Shorts: Jim Hart in HBR Blog on communicating with your team

This is a quote from Jim Hart’s post in Harvard Business Review Blog titled In Tough Times, Help Your Team Remember Their Purpose:

In his book, It’s Not What You Sell, It’s What You Stand For, Roy M. Spence Jr. writes something we have been coaching CEOs and executive leaders on for 30 years: “A real purpose can’t just be words on paper. It has to get under the skin of every member of your organization….If you get it right, people will feel great about what they’re doing, clear about their goals, and excited to get to work every morning.” This is especially important in turbulent times…

Very strong statement. Reminds of the idea of Vital Signs I write about a lot. And this:

And I think, this can also teach us a lesson as managers and leaders. There is no doubt that one of the most important things we need to do as managers and leaders is to communicate. But we have so many channels. Just using one of them for all our communications is not enough. We need to create the right mix and to send the right messages using the right tools. We need to remember that some people are listeners and some are readers. We need to remember that some people like to get all the information online (on a computer and all the time) and some prefer to do it offline (not on a computer and postponed to a different time).

Elad

Shorts: The Freak Factory on Teamwork

We so often forget where the real power of teamwork can be found. David Rendall, in his Changethis manifesto The Freak Factory: Making Employees Better by Helping Them Get Worse, reminds us:

Teamwork doesn’t mean that everybody does the same thing. It means that everyone contributes what they do best

Reminded me of what I wrote in my E-book:

There is the known proverb saying: “there is no ‘I’ in the word ‘Team’”. If you ask me, it is a silly notion because it takes to edge of the most important factor of the team – The teammates themselves. I think that a team is composed of a lot of “I”s. That is what makes it a strong team… A team is made powerful by using the comparative advantage of each team member and making it the team’s advantage.

Elad

Shorts: Customer Experience Matters on leadership

I read so many things each day that are relevant to the subjects I write about in my blog . However, I don’t always have the time or the ability to write a full blog post about them. Usually, there is one quote I like, which it too long to tweet about. Therefore, I decided to start a new series of posts called: Shorts. Each of these posts will have the word: “Shorts” in the title, with the name of the source I am referring to and the subject. These posts will only include a short introduction by me, and then a quote.

Today, I am going to start with a post from Customer Experience Matters. Bruce Timken Quotes a few people interviewed for U.S. News & World’s America’s Best Leaders 2009 list. Here is the quote I like in particular, as talks about the balance between team and individuals in management:

Roy Williams, head coach of North Carolina, listed his three guiding leadership principles:

“(1) Everyone on the team must focus on the same goal. It’s my job to effectively communicate those goals to the team; (2) Emphasize those goals every day; and (3) Understand that although everyone has a common goal, individuals also have goals, needs, and dreams that must be cared for.”

Elad

It’s not about you

Photo by David Boyle

On B-net Australia, Steve Tobak, writes about The Ten Rules of Great Teams:

Great groups and great leaders create each other

Every great group has a strong leader

The leaders of great groups love talent and know where to find it

Great groups think they are on a mission from God

Great groups see themselves as winning underdogs

Great groups always have an enemy

People in great groups have blinders on

Great groups are optimistic not realistic

In great groups, the right person has the right job

The leaders of great groups give them what they need and free them from the rest

I was going through this list and noticed something. The list mentions the idea of leadership a number of times (even though I think mostly management is a better term in this case), but it does not differentiate the concept from the group. The leader and the group are both part of one concept. And that reminded of something I wrote a few weeks back:

They way to create a shared story is not using your employees as instruments, but treating them as partners. And if you treat them as partners, the results will follow. It is more than making sure the job gets done. In order to get the job done, you can put processes in place. But a manager needs to think beyond getting the job done and beyond the process. A manager, as a facilitator, needs to create the conditions in which these processes take place. Conditions that lead to flow, joy and happiness.

