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What is Management?

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A common definition of management is getting things done through others.

I don’t like that definition very much because it leaves out the human component. This definition could just as easily apply to machines. Why would we want to speak of people in the same way?

Further, you can “get things done through others” while chopping them up in the process.

I think a better definition is provided by Stephen Covey: management is developing people through tasks. This brings in the human component. Management is not just about getting things done, but developing people in the process.

The result is, ironically, that you will in turn be able to get even more done in the future, since whenever a manager’s team is productive they are at the same time increasing in their productive capacity.

But that is not why you manage in this way. You manage with this goal in mind because it is the right way to treat people — that is, because you are managing people, not machines.

A New View on Non-Profits

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Patrick Lencioni is one of the authors that I consistently find most helpful. His latest article [not yet online, but copied below] does an excellent job pointing out the false dichotomy that we often make between non-profits and for-profits.

We often think of non-profits as accepting “lower levels of accountability and productivity and rigor” than for-profits. On the other hand, we often see work at for-profits as failing to give people a sense of mission and failing to tap into their passion and idealism.

We need to reject this false dichotomy. Although it may often be this way, it doesn’t have to be.

I think that a new era has begun for non-profits. More and more people are realizing that a non-profit can be a place driven by an incredible mission while at the same time accomplishing that mission with excellence, discipline, and remarkable innovation. As a result, more and more talented people are realizing that they can go into the non-profit sector to make an impact on the world without sacrificing excellence in their work. And as a result of that, the work of non-profits is becoming even more innovative and excellent — thus resulting in an even greater impact for good.

In fact, Jim Collins writes in his monograph Good to Great and the Social Sectors, “Social sector organizations increasingly look to business for leadership models and talent, yet I suspect we will find more true leadership in the social sectors than the business sector” (p. 12). Why? Because “the practice of leadership is not the same as the exercise of power.” Social sector executives have to rely more on influence than power to get things done, and therefore the social sector environment provides a significant catalyst to the development of leadership.

So a new day has dawned for non-profits — an era where they are seen as a place that satisfies a person’s desire for both mission and excellence. And the result is that great things are being done and will be done.

When it comes to for-profits, we also need to reject the idea that their work is productive but not meaningful. For-profits, also, need to affirm and tap into their employee’s sense of purpose and mission.

This is happening more and more — and, interestingly, can happen in part through partnerships with innovative non-profit initiatives. But that’s not the only way it can happen. It is possible to see the work itself as meaningful and purposeful in its own right, and then also as connected to wider purposes for the good of the world.

As a result, whether in the for-profit sector or the social sector, we can and should have both a sense of mission and an outcome of excellence in our work.

Well, time to get to Lencioni’s article. Since it doesn’t look like it’s on his website yet, I’m copying it here in full:

[Read more…]

Too Controlled is Out of Control

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Good point from David Allen in Ready for Anything:

In golf and tennis, too firm a grip can cause you to “choke” a shot. Hanging on too tightly can limit your ability to deal with things from the most productive perspective. Micromanaging — getting too wrapped around the axles of life and work — can be a seductive trap in getting things done. Fine points are fine, as long as there’s a point. (p. 122)

In other words, if you try to control too much, you actually lose control. As in tennis, so also in productivity: too tight of a grip will cause you to choke.

Allen touches on this in his latest book, Making It All Work, as well:

If your grip is too tight on a golf club, you will lose control of your swing. If your rules are too strict for your kids, they will rebel. A boxer or karate master will attempt to coax his opponent to fear losing control, which causes the opponent to tense up and overreact. (The tactic is called a “fake.”) If your policies and procedures are draconian, you will wind up only stifling creativity, flexibility, and momentum in your environment. (p. 65)

A key part of the solution is to realize that utilizing a disciplined approach to productivity, such as GTD, doesn’t relieve you of the work of having to think about your work. As Allen writes:

Once people catch on to the power of organization per se, they sometimes go too far and try to microorganize everything: “Let’s create a system so you won’t have to think at all!” But it can’t be done. My systems do indeed relieve the mind of the tasks of remembering and reminding as much as I can, but they don’t replace the need for regular executive thinking about my stuff. … You must still engage your mind, your intelligence, and your vision to integrate those moving parts into the whole of how you interact with your world.

Interestingly, the concept of being over controlled has implications for organizational and management productivity as well. For, as Allen alludes to in one of the above quotes, if an organization tries to tie everything up with very detailed policies, the result is often that creativity and momentum are killed.

