That Seismic Shift You Are About To Hear is Management Revolution

March 20, 2009 By 6 Comments

Author’s Note: This post moves from fun to management revolution in a hurry.  Hold on!

One of the things that I absolutely love about this time that we are living through is the constant and accelerating rewriting of the rules.  How much fun is it to be engaged in a set of activities where what used to define success now defines failure and where your experience may be your own worst enemy?  Someone should charge admission to this surreal game we are living!

It’s like playing my favorite board game, Monopoly, where the long-established rules of buy, build, rent and bankrupt your opponent shift ahead of your turn.  Thought that Boardwalk was a good investment?  Not anymore…by the time you land on it, it’s been sold off to a foreign player to raise funds to support infrastructure.  Driving the car around the board.  Sorry, your car company went bankrupt and unless you can bail it out, you’ll need to walk. Draw a Chance card and expect to advance to the nearest railroad?  Forget it.  The government now owns 80% of this industry and they can’t get the trains running.  Bankrupt your partner.  Heck no, that would be anti-competitive, so your partner just pulled off an interest free loan under the “too big to fail” act. (Hey Parker Bros, I’ve got dibs on the new “Ever Shifting Rules” version of your board game.)

One of my favorite business writers, Gary Hamel is back this week with his very relevant message that it is high time that we reinvented management and shed some of the late 19th century practices that persist.  His focus this week is: The Three Forces Disrupting Management. 

Hamel’s Three Discontinuities:

1.  A wildly accelerating pace of change, an onslaught of new, ultra low-cost competitors, the commoditization of knowledge, rapidly increasing customer power and an ever-lengthening menu of social demands.

2.  The invention of new, Web-based collaboration tools

3.  The mash-up of new expectations that Generation Facebook will bring to work in the years ahead.

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Yep.  In this case, we didn’t need one of the world’s foremost management writers and thinkers to tell us what those of us running businesses have been painfully aware of for the past few years. Things are changing in front of us, even if our approaches are not changing to embrace and leverage the new dynamics.

Something’s gone horribly wrong with our pre-established convictions and our comfortable understanding of the old rules.  There was no memo.  The new rules are not written in stone anywhere, and in fact they are changing so quickly, that by the time you understand and write them down, they’ve changed yet again.  Heck, a good number of firms and leaders never optimized under the old rules, and now look at what they are facing!

I work constantly with professionals and teams desperately trying to break free of the shackles of the old rules, the archaic premises and obsolete leadership practices that govern so many businesses. A good number of professionals get the fact that the game has shifted, yet organizations and leaders tend to hang onto the old premises.  The obsolete and dangerous practices that still predominate, include:

  • Rigid hierarchical leadership-it’s time to end the royal leadership model
  • Silo structures-maybe the single most value destroying approach to organization
  • Dysfunctional matrix approaches dominated by functional interests
  • Ad hoc leadership identification and development practices (if any)
  • Farenheit 451 type thinking about access to the internet and adoption of new methods of working and communicating
  • Traditional strategic planning models that fail to take into account systems, constant change, the need to adapt, the difference between adapting and proacting etc.
  • 1950’s HR practices (in many cases) that emphasize compliance and fail to focus on enabling performance
  • An accountability paradox…those in charge are the least accountable

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The Bottom Line:

Instead of a more traditional passing of the baton from one generation of business leaders to the next, I get the feeling that this period will be characterized by social and cultural revolution in business.  It’s needed and in my opinion, appropriate.  

The current situation will see record numbers of firms fail, and in many cases, they should and must.  This painful cleansing will be just that a cleansing.  The only way it doesn’t create a better landscape is if we through our governmental institutions destroy the ability to regenerate.  That is an unfortunate but real possibility. 

Jefferson’s perspective on the appropriateness and need for the French revolution shocked many of his contemporaries.  I am right there with him.  Forward progress will require significant business casualties and some shocking restructuring of what we view as conventional approaches to business.

I like Hamel’s thinking on management innovation and even revolution.  I do think that his message is too soft.  It’s time to rise up against the tyranny of hubris and the post Civil War management approaches that many leaders still cling to as their hold on power. There are many great people inside of even the most dysfunctional organizations that have some valid ideas on embracing the new rules.  If you are a leader, its time to listen or beware the march of time and the villagers lighting torches!

