Leadership Caffeine for the Week of March 30, 2009

March 29, 2009 By 3 Comments

A healthy spring snowstorm blanketed the northwest suburbs of Chicago overnight, making the morning cup of coffee particularly relevant as a source of both warmth and energy. 

I’m back with a fresh pound of my favorite fair trade Mexican Roast from a great local roaster aptly named Conscious Cup.  My first contribution to stimulating the economy today is to let you know that these great people ship.

My second contribution is to encourage a renewed sense of personal professional accountability.  Yep, I’m striking a blow against Boss-Blame…that world class sport that so many engage in as part of rationalizing why their own results might just be falling short of something resembling excellence.

Quit Grousing…It’s Wasted Energy!

It’s common for me to hear quite a bit of grousing about the people we work for from attendees at workshops, at client sites or in classes.  And while I don’t doubt that there’s a fair amount of truth in much of the talk about lousy managers and do-nothing exec teams, I truly don’t care and neither should you. 

Do not let the chucklehead that you work for hold you back!  Do not blame the management team for your inability to hit your targets, develop professionally or create a high performance team.  The only one in charge of you is you.

I’ve long since concluded that in spite of our best intentions we have a low probability of fixing most of the bad bosses. Our best bet and your best bet is to develop a multi-pronged approach to the situation.

Suggestions for Overcoming Bad Boss Syndrome:

1. Mitigation.  Sometimes “Bad Boss” syndrome can be mitigated by changing your own behavior.  I’ve observed many situations where the boss has issues and the individuals that report to him or her have no qualms publicly depicting their lack of respect. While that might in some perverted way feel good, it is wrong. 

Try using judo on the situation and increase your efforts to be respectful and helpful and to portray a genuine sense of empathy for the burdens that this individuals bears as a leader and as a person. Hey, no guarantees here, but you’ll be the better person for trying, and it might be you some latitude in the workplace.

2.  Partnering. I work with many different project teams in IT and new product development, and I can predict with near certainty the top reasons that will surface in the post-mortem on failed projects.  You know the issues as well, and yes, most of them have to do with people and leadership.  (An oft-quoted E&Y study indicates that 80% of the reasons associated with poor project performance are tied to people.)

Work on a few project teams, and you can predict the problems like clockwork.  Estimates will be off…people sandbag or play politics.  The matrix gets in the way…people have multiple priorities and are not linked to one team.  The sponsor spends her time jetting around Asia and is never present at critical times to do what a sponsor is supposed to do.  And so on.

What is stopping you from working with your peers to focus your collective energies on eradicating the mostly controllable and predictable problems that bedevil so many teams? Nothing!  If the project manager lacks the leadership savvy to broker resolutions and build a performance culture, jump in along with your peers and help out. Have an ineffective sponsor?  Either educate him or her on the role or seek out a new one.  There are few problems that arise that are dependent upon those upstream. 

3. Your Personal Pursuit of Excellence:

In the final leg of my bad-boss mitigation & you must develop your own sense of accountability rant, this is for all of you first-time or mid-level leaders that are not getting the support and coaching that you genuinely should receive.  Get over it, and make certain that you go to extraordinary lengths to give to your colleagues in spades what you are not receiving from your manager.

Boss not talked to you about career development?  Well, you are in charge of your own career, and oh by the way, nothing is precluding you from working with your team members on their own personal development plans.

Don’t get much feedback on your performance?  That’s unfortunate, but it is not an excuse for you not recognizing that feedback is your most powerful performance tool and practicing it constantly.

Does the boss work hard to protect turf and strengthen silo walls?  Don’t fall into that shortsighted trap.  Become a network broker across organizational boundaries.  Learn and apply the art of lateral leadership and diplomacy. 

The bottom-line

Just as it is common in life for people to hitch their sense of well-being and happiness to the actions and opinions of others, it is common for people to wallow in business misery because of the shortcomings of our leaders.  It’s time to unhitch that wagon and take responsibility for your own business happiness and health.  Get started this week!

 

 

Filed Under: "To Do" List, Career, Leadership Caffeine, Performance, Professional Growth, Project Management, Surviving Lousy Leaders Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

“Why Did We Fire You?” Talent Gaffes of the Big and Clueless

February 12, 2009 By 2 Comments

If it wasn’t so sad, it would be laughable. The question, “Why did we fire you?” expressed with surprise and genuine confusion was asked by a senior HR exec to a talented and fired sales rep at MegaFirm.

This sales rep was the “last one standing” that actually understood how to sell the products that MegaFirm had inherited with one of its many acquisitions. The products are still there, but the people aren’t. MegaFirm unleashed the neutron bomb from its powerful HR arsenal.