Authority is not about telling people what to do either. The worst damage you can do is giving clear instructions because it prevents the communication inside the team and prevents the development of people. It means that there is a big chance the team will fail when you would not be there. And it is not about you, it is about your team. It is about completing the task together.

As things happen these days online, connections are created . Just a few minutes after reading the B-net article, I read Marshall Goldsmith’s post on the Harvard Business Review blog “Leadership isn’t about you“:

Charlie thought about my question. “As a coach,” he said, “you should realize that success with your clients isn’t all about you. It’s about the people who choose to work with you.” He chuckled; then he continued: “In a way, I am the same. The success of my organization isn’t about me. It’s all about the great people who are working with me.”

Maybe it is time to stop worrying about ourselves. It is time to realize that nobody cares about us. Being a great manager or leader is not about us. It is about connecting people to something bigger. It is about creating a shared story. It is about creating great people and great teams.

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

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

Which team member should get most of your managerial attention – the weakest or the strongest?

Photo by woodleywonderworks

I was reading an article from the Harvard Business Review Blog yesterday called: “Four Ways to Improve Your Team’s Performance “. As it names suggests, the article deals with ways to improve team performance. The “Four Ways” are derived from the suggestions of Tom Donnelly, the men’s track and field coach for the past 34 years at Haverford College. Now, I am the last guy who can say anything against using sports to describe important concepts in other disciplines or life in general, but in my opinion, at least one of the suggested ways is not applicable in both worlds.

The first tip the article tries to import from the track field to business teamwork is setting is:

Spend as much time with the slowest runner as with the fastest. To improve a team’s performance, focus on its weakest members. As long as a team member is working hard, he or she deserves your attentive, careful coaching.

Now, this sentence has two parts and it is important to take both of them in consideration when dealing with teamwork. I kind of agree with the last part of the sentence.  If somebody is trying hard, he should be acknowledged. But, we should be careful. If somebody is trying hard and he is still weak, this might be a sign that he is not talented for that role. Now, this is one place where the difference between teamwork in a business setting and teamwork in a college comes to into play. In a college, I guess, part of the job of a coach is to get everybody to participate and to encourage the cohesiveness of the team’s spirit. In a business setting, the role of a manager is to help each team member find the best ways to make the most of his talents in order to improve the overall team performance and use of the team members’ comparative advantages. And that means, letting people who are not good at what they do go (or moving them to a different role).

The first part of the sentence is even more interesting. On one hand I like it. Because in contrast to the conventional wisdom, it does not say – spend most of the time with the weakest members, but says to spend equal time. But the middle sentence says the opposite that is, focus on the weakest link. Maybe this is true for the track team, but I actually believe that a manager should spend more of his time with his best people. Now this is surprising. They are doing fine – why do they need the managers time? Exactly because they are doing fine. The manager’s role is to help them do great. Help them to excel. Help them make the most out of themselves. Doing fine is not enough. With the right guidance, people who are good can become great. And their improvement will drive up the team performance more than any change in the weakest people ability.

In addition, people crave for attention, recognition and development. And if your best people will feel they don’t have enough of those they will be frustrated and they will leave. But even worse than that, they won’t be able to realize all of their potential. And that is the true role a manager. If you don’t do that, you fail as a manager.

I think this is true not only in the business setting, but also in other settings. So much attention goes to weak students, the troublesome soldiers, for those who fail that we forget those who succeeded, those who do everything right and those who are on the verge of excelling. I think, for example, that in any school, there should be at least an equal number of hours and resources spent on the most excellent students as those who go into those who struggle. How many times did you sit in class and felt that you are not being challenged because the teacher was going slower so the weak students could catch up. Now what would have happened if you were challenged.

Now, I am not saying that we should abandon the weak or ignore them. in the business setting we should find a better role for them or let them go. In education, we should also create ways to help them better themselves. But, if we want excellence and high performance (in the most wide interpretation of the word that includes intellectual performance), we should not forget those who succussed. With a little help, they could do so much more.

Elad