Wait and re-evaluate

Photo by QueenNeveen

This post is the second post in a series of posts I am writing about lessons about managing people from the book Predictably Irrational, by Dan Ariely (for the first post in the series, see here). This time I want discuss chapter 5.

Chapter 5 is called the influence of arousal – why hot is much hotter than we realize. In short, it describes the effect that feelings and extreme emotions have on our decision making processes. It is like each and every one of us contains a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. A rational, calculating persona and an emotional, less sophisticated side. And it happens to us all the time even we are not aware of the effects. And when you are dealing and managing people, you are prone to a constant state of varying emotions.

For me, I think the most important lesson from reading this chapter is a two part lesson – wait and re-evaluate

Wait – Let’s say something happens. For example, a peer or an employee makes a mistake or sends you an e-mail that you feel is wrong (to use the nice term). You are angry and you want to instantly write back to him an angry e-mail. You write a wonderful e-mail explaining his entire family history and how it pertains to the current situation. And you hit send. And then, a few minutes after that, you calm down. And you think about it. Actually, he is right. He might not entirely accurate, but if you think about it from his perspective, you can understand why he said what he said. And after the apologies (assuming he forgives you) you talk to him and understand that the problem was in how you explained things to begin with.

Have you been there? I have. The solution – if something in your everyday work makes you feel a particular emotion, just stop. Wait a few minutes. Wait a few hours. Re-examine the situation and then make the decision.

Re-evaluate – there are some decisions that we know are important. And still, we make them in different states of emotions. This rule is not practical in all situations, but if you have the opportunity, make the decision twice. I first came across the advice while reading Paul B. Carroll and Chunka Mui book Billion Dollar Lessons and manifesto Let’s Get Persian:

Herodotus, the Greek historian, reported that the ancient Persians always made important decisions twice—first when they were drunk, and then again when they were sober. Only if the Persians reached the same decision, drunk and sober, would they act on that decision. The approach apparently worked—the Persians dominated the much of the Middle East and Central Asia for three centuries.

They talk about it in terms of how to create dissent and overcome groupthink, but I think it is applicable to inter-personal communication as well.

Ariely mentions in his book that “Looking from one emotional state to another is difficult”. To use his analogy even further, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde don’t really communicate. The decision Mr. Hyde makes under the enhanced state of emotions seems completely rational to him. But when Dr. Jekyll re-evaluates the same decision, he will understand how irrational it is. We need to create this communication between the sides and allow them to discuss the rationality. Sometimes, the decision would not change. Sometimes it will. But at least you will have some kind of assurance that it was made (hopefully) more rationally and that it will be fairer to your peers or employees.

Elad

Am I just like you?

Photo by Lanuiop

A few days ago, Bob Sutton wrote a post called “I am just like you“. In it, he describes some of his thoughts after reading David Dunning’s book: Self-Insight. While I haven’t read the book (Yet! Just added it to my ever-growing Amazon wish-list), I am not sure I agree with Sutton’s thoughts. Here is what I perceive to be the gist of his post:

Dunning points out that a host of studies show that one major impediment to self-awareness is that people see themselves as unique — usually as superior to others –  when that actually are  not: as more ethical, emotionally complex, skilled, and so on…

The implication, however, that if we assume “I am just like you” rather than “I am special and different,” or even that “we are all the same,” we might make better decisions and learn at others’ expense rather than our own strikes me as a lesson that could be quite valuable.  For example, I’ve been rather obsessed about the virtues and drawback of learning from others mistakes rather than your own (see this post on Randy Komisar and Eleanor Roosevelt), as this question has huge implications about how to teach people new skills and the best way to develop competent and caring human-beings.

