We all work for someone. Sometimes we work for people that are leaders and create an environment where we can grow and flourish. Sometimes we work for managers that seem to feel it is their responsibility to keep track of our every activity. These are the managers that for whatever reason seem to consider themselves the center of the group’s processes and the core of its activities. They appear to think of each member of the team as to be some sort of appendage or digit to be controlled or told what to do. These managers want to position themselves as the control point and decision making hub of their organization. These are the types of managers that I refer to as High Maintenance Managers. High maintenance managers can present a significant issue to responsible and capable leaders. In addition to managing downward into their team, high maintenance managers also seem to focus on reporting upwards into their management. Most leaders understand that there is a trade-off between how much time and effort is spent getting work done and how much time and effort is spent reporting how much work is getting done. The obvious point here is that the more time that is spent reporting, the less time that is spent actually doing. Most managers do not see this trade-off as an opportunity cost / productivity issue. High maintenance managers seem to thrive in the reporting arena to the point of almost seeming to place a higher priority on the reporting of the work than the actual work accomplished. So how do you deal with a high maintenance manager if you happen to find yourself in one of their group’s? Their demand for awareness and involvement will not go away. Refusing or ignoring their involvement usually only increases their demands to be involved. And as my dad was so fond of telling me, he might not always be right but he (like the high maintenance manager) was always boss.
I once heard it said that “Those who can’t do, teach.” This always intrigued me. Being someone who enjoys and appreciates golf, I looked at some of the professional golfers and their beautiful rhythmic swings for inspiration. They all seem to have swing coaches of one type or another. I always wondered if these swing coaches were capable of creating these great swings in others, why they couldn’t create one for themselves and start winning. It would seem to indicate that there is more to golf than just the physical / mechanical aspect of being able to swing a golf club correctly. Hence, they teach.
I would propose that the business corollary to “Those who can’t do, teach” is “Those who can’t do, report.” It is my experience that high maintenance managers love reports. They love to get them. They love to give them. They want reports from their team members weekly, monthly, ad hoc, you name it. They want project reports. They want progress reports. They want to have meetings and conference calls to discuss their reports. They seem to want to know what everyone is doing, all the time.
They are almost information junkies when it comes to their areas of responsibility. They can’t seem to ever know enough about what is going on. This might be an acceptable situation if the information that is gathered is used for the purpose of directing or affecting the performance of the business. More often than not it is not used this way. High maintenance managers seem to try and gather all the information that is available for the purpose of creating more reports.
High maintenance managers seem to live for the opportunity to present reports on their own and their teams activities. It is not uncommon for these managers to have multiple drafts and even multiple dry runs on presentations and reports that they will be presenting to their reporting structures. They are experts at crafting an activity report (or just about any other type of report) that not only conveys what has been done, but also does it in such a way as to amaze and astound their management with the images, prose and flow of the presentation. It seems how things are said and done are just as important, if not more so than what was actually accomplished.
Contrary to what you might expect it has been my experience that high maintenance managers do not want to make all decisions. They do however want to be involved in all decisions. They will want to understand how the decision was arrived at and the logic that was used. They will ask detailed questions and probe the arcane aspects associated with the decision. There were always a great many “your decision” questions, and they were usually phrased as “I would like to know…” While the high maintenance manager may not make all of the decisions, through this type of process they do in effect control the decision making process.
It might sound as though I have found high maintenance managers to be untrusting of their teams. In all honesty, I really do not believe this to be the case. I think it stems more from the idea that these types of managers are driven by the perception that since they are nominally in charge that they must be in the middle of all that is going on. They must be aware of, understand and try to control all that is going on as it pertains to their realms.
I am not advocating or even saying that leaders are not or should not be aware of their team’s activities. I am saying that good leaders need to provide space for their team members to operate in. Team members should not be fully autonomous, but they do need to have some sense of self direction if they are to grow into the next generation of leaders. The leaders that I have been associated with were good at providing objectives and guidelines. The managers that I have worked for usually provided tasks and instructions.