 

Filed Under: Crisis Leadership, Leadership, Leading Change, Management Innovation, Surviving Lousy Leaders Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Pain and Promise of Collaborative Management on Display at Cisco

December 9, 2008 By 1 Comment

Author and consultant Gary Hamel writes in the preface to his latest book, The Future of Management, that, “Management is out of date.  Like the combustion engine, it’s a technology that has largely stopped evolving and that’s not good.”

Hamel challenges leaders and managers to eliminate the toxic effects of legacy management practices and innovate in ways that create “organizations that are capable of spontaneous renewal” and “companies that actually deserve the passion and creativity of the folks who work there, and naturally elicit the very best that people have to give.”

Noble thoughts that I agree with and that I espouse at every available opportunity.  Unfortunately, many firms and many top leaders are still stuck in the Managers Manager and Workers Work era that Frederick Taylor ushered in over 100 years ago.   The number of teams and ideas that I see held hostage to adjudication by these out-of-date, out-of-touch and hopefully, out-of-time command and control leaders is shocking.  Please, set your people free.

One organization and leader that has gained a great deal of coverage for ushering in new approaches to managing is Cisco Systems and its CEO, John Chambers.  The interview with Chambers, “Cisco Sees the Future” in the November, 2008 issue of Harvard Business Review is must-read material for anyone interested in the cutting edge of management innovation as well as some profound thoughts on identifying and exploiting market transitions and disruptions.

Cisco has effectively flattened its organization and now operates with a small executive team and manages its priorities by cross-functional, collaborative councils and boards. Chambers indicates that the impact is: “This companywide council-based leadership model has allowed us to move from taking only one or two cross-functional priorities a year in the past to addressing 22 this year.” He goes on to add, “We think this is what organizations of the future will look like and that this 21st century leadership style will be a major competitive advantage for us over the next decade.”

At this point, I’ll stop quoting the article…it’s worth taking a look at on your own.  However, what I found most interesting aside from the insights into the structure, management and results of the many cross functional teams, was the fortitude that Cisco and Chambers showed in adopting this new management model.  You get the impression that the gains did not come without considerable pain.  Over 20% of the executives washed out of the new collaborative model, and in essence, the entire culture had to change. Chambers even confesses to the challenges that he had in changing his own style from one of command and control, provide the answers and direct the troops to one of letting teams solve problems and then execute.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

Seven years in the making, the results of this new management model at Cisco are encouraging.  Of course, time will tell if Cisco has truly changed, as well as defined and implemented what can truly be called a management innovation.

I suspect that Chambers and Cisco are closer to right than wrong on their approach.  It’s an exciting time to be leading as the pendulum seems to be swinging away from a style of leading and working that minimized the value of the individual to one that emphasizes empowerment, creativity and the freedom for groups and individuals to think and act.   It’s hard to imagine a future where this formula does not produce winners.  Of course, the proof as they say is in the pudding.

Filed Under: Decision-Making, Leadership, Leading Change, Management Innovation, Project Management Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

The Counterintuitive Nature of Management Excellence

December 2, 2008 By 2 Comments

I suspect that most readers will agree that examples of management excellence, high performance and great leadership are not the topics dominating the news in this emerging “we’ve never seen anything like this before” economy.  Instead, we are fed a constant stream of downward revisions, requests for bailout and examples of management failure of “someone should go to jail”   Whole sectors are crashing, great old brands are on the brink of fading into the history books and recently great businesses are floundering.

Contrast this current phase with the other extreme of recent memory, the dotcom bubble of the late 90’s, when the laws of physics were upturned, profits didn’t count, and it was all about clicks and eyeballs.  Everyone knew someone that was a gazillionaire and massive amounts of paper wealth came into existence overnight.  And then disappeared.  A few firms like Amazon, eBay and Google ultimately emerged from the carnage following the bust, to play major roles in a changed world.  Ironically, this changed world looked more like what we knew than what had been professed by temporary pundits feasting on the momentary gullibility of the masses.

The point.  It’s easy to ride with the herd in boom and bust periods.  It takes no management skill whatsoever to spend a fortune building up clicks and it definitely takes no skill to slash budgets, cut headcount, freeze programs and hunker down and wait out the storm.