While I agree with the basic assumption that we should get to know ourselves better and that we should develop a better understanding of our abilities and strengths, I am not sure the solution could be found in “I am just like you” thinking. Actually, I don’t see the difference between that kind of thinking and “we are all the same” thinking. I wrote something similar in my e-book:

Equality is an important concept in many aspects of life, especially in the legal field, as I know so well. But in real life, because equality is intertwined into our thinking DNA it is used in ways that many times hinders excellence. Earlier I mentioned Ken Robinson’s inspiring speech regarding creativity and education. In it he says that standard and equal education for everyone is not necessarily good because it “misses” people’s strengths. All men are not born equal. Whoever tells you that is lying. All man should deserve an equal opportunity to excel, to be happy and to use their comparative advantage. That is the truth. And there is a big difference between the two. Nobody can be good at everything. People who truly excel do it by recognizing their comparative advantage, maximizing it and letting other people do what they are better at than them.

I do not disagree that people have a tendency to be over optimistic about their abilities. There is ample research to support that. I am just not sure that the way to deal with that problem (if we assume it is a problem) is to reinforce the wrong assumption that we are in fact just like each other. I think this is a dangerous line of thinking for individuals and managers. The real value is found in realizing the actual differences and respecting them. By realizing who we are and embracing it, we could reach much more than by deluding ourselves about our equality or superiority.

Elad

More on managing meetings

A week and a half ago I wrote here about my most important concepts for managing meetings. I got many comments on this post, many of them offering other important concepts and some disagreeing with some of the concepts I mentioned. One of the disagreements that kept coming up dealt with my concept about coming prepared.

This is what I wrote:

Everybody must come prepared. And when I say prepared I mean totally and utterly prepared. When you get to the meeting you already: read everything; made the preparations; calculated the numbers; came up with your own ideas. I spent so many meetings where people come unprepared and as a consequence half of the meeting is spent on just understanding the issue or on doing things that should have been done earlier without wasting everybody else’s time. Too many people believe that they perform the best under pressure and rationalize their way into procrastination. This trend extends itself into the meetings and people say to themselves – “hey, I learn the subject while the meeting takes place”.

Here are some of the comments about this point:

Everyone needs to be prepared. However, avoid over preparation if you want to be innovative. If you want to build ideas as a group, you don’t want to have people come with their ideas nailed down.

Too much preparation can be a downside, leading to people coming in with pre-conceived ideas and already solved problems. Basic preparation is a must though, to understand the key facts etc. but I’ve found too much preparation can hold back a discussion.

While I respect the people who commented on this point, I have to strongly disagree with them.

First, I think the comments confuse between communication skills and preparation. One can come totally unprepared, but still be closed to other people’s opinions. On the other hand, somebody can come with his own ideas and solutions, but be open, receptive and listen to other people. The fact that some people come prepared and are not willing to listen does not mean that coming prepared is the problem (causality). It means that their lack of communication skills and ability to listen is probably the problem. I think one of comments actually described it quite well:

… but I think there is a thin line between coming prepared for a meeting and coming with THE solution. I think it’s very important to be open to new ideas and avoid selling your solution. The attitude that you have when you go to a meeting is crucial.

The issue is the attitude and not the preparation which is positive.

And this brings on the second point. Part of the problem occurs when only one person comes to the meeting prepared. The others, who are not prepared are not able to contradict that person so he seems like he is not listening to them and they are also not able to point mistakes or to create a positive influence on his idea. Everybody loses.

Third, most of the comments also talked about wasting time in meetings and the fact that we have to many meetings. If people come unprepared, everybody’s time is wasted because people have different abilities and speed of understanding. I honestly don’t see the negative connection between preparation and being innovative. On the contrary, the fact that everybody has come prepared only allows spending more of the time on the actual innovation and allows avoiding things like groupthink.  

Fourth, preparation is disregarded in many aspects of our lives, and while I don’t support excessive over perpetration I feel that it should be given its due place. Just recently Jon Gordon wrote a post exactly on this subject:

So often we fail because we fail to prepare. We focus on hitting the ball but we forget to take the time to tie our shoes tight before the game starts

I am going to come prepared to my next meeting. What about you?