I have spent a little time describing some of the traits and attributes of high maintenance managers. I am sure there are more. There are other items such as rigorous justifications associated with approval processes. Another favorite of mine is the repeated forwarding, with comments, of just about every email and piece of correspondence that they receive. It seems that since high maintenance managers crave information, they assume everyone else does too.
I have found that there was never any way to satiate the demands of a high maintenance manager, but that there were usually ways to contain them. One of my favorite ways was what I referred to as the preemptive information strike. Since they were information junkies, I found that if I would provide an information set to them prior to them asking for it, I could invariably provide them a less intensive information set and avoid the detailed review.
I also found that I could work to create an information format or structure that again would be less time consuming and information intensive. I would look to try and create a “bulletized” information / feedback format that would enable me to provide the desired information while at the same time creating a jointly agreeable structure that would reduce my reporting time.
I am sure there are other methods for dealing with high maintenance managers. I have only highlighted a couple of tactics that seemed to work for me. High maintenance managers by their nature are demanding of their team members’ time. This is a trait that is difficult to change. Refusing their information and report requests usually only succeeds in having the requests changed to demands. And the demands usually become for ever more intensive detailed information.
High maintenance managers are a fact of business. For whatever reason they have adopted an informational management approach that they believe works for them. Team members will need to understand this and be flexible enough to adapt to this management style. It is difficult if not impossible to get managers of this type to change, but it is possible to find ways of satisfying their demands while at the same time limiting their informational intrusion into the actual conduct of the business. While that may not be the optimal solution it is an effective way of dealing with high maintenance managers, and still accomplishing your goals.
Category Archives: Decision Making
Being Liked
I think it is pretty safe to say that we all want to be “liked”. There are few people in business that set out to be disliked. They may end up being disliked, but I don’t think they started out with that as an objective. However, there do seem to be many business leaders who it appears do set out to try to be liked by everyone. While it is a good leadership characteristic to be able to try and get along with everyone, I don’t think a leader has to try to be liked by everyone. Business leaders are vested with the responsibility of setting the direction for the business. This includes the strategic longer term direction as well as the shorter term tactics and steps required to achieve the longer term goal. This means that leaders have to make choices. Making choices means that some people will agree with your choices and some people will not. Healthy disagreement within an organization is a desirable trait. It makes you continually check your choices and directions against differing views to make sure that you are not missing any overlooked piece of information. It fills gaps and strengthens the overall plan.
Still, making decisions, especially difficult or contentious decisions will mean that some people will “like” the decision, and some will not. Each individual’s position as it pertains to the decision will in turn be associated with the leader who made the decision. However if the decision is clearly made and the reasons and criteria that were applied are well communicated everyone can respect the decision. That can be a key point. While some people may not like the decision, and by extension the leader that made it, if they are provided with some insight into the factors that have lead to that decision they can respect it.
Providing insight and understanding into leadership decisions does not mean having to explain why one direction was taken instead of another. That would mean that everybody in the organization would have to be supplied the same aspects and information as the leader for each decision. That would be far too cumbersome and slow. Economic theory states that businesses exist to provide earnings to their owners (either stockholders or other types of equity holders). They do this by providing value to their customers, and from that generated value creating profit and earnings.
When leaders make decisions that are in support of these basic business precepts, it is hard to argue with them. As leaders they will have to make difficult decisions in association with these directions. It will fall to them to decide which projects go forward and which ones do not when limited resources dictate that the business cannot sustain multiple investments. Some will like the decisions, and those whose projects have been discontinued may not. It will be the responsibility of the leader to decide if market conditions dictate a reduction in staffing, when it will happen and who will be affected. The list goes on.
Leadership and management mean making decisions. There have been documented instances where management could not decide on the strategic direction for the business. They decided to set two strategies in progress and see which one did better, then choose it. In theory this would indicate that at best they were wasting half of their scarce resources. In reality with only half a full commitment to each initiative, neither worked out well. The leaders wanted to be liked by all but ended up not being respected by anyone.
There have been instances where leaders have tried to avoid being disliked or having to do the politically unpleasant. This can be manifested in the “peanut butter” type staff reductions that occur where all business units within the overall organization, performing and underperforming alike, are reduced in response to overall profitability pressures. Instead of being guided by business profitability and customer value, and focusing on those specific business units that are relatively unprofitable, other non-performance based criteria clouded a critical decision. Invariably this leads to management eroding the support of their respective teams, and again an overall loss of respect for the leaders.
