Angry Management

An icon in the computer industry recently lost his temper and fired all his staff in a particular product line because the product was not a success. I'm pretty sure most of my business school textbooks said he did the exact right thing. Management is holding staff accountable for a failure. But if you draw that logic to its ultimate conclusion, if all his staff failed then why didn't he fire himself too?

I agree that managers have to hold staff accountable for failures. I disagree with letting emotions interfere with good judgment. The problem isn't with holding staff accountable for a product failure. The problem isn't with firing some folks who may have been incompetent and should not have been in the roles they held. The problem is with losing your temper.

As a manager, how can you possibly make a rationale business decision when you are angry? Every rational road of reason in your brain is blocked in a traffic gridlock of anger. You are going to make mistakes. Making arbitrary decisions is the result of letting emotions shutdown alternative routes of logic. Seeing only one road to follow is the result of letting emotions limit broader thinking. Anger leads to simplified logic: if the product is a failure, then team is a failure. If the team is a failure, then fire them all.

Much like throwing the baby out with the bathwater, the icon of the computer industry threw the whole team out on the street. A less emotional decision may have called for a post-mortem review. Create an opportunity to let emotions dissipate before making a decision. Let rush hour to fade and discover new roads of logic. Maybe some members of the team truly needed to leave the organization. But it is inconceivable to think all of them were a problem.

No one comes into work with the intention of doing a bad job. As a manager you need to take some time to understand the full reasons for the failure. Before you fire the whole team, think about how much support and guidance you gave your staff. Did you hire the right people? Did you set the appropriate strategy? Did you put the right support processes in place? When you ask these questions you realize accountability for a failure of this magnitude moves up the organization. You need to think carefully about the true origins of the failure.

Responding to a crisis on an emotional level allows the manager to hide the truth behind a wall of anger.

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Change Challenges

Sometimes I wonder why it is so hard to introduce technology change in organizations. While planning a new enterprise system implementation several years ago I discovered that everyone said the old system was bad and had to be replaced. After we installed the new system, everyone blissfully reminisced about how wonderful the old system was. If this reaction happened once for one technology change I would understand. But seems to be a consistent reaction to technology change.

Is the reason human nature, or how we approach technology change? The very nature of the word technology might have a small part to play in the problem. The word technology is derived from "knowledge of technique." Not "cool gadgets are fun" or "my new iPad will change the world." I would suggest that the etymology of the word of technology reveals an interesting perspective on how to introduce technical change to an organization.

What if we paid more attention to understanding the technique needed to use new technology, rather than the technology itself? To address technique we naturally focus on process improvement. Let's try to improve our processes at the same time we implement new technology to ensure the technology is optimally used and the organization is appropriately prepared to apply the new technology.  Makes sense, but I've seen serious resistance to this approach too. Changing process concurrently with new technology implementation isn't enough.

I suspect we implement change with blinders on. We have a narrow focus on planting new technology using advanced processes but ignore the fertility of the ground. What about looking at the rate of technology change relative to the rate of culture change in your organization? How fast does your organization's culture change relative to its outside environment? How fast are you planning to implement new technology internally? I suggest that anytime you introduce technological change faster than the natural pace of change in your organization, you are going to have change challenges. Conversely, anytime you introduce technology slower than the internal change rate you get stagnation.

Is first prize matching the rate of technology change with the acceptable rate of organizational change? Is that the ideal synchronization? Nope. How do you compete or derive a competitive advantage if you simply plant the same crops the same way every year? The challenge is how do we increase our rate of technology change without the resistance caused by being faster than our natural organizational rhythm of change?

I suggest you change the culture first, and then introduce the new technology. When the rate of technology change has to be faster than the rate of organization change, the culture has to change first. Make sure the field has all the nutrients needed to grow a new crop and you will reap what you sow. But changing an organizational culture is a lot harder than buying a new technology. I'm afraid that too often we take the path of least resistance and try to use technology to drive the organization change. In this field of endeavour, maybe we have put the plough before the horse.

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Some thoughts on privacy legislation

Attached is my speech on privacy legislation from a CIO perspective.

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Changing Change

I've implemented some large scale organizational changes in several places over the years. Whenever I initially tell folks we will be changing, I'm always surprised with how quickly many folks agree that changes are needed. Why do they easily agree that change is necessary? Because typically they see themselves as not needing any personal change. But they always tell me that the person next to them needs to be changed.