Elad

The unconventional wisdoms: helping people succussed and long-term teams

Photo by John Spooner

One of my favourite subjects here in this blog has been conventional wisdoms. Those things that mangers usually believe in, but that have been proven wrong and ineffective. Over the life of this blog I have mentioned some of them, mostly relating to the management of people and teams. That is why it made me so happy to read Bob Sutton’s post: “What are the Dumbest Practices Used By U.S. Companies?“. It’s nice to have smarter and more experienced people reinforce your ideas from time to time.

I recommend reading the post and the comments which offer many mistaken conventional wisdoms. With so many of them out there, I sometimes wonder how the business world works at all. But I wanted to focus my attention to two of these practices that are mentioned in the original post, and add a few thoughts of my own. This is the first one:

2. Dysfunctional Internal Competition.  This is a big theme in The Knowing-Doing Gap and Morten’s Hansen’s masterpiece Collaboration.  If you dig into the problems in the banks and a lot of other companies, they actually punish people who help others succeed, both via the reward systems and who gets the most prestige.  This seems to persist even though the evidence against such assumptions and systems are so clear.

I must admit that I have never seen this problem described like this. But it makes a lot of sense. As I advocate in this blog, following Markus Buckingham preaching, is that the most important thing a manger could do is help other people succussed. And if organizations are built in a way that hinders the ability of managers to do this, that actually incentivizes them not to do what there are supposed to do, there is no wonder why so many people feel out of place in their workplace and why so many people do not reach their full potential and quote “a bad manager” as their number one reason for leaving their jobs. It is about time to not only make sure that we as managers engage in helping other people excel, but also to ensure that there are systems in the places we work for are set to support that function.

This is the second practice Sutton complains about:

3. Breaking-up Teams Constantly.  American companies often seem to love moving people around constantly, breaking-up teams, giving people new experiences, and so on.  Certainly, there is a time for fresh blood, but if you read J. Richard Hackman’s Leading Teams you will see that the weight of the evidence is that breaking up teams less often rather than more often is linked to all sorts of effectiveness indicators.  Also, see this post about the Miracle on the Hudson where I discuss this literature.

Again, I never thought of this problem in the way described here but it makes perfect sense when you think about it from a strengths perspective. An effective team, among other things, is a team where every member is attuned with his strengths; where synergies are created from the diverse opinions and talents. And it takes time to create this synergy, because people are so different. But it is their differences that creates strength and allows them to perform excellently. I think everyone who has worked in a team felt it. The difference between the beginning of the life of the team and the end of it, when each team member has learned his teammates’ traits and knows how to work in tune with them. So, maybe we need to think about long-term teams and about ways in which we sustain them.

Two challenges laid down for managers of organizations… will you take them upon yourself?

Elad

The biggest challenge of modern managers – managing smart people

photo by GIHE

The last few weeks I have been interviewing for a job. I went to different firms and met different interviewers. As I am interviewing for a position in the middle of an organization, one that will demand the handling of a team, the discussion included questions around teamwork, leadership and management. Those are all things that I love talking about, as those of you who have been following this blog know very well. However, the interviews themselves, and my mental preparation for them, made me think about some of my beliefs, in an attempt to articulate them better.

I wrote here many times that I believe that a manager’s main challenge is helping his team excel, each person in a different way. I talked about the fact that I believe that the best way to manage is by outcome management and by resisting the temptation to give answers. I also talked about the humility that must be part of a manager’s attitude, and off course about MBWA.

But the more I think about it, the biggest challenge managers in modern organizations face today, one that encompasses most of the above challenges is that of managing smart people. Because in today’s environment a manager is not necessarily the best professional. These days are over. He no longer has the ultimate knowledge and the ability to understand all issues of the business, department , division or sometimes, even the team. The people he works with, most of the times know more about specific things then he does and have skills that he doesn’t.  And they are smart. Not only smart in terms of pure intelligence (IQ)  but smart in terms of emotional intelligence (EQ) and social intelligence (SQ).

Malcolm Gladwell, one of my favorite authors gave an amazing speech at the New Yorker conference labeled: “Genius: 2012″. In it, he  compares Michael Ventris, the decipherer of Linear B, with Andrew Wiles, the solver of Fermat’s Last Theorem and concludes:

“Modern problems require persistence more than they require genius and we ought to value quantity over quality when it comes to intelligence”.