Oh, once the light bulb went on, several of the recently fired were offered their jobs back.

In the movie “Liar, Liar,” Jim Carrey is incapable of saying anything but the naked truth. If this were true for just a moment in the HR world at MegaFirm, here’s how I imagine the conversations with the newly fired associates to go:

“Sorry, we screwed up. We fired you and everyone else because you were there and we needed you to not be there for the numbers to work out on our spreadsheets. You should see this formula we created. All I have to do is reduce the number in one column and our business looks great! I might get a promotion for this.”

“What’s that you ask? Talent, skills and knowledge. No, those aren’t important. We actually don’t care. What counts is that our numbers work. You should have figured out that we actually don’t give a rip about developing people or retaining talent, because we don’t have to.”

“Yeah, so what that we paid to buy your company. You came along with another deal. Yeah, your thousands of customers will not be served…we’ll let your former competitors pick them up. We don’t mind alienating our customers, because we don’t give a rip here either.”

“Hey, are you sure you don’t want your job back? You sound like a smart guy. We probably shouldn’t have fired you. I’ll take someone else out of the spreadsheet if you want to come back. Have I told you about our insurance program?”

–

I promised that I would keep this case anonymous, so all of you former colleagues that are guessing about who this is, well, you’re wrong.

As for the recipient of the “Why Did We Fire You?” question, this individual is a one-person success generating machine with the heart of a prize-fighter and the battlefield instincts of Patton.

This individual should be running your sales team.

The bottom-line for now: run, don’t walk, to start finding ways to bring talent like the subject of this post into your organization. MegaFirm’s ignorance should be your gain if you are doing your job.

While the MegaFirms of the world are working themselves down into MiniFirms by focusing on the ratios, you should be arming yourself to the teeth with the best talent you can find. And yes, you will have to make some tough decision on people in your own environment. Make the right choices to make room for the talent…don’t let the spreadsheet rule the day.

There’s something about going into battle in the market with the best soldiers that seems so right.

Filed Under: Crisis Leadership, Decision-Making, Leadership, Surviving Lousy Leaders Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Planning Ahead for the Week: Three Items for Your Management Excellence “To Do” List

December 7, 2008 By 1 Comment

Throughout my career, Sunday evening has been my “boot up” time for the week.  I like to go to bed on Sunday night knowing my goals for the week and I like waking up feeling energized, organized and ready to conquer the world.  Additionally, I’m a firm believer that I do some of my best thinking while I’m sleeping.  It’s amazing how often I wake up with a solution to a vexing problem that eluded me the night before.  (Yeah, I know that I’m odd.  My wonderful wife reminds me regularly.)

Every week represents an opportunity to improve your performance as a manager and leader. In spite of the setbacks of the prior week, the fire drills that caught you by surprise and your own lack of follow-through on your goals, every Monday offers a clean slate for you to fill. My very positive intent here is to offer you a few suggestions each week that will inspire your pursuit of continuous improvement.  Enjoy and Prosper!

1.  How current are your Individual Development Plans? Most people in my workshops indicate that they do not have an Individual Development Plan, so the odds are pretty good that you can improve in this area.

Regardless of your performance evaluation cycle, if you have not created (or updated within 12 months) an Individual Development Plan for each of your direct reports, it’s time to get this activity started.  This is a great opportunity to conduct quality discussions with your associates about their interests and aspirations on your team or within the organization.  Of course, the most important part of the discussion is the joint action plan and plan for follow-up.

2.  How effectively are you communicating during these tough times? Chances are, your employees would like more from you.  Quite a bit more! During times of change or times of strife and stress, a good rule of thumb is to keep the communication flowing.

Create opportunities to update your team on key performance indicators and to discuss the impact of the economy on the organization’s performance.  Also, create new forums where you and your employees focus on identifying opportunities to increase the value you provide customers or identify opportunities to eliminate waste from your business systems.  If you already use a quality discipline like Six Sigma, these are natural discussions.  If not, emphasize focusing on improving customer value by making things easier/faster/better for your customers by streamlining service and product processes.

3.  It’s time to build new bridges and repair old ones across your organization. It’s easy to get caught up in our own functional pursuits and lose track of what’s going in departments that are dependent upon you or that serve your department.

Take time this week to reach out to one or more of your peers and find out what’s on their mind and how you and your team might help.  There’s no substitute for great relationships across the organization, and building and maintaining those relationships takes time and energy.  And remember that the cardinal rule of networking is always to give more than you take.

Have a great week!  -Art

Filed Under: Leadership, Professional Growth Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,