That kind of "it's not me who needs to change, it's them" thinking can be a huge millstone around the neck of managers. Sinking into a comfort zone as manager will end your creativity and innovation. Without constantly craving change, you are not striving to make your organization continuously better. Contentment is the antithesis of successful management.

Unfortunately, sliding into complacency seems to be a natural path. Our culture assumes that it is normal for us to look for a state of stability. Build a perfect model and then don't change it - there is a Stalinesque simplicity in such an approach. For a manager, I would suggest that's the most dangerous path possible. If you are not changing, you are not adapting to external forces. If you are not adapting, you are deteriorating.

If the complacency assumption is correct, then it is human nature to look for stability and reject change, or at least pretend to accept change if it only means changing your neighbor. That means managers are inevitably doomed to sink into an infinite vortex of depressing stagnation. Of course, that makes no sense for successful management, so managers need to work with a different cultural assumption.

I would like to suggest an alternative mindset: change is addictive. This may seem counter-intuitive, but think about the rush of adrenalin created by something new. If that new thing is good, the feeling is positive. I think deep down, human nature is about being adaptive. I think we're fundamentally designed to adapt to new conditions, so managers have a responsibility to feed the need for change. Isn't that how we have successfully evolved as a species? Our role as managers is to be constantly on the lookout for new opportunities to improve and grow our organizations.

As managers, we need to replace a fear of change with desire for innovation and our normal state should be one of constantly searching for improvements.

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Why Giving Positive Feedback Is Bettering Than Giving Praise

There is an important difference between giving your employees positive feedback and giving them praise.

• Positive feedback focuses on the specifics of job performance.
• Praise, often one-or two-sentence statements, such as “Keep up the good work,” without positive feedback leaves employees with empty feelings.

Worse yet, without positive feedback, employees feel no sense that they are appreciated as individual talents with specific desires to learn and grow on the job and in their careers, reports Nicholas Nigro, author of, The Everything Coaching and Mentoring Book.

So, skip the praise and give positive feedback that is more uplifting to your employees because it goes to the heart of their job performance and what they actually do.

An example of positive feedback is:

“Bob, your communications skills have dramatically improved over the past couple of months. The report that you just prepared for me was thorough and concise. I appreciate all the work you’ve put into it, as do your team members.”

Use A Board Of Advisers Instead Of Mentors

Here is one of my Blog's most popular posts from last year...now with updated information.

David Burkus often provides valuable comments to my various Blog postings, and he's a person who effectively uses a board of advisers, instead of mentors, to help him achieve success.

"I've found that in my life, it was easier and more effective to set up a board of advisers," said Burkus, the editor of LeaderLab. "This is a group of people, three to five, that have rotated into my life at various times and that speak into it and help me grow. I benefit from the variety of experience these people have."

LeaderLab is an online community of resources dedicated to promoting the practice of leadership theory. Its contributors include consultants and professors who present leadership theory in a practitioner-friendly format that provides easy-to-follow explanations on how to apply the best of leadership theory.

Community users can download a variety of research reports and presentations about leadership and leadership versus management.

For example, a presentation on LeaderLab explains:

•  Management is made up of activities needed to run a business, unit or organization to help achieve its goals.
•  Leadership is what it takes to inspire and engage employees to contribute their best to achieve the goals, support the vision, carry out the mission, and embody the company's values.

Two of Burkus' favorite leadership books are:
•  The Starfish and the Spider -- A book actually about leaderLESS organizations. "This book examines organizations that didn't need leaders to thrive," said Burkus.
•  The Leadership Challenge -- "This book examines the practices that make leaders effective and teaches aspiring leaders how to inspire and lead others," explained Burkus.

David has written his own new book. It's called, The Portable Guide To Leading Organizations.

Does T.E.A.M Say It All For How To Successfully Lead A Business?

While I was at the gym today, I saw a poster for a team weight loss class/program. Its theme was:

T.E.A.M.

T = Training
E = Education
A = Accountability
M = Motivation

That got me thinking...if you lead a business and provide on-going training for your employees, provide opportunities for education and learning, hold employees accountable and provide plenty of motivation....is that basically all you need to be a successful leader?