It does take remarkable management courage and skill to run against the crowd and conventional wisdom by investing in strategic initiatives and talent during tough times and resisting the temptation to chase mythical fortunes during boom times.  Leveraging adversity to stimulate creativity and rethink business models, refocus on customers and look everywhere for innovation that will create value is counter-intuitive to the “flight” response that so many firms are exhibiting.  This counter-intuitive nature is also the hallmark of great management and great managers.

Deming dared to call U.S. manufacturing on the carpet and predict their ultimate suicide if they ignored quality during a time when quality got in the way of volume and profits.  Drucker spent a lifetime teaching managers the rules of management excellence.  Based on recent news, most of us forgot to listen.

You face the choice everyday to stay with the herd or dare to do something different in pursuit of management excellence.  In case you are looking for some thought-starters on counter-intuitive ideas, consider these:

  • Resist the temptation during tough times to make all of the “hard calls” by yourself.  Talk with and involve your employees in decision-making and idea generation.  They are just as concerned as you are about their survival and they want to help.
  • Don’t shred your strategic plan because “everything has changed.”  It’s great to challenge your assumptions or as Ayn Rand often said, “Check your premises.”   There may be new or more opportunity than you imagined, and the plan may need revision, but don’t scuttle it based on fear.
  • Invest in your talent now.  While you may be culling the herd of poor performers, you should also be investing in building the leadership and strategic thinking skills of your workforce.  If this ends, they will propel you to new heights, and if this economic environment lingers, they will save your skin.  Either way, you need to invest.
  • Your customers are as perplexed and worried as you.  It’s time to seek nontraditional relationships with key customers and partners.  These relationships include joint-strategic planning, joint brainstorming and true partnering solutions that transcend the traditional press-release relationship.
  • Take a sledgehammer to internal silo walls.  The dysfunction inherent in most sales and marketing or marketing and engineering relationships is significant enough to sink your ship.

The bottom-line for now:

It’s an outstanding time for great leaders to stand up and be heard, and it is an outstanding time to focus on excellence in management.  It starts by checking your conventional wisdom at the door.  Go visit a customer, ask questions and listen.  Do the same with your employees.  And then do something that creates value versus something that reduces your chances of creating value.  Your actions may just start a revolution.

Filed Under: Crisis Leadership, Leadership, Leading Change, Marketing, Product Management, Project Management Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Change or Die

November 10, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Perhaps it is human nature, but we tend to eschew change either in our personal habits or in business settings until we are faced with mortality.

In organizations, most significant change occurs during times of crisis when the threat of extinction sufficiently motivates individuals and groups to consider changing long-standing ways of doing things.   The crisis brings into stark focus the fact that it is easier and less costly to accept or embrace change than it is to suddenly become extinct.  Unfortunately, by the time this clarity is achieved at the top leadership levels, it is often too late.

As difficult as it is to follow the news everyday, we are living and working through a period of time when the extinction of firms and industries is taking place in front of us, like some business simulation game gone horribly wrong.  The game unfolds like this: focus only on short-term results, add in a measure of personal greed, consistently make the wrong decisions and act shocked as the results spiral out of control to the final act….a low probability of success, last ditch effort gambit (or bailout).

For some, the distance from the top of the Mount Olympus to the graveyards and swamps below is fast and furious.  The suddenness and rapidity of the fall is shocking, but perhaps easier to digest than those firms that have systematically planned their own demise step-by-step as they move from Masters of the Universe to what will soon be footnotes in our history books and business texts.

As in life, there are no guarantees of survival…there is no prescriptive formula that says “if you do X then you survive and prosper,” but there are methods to improve your odds.

How to Improve Your Odds of Survival

  • Senior leaders must embrace the fact that survival and prosperity occur only at the pleasure of customers.  Instead of giving lip service to the importance of customers, you need to develop systems to constantly seek out, understand and translate into actions the Voice of the Customer.  This is remarkably difficult to do in practice and requires for many an impossible shift in culture and values.  Nonetheless, you must change or die.
  • Senior leaders must embrace the fact that without motivated, dedicated employees they have nothing.  There can be no doubt that satisfied, engaged, respected, informed employees are essential for survival and success.  Why then are our systems and our managers and leaders so often at odds with what it takes to create an environment where employees will gladly give their best.   The poor leadership habits that are vestiges of another era must change or you will die.
  • Call it total quality, performance excellence or whatever you want, but you must embed the notion of high performance and all that it takes to achieve it into the DNA of your organization’s culture.  Success can breed success or it can give birth to complacency.  An unyielding focus from the firm’s leaders on creating a high performance culture is required.  This means that the fire-fighting mentality must stop, clear performance/quality priorities  established and the systems developed to allow these to succeed and for people to learn in the process.  You must change to create a learning organization or you will die.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

Change or die.  It’s that simple.

