Art of Managing: Tackle the Big Issues by Creating Time to Think Deeply

May 23, 2013 by Leave a Comment

ArtofManagingSometimes, you just have to call a time-out.

While our tendency is to respond to the gravitational pull of our devices and the unceasing demands of the urgent and urgent-unimportant in our work lives, some issues simply require deep thought.

Most organizations and professionals get into a groove of recurring meetings and outlook calendar-driven days. They associate “being busy” with working.

The hardest work is finding the quiet time to allow you and your colleagues to stare at and talk through and solve the real issues in the way of progress.

You won’t solve: “design new approach to market and supporting organizational structure for new strategy” or, “outline succession plan for management team” in-between your 8:00 a.m. production meeting and the 10:00 a.m. call to London.

The big issues of talent and strategy and structure all demand more than transactional treatment. The decisions that commit us to distinct paths merit the thoughtfulness that can only occur when we hit the stop button, change the environment and allow ourselves to honestly engage on the issues, risks, opportunities and fears about the path.

When working with executives who are struggling to get something right…sales, profits, team dynamics etc., I look for signs that they understand the need to occasionally slow down and focus. I asked one sales executive when he took time to think about the big issues in front of his team and the firm, and his response said it all. “Never. I enjoy the thrill of the daily hunt, and I focus my energy there every day.”  OK, that explains the visible stress fractures and performance problems all over his team.

6 Ideas for Creating Time to Think Deeply:

1. Make this part of your job. Recognize and accept the need to create time to think and talk deeply about the core issues with one or more of your key colleagues.

2. Accept that off-line time is still work time. In fact it’s the right work, even though you’ve turned off your devices and are ignoring for the moment the 147 issues that seemingly can’t move forward without you opining or approving.

3. Don’t restrict “thinking deeply” to the annual offsite. Be spontaneous. Don’t restrict deep thinking time to one or two off-site retreats during the year. In my experience, the best progress is made on the big issues when the planning is less deliberate.

4. Recognize the signs that it’s time for some deep thinking and talking. Most of our big plans are developed in an iterative fashion. A compelling strategy on the surface still requires deep thinking about the assumptions and the practicalities of implementing the strategy. Don’t let the pretty pictures and great words keep you from digging deeper and throwing some mud at the ideas.

5. Learn to stimulate thinking through re-framing. Just recently, I talked through a strategy program with the head of sales and we shifted frames 4 or 5 times on how we might build a go-to-market. Every time we got one side of the multi-colored  cube right, we would look at another side and something didn’t line up. This told us to keep thinking and talking.

6. Keep talking until the discussion exposes the real issues and the honest assumptions, opinions, biases, excitement and fears. If you never hit the fears, you’ve not thought and talked deeply enough.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

Remember, being busy doesn’t mean you’re working hard. Call the time-out and create time for you and your colleagues to think deeply on the big issues. And then act.

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More Professional Development Reads from Art Petty:book cover: shows title Leadership Caffeine-Ideas to Energize Your Professional Development by Art Petty. Includes image of a coffee cup.

Don’t miss the next Leadership Caffeine-Newsletter! Register here

For more ideas on professional development-one sound bite at a time, check out Art’s latest book: Leadership Caffeine-Ideas to Energize Your Professional Development.

New to leading or responsible for first time leader’s on your team? Subscribe to Art’s New Leader’s e-News.

An ideal book for anyone starting out in leadership: Practical Lessons in Leadership by Art Petty and Rich Petro.

Filed Under: Art of Managing, Management Innovation, Performance, Strategy Tagged With: , ,

Art of Managing-Kick Mediocrity to the Curb in Pursuit of Extraordinary

May 6, 2013 by 6 Comments

ArtofManagingMediocre is on display daily in too many areas of our society and in too many of our businesses. From the boss who just doesn’t care to our government seemingly barely functioning to the miserable help-lines of too many firms to the slow gait…the shuffle of retail workers at organizations that definitely don’t care, ordinary and average are epidemic.

Mediocrity has a way of numbing our senses and taking the fight out of us. It impacts everyone at all levels of leadership and all employee groups. Individually and collectively, we reduce our standards to the lowest accepted level and then shuffle along dispensing the ordinary until something shocks our system. Often, the shock comes too late.

As a manager, you play a critical part in either perpetuating mediocrity or helping your team break free in pursuit of extraordinary. The latter is a lot more fun and rewarding for all involved.

8 Ideas to Kick Mediocrity to the Curb in Pursuit of Extraordinary:

1. Start with the belief that your attitude and your actions will make a difference. In a world where mediocre is the norm, your extraordinary effort to help, serve, lead, please, thank, teach, manage, fix and engage will all be noticed. Not by everyone, but by many of us.

