Your Management Model

The following is a letter sent to our workshop participants.

Hi Everyone,

Randy, Fran and I came away from the workshop inspired by your energy and high-level participation with both the H2H Interaction System and with each other. 

Bottom line, our day was spent exploring and discussing your management model, which sources the explicit choices you make around: 

1. How you set direction
2. How you make decisions
3. How you track, support, motivate, and
4. How you coordinate activities

 About Management Models

 We made the claim that management science has not kept up with the explosion of technology and today’s global work.  And, that management as a discipline has been neglected.  For the past 40 years leadership has been glorified by universities and by gurus such as Warren Bennis, who have underplayed the importance of management.  They did this by equating leadership with effectiveness and management with efficiency.  Literally, the top thinks and the rest carry out that thinking.  It turns out, however, that everyone who manages participates in leadership and management interactions (conversations).

In my research I’m finding that the exploration of management models is gaining steam.  While this is not a new term we’ve found that people who manage don’t typically talk about or explore their management model, since it lives in the background.  Day to day, they simply operate from it.  Those who take a moment to examine their management model can determine:

•  Whether or not it is working to their advantage in their present environment and current work demands,
• If they operate from their model because they have always done it “this way” or “this is how we did it at my other company.”  We call this a “drift” and claim it is time to “design.”
• Whether it would be advantageous to “upgrade” their model for the sake of helping their company and themselves gain a competitive advantage.
• Are we operating in a “slippage” or “accountability” culture?

 The key advantage is that for each of the dimensions of management listed above, managers can make choices about how they are working.  However, without a sense of their present model and the availability of other models and new ways of thinking, they basically have little choice.

 Exploration

Our intention to build your managerial success foundation was based on the notion that it would be insufficient to simply share tips and techniques for high-performance leading and managing given what we’re facing in today’s world. What is required is an examination of your management frame of reference, literally the foundation of your beliefs and thinking.  In Quiet Leadership, David Rock writes, “Improving the performance of your employees involves one of the hardest challenges in the known universe:  changing the way they think.”  Our sense is that change starts with ourselves so we started by examining your paradigm or “now” frame of reference, reflecting on the way you think and take action.  We compared a separate circle with a connected circle and explored which circle you are operating from in various situations.  We also challenged your intention to change.  Now you can use your new understanding and the tools with your people.

The Three Management Paradigms

Professor Don Sull from The London School of Business writes, “If you look at how people think about getting things done in large complex organizations, they basically sort stuff into three broad categories. The first is about power: the organization is a hierarchy where information flows up and orders flow down, and you do what you’re told or you’re fired or demoted. … This tends to create silos: the hierarchy is very up and down and doesn’t work well for work that requires cooperation across different units or functions. It’s pretty slow as well; it takes a long time for information to get up the structure and for orders to find their way down.

Another approach that really started to gain traction in the 1950s in Japan, and became more well-known in the 1980s, is management by process. These are standardized operating procedures for getting things done. They could be formal processes for production or logistics, or they could be for other processes like decision-making. This view of management sees the organization as a bundle of processes. Six Sigma…TQM [Total Quality Management]…all of these are variations on the same theme. This is hugely helpful—it allows you to squeeze out excess resources and continuously improve on what you do. But here we also have limitations, probably the biggest one being that standardization gets in the way of innovation. There’s been some interesting work done by Mary Benner from Wharton and Michael Tuschman from Harvard. What they found was that the higher an organization’s commitment to standardized processes, the lower the level of innovation.

Which brings us to our third approach: managing by commitment. Here, we look at an organization as a network of overlapping, continually evolving promises that people make to each other to get things done. The advantage and the power of this approach is that it lends itself quite well to situations that cannot be standardized: emergent strategies, innovation, one-offs or one-of-a-kind crises. It also works well when you coordinate among people who don’t report to you: suppliers, distributors, etc. And that kind of work is quite important. There was a study done a few years ago that said 40 percent of all employees in the United States added most of their value to their organizations through these non-routine activities. And about 70 percent of the growth of employees in the U.S. was among people who did this non-routine, non-hierarchical work, so it’s a big idea in the context of the economy as a whole.”

The managerial system we shared with you in the workshop is based in using commitments to manage processes, projects and work across units and geographies.  We have found that the standard workflows and information flows that cut horizontally across organizations are missing something.  That something is people.  And, as we explored with Mary, when a process goes awry we’re left with very few (if any) moves to fix it.

Using the human to human (H2H) perspective to map commitments revealed steps to locate and diagnose breakdowns (e.g. missing requests, missing commitments …”what by whens”, or absence of designated responsibility) and then intervene to fix them.   The ability to map and analyze the value created or destroyed within projects, processes, initiatives and employee networks is part of the new management model.  (Note: Six Sigma and Lean are about efficiency and reduction of variation, while H2H is directed toward interaction effectiveness.)