Filed Under: Crisis Leadership, Leadership, Leading Change Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Do Your Employees Truly Believe That They Can Make A Difference?

August 12, 2008 By 1 Comment

I am busy preparing for my fall MBA teaching assignments and I tripped across an interesting survey about employees and change (circa 2006) in the excellent text: Managing for Quality and Performance Excellence by Evans and Lindsay. (Note, contrary to my comments regarding some other management texts that I’ve run across, this one has a great deal to offer both the student and the instructor.)

The survey of Fortune 500 employees offered an interesting insight into what your employees might really be thinking while you as a leader are delivering yet again, another of your famous “take risks, innovate, create and you are empowered” pep talks.  The survey results said that 79% of respondents understood that they were accountable for “taking initiative and bringing about change,”40% of the respondents indicated: “they do not believe that they can make a personal contribution.” 

While employees are often appropriately cynical about the disingenuous cheerleading of many leaders, if you’ve got 4 out of 10 members of your firm “not believing” that they can make a personal difference in the firm’s success, you’ve got a crisis on your hands! 

I’ve written in prior posts that a leader should strive to ensure that everyone in a firm can pass the “Walk in the Door” test.  Simply stated, everyone in the organization must be able to connect their priorities to a firm’s key objectives and strategies when they walk in or log on to begin their day’s work.  Easy to write, hard to realize, but definitely not impossible to achieve.  However, if 4 out of 10 employees don’t buy in to the belief that they can and will make a difference to a firm’s performance, my speculation is that “To Do” lists are filled with Urgent but Unimportant tasks that fill time and ultimately come to represent a person’s corporate existence. 

Leadership Root Causes of the 40% Malaise Organization:

  1. Leaders lack credibility to help bring about change.  People have heard the same pitches over and over again, but have not seen leaders step up and remove impediments or make the process and structural changes needed to allow people to create.
  2. The leaders talk change, but the bureaucratic procedures and silo politics serve to flush any hope for change down the drain.
  3. Leaders have failed to create proper awareness of a galvanizing vision and supporting strategy.  Vision and strategy are likely abstract concepts to most employees in a 40% Malaise Organization. 
  4. Communication is likely stilted and tough discussions avoided, or worse, discouraged or even punished.
  5. Systems and processes fight change and directly contradict the lofty exhortations of the leaders.
  6. Accountability for results is fuzzy.  Malaise prospers and spreads in environment where accountability is kept in the closet, like mildew in a damp basement.

The Cure(s): Apply Some Good Leadership Common Sense Quickly:

  • It’s hard to resist the “fire the leaders” that got you here in the first place.  If you are the new leader at the top of your organization or team, give this one some strong consideration.  Otherwise, keep reading.
  • Quit talking and start listening and acting.  The problem and the solutions are in your court.  Seek to understand the level and depth of the malaise and why your associates believe that they cannot make a difference.  What are the impediments?  What systems, processes or behaviors confounding attempts at change and creativity?  What management practices have ripped the heart out of any desire for people to solve the big problems?
  • Provide people with context for the firm’s situation and build widespread awareness of a clear vision for the future.  Ask everyone how to realize the vision and begin involving a broad swath of the population in defining strategies and actions.  Create and publicize victories for teams and individuals as small changes take root and big changes begin to develop.
  • Open communication channels, encourage and reward individuals willing to identify problems and solutions to tough issues.  Hold your leadership team accountable to listening to ideas and acting on removing impediments.  Eliminate the leaders that are more concerned with politics than results and replace them with leaders that understand what it takes to help a culture evolve at light-speed.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

Every leader should spend a few minutes at night staring at the ceiling and pondering whether his or her employees are truly engaged in helping the business advance.  If your perception is that the answer is "Yes," ask yourself how you can truly be certain.  A company marches forward on attitude, and if the attitude is that “my input doesn’t matter,” you’re in deep trouble.  It’s time to quit talking and start asking, listening and acting.  How engaged are your employees?

Filed Under: Leadership, Leading Change, Strategy Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
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