A business leader does not need to be liked by everyone. A good leader will be respected for the quality and timeliness of their decisions. If a leader fails to make a decision, or the right decision based on the acknowledged business drivers and available information, it will not result in the leader being liked by more people or disliked by fewer people. Invariably it will lead to a reduction in the team’s performance as it becomes more recognized that performance may not be the primary decision criteria. It seems that managing a responsibility or a business from the aspect of trying to minimize the number of people who dislike you, invariably results in a less healthy business, and nobody likes that.
Necessity
We have all heard it said that necessity is the mother of invention. It is also said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. That is probably enough on the trite homilies for now. I want to look here at the latest events in the news on the macro-level and relate them to our businesses on a more individual level. It seems that one company created (invented) some industry leading applications for their product, and another company apparently copied these applications for their competing products. In the ensuing legal battle the inventors of the capabilities won a judgment against the imitators. All of the articles and documentation that I have read regarding this legal decision seems to be capable of being summed up in a single line: The decision was good for the inventor, bad for the imitator, worse for the consumer. In the macro-level consumers will also benefit from the reduction in imitation and the increase in new products and innovation in that by necessity if the imitating company wants to stay in the market, they will have to invent and create new applications and new ways to bring them to market. Will they be better? Hopefully, but they will certainly be different because they have to be. They can no longer comfortably continue to do things the way they have been doing them. It seems to me that this is an excellent case for continuing to make the daily difficult decisions on what is best for your business while the decisions are still yours to make. Don’t allow a “wrong decision” or worse, a “no decision / no action” to be made because it is easier or perceived to be more palatable at the time. Avoiding the current necessity or delaying it will not make it any easier or less unpleasant either now or in the future. As we saw in the news, waiting to go your own way can result in facing a much more public, painful and expensive set of new business criteria than you might have ever considered.
The idea here is that the inventor won so they are happy (and richer due to the awards associated with the judgment), the imitator is unhappy due to the penalties they must pay (and the fact that their products may not be able to utilize the desirable applications going forward), and the consumer’s will be worse off in the market because they will have fewer choices for products with these desirable applications, and they may be faced with higher product prices.
I don’t think this is bad. I think this is commerce. I also think that the company that was imitating its competitor is now faced with the necessity of changing and creating its own new innovations and products if they wish to continue forward in their chosen markets. This isn’t bad, this is good. The process will obviously be painful and could probably have been avoided with timely business decisions when they were necessary.
We are seeing here on the very high level is how an entire company is being forced out of its comfort zone, where it imitates what another company has been doing. We can telescope this type of event down to just about any level of almost any organization. What I am getting at here is that creative companies focus on and want to protect their creativity up and down their management levels, not just at the corporate level. Profitable companies focus on and protect their profitability. These ideas seem to permeate the corporate fabrics of these types of companies. You can’t copy that. You have to decide to do it yourself.
Now there are several directions that we can go here. Is there a uniformity of goals in these focused and successful organizations? I think the answer is obviously yes. Is there an alignment of incentives associated with attaining these goals? I would say that as well. Is there a necessity of performance? Yes there is. I Think this is where we, like the previously mentioned imitating company can all learn. There is a focus on and culture for doing what is necessary, when it is necessary to maintain the corporate focus and achieve the corporate goals. These decisions and actions may not be pleasant or welcome at the time, but they are recognized as a necessity of the business.
On our own business levels, we are constantly faced with competition that as a response to our capabilities must change the way they conduct their business. This is the reality of the business environment. There usually is not a legal decree involved that makes them do this. This is being done out of necessity. No one wants to be second best. (This may not be entirely true. Those that are actually third best or lower strive to be second best, but this is normally only as a step toward being the best.) If nothing changes, there will be no way to improve.
We rarely get presented with the stark necessity of change the way that the imitating company did. We always find that it is easier to imitate what we have been doing in the past than it is to change and do something else. Our creativity or profitability rarely comes to an abrupt halt. It usually declines in such a way that can be easily explained or rationalized for some period of time. Even then it can be bandaged or milked for a while longer. Eventually however, necessity will arrive and with it the requirement to act.