In this regard, Marcus Buckingham gets at the solution in First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently: Good managers define the right outcomes, but leave it up to each employee to find the best way there. That brings together both the need for clear expectations with the equally important need for freedom and empowerment.

In both the realms of managing others and managing yourself, too controlled is out of control. When managing others, work with people to define the right outcomes, but leave the methods to them. When managing yourself, define your outcomes (projects) and the best next steps to carry them forward (next actions), but once you’ve done this, don’t think that you’re on autopilot. Rather, that is when another level of thinking needs to begin about how to integrate what you have to do into the reality of your ongoing, ever-changing daily environment.

Death by Meeting?

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Seth Godin posted last week on Getting Serious About Your Meeting Problem. It was a good post, and brings up some things I’d like to develop further off and on.

For a longer treatment of the subject — and from a somewhat unexpected angle — I’d also recommend Patrick Lencioni’s Death by Meeting.

Lencioni’s premise in Death by Meeting is not what you might expect. He doesn’t jump on the usual bandwagon of trashing on meetings. In fact, he believes that the mindset of “if I didn’t have to go to meetings, I’d like my job more” is not a good one. It would be like a surgeon saying, “If I didn’t have to operate on people, I’d like my job more.”

So instead, Lencioni’s point is that we need to make meetings better. In fact, he argues that meetings should be more interesting than movies.

The reason most meetings are bad is that they lack two things: (1) context and (2) drama. The way to make meetings better, then, is to provide context and drama.

To provide context, he lays out the different kinds of meetings that should exist, and argues that harm is done when we combine incompatible things into the same meeting. For example, tactical and strategic meetings should be kept distinct. You shouldn’t bog down a strategic meeting with tactical issues.

Beyond this, meetings ought to be more interesting than movies because they actually affect reality. They key to making them so is drama. Not artifical drama, for sure. But by being willing to engage in constructive ideological conflict and mine for differences, meetings become naturally engaging, compelling, and energizing.

Enlightened Trial and Error Outperforms the Planning of Flawless Intellects

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That’s the mantra at IDEO, which they apply not only to the design of their products, but also to their organization itself.

Now, before getting into that, a quick aside. This principle, that “enlightened trial and error outperforms the planning of flawless intellects,” is quite profound. It is based on the reality that we are finite, and is in fact one of the key lessons of human history.

For example, it shows us why central planning doesn’t work as an economic system. Or, better, the failure of central planning as an economic system manifests the truth of this principle (which we can now use to discourage new attempts at increased central planning, BTW!).

The mass collaboration of the internet is also powered, in part, by this principle of enlightened trial and error — in this case, the enlightened trial and error of essentially millions of people collaborating (directly and indirectly) on a massive scale because of technology.

For example, the team at OmniGroup created the task management application OmniFocus. But they encourage user feedback and even gather data on how their program is used. They are continually building out and improving the program on the basis of how people actually use it and on the basis of what the users identify as potentially being most important to them.

That is only one small example of how many things, even though ultimately developed by a company, are now developed “in collaboration with” large groups of real people. There are also many other forms of mass collaboration that are now happening (on this see the excellent book Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything).

We are just on the cusp of some very powerful changes that will come about from this new way of working and thinking, made possibly by the web (and now, especially, web 2.0 functionality).

So this principle is very, very significant and has very wide application.

But back to IDEO.

IDEO shows that of the many areas where this principle is relevant, an easily overlooked but quite fascinating application is to the arena of organizational strategy and design.

Here is what we read about IDEO in What Were They Thinking?: Unconventional Wisdom About Management:

IDEO’s mantra is that “enlightened trial and error outperforms the planning of flawless intellects,” a philosophy it applies not just to the design of its products but also to itself, its organization, and how it conducts business.

It has built an experimenting, do-what-it-takes culture. IDEO had made a good living by designing products for the high technology industry. But during the technology crash of 2001, it needed to reinvent itself, and it did. The company began designing products for consumer goods companies like Procter & Gamble. And it even got into the business of designing experiences, which helped it garner business figuring out how to design hospital emergency rooms, for instance, to make things less confusing and fearful for patients.

Here’s the application:

So, instead of sitting in meetings and spending time preparing fancy PowerPoint presentaitons, develop your strategy adaptively, by using your company’s best thinking at the time, learning from experience, and then trying again, using what you have learned.