One of his main claims in the speech is that 13 smart guys are better than one genius in dealing with modern problems. And this is the essence of what a manager needs to do. He needs to coordinate 13 smart guys to solve modern day problems. And those of you who worked with smart people, know how big a challenge it is.

The more our society advances the smarter people will get. They will get more specialized. Most problems today can’t be covered by one individual so each team members must know only part of the problem very well. And the manager needs to coordinate all of that. He needs to make sure that each team member has the ability to excel with his specific knowledge and skills; has to ability to use his strength for the good of the team; to create a synergy from the separate members of the team.

What do you think the biggest challenge of modern managers is?

Elad

Obliquity and management

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As part of a “Business Ethics” course I am taking at my AGSM MBA I came across this fascinating article by John Kay titled:  ”The role of business in society”. It deals with the long lasting debate surrounding the role of business – to make profits or to be a good corporate citizen. It is an interesting look at the debate and I think it makes some valid points, even though I think in its essence it does not contribute something very new to the discussion. However, one concept in the article made me reach a revelation, the principle of obliquity:

I call this paradox the principle of obliquity. It says that some objectives are best pursued indirectly… We are all familiar with one application of the principle of obliquity. While Americans, characteristically, talk of the pursuit of happiness, happiness is rarely best achieved when it is pursued. Research in social psychology confirms our intuition and experience. Happy people are not, in the main, those who selfishly promote their own interests: in fact happy people are most often characterized by a kind of uncalculating and outgoing generosity

In a later article, titled: “The oblique approach”, Kay writes the following things:

With maturity – personal or corporate – comes the principle of obliquity. Goals are often best achieved indirectly. Many people have noted the paradox that the most profitable companies are not necessarily the most profit oriented

It is so inspiring to read something that actually makes you feel: “wow”. And that is the way I felt when I was reading about this concept. So many times during my life I was told that the first thing we should do is concentrate on the goals and try to align ourselves with them. Why, I taught it myself a number of times. And it is true. And useful. And effective.

But not always. Because sometimes the best way to reach a goal is to reach it indirectly. We all know that sometime we are so obsessed with something that we hurt our chances of actually gaining it. When we let go, it somehow comes naturally. And I know it sounds very Hollywood-Movie like. But it actually happens.  

Think about it. When do you learn the most? When you are sitting in class actually trying to learn or when you are doing something and the learning comes as a side effect? Most people say that the most they learned it from the indirect learning – from other people, from doing, from watching – and not in formal courses. Or from failing. Could you imagine that? Those of us who learned how to drive know that the best teacher of driving is the road. Once you start driving, it actually teaches you about how to drive.

And this concept is so true in so many business settings. And it explains why many of the conventional wisdoms are just wrong! Would the manager help his flowers more by solving their problems or by letting them reach the answers by themselves? If you want to improve the performance of your team do you focus your managerial attention on your strongest people or on your weakest people? The answer to both of these questions is the indirect answer. Don’t give answers and the strongest people. or just think about Judo Strategy, and its claim that sometimes we don’t need to attack by pushing, but by pulling. Or by substituting effort for ability.

I am not saying that the answer to each and every problem is the indirect approach. But when we realize that the direct approach is not working, why not try to attack the challenges we face indirectly. It could be a powerful tool. After all, as Abraham Maslow said: “When your only tool is a hammer every problem looks like a nail“.

Elad

Widespread transparency

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Everybody who ever worked in any kind of an organization has felt the same way. “What the hell are the guys up there thinking?”; “I do all the work down here and I am not sure how what I do relates to what the company does?”; “How do I make a difference?”.

Here is how Anthony Tjan from the Harvard business review blog describes it:

Here’s a test. Ask five to 20 of your employees to explain what your company’s customer value proposition is. How many different answers do you guess you’ll get? Answer: somewhere between five and 20. This is, of course, in addition to the response, “What the heck do you mean by a value proposition?”