What we have seen here in a generalized form is that those companies that have recognized what is necessary to their ongoing success (be it innovation, profitability, service, etc.), and pursue it with an ongoing focus are usually the most successful. Their approach is not to imitate others, or to imitate their own past success, but to recognize what is necessary today and to make the appropriate business decisions and to take the appropriate actions. Those companies that do not recognize what is necessary on an ongoing basis and continue to try and live off their own past (or other company’s) successes are eventually confronted with the very abrupt, somewhat expensive and usually painful realization of the new necessities that they are facing.
Confidence and Time
When was the last time you were 100% sure about a business or sales decision? We all like to say we are when we make a decision. Occasionally we might even be that sure. Most of the time I don’t think we are that sure. We usually have an acceptable amount of information or input that enables us to feel confident enough to make our decision and move forward. If we didn’t feel confident, we would ask for more information and decisions wouldn’t get made and things wouldn’t get done.
Have you heard the phrase “paralysis by analysis”?
Confidence and how it affects decisions can be looked at on many levels and seems to vary significantly with both the economic climate and the business culture. In harder economic times, such as those we have been experiencing for the last while, it seems we need more information to make us feel confident enough to make decisions. The return for making the right decision seems to be outweighed by the risk of making the wrong decision. We also seem to be in many instances encouraging a “matrix” business culture where “consensus” is almost a requirement for any decision to be made.
Pareto would tell us that we will get 80% of the information in 20% of the time or inputs. It would follow that on average with this input you would make the right decision at least 80% of the time based on this 20% input. You would be right at least 4 out of 5 times. Just think how well you would do if you had this kind of accuracy with respect to your decisions in the stock market.
It seems we are now in economic times where the risk of being wrong once outweighs the benefits of being right 4 times. So now where do we go? Is it acceptable to only be wrong once out of every 10 times? Once out of every 20 times?
We need to remember that as we require this greater and greater accuracy on our decisions, we also require greater and greater amounts of information on which to base the decision and more importantly greater and greater amounts of time with which to make the decision. The result is we end up moving slower and slower. It ends up taking us longer to react. It takes us longer to get moving. It takes us longer to recover. When then layer in a matrix / consensus business structure and environment where the process has to be repeated for each individual associated with the consensus, it is almost a wonder that progress can be made at all.
Of the major resources available to a business, Money, People and Time, the only one that can not be replaced or replenished it Time. Physics tells us that Time only moves in one direction, and unless you are travelling at relativistic speeds (close to the speed of light) and doesn’t slow down. It would seem that if we focused more intently on Time as it affects our businesses that we would probably get a better return on our decisions, and start moving faster.
Moving our businesses forward will require the confidence to make right decisions as well as the acceptance of wrong decisions. We need to understand that no decision will engage reality and remain intact. They will all need to be modified. The “correct” decisions will only need to be modified slightly (if at all). The “incorrect” decisions will need to be modified to a greater extent.
The point here is that it will probably take less Time to modify the one potentially wrong decision out of five (the 80 / 20 rule) than it would take to gather all the information and gain the consensus required to get a higher level of surety across all five decisions.
I think that in these economic times with businesses focusing on the risk, and hence moving slower and slower, the business that has the confidence to focus on Time will gain the advantage by starting to move faster than the competition, and get the return.
Interviewing and Closure
A while ago I had an opening in a group I was leading. I did what anybody who has a need for staff (and budget to pay them) does: I interviewed people to fill the position. I went through the standard progression for hiring people. I requested and gathered resumes, and then went through them and made the first cut of people who had the minimum / desirable experience and expertise for the position. I then contacted this “long” list over the phone and had a short conversation with each candidate to ascertain their histories and capabilities as they had detailed in their resumes. After this conversation I again made another cut to the “short” list of candidates.
I then scheduled and had a more in-depth phone conversation with these candidates to understand how they would recognize, approach and solve problems associated with the position. I also wanted to get a start at understanding their various management styles and how they might fit into the existing team. At this point it was relatively clear that all candidates had the technical and hard skills required to perform the work associated with the position, and that the final decision criteria would come down to soft skills and which candidate would fit best into the existing team. The “short” list was then cut to the finalists.
