Getting down from the ladder

Photo by doortoriver

Our integrative experience in the AGSM MBA this week included a big chapter on adaptive leadership. One of the concepts that were mentioned time and time again was that of rank. How we perceive our and other people’s rank and what effect it has on our assumptions and behaviours.

One sentence that one of our facilitators mentioned (he actually quoted someone else, whose name I don’t remember) struck me as especially interesting. He was talking about rank in organizations and about people “going up the ladder”, being promoted. Then he said:

“When we go up the ladder, we look down and see a lot of shiny happy faces. When they look up, they see…”

Well, he did not finish, so I don’t feel I need to. But that reminded me of the “Toxic Tandem“. People in positions of power tend to be oblivious to the needs and actions of the people who have less power than them. Or in other words, as we described it in class: “managers are usually blind to their rank”. As a manager, it is easy to forget that you are there on the ladder. That means that the focus of all eyes is on you. And it also means that you are in a different position than everybody else is. Which means it is harder for you to understand them.

Too many managers get to a management position and continue to do what they always did. Their work. Which is good, but not great. The problem is that now their work is being a manager. And that is a totally different job. A job you cannot do without leaving your desk. With our being active about it. without a little, MBWA.

So, the fact that you went up the ladder does not mean you have to stay there all the time. From time to time, you can climb down from the ladder and let the people see your happy shiny face, instead of your…

Elad

Silence, “I don’t know” and problems & solutions

Photo by said&done

This week we had workshop on Adaptive Leadership as part of our integrative experience in the AGSM MBA. Part of the workshop entailed peer consultation regarding dilemmas the students are facing. We formed grouped of five people and in the group we had a very specific process that we had to follow. First, the person presenting the dilemma had five minutes to present without anybody interfering. Then the group had ten minutes to ask open-ended questions. Then, for 15 minutes, the group had to discuss the problem. At this point, two rules were put in place. The first is that the presenter should be absolutely silent. The second is that the discussion of the dilemma should not be about solutions, but only an attempt to understand the situation and what is the dilemma made of. The next stage was a ten minute discussion regarding possible courses of action. And finally, the presenter had five minutes to recap what he found useful.

As someone who likes to focus on the process and its importance, this exercise defiantly appealed to me. I think some bigger insights can be gained from it:

The importance of silence – I think that this is a great reminder to the importance of silence. When you sit silently while other are discussing you become attuned and aware of other things that you usually miss. Your mind is focused on listening and not on the next sentence you will try to push into the discussion. Silence and listening are important tools for communication that are usually underused. I just finished reading the book: “The McKinsey Mind” where one of the tips the writers prescribe is: “we have one mouth and two ears”. This is especially important in feedback sessions and in today’s managerial setting where the manager usually is not the content expert. Listen as twice as much as you talk. This relates to a concept I really believe in: “MBWA – management by walking around”. Go around the office, firm, plant, company. Be silent and listen. What do people say? What do they do? What do the customers say? I grantee, you will learn plenty.

Don’t accept “I don’t know” as an answer – in the same book the authors talked about not accepting “I don’t know” as an answer. They claim that if you go and interview somebody, let’s say, about the causes of a certain problem, many times he will answer: “I don’t know”. But people do know. Maybe they don’t have the entire answer, but they always have opinions, knowledge and theories. And theses sometimes might be more valuable than they think. I believe that the silence is important here is as well. Try this next time you interview someone or give feedback to someone. Ask a question. Listen to the answer. Then wait. Don’t go to the next question. In high percentage of the cases, that person will, after a short uncomfortable silence, will continue talking. People don’t like being silent. You would be surprised how much they will tell you just to avoid being silent.

Problems and solutions – people in the business world tend to be practical. They want to see and reach the bottom line. They ask: “So what?” all the time. But in our race to be active and create an impact we sometime bark up the wrong tree. We miss focusing on the real problem and create solutions which don’t really solve it. We keep trying to deal with fires and don’t ask ourselves how they were caused and why. I mentioned here in this blog that I believe we should be more focused on preventing problems then on solving them. Understanding the real problems is an important part of that. In order to do that, it could be beneficial to limit the discussion to the problem without talking about solutions. It allows us to talk about concepts. To take the balcony view. To think about the underlining rationale. Then, the discussion of the solutions will be much more effective.

Elad

Manager’s Toxic Tandem Dilemma

Photo by John-Morgan

Yesterday I was listening to a podcast from the Mckinsey Quarterly titled: “Good boss, bad times“. It is basically a very interesting interview with Bob Sutton from the Stanford Graduate School of Engineering about an article he wrote for Harvard Business Review.

One of the concepts he mentions is the “Toxic Tandem”. Here is the explanation:

…it’s a combination of two things about power that are very well documented. One is that when people are in positions of power, for better or worse, they often become sort of oblivious to the needs and actions of the people who have less power than them… And the other part of the toxic tandem is sometimes called hyper vigilance…  The spotlight raises on you. They’re looking at you really closely. So if you think about the toxic tandem, you’ve got the boss, oblivious, and then the subordinates, even more and more worried. People tend to devote a lot more energy to their boss—or to their board, even, if they’re CEOs—to figure out what is going on. And they don’t engage as much with the people who are under threat.

I think this is a particularly interesting concept because at least the first part of it is so opposite to what a good manager should do – engage with his employees and become more aware of their needs. Being oblivious to your people is a real danger as a manager.

