensively, and an effective decision-making culture that facilitates making the calls close to the action is critical for improving real time performance.  One of your best responses in this process to inquiries on “What to do?,” is, “What do you think you should do?”

The Bottom-Line for Now:

While I am always reluctant to encourage a transactional culture, if the quality of the transactions improves, you are doing your job.  This approach to “leading in the moment” doesn’t preclude the need to find deep-thinking, big-picture group and one-on-one time, but it does challenge YOU to be more efficient every possible minute.

There’s little chance we’ll find more hours in a day, but you absolutely have the ability to make each and every minute count just a bit more.

Filed Under: "To Do" List, Leadership, Leadership Caffeine, Performance, Professional Growth

Leading the Driven Individual

January 15, 2010 By 10 Comments

The Driven Individual's DestinationNote from Art: My use of the “Driven Individual” term here encompasses the big-thinkers and game changers that I’ve had the privilege of supporting over my career.  I get that there are other types of Driven Individuals…those that will seize a task and not let go until it has been wrestled to the ground.  The latter group represents a subject for another day.

A great deal of popular leadership writing (mine included) focuses on the common issues and challenges with “typical employees.” Now before you grab a pitchfork and light the torches and start marching on this blog for my use of the term “typical,” don’t misconstrue my meaning.

Yes, I know that no one is “typical” and that we all have strengths and weaknesses and that it is grossly unfair to provide such a crass label to the masses of good quality employees laboring away and earning “strongly exceeds” on our grade-inflated performance evaluations.  (I can hear the pitchforks clanking again on that last shot!)

Nonetheless, it was the best label I could come up with on short notice and only a few sips into my first cup of coffee, to differentiate from the subject of today’s post: The Driven Individual (DI). This is the “atypical, super-motivated, cannot do enough, has limitless energy and enthusiasm and offers capabilities that have no visible boundaries,” type of employee.

While one might consider the DI to be a leader’s dream, the reality is that these wonderful individuals offer a unique set of challenges that require special care and feeding. My perspectives are based on personal experience working with some brilliant but challenging DI’s and reflect both the good outcomes and some spectacular misfires on my part.

Understanding and Leading the Driven Individual:

Recognize that these individuals don’t think about problems like the rest of us.  What we view as a set of tasks or a discrete goal, the DI views as an opportunity to change the world.  DI’s in my experience are often “systems” thinkers, looking at the big picture and offering ideas that may be transformational.

A simple example might be an engineer or product manager that sees an opening for a new product.  The product idea might be innovative, but the DI is constitutionally and genetically wired to attempt to rethink how the offering can redistribute the wealth of an entire industry. The iPod was a cool innovation beyond the Walkman.  The iPod plus iTunes reset the profit pattern of an entire market and changed the world.  You bet that there were a bunch of DI’s and one obvious one (Steve Jobs) behind that.

Another example is the individual that looks at the way certain tasks are executed in an organization and sees an opportunity to streamline, eliminate waste and improve coordination.  This Deming-like thinker gets the fact that “the system” is the tool for success of failure and is always looking at problems and processes from that perspective.

And one other core observation of my own in working around DI’s is their reaction to failure. I’ve yet to meet one of these characters that didn’t respond by licking wounds for a day or so and then coming back stronger…either for the project that failed or on a new idea.  They don’t need false motivation from you, they need recovery time and space.

Leadership Guidance

-Let DI’s run, but make certain that you stay engaged enough to keep them from pursuing too many revolutionary activities at one time. Some of these characters love to catalyze revolutions but lose interest for the long fight.  Left unchecked, their passion and exuberance and brilliance can lead to too many great projects chasing too few resources.

-Don’t ask the types of DIs that I’m describing in this post serve as project managers. I’ve made this mistake and I’ve yet to succeed with this configuration. The minutiae of execution detail acts like a leash on creativity and energy.  On the other hand, this same DI that might not be a great project leader is most definitely the heart and soul of the project, so they must remain involved as architect, champion and visionary.

