Bad Managers Suck - Chapter 1

Joe,

As I was reading through the Manifesto again recently, one page in particular spoke to me.  It was in the chapter of the Manifesto intended for leaders.  For whatever reason, this statement jumped off the page:

GET OUT OF THE WAY.  People want to kick ass.  You just need to let them.  

It's been a while since we trained our cross-hairs on bad management, so I thought we could exchange some thoughts here on our "favorite" bad management practices.  Let's shine a light on these practices so that the Talent Anarchist's of the world can rise up and crush them.  We must demand better from ourselves and our leaders.

Bad Management Practice #1: The Silent Treatment

It seems that almost every day, I hear another story about how an individual never hears much from their manager.  For some, this means that the manager literally doesn't talk them . . . at all.  Sadly, this isn't as rare as it should be.  In most cases, it's that the manager doesn't talk to the employee about anything that really matters.  No information about what's going on.  No information about decisions being made.  And absolutely no feedback about what's expected of them or how they are doing towards meeting those expectations.

There are probably a lot of reasons that this happens.  We promote the wrong people into management.  Tenure in a job is not a qualification to manage people.  We also do a very poor job of training our managers to manage.  Learning to communicate with others doesn't happen from listening to a trainer for 60 minutes or reading a book.  Those things might give us some tools, but you have to practice.  Actually doing it and learning from the experience is the only great way to learn these skills.

The silent treatment is not cool and it's not okay.  If you are a manager, you need to sit down with your people regularly (at least once every 2 weeks).  If you are not a manager, but you have one and he/she sucks at communicating, you should demand a regular meeting.  The meeting should have an agenda with at least these four agenda items:

1. Stuff the manager knows that the individual should probably know about (Call it Team Updates)
2. Stuff the individual knows that the manager should probably know about (Call it Progress Updates)
3. Feedback on how the individual is performing relative to the manager's expectations.  
4. Q&A (Space in the discussion to bring up whatever is most important.)

This won't necessarily cure a manager who is giving the silent treatment, but it's a step in the right direction.  

What is your "favorite" bad management practice?

-Jason

Making Space for the Truth

Jason-

A follow-up to my last post.

So here is the dilemma…

Organizations (like any social group) require a certain amount of conformity. There are certain rules and policies and norms (implicit and explicit) that you need to follow in order to have membership. The more conformist an organization is, the less it is able to utilize the intangible assets that it has access to…things like the curiosity, creativity, ideas, questions, experiences, perspectives, diversity, passion, etc. that live within its workforce. These things make people stand out and so in a more conformist environment they tend to stay buried.

So.

If an organization wants to minimize conformity in order to harness its intangibles and maximize its ability to learn, adapt, innovate and evolve, how does it do that? Here are some thoughts.

Look for and expect dissent. If you are talking about anything of substance and there is not some disagreement, you should be very concerned. As General Patton said; “If everyone is thinking the same thing, someone is not thinking at all.” This can be a significant blind spot when we are in a position of leadership though, because we start out thinking pretty highly of our own ideas and when everyone around us agrees with them, who are we to see that as problematic?

Teach people how to disagree respectfully. Talk about this starting in the interview process, include it in job descriptions and in performance evaluations, provide training and feedback. Make it a normal and central part of the culture.

Create and support a different kind of leadership. A big part of why this is a problem to begin with is that we have a way of leadership/management that is largely built on being right and owning the truth. This stands in the way of candid conversation, challenging assumptions, and questioning decisions...all of which can be incredibly valuable for an organization.

Crush politics at every chance. The validity, value and necessity of organizational politics are greatly overrated. We have organizational politics to the extent that we do because that is what we tolerate. Be less tolerant. Organizational politics come at great cost as employees end up with truncated identities and trade their passion and ideals in for the rules to the game.

I think the "how do we do it?" question probably has a lot of different answers, but I think that these are a good start.

-joe

Building the right kind of Container

Jason-

Thanks for the great list on increasing our capacity to work with and through conflict. Good stuff and very actionable. There is only one thing that I would add to this list and it is really a pretty common theme in our work and in our ongoing discussions. I think that the nature of our relationships is probably a large variable in the capacity for those relationships to withstand and actually benefit from some conflict and tension.

One thing that every single one of us can do, regardless of our role or title, regardless of our education or amount of experience is make a greater effort to develop and maintain real and resilient relationships…relationships strong enough to tolerate a bit of conflict. We have talked a fair amount about social capital in this space and I think that it is a dead horse worth beating.

Conflict, tension, and dissent are not bad things necessarily…in fact they can be very good things. They can be a sign that people are awake, paying attention and actually give a shit about something. They can be a sign that people are willing to be honest…which unfortunately is not terribly common in my experience.

If you want the benefit of that honesty and those different perspectives, you have to create the right kind of container. If you cannot create that container, then conflict is likely to break things pretty quickly. Your list is a great way to go about building that container, as is an overall focus on building strong relationships.

-joe

The Future of the Organizatin, Part 3

Joe,

I think I misunderstood the assignment you provided for this leg of our discussion. I will do as Avis always promotes and "try harder" this time.

So to reset, if business is going to change in these ways . . .

1. Innovation as a key opportunity for competitive advantage
2. Increasing rate of change
3. Disruptive technology
4. Importance of customization and individualization to consumer desires
5. Trust as a key opportunity for competitive advantage
6. Importance of design

. . . how will the organization be different? Rather than talk specifically about what the organization should look like as I did in my last post, I'll instead talk more generally about what is likely to happen in organizations as business evolves in the directions we discussed.

How will the organization of 2020 be different?

• Culture will be important, for the reasons you described, but also because top talent will be increasingly more portable and willing to move. Today's younger generations also put more value on culture as a decision for where they choose to work.
• IT as we know it will no longer exist. As technology gets more pervasive, sophisticated, and inexpensive, the role of the traditional IT department (writing code) will go away and a new strategic IT must emerge. Every person in every function will be utilizing technology in a significant way to do their job. IT will need to become more of an internal consulting organization to help the business make decisions about where and how to implement and utilize technology to make business happen.
• Brand building will become increasingly important. Controlling the company message in the media and community at large is no longer possible so putting out a bunch of BS in an attempt to spin things won't be an option in the future. Web 2.0 tools have created an environment where you will have to authentically "walk the talk" or your employees and customers will crucify you through their blogs and social networks. Thinking of brand in a much larger way will be the key. What you say about your brand must also be true about your culture in the future.
• Specific and deep expertise in a product or service area may become a liability. Organizations who are able to develop competencies in creation, seeing the future, disrupting markets, and solving big problems are likely the ones best able to navigate in rapidly changing markets and business environments. These competencies are also global in that they create value regardless of business and locale. These organizations are likely to be those who are right-brained companies who embrace some chaos and welcome in the deviants who are too "different" to fit in at traditional companies.
• Relationships and communication are going to be critical with both customers and employees. You mentioned building communities with customers. These communities need to power wide-open, no-holds-barred dialogue between customers and the organization. These dialogues aren't about pushing products or promoting the company, they are about only listening and seeking to understand what is being said. And, they are the key to delivering the kinds of things that the market will consume. These same dialogues will need to be taking place with employees.

I hope that this was more in line with the assignment.

-Jason