2. If your team works on the phone, teach them to lead with their smiles. Customers hear smiles over the phone and that helps us forget that we just navigated a 42-step phone-tree and a 36-minute wait seeking someone who could explain how to work a feature on the device in our hand that has more technology than the entire Apollo program which sent humans to the moon and successfully retrieved all of them.

3. If your team works in front of customers teach them to lead with direct eye contact and a smile. I don’t care if you are the manager at XYZ Big Box or the Shift Supervisor at the Driver’s License Bureau, the only downside of your employees smiling and making eye contact will be the fainting and momentary loss of equilibrium of your customers. They’ll recover and you’ll have changed the world in your own small way. (Note: in some cultures, direct eye contact is frowned upon. Let’s assume a U.S. based business.)

4. Extraordinary starts with the behaviors you model you set as a manager. Define “extraordinary” in your environment and then teach and model the behaviors. If you don’t, who will?

5. Set expectations for performance that is extraordinary.  Create a culture that enforces accountability for the right results and reward those who deliver.

6. Remember, extraordinary isn’t just for external customers. Model extraordinary across employee groups and watch it grow.

7. Eliminate those who don’t really care. Not everyone will respond to your guidance and teaching. Not everyone aspires to extraordinary. Encourage those who are comfortable with mediocrity to practice this approach by working for your competitors.

8. Make hiring for extraordinary a religion. Not everyone is suited to extraordinary in every environment. Your challenge is to identify those underlying values and behaviors that are so critical to transcending mediocrity in your world and then recruit and hire for those items. Few of us would pass Southwest Airlines’ rigorous filters for fun and love of people and Zappos is so committed to getting just the right people, the firm offers new employees a cash incentive to leave once they’ve completed the firm’s training program. In Zappos’ case, it’s cheaper and more productive to pay someone who isn’t feeling the firm’s definition of “extraordinary” to leave than to retain them and have them poison the well.)

The Bottom-Line for Now:

Kicking mediocrity to the curb doesn’t require expensive consultants, confusing restructuring or an epiphany around strategy. It’s common sense coupled with a strong sense of personal accountability to teach, model and reward the behaviors that promote extraordinary in your organization.

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More Professional Development Reads from Art Petty:book cover: shows title Leadership Caffeine-Ideas to Energize Your Professional Development by Art Petty. Includes image of a coffee cup.

Don’t miss the next Leadership Caffeine-Newsletter! Register here

For more ideas on professional development-one sound bite at a time, check out Art’s latest book: Leadership Caffeine-Ideas to Energize Your Professional Development.

New to leading or responsible for first time leader’s on your team? Subscribe to Art’s New Leader’s e-News.

An ideal book for anyone starting out in leadership: Practical Lessons in Leadership by Art Petty and Rich Petro.

 

 

Filed Under: Art of Managing, Leading Change, Management Innovation, Performance, Values Tagged With: , ,

Art of Managing: The Power of a Well-Placed “No”

April 7, 2013 by 4 Comments

ArtofManaging“Don’t tell me what you’re doing. Tell me what you’ve stopped doing.” Peter Drucker

“No” is one of the most powerful and under-utilized terms in your management vocabulary. Here are ten situations where “No” might be the absolute right call.

10 Situations Where “No”  Might Just Save the Day:

 1. In strategy when the potential vector or investment is outside your competence and core strategy, no matter how potentially lucrative. If the strategy is broken, fix it, but don’t risk diluting your efforts chasing shiny objects.

2. When saying “yes” to a project creates a too many projects chasing too few resources situation. The project/resource imbalance is epidemic in most firms. Cut it out. Either find more resources or, follow Drucker’s advice and quit doing something else!

3. When you find yourself fighting your gut instinct on hiring someone. This is one situation where the gut is almost always right. The credentials, smiles and interviewing skills might be saying “yes,” but if the gut says “no,” listen to it!

 4. When someone suggests you cut quality to satisfy cost targets. There’s always a better way.

5. When someone asks you to “take off your (insert function) hat and put on your (insert function) hat.” Sorry, but what they’re really asking you to do is to suspend your common sense, put aside your experience-based judgment, lobotomize yourself and pursue a path that is wrong. This approach reflects pure management evil!

6. When the mantra coming from the team is, “…but, with just a little bit more time and money…  .” These more time and money pleas are indicators that you are blazing a path down the sunk cost trail. Quit throwing good cash after bad. The old cash is gone. It’s sunk. Call it.

 7. When a pending decision puts you on the uncomfortable side of an ethical dilemma. If it’s gray, say “No” and seek counsel. In that order. It’s called moral courage.

 8. When everyone in the group is nodding their head “yes” too quickly and too easily. Saying “No” is the last line of defense against group-think.

9. Whenever someone suggests outsourcing a customer facing function. Outsourcing customer service should be a crime punishable by prison time. Just say “No!”