When is the last time you thought about how much your team understands about what is your business and about what the team actually does? When I was in the Israeli Air-Force I headed training for new soldiers. I had a couple of new instructors working with me and before the course started we sat down to have a chat about what the new course is going to be like. I planned to have a short discussion of what we were generally trying to accomplish and then move on to the urgent administrative staff. But when we started the discussion I realized, after a few short questions, that was what obvious to me regarding the training, the way it is built and handled and its objectives, was not that clear to them. We ended up spending more than two hours just talking about the big pictures. After a few weeks on the job, one of my teammates came up to me and said: “you know, if you we haven’t had that discussion, I would have handled a lot of my daily interactions totally differently. Thanks for that”.

I remember thinking after that about how things that are obvious to me as a manager of that team were not at all obvious to my teammates. Years later I was reminded of this story when I read about the “curse of knowledge” in the great book “made to stick”. The curse of knowledge basically means that we have problems explaining things because we already know them, which makes it hard for us to imagine how someone who does know what we know see it. This means we need to actively seek where our assumptions about the knowledge of other people are wrong.

However, I think that if we look at it from a broader managerial perceptive, it is about creating a culture of widespread transparency. It could be, as Anthony Tjan claims, that it will be about transparency in what is our value proposition It could be financial transparency that helps low level managers and employees make decision. And it could be leadership transparency. But all of these are part of the same mechanism of creating a widespread transparency. A way to engage our teammates, employees and followers and a way that allows them to make the right judgment calls and decisions. To implement strategy below the c-level strategy. In this complex but highly fast paced and fast communicated world, this kind of culture will have to be the norm.

So, what have you been doing to create a widespread transparent environment?

Elad

 

Intuitive Vs. Analytical

I was watching Mae Jemison’s TED talk today about the connection between science and art. In this interesting talk she explains why she thinks the perception of many people that science is analytical while art is intuitive is wrong. Actually, she claims, they are both a manifestation of the same idea. You can find analytical thinking in art and you can find intuitiveness in science.

That made me think. This debate is relevant to business as well. How should businesses be run? According to intuition or analysis? The answer, of course, is both.

 In the last few weeks I have been preparing for interviews with management consulting firms. One thing you understand when you practice solving business cases and reading about how these firms operate, is that there is a tremendous importance to analytics. You are expected to be structured in the way you approach each problem, you are expected to think about all the problems while at the same time paying attention to the little details. But at the same time you see how important intuition in their work and thinking process is. You are also expected to hypostasise and prioritise. Go with your basic logic, gut feeling and intuition.

I heard many people in the past say: “I am a numbers guy” or “I am a big picture – go with my gut – kind of guy”. Hell, I said it myself a few times. And I think knowing what you are is an important part of success. At the same time, it is also important to understand that the fact that you have a certain point of view, a bias if you will, does not make the other way wrong. It means that we should actively try to seek out the other way.

It seems to me that success, in art, science or business, comes out from integrating intuition and analytics. That is one of the reasons diverse teams have trouble working in the short term (they speak different languages – one of intuition while the other analytics) but in the long term, they tend to outperform homogeneous teams (which do not take the full picture).

Thus, if we are unable to use both (and most people will struggle doing it consistently) we need to complete our own biased point of view, with the opposite point of view. Or just remind ourselves to re-check the other point of view every once in a while.

So, how do you integrate both intuition and analytics in your everyday work?

Elad

Re-thinking tradeoffs

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During the last few weeks, as part of our AGSM MBA integrative experience, we participated in a simulation with a software called Markstrat. The simulation allowed us to run companies in teams as part of a competitive environment, making decisions about operations, marketing, strategy and more. In the end of the two weeks experience we each had to write a short essay about what we learned from the experience.  Here is a short part of what I handed in:

As future managers we should be aware of that and think carefully about the implications each decision has on our cognitive resources. Attention and time are the scarcest resources a manager can allocate, even more then money. Thus, they should be considered in a decision like any other scarce resource.