-Don’t ever micromanage a DI.  Frankly, don’t ever micromanage anyone, especially a DI.

-Watch out! DIs I’ve known have tended to have little regard for social niceties and are prone to stepping on toes or entire bodies. The goal is the thing for these DIs and if they have to throw a few body blocks along the way, that is fine.  If you have this form of DI on your team, you’ve got a non-trivial leadership challenge in front of you.

The cultural pressure from the rest of the team may ultimately demand that you act to remove this “social misfit,” while your tendency will be to rationalize the behavior as the price to pay for their brilliance.  Coaching, constant feedback and more coaching can help minimize the body count, but won’t completely eliminate the issue.  Get this right and your DI will do great things for you and others will recognize how they benefit as well.  Manage this wrong by either allowing reckless, free reign or worse yet, attempt to neutralize the DI and you will fail.

-Don’t let DIs sit idle or you will bore them into looking elsewhere, including your competitors, for their next challenge. Remember, these individuals are thinking three chess moves ahead of the rest of us, and as they mentally wind down on one issue, there needs to be a new one ready to take its place.

-Be careful: some DIs enjoy visibility and others run from it. Don’t misfire by either ignoring this for those that like the accolades or over-using it for those that would rather have a root canal without drugs than have to stand up at a company meeting.

The Bottom Line for Now:

I’ve barely scratched the surface of this topic, but need to stop somewhere.  I love the challenge of working around and providing the environment for Driven Individuals to succeed.  Get this right and fortunes are made.  Get it wrong, and you’ll wreak havoc on the workplace.   The stakes are big, and the Driven Individual will challenge you to earn your keep.

Filed Under: Leadership, Performance, Product Management, Professional Growth, Project Management Tagged With: , , , , , ,

What the Boss Hears When You’re Talking and Why It Might Hinder Your Career

January 14, 2010 By 1 Comment

tincansI’m not quite certain if this post is a violation of the “Boss’s Code,” much like that masked man on television who blatantly betrays the Magician’s Code (and ruins our fun in the process) by showing us how magic tricks work.  Nonetheless, here goes.

Every time you open your mouth around the boss, she learns something about you that may determine your fate, or at least your fate while you are working for her.

As people of experience, good managers listen for and  hear things during conversations that have nothing to do with the conversation but everything to do with how they view and value you as a professional.

There, the secret is out!  We’re carrying on two lines of thought when you engage us. We’re appropriately staying in the moment and attempting to support your inquiry, while we are processing on the following questions.

What the Manager Hears-Or At Least Is Listening For:

  • How complete of a thinker is this person?
  • How strong are his critical thinking skills?
  • Are his ideas creative?
  • Has he thought through the issue from all directions?
  • Are the solutions innovative?
  • Is he a systems thinker, taking into account the impact of the situation/solutions on other parts of our organization?
  • Is he asking me to do his job for him?
  • Is he pursuing a political agenda?
  • Has he sought out the experts for help?
  • Do I have confidence in this person?
  • Is he as smart as I thought he was?
  • Is this someone that can do more for us?

–

I could keep going, but by now, hopefully, you get the idea.

Someone once asked me when I take the time to evaluate performance and my response was something to the effect of “During every conversation and in every meeting.”

I was pleased to see that I was in good company on this point when I read Jack Welch’s book, Winning, and noted the following in his first of 8 points describing what a leaders does:

“Leaders relentlessly upgrade their team, using every encounter as an opportunity to evaluate, coach and build self-confidence.”

The Bottom Line for Now

Challenge yourself to develop your critical thinking skills.  Think about the questions above and make certain that you are adept in scaling from the big picture to the details and agile enough to circle the issues.  We like “complete thinkers” that take every opportunity to solve even bigger problems for our organizations. In fact, we like to promote these people, provide them with more responsibility and even pay them more.

All of that from a simple conversation.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , ,
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