The finalists were then requested to come in and meet face to face for a more in depth discussion on strategies, directions, tactics and methodologies that the candidates would use in performing the work, and interfacing with the other members of the team and other teams.
I was fortunate in that a clear choice emerged, and that it enabled me to make a good selection for the position.
That was the standard progression for the interviewing and hiring people. I think we are all familiar with it, and have probably gone through it at least once and probably several times in our careers. The point that I want to make here is not about the selection process, but about the communication that was then conducted with each prospective candidate who was NOT chosen at each stage of the process.
I had begun to think back to various times that I had interviewed for positions. I recalled that many times the process just seemed to end or go dormant with no feedback or reason given. After a while I would call to ask to understand what the next steps in the process were (after all they had shown interest in me), only to be told that they had already selected someone else. They hadn’t had the courtesy to let me know that I wasn’t selected.
I understand that due to the variations in positions and interviewing leaders no one will be selected for every position they interview for. The point is, that while no one likes to bring people the bad news that they were not selected, the hiring manager has the responsibility to see to it that the unsuccessful candidates are told if and when they are removed from consideration, and if possible to provide a short explanation of the basis of the decision. If you invited someone to the party, you need to stand up and tell them when the process is over for them.
The information needs to be straight forward, simple, and on a par with the position that they were at in the hiring process. If it is at the resume review or early in the process, then a short note thanking them for their time should do. If you have had significant discussions with them either over the phone or in person, I would think that the courtesy of a person to person phone call would be appropriate. I don’t think a detailed discussion or review of the candidate is called for, but at least hearing from you that while the decision was difficult, it was made, and that their participation in the process was appreciated.
I guess there were times in my past career where I would have appreciated that kind of closure on the interview process. Because of that I try to make sure that I provide that kind of closure to people who have gone through the interview process with me.
Information…or Punishment
Business and project reviews are good opportunities for leaders to get a view into the business on how it is performing. They need to be scheduled often enough so that topics and trends can be identified before they become issues, and not so often that they become onerous and drain time and resources away from the business in preparing for them.
How often should you have them? Monthly? Every two Months? Quarterly? I think that it depends on the actual cycle time of the business. By cycle time I mean the amount of time that must pass before the results of an action can be recognized in the business’s financial reports. Hi-tech business cycle times are normally on the order of months.
However, we have all been in organizations where managers have uttered the immortal phrase “We will have weekly reviews on this issue until it is resolved…” It is good to let the team know which topic is a high priority and what is not, but a leader should not take this approach for several reasons.
If you are truly committed to this approach you have to be prepared to attend every one of these reviews. As soon as you fail to attend, or send a delegate, you are communicating to the team that the issue is no longer as high a priority to you. The team will also take that into account as they set and work their own priorities.
The other aspect of this action is, what are you trying to achieve? If you understand your business’s cycle time, and you know it is longer than the periodicity of the reviews, what do you hope to gain, or learn from the more frequent reviews? It is in this area that information transfer becomes perceived as a punishment. You are in effect telling your team that you did not like the information that they provided you, and that you will hold repeated reviews until they provide you the information that you do like.
A better approach is to take and assign action items at the initial review. The action items can and should be specific and should have response and delivery objectives that are well in advance of the next regularly scheduled review. That way changes and actions can be taken quickly, feedback can be obtained in advance of the next review, and enough time can be provided to recognize the financial impact of the changes. In this way you can communicate the priority of a topic, the actions that you feel need to be taken, assign time lines and monitor progress, without turning what should be a useful communication session into a perceived ordeal and punishment.
Remember, if you are perceived as punishing people for bringing you what you feel is bad news, they will stop bringing you the issues. By taking the action item approach you can encourage the early discussion of potential issues and help work to avoid them. The team will appreciate the leadership.
Equipment is Becoming a Commodity
It used to be that if you made the best products, you had a distinct competitive advantage. However, today it appears that things have changed. If you are not making the best products, you are not at a competitive disadvantage, you are out of business.