This relates to an idea I have been writing and thinking about a lot lately. Tradeoffs. I think as human beings we have the immediate tendency to want everything. To try and be everything. To try and be the best at everything. Maybe instead we should focus our attention on being the best at something. Just one thing that will make us stand out. Not because being good at everything is bad. It is because it is so hard to achieve all at once. Because success is so many times the result of tradeoffs. Of actively deciding not to be good at something, because we put all our resources on something else.

Maybe, in our multi-tasking world, we need to re-learn what our forefathers, the hunters, knew how to do so good – focus on one thing. Become your prey. Follow it enough and you will understand it, start to think like it and finally hunt it.

I was reminded of this concept yesterday while I was reading Seth Godin’s post: “Spare no expense!“. Godin, makes the same point about tradeoffs in a different setting. The resources companies put into making one customer happy. A short excerpt:

The reason we get trapped by (c) is that, “I’m doing the best I can” is always much easier than, “we need to be disciplined and help more people, even if that means that some special cases will fall through the cracks. The internet makes this even more difficult because people who fall through the cracks are able to amplify their complaints ever louder.

The way around it, I think, is to set expectations early and often. If you’re going to give me your phone number, you better answer it. If you’re going to offer a warranty, you better honor it. If you position yourself as a company with real people eager to make every single person happy–you better deliver.

No matter what, you should decide. In advance. How much do you want to spend on ad hoc emergencies, how much do you want to reserve on design and helping the masses improve their experience?

The hard part is making the decision and sticking to it. We see many companies saying things like – “we put our people first” – but when it comes to making the actual choice, the actual tradeoffs, they don’t. It is not only about not fulfilling your promises; it is about not making the right tradeoffs even though you decided to make them.

So, what are your actively chosen tradeoffs? And what do you to keep them?

Elad

Standpoints, interests and zero-sum game

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I was reading a very interesting post by Shmuel Merhav about t “impotent explanation of the manager’s ego problem” (link in Hebrew). In short, Merhav claims that many times, problems in organizations are said to be a result of some individual’s ego. The trouble is that talking about someone’s ego does nothing to solve the problem. It blames it on an external force (and off course, it is never our ego, always others). Hence, it is an impotent way to deal with problems. Defining the problem as an ego problem suggests that there is nothing to do about it.

Merhav then goes to describe how in many of his consultation services, he came to an organization and heard that the problem was due to some manager’s ego, but when he actually looked into the problem he discovered it is not an issue of ego at all. For example, he describes a situation where a manager used to keep all essential information to himself. The other managers saw it as an ego problem. It turned out that that manager did it because of a legitimate concern that classified information will leak to competitors as this has happened a few years earlier. A little work allowed to better identify which information is really classified, and release most of the information the other managers needed without any fears of a leakage. Not an ego issue at all.

Another example was of a manager that did not delegate. A short investigation revealed that she did not really know how to. She was sent to a workshop that not only made her team members happy, but also made her very happy, as she was swamped and wanted to delegate. Again. No ego issues.

This reminded me of a lesson I wrote about in my e-book about understanding the difference between standpoints and interests. An interest is what we really want. A standpoint is how we communicate to the world what we want. Many times, there is a misalignment between the two due to our fear to admit our own fears or problems or just due to poor communication. Then, the discussion revolves around the standpoint, instead of around the interest.

Think about the manager with the classified information. His interest was that no sensitive information would leak outside of the organization. His standpoint was: I am not releasing any information. Only after his interest was laid out on the table, there was a possibility to really solve the problem by meeting the interest of both sides. Instead of asking a zero-sum question – “should the information be released or not?” a discussion of the interests allows to ask a win-win question: “how can we release the information the managers need, while making sure there are no leaks of important information outside the organization?”.

I think the important lesson we can learn from all these examples is that sometimes we assume that the other side has a standpoint, without him even stating it. The ego explanation is just our own standpoint of the situation. But, as Merhav puts it, it is not a very productive standpoint.

So, do you talk about your and the other side standpoints or about your and the other side interests?

Elad