You hear a lot of managers saying that they feel they don’t have time to do their work since they became managers, because they have to spend so much time with their employees. Then they start disappearing, employing closed door polices and so on. This is because people are promoted on the merit of their old job, without regard to whether they are compatible to being a manager. To whether they have the inherit talent for it. So, they try to do what they did before, but just better. But when you are a manager, it does not work. Because being a manager is about more than being a great professional, not matter what your profession is. Because you cannot afford to be oblivious to your people as a manager. Your job is your people. Their feelings, their thoughts, their success, their excellence.

I believe that one of the most important aspects managers should adapt to their management style is MBWA (management by walking around). I find the importance of this concept not only in managing people, but also in other fields likes marketing (the best companies spend a lot of time with their customers) and operations (actually walking to the production level and seeing things with your own eyes). But when we talk about managing people, it is a must. It is the key to understanding your employees and to making sure you are not oblivious about them.

So, how have you been fighting the Toxic Tandem Dilemma?

Elad

Why you should go and observe someone else’s work?

Photo by Timothy Valentine

Last week in our strategy class we were talking about competitive advantages. We learned about the two main ways you can create competitive advantage – cost advantage and differentiation. Then, as an answer to a student’s question (I don’t remember what it was exactly) the professor said something like this: if you are looking for how to create cost advantages – you need to look for answers in the operations class. If you want to create differentiation advantage – you need to look for answers is the marketing class.

I can’t say I agree.

I think one of the major problems companies are facing today is to create ways disengage from this kind of thinking. To create synergies between operations and marketing. And finance, accounting and HR for that matter. The thought that the advantage of the company, whatever that is, lies in one aspect or one discipline of the business is counterproductive and for me, counterintuitive. With everything we know about the importance of diversity in the creation of innovation, about the effects of social capital derived from interaction between different parts of the business, even thinking about competitive advantage as being the responsibility of one part of the business is dangerous.

I am sure our professor acknowledges that as well. All the examples of successful companies we keep seeing are examples of companies which succeeded to do both cost and differentiation advantages. Doing both requires coordination.

More than that. In the operations class we learn about things like TQM and Six-Sigma. These are concepts that not only reduce cost, but also increase quality and can create differentiation. Marketing decisions can have cost implications. The fact the Apple chooses (or choose) to create the I-pod with a very limited user interface (which I find terrible) is a marketing decision. But I am sure it has operations and cost implications. Design of the product can be a competitive advantage – who does it? Marketing or operations.

In the words of Guy Kawasaki:

The separation of engineering and marketing is artificial. It presumes that engineers build feature-laden crap that no one cares about but engineers. Maybe mediocre engineers do this. Great engineers create with a customer in mind. Fantastic engineers create with themselves in mind as the customer. Every Nokia engineer should give their prototypes to their mothers, fathers, and kids. That would fix everything. The user interface of almost every phone is unintelligible. Anyone could have done an iPhone—it’s not like Apple has a monopoly on design.

I understand the need to simplify concepts for MBAs. But the fact that we study each and every one of the courses separately is enough to create silos of thinking instead of integrative thinking. I think all disciplines, and especially strategy, should embrace an integrative look.

No matter where you work and what is your pre-defined role in your company, you should try to schedule an hour, a day, a week – with another department – to understand their work, their needs and their problems. What you will learn will be invaluable to your work.

Elad

Management by walking around and the impact of leaders on culture

Photo by (Tres) “descamarado”

Tomorrow I have a mid-term in Organizational Behaviour course. Some of my classmates have been affected deeply by the content to an extent of seeing every story in the frame of the course. I will take a more conservative approach.

The material we covered so far in class deals with a number of subjects, but one of the most prominent subjects is organizational culture. This is also the main story of the case study we will deal with in the exam (we got it before hand). The case study deals with the change of culture in Pizza Hut (and KFC and Taco Bell) after it was sold by PepsiCo to Yum! Co.

The importance of culture is known to all. We all feel it almost every day. The culture of our nation, our school, the place we work for or even that of our family and friends. It is all around us. And like with most things that are around us most of the time, we give it little thought. But the rigours dealing with the subject of culture got me thinking:

1. Given the fact that many of us spend a great amount of our time in work, how do you choose an organization that has the right culture for you? Organizational culture can have so much effect on your happiness and satisfaction in your work place. But we don’t really have any efficient way to choose the appropriate place for us. Because culture is such an intangible concept and there is no real way for us to know exactly will work for us, it is a little bit daunting …

2. The more practical thing I was thinking about is the importance of leadership on the creation of culture. There is a wide agreement among researchers that leaders are the main agents of change. And new leaders have the most prominent effect on the organizational culture. The problem I think most of us face while dealing with leaders and their attempt to change culture is hypocrisy. Leaders who say one thing and do another. I think the most frustrating thing people encounter. Sometimes the hypocrisy is intentional, sometimes is just a matter of bad practices. If it is intentional, well, there is a bigger problem. If it is not intentional, I think many times it is a matter of disconnection with the reality of the organization and the people who operate it. The leaders don’t know what is really happening. That is why I think one of the most important process leaders should adopt is MBWA – management by walking around. Go to your people, walk around them, talk to them, be the costumer, deal with a costumer, see where the people are sitting or working. If I learned something from all the study cases we read in this Organizational Behaviour course it is this. Southwest airlines, SAS and now the Pizza Hut cases all deal with strong cultures, led by dominant leaders that interacted regularly with their employees and customers. Go out of the office and walk around. If you consider yourself a leader, this is as much a part of your job as sitting in your office. It is more than that – it is something you need to put into your schedule. How many leaders you know have “walking around” in their schedule?

Elad