Off-shoring, and its new euphemism “Right-Shoring”, have reduced the costs of everyone’s products. Moore’s Law (the doubling of technology’s capabilities approximately every 18 months) is well understood, and in some quarters is thought to be close to having run its course. With so many open standards, products are no longer comparable, they are virtually interchangeable.
As China emerges on the technology scene as an economic super power, it is using its competitive labor advantage (most technology based companies have their products manufactured in China by various Contract Manufacturers), and its technical parity to try and make every customer’s buying decision a price based one. In trying to make every buying decision solely a priced based one, it is in effect “commoditizing” the equipment.
If there is no ability to differentiate equipment, other than price, what can be done? The obvious choice is to start focusing on the non-equipment differentiators: the level of relationship and trust between the customer and vendor, ease of equipment installation, ease of product maintenance, warranty length and breadth of coverage, etc. In short Service.
As products become more technically capable, they can have a tendency to become more complex to operate. Their installation and implementation have become more specialized. Their maintenance and the ability to trouble shoot their problems require much more training and specialized support.
Customers do not seem to buy technology for technology’s sake. They are buying a “use” or application to fulfill their specific need. The ability to simplify and reduce the customer’s perceived risk associated with the implementation and operation of their equipment in the delivery of its functional usage can be significant equipment decision differentiators.
With it becoming so difficult to differentiate commoditized equipment, it will pay to try and differentiate the ease and simplicity of product usage, the depth and breadth of support, and the comprehensive level of service that will accompany the equipment. When the competition is trying to make the customer’s buying decision a price based one, you will need to try and make it a service based one to change the decision criteria back in your favor.
Robert McNamara Was Right
Robert McNamara was a former president of Ford motor company, A Secretary of Defense under presidents Kennedy and Johnson, and was generally known as one of the first “whiz kids”. He was involved in returning Ford to profitability in the 1950’s and such global events as the Vietnam War, the Cuban missile crisis and the USS Pueblo controversy.Through out those events he maintained a directive that stood him and the country in good stead. He always said to get the information first, and then check it again.
We have all looked at a report, spreadsheet, balance sheet or P&L and after glancing at it said that everything looked in order. With the shear number of documents and emails that we have to look at in one day, we find ourselves falling more and more into this habit. We get to feeling that if things look right, then they must be right, right?
To be truthful, in many instances the simple answer is usually the correct one. Your instincts and a scanning of the documents will do. Things will be as they seem.
However there will always be the exception to the rule. You can not allow a bad habit to lead to a bad result. You will need to get into the good habit of double checking and triangulating your information. You need to understand where the information you are working on has come from. There are very few events that call for such an immediate response that you cannot re-look at the data before acting.
A good manager will look at the information and if it looks right, they will take action. A business leader will look at the information and if it looks right, will look at it again to make sure that it is right, before taking an action. That’s how you make sure you are acting on a studied decision instead of reacting to an external stimulus. Sometimes it might appear right, but sometimes appearances can be deceiving. Checking the data again seemed to work well for Robert McNamara.
No Peanut Butter
You’re running your business. You’re paying attention to the big issues and the details. You’re on your targets, making your numbers and living within your budgets. Life is pretty good. Then at one of your boss’s staff meetings you are told that there is a headcount reduction scheduled and you are told what your participation in this activity will be. It turns out that other functions are not performing as well to their targets as you are, and now all are going to have to participate in the unpleasant task at hand.
It is the dreaded “peanut butter” effect.
The peanut butter effect occurs when it is easier to take an overall general action than it is to take a focused and specific targeted action. It can be 10% reduction across the board instead of a greater number in the offending groups, or a travel or a hiring freeze for all instead of just for those declining functions. I think we have all seen it.
Peanut butter provides a disincentive to good business performance. If a function that is performing must participate in a down side activity to the same level that a non-performing function does, you are mitigating the cost of poor performance to the underperforming function.
Fast forward to now, and you are now the leader. If your business is not performing to its overall requirements, and you are looking to take actions early on to try and bring its bottom line back on track, make the effort to understand where both your good performance and your problems lie. Take specific, focused business actions based on the businesses performance. Don’t spread peanut butter.