The workshop was just a beginning—exploring how to power-up your interaction quotient.  We invite you to join us in the exploration of exactly what is needed to manage effectively, with satisfaction and well-being.  Please let us know how you are doing.

I look forward to your comments.

Rob

Perspective and tools for building a strategy-focused, high-performance organizations

We know that you and your people devote significant time, energy, and human and financial resources to achieving your strategic goals.  But, are you satisfied with the results your’re getting?  Research suggests that high percentage of companies fail to implement their strategies.  It’s clear that new perspectives and tools are required if companies are to succeed in today’s highly competitive, change-filled environment. 

Jim Collins, in his book Good to Great, claims that in order to succeed, we need to “get the right people on the bus.”  However, if “all the right people” are intending to go somewhere together, the bus had better be in good order or they will not arrive at the intended destination. 

The bus, of course, represents the environment and the organizational system in which the “right people” work.  It has become abundantly clear that organizational systems are stronger than individuals and that good people can fail in dysfunctional systems.  Unfortunately, the dysfunctional systems in which some people work are invisible, which allows these systems to simply grind people up.  The solution?  The invisible needs to be made visible.  Then steps can be taken to strengthen the organization and turn its performance management system into one that is fully supportive of people who are attempting to produce on a strategy.  

My purpose is to share a proven system of strategy-focused execution and innovation that supports continuous high performance and the “right people.”  We have dedicated this system to executives and managers like you, who in the role of producer, are accountable for delivering through the efforts of others. 

Boss Talk, our first book, came out in 2000.  During the years following its publication, we’ve had an opportunity to test, revamp and verify our notions about how leaders at all levels can effectively and efficiently get intended results.  My associates and I have seen firsthand the typical mistakes leaders repeatedly make, and we’ve had a chance to observe what happens when they try our system and tools.  We’ll share some of our success stories here, along with what leaders and managers have taught us. 

This blog is our attempt to distill what we’ve learned from our consulting work with companies of all sizes since we published Boss Talk over nine years ago.  The high-performance system we will share with you grew out of our observations and our work at companies large and small over the past 18 years.  We are indebted to Adobe Systems, Agilent Technologies, BEA Systems, Align Technology and ETM, Inc., and VaST Technology for their support in developing this system.  Our overriding purpose has been to provide CEOs, VPs, directors, managers, supervisors and contributors with the perspective, key concepts and tools that will lead to immediate and lasting improvements in innovation and productivity.

A number of books have appeared that speak to execution and the difficulty companies have executing their strategies on a consistent basis.  The good news is that there is now more attention being paid to execution as opposed to developing a strategy and just letting it happen.  The bad news is the books that address execution continue to miss the key element at the heart of productivity. 

In my next blog I will share a perspective (new way to view organizations)with you and set a context for succeeding in your work.   I look forward to your questions and comments and mostly……..your stories.

Till then, here is to Great Leading through Better Interactions. 

All the best Rob

Overview: Leader in the Role of Producer

Strategist, planner, motivator, integrator, fund-raiser and facilitator are among the numerous roles you play as a leader.  Another, often overlooked role, is that of producer.   This blog is dedicated to leaders and managers who are accountable for delivering through the efforts of others.

Let’s get right to the point.  Management science has not kept up with the changes you face.  At this very moment you are probably working from an obsolete management system that makes you work longer and harder and actually prevents you from getting the breakthrough results that are demanded of you. 

At whatever level you know the feeling…

• You must generate and deal with constantly shifting strategies and goals
• You’re compelled to create double the results in half the time, yet you lack clear visibility into what is happening at certain levels of your organization
• Budgets must be slashed, resources vanish, yet new projects with soaring expectations must be delivered.
• You face the difficulties of communicating across companies, departments, disciplines, and even across language and cultural barriers.
• And…. you’re challenged by the predictable problems of 24 x 7  virtual production, different mind sets about work, lack of accountability and information overload.

When we asked leaders and managers to list their frustrations creating extraordinary results through the efforts of others they point to things like….disinterest, misunderstanding, misaligned-self interest, failure to follow through on commitments, a lack of visibility into critical projects and initiatives, and having to do too many things themselves.

But what if you could:

• Leverage your existing leadership/managerial competence
• Follow an easy, step-by-step blue print for getting results that includes a simple diagnostic tool that gives you visibility into any and all projects and initiatives
• And develop a solid, high-performance work unit while you’re producing your products and services.

I look forward to sharing my system (co-developed with client organizations) and interacting with you.  Let me know what you need so I can better focus my blog to support your work.

My passion is supporting bright, ambitious, leaders and managers just like you.  In my next blog I’ll begin to share the perspective and tools you need to succeed in today’s complex world of work.  Join me in exploring  some new possibilities for your organization and career.

Rob