10. When restructuring is suggested as a fix to an organization’s problems without consideration of the impact it will have on customers. It’s amazing how easy it is to lose track of what counts when the turf battles begin.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

It’s hard to say “no.” We often associate “yes” with right and good. Too often, “yes” is the weak response. It’s time to practice putting your tongue on the roof of your mouth and emphasize the N in this powerful and value saving and creating word, “No!”

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More Professional Development Reads from Art Petty:book cover: shows title Leadership Caffeine-Ideas to Energize Your Professional Development by Art Petty. Includes image of a coffee cup.

Don’t miss the next Leadership Caffeine-Newsletter! Register here

For more ideas on professional development-one sound bite at a time, check out Art’s latest book: Leadership Caffeine-Ideas to Energize Your Professional Development.

New to leading or responsible for first time leader’s on your team? Subscribe to Art’s New Leader’s e-News.

An ideal book for anyone starting out in leadership: Practical Lessons in Leadership by Art Petty and Rich Petro.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Art of Managing, Career, Decision-Making, Values Tagged With: , , ,

Art of Managing: Beware the Pursuit of False Precision in Planning

March 24, 2013 by 3 Comments

Diagram with a question mark in the center and why, where, when, how, what, who surroundingIn preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” -Dwight Eisenhower

Chance are, you’ve seen this movie before. It’s the one where you or your team are on the hook for distilling the chaos and complexity of the market and the ambiguities and risks surrounding emerging opportunities, competitors and disruptive technologies, into a nice, neat multi-year forecast.

Sadly, for all of the effort that goes into cramming the complexities of the markets and human behavior into a few flipping cells on a spreadsheet, the output often isn’t worth a damn. 

The future has an annoying habit of ignoring our efforts to corral it in the form of plans.  Especially when it comes to financial forecasts.

My issue isn’t with the work of planning. It’s with the literal reliance on the output that so many managers and corporate bean-counters impose upon their teams.

The Positives-What the Act of Planning Does for Us:

  • It forces us to look at ourselves and our offerings and ideas in the mirror. There’s something particularly shocking about the image of a naked plan in bright fluorescent lighting in front of a full-length mirror. You’ll see flaws that demand attention!
  • It challenges us to ask and answer: “Why do we think we can succeed with this plan?” That’s a healthy discussion.
  • Good planning is an exercise in not only predicting risks, but in preparing for the risks we can’t envision. Luck will happen…good and bad. It’s what we do with it that counts.
  • Planning forces us to bring forth the assumptions and thus our biases that push us in one direction versus another.
  • Planning sets the stage for future learning.
  • Planning opens the door to innovation.

At Least 4 Reasons to Beware the False Pursuit of Precision in Planning:

1. The Crystal Ball is Notoriously Unreliable. In spite of all of the benefits of the work of planning, one of them is not a set of numbers that magically corrals the future and forces it to cooperate accordingly. The forecast output of planning serves as a guideline and a measuring stick, but not an absolute.

2. You Potentially Introduce Less Than Desirable Behaviors into Your Team’s Efforts. Unnatural reliance on the output of planning biases behaviors in pursuit of numbers or goals that weren’t predictable in the first place.  I see it in sales forecasting and multi-year business plans. I love SAS founder Jim Goodnight’s response to the issue of public firms (SAS is private) predicting quarterly earnings during an interview aired on 60 Minutes a number of years ago: “There’s no possible way I can tell you what my earnings are going to be to the penny each quarter. There’s only one way to get there to the penny. You have to cook the books.”

3. We Lose Track of the Details and Assumptions Surrounding the Numbers. Too many senior managers base success…relative success or failure and all its’ attendant implications on the numbers output of planning, forgetting the assumptions, risks, expectations for learning and uncertainties that went into the numbers. That’s a superficial way to deal with your people and your firm.

4. Competitor and Customer Behaviors and Market Forces Defy Financial Smoothing. Human and group behavior in the face of changing circumstances is difficult to corral into a cell on a spreadsheet. Sorry, we’re complex and we don’t give a damn about your forecast.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

I’m not excusing us from the act of planning. Nor am I suggesting that we simply let the future unfold without forecasting. On the contrary, as a good manager, you must understand your costs, your revenue model and how you make money. And you’re on the hook for growing and strengthening over time.

However, instead of relying on what is most often an unnatural level of precision around an unpredictable set of numbers, build the systems and processes to incorporate learning, constantly refresh forecasts and push the planning forward.

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More Professional Development Reads from Art Petty:

Don’t miss the next Leadership Caffeine-Newsletter! Register herebook cover: shows title Leadership Caffeine-Ideas to Energize Your Professional Development by Art Petty. Includes image of a coffee cup.