Building and experimenting, mistake-forgiving, adaptive culture provides a competitive advantage that lasts, because that sort of environment is much more difficult to copy than some dogmatic strategy. Under almost all circumstances, fast learners are going to outperform even the most brilliant strategists who can’t adapt.

Catalytic Mechanisms for Improving Organizational Performance

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Here are some key points from an article summarizing Jim Collins research on catalytic mechanisms for improving organizational performance.

Catalytic mechanisms are galvanizing, non-bureaucratic links that turn objectives, such as Collins’ concept of the BHAG, into performance.

There are several characteristics of catalytic mechanisms.

First, they often produce results in unpredictable ways. “Unlike traditional systems, procedures and practices – which may lead to bureaucracy and mediocrity – catalytic mechanisms let organizations achieve greatness by allowing people to do unexpected things, to show initiative and creativity, to step outside the scripted path.”

Second, they have teeth. “In contrast to lofty aspirations a catalytic mechanism puts a process in place that all but guarantees that the vision will be fulfilled.”

Third, rather than being designed to get employees to act in the right way, “catalytic mechanisms help organizations to get the right people in the first place, keep them, and eject those who do not share the company’s core values.”

Fourth, they have an ongoing effect. “Unlike electrifying off-site meetings, exciting strategic initiatives, or impending crises, a good catalytic mechanism can last for decades.

Notes on Weekly Management One on Ones

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One-on-one’s are weekly 30-minute meetings between a manager and each person that reports to him or her.

The guys at Manager Tools say that they are the most effective management tool that they know of. They have a series of three podcats on one-on-one’s along with a worksheet that provides some additional details.

I found the podcasts so helpful that I took some notes over them. Here are my notes.

Purpose
The purpose of 1:1’s is communication. A culture of communication, in turn, is a key ingredient of organization-wide alignment and coordination across departments. Communication is the most important lever an organization has for performance.

Basics

  1. Regularly scheduled.
  2. Rarely missed. This means “always reschedule,” instead of canceling. [I would say that sometimes, it just won’t be possible to reschedule and a week will have to be missed.]
  3. Primary focus is on the team member.
  4. Take notes. Keep in a notebook or electronically, and in each meeting refer back to follow-up items.


Agenda
Here is the standing agenda that seems to work best:

  1. 10 minutes: Them. Agenda items they bring and whatever they want to talk about.
  2. 10 minutes: You. Agenda items you’ve brought; updates that will be useful to them to know. Touch base on status of projects and quarterly goals if desired.
  3. 10 minutes: The future/development. (If there is time left for this.)

Preparation
To prepare, they suggest that it can be helpful to review 5 questions. [What I basically do is review notes from the last meeting and pull together agenda items I’ve collected along other items that come to mind (updates that will be useful, etc.).]

Anyway, here are the five questions they suggest:

  1. What things in my notes from last meeting do I need to follow up on? Then write them on your agenda.
  2. What do I need to be sure to communicate to this person?
  3. What positive feedback can I give this person?
  4. What adjusting feedback am I going to give this peson?
  5. Is there something I can delegate? (“There is a gross under-delegation epidemic in America.”)

How to Spell Bureaucratic

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I’m always forgetting how to spell this, and spell check never seems to suggest it when I need it, so I’m putting it here:

  • Bureaucratic

And, its anti-particle:

  • Non-bureaucratic

Why Your Organization's Efforts to Change May Be Failing, In Spite of Everyone's Intentions

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I recently watched a very helpful message by Andy Stanley on Systems. He made the very, very illuminating point that systems trump intentions and mission statements.

Here’s what that means. You might have a great mission statement, but systems are what create behaviors. So if your systems are out of sync with your mission, then your results will be off-mission too.

This will be true in spite of the best of intentions. Even if everybody in the organization wants “change,” the change will not happen if the systems are set up in a way that produces and rewards the opposite behavior.

Your systems must align with your strategy, which must align with your mission. Intentions and even mission statements are not enough. You must have people that give attention to making sure that your systems align with your principles and the results you want to produce.

Vision is essential. But it is part-one of a two-part picture. The second component is your system. Organizations — including creative, bold, and visionary organizations — need to have good systems in order to be effective. Otherwise you may just be a crazy maker.

As an aside: This is why I’m not a big fan when people say “I’m great at vision, but I ignore the details.” To me, that seems irresponsible. It’s like saying, “what I like to do is create a bunch of work for people that I don’t like to do myself.” True, leaders can’t get too deep into the details. But they will have to delve into some — and then make sure that they have and can effectively give strategic direction to the other leaders on their team that are good at systems.