For more ideas on professional development-one sound bite at a time, check out Art’s latest book: Leadership Caffeine-Ideas to Energize Your Professional Development. 

Download a free excerpt of Leadership Caffeine (the book) at Art’s facebook page.

New to leading or responsible for first time leader’s on your team? Subscribe to Art’s New Leader’s e-News.

An ideal book for anyone starting out in leadership: Practical Lessons in Leadership by Art Petty and Rich Petro.

Need help with Feedback? Art’s new online program: Learning to Master Feedback

 Note: for volume orders of one or both books, drop Art a note for pricing information.

Filed Under: Art of Managing, Decision-Making, Performance Tagged With: , , ,

Art of Managing: Work is Where the Brain Is

March 10, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Small Ideas Add UpIn the past two weeks there’s been a buzz in the world of business generated by two firms changing longstanding flexible working arrangements. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer  announced an end to the firm’s liberal telecommuting policy, and Best Buy CEO Hubert Joly tossed out the firm’s long publicized Results Only Work Environment (ROWE) approach that offered location and time flexibility to non-store employees.

Not incidentally, both firms are fighting for corporate survival.

I suspect that the fundamental problems of two firms who no longer exist for completely obvious reasons, have as their root causes, something much deeper than whether butts are in seats behind the same walls every single day.

Like politics and religion, this topic is personal and controversial. I’ve yet to run into someone who doesn’t have a strong opinion one way or the other. You can intuit my position from the headline of this post.

Not All Roles Demand Physical Proximity:

Certainly, the nature of an individual’s work plays a critical factor in location choice. Some functions are highly interdependent and there’s little option for location or time flexibility. Other roles are highly independent and whether the individual commutes to a cubicle or works from a quiet room in her home and engages via video or audio conferencing is essentially meaningless.

As an experienced executive accustomed to both leading widely dispersed teams at market leading firms, and to working comfortably anywhere I can connect and engage, I struggle to understand the office-only mentality for all positions and all employees.

For firms that are dependent upon engaging and motivating the best available talent, demanding daily physical presence is just dumb. You reduce the size of the target talent pool, increase costs of acquiring, moving, housing and transporting these employees, and any gains in productivity for requiring this class of knowledge or creative workers to be in-office are subjective at best.

The stress of a flexible work-location approach is mostly borne by the remote individuals who may miss opportunities to build relationships that lead to career advancement. Nonetheless, for many groups of knowledge workers, the flexibility is worth the risk.

Sometimes, There’s No Substitute for Being in the Same Room:

I’m a huge fan of periodic (not constant) contact with team members and colleagues for creative and personal reasons. It is essential, even for globally distributed project teams. There are many circumstances where technology is just a poor substitute for sitting down with a group or breaking bread over lunch with your peers. We build relationships best in-person. However, the command for all employees to be in-place and imprisoned 8-5 feels like a carry-over from a bygone era.

The Organization as a Young Tool of Creation:

The organization as a critical tool of management and human invention is a relatively young institution. Frankly, our collective mindset on managing is young as well and hasn’t perhaps yet found the best approaches to harnessing the advances in technology and resources available around the globe and around the clock thanks to globalization.

The troubles of two firms who tried something new and are now retreating from their experimental approaches  shouldn’t dissuade other firms from searching for the balance that works best for their people, their customers and their top and bottom lines. And speaking of the bottom line:

The Bottom-Line for Now:

There’s a world of possibilities in experimenting with the organizational model and location is one of the variables. While the nature of the work should drive the decision, if physical presence isn’t absolutely essential, I’ll take the smartest and most creative people I can find, regardless of location. I’ll figure out how to adapt my management system and technology tools to support their efforts to do their best work.

And yes, one has to wonder whether Mayer and Joly may be fixing the wrong problem.

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Additional Resource: from HBR Blog Network-The End of Results Only at Best Buy is Bad News (great post…even greater comments!)

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More Professional Development Reads from Art Petty:

Don’t miss the next Leadership Caffeine-Newsletter! Register herebook cover: shows title Leadership Caffeine-Ideas to Energize Your Professional Development by Art Petty. Includes image of a coffee cup.

For more ideas on professional development-one sound bite at a time, check out Art’s latest book: Leadership Caffeine-Ideas to Energize Your Professional Development. 

Download a free excerpt of Leadership Caffeine (the book) at Art’s facebook page.

New to leading or responsible for first time leader’s on your team? Subscribe to Art’s New Leader’s e-News.

An ideal book for anyone starting out in leadership: Practical Lessons in Leadership by Art Petty and Rich Petro.

Need help with Feedback? Art’s new online program: Learning to Master Feedback

 Note: for volume orders of one or both books, drop Art a note for pricing information.

Filed Under: Art of Managing, Management Innovation Tagged With: , , , ,
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