Manage a Smile

Talent dilution

2011-02-15T22:02:00.000Z

Talent. It's not too easy to define, but we all know when we see it. The problem is, do we know when we lose it and do we know how to nurture it?

Let's begin with a young startup. Just a handful of people, sitting in a room creating something new. A company like this is rich with talent; entrepreneurial, technical, creative, imaginative. The repetitive tasks are minimal, and nearly every conversation is a rich cordial of talent that can create innovation and generate competitive advantage. For want of a better term, let's call them the 'talent group'.

Let's jump forward a few years. The startup has blossomed but that has increased the volume of repetitive tasks and so now they've had to employ new people. Because these are repetitive tasks, the new people are treated differently and don't get invited to join the talent group. Where before we had a talent group making up 100% of the company it is now down to 50%. The cordial is watered down, but because the company is small it still appears innovative.

Let's stop for a moment and clarify. I have not said these new people are lacking talent. They have just been implicitly excluded from contributing talent because of the role they were employed to perform.

Now, jump forward a few more years. The company is even more successful and has new external investment. The investors want measurable results, and as we all know, quantitative measures of success tend to focus on the repetitive tasks. Now our ever increasing underclass, already excluded from the talent group, are further disenfranchised by reducing their role to a list of instructions. Any that might have asked to be included in the talent group feel it's impossible and direct their creative energies to things outside the company.

The company is now made up of a large underclass of potential talent suppressed into automation, and our talent group is now even smaller, say just 5% of the company. Our cordial is decidedly watery.

So far, our increasing dilution has been gradual. So much so that it has gone unnoticed and been largely obscured by the increasing scale of activities. If nobody notices, it's not a problem, right? Wrong. We've scaled our operation on an ever decreasing asset and now it looks like an upside down pyramid. In this position we find it almost impossible to innovate our way out of the situation, worse still, when members of the talent group leave, the effect is disproportionate and significant.

At this point, the company culture has embedded the idea that one small group contribute ideas, a thin layer scrabble around the fringes and the majority sit in miserable servitude. This is an irreversible position in my opinion. A company in such a position will seek partnerships and mergers in place of innovation, and will ultimately be consumed into a larger group where similar problems exist, but where economies of scale allow profits to continue.

So is there an alternative? I believe the answer is yes. Here's how I'd do it:

Explicitly look for talent in new employment candidates as well as skills.
Create a culture and structures that actively promote ideas from all people about all things. This includes setting aside time.
Train all people in skills for giving, receiving and considering suggestions (no, we aren't all very good at it)
Reward people for contributing and participating.
Create and stick to a manifesto that gives employees autonomy and responsibility.

Companies begin by talent but gradually dilute to automation by treating people like machines. What's great about talent is it's unconstrained by class, role or salary. Great ideas can come from anywhere and all we have to do to find it is open our eyes and our meeting rooms.

Your office is your theatre

2010-11-24T09:21:00.004Z

"OK so, we’re getting ready for a launch… we have all the data flowing. All colour coded:

Every issue.

Every launch.

Up comes the launch, everything about it, red, Red, RED.

The room goes silent. I started to clap...

CLAP.

All the eyes turn to me.

That’s the sign,

Mark’s gone,

he’s gone,

he’s red.

I said, Mark…. That’s fantastic visibility."

These words are taken from a radio interview with Alan Mulally, Chief Executive of Ford on the BBC World Service. I've put a link at the end of this post.

When I listen to this interview, I'm captivated. It's pure theatre. Alan tells his story with so much drama that you can't tear yourself away. And yet, his story is just one of management efficiency and communication.

When things are exciting, it's much easier to stay motivated. When we're motivated, we're at our best. We try hard as leaders to create motivation, and yet how hard do most leaders try to create excitement from the drama that exists all around them every day in the office? In fact, quite the opposite, how many meetings have you sat through with someone saying 'it doesn't look like we'll make the deadline', but delivering the line slumped back in their chair, fiddling with a pen, and avoiding eye contact. I'm not sure Bruce Willis would have got very far taking that approach.

I'm not suggesting that we all turn into Shakespearean actors overnight. No, that would be weird. But I am suggesting we all buck up a bit, relish in the highs and lows, the dramas of our work, and the shared experiences with our teams. We do great things every day.

Here's the link for as long as the BBC keep it active. Listen all the way through. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00b5qjq

Can you remember the stress of doing?

2010-09-28T17:54:00.000+01:00

This is about how managers can get separated from the art of doing, and that makes them less effective at the art of managing.

I'm working in a start-up at the moment, and that means you have to get your hands dirty. One of the things I've noticed today is that actually doing stuff with real clients and real data can be quite a stressful thing.

It can be easy as a manager to spend your life hidden away in reports and statistics. If you get a report wrong you'll get some kind of pay-back, but it's unlikely a customer will see it.

What I remembered today was that if you're working on the front line, actually working with clients and their data, and you really care how it turns out, then life is pretty stressful. Everything you do has to be checked and double checked, and the less reliable the systems are that you use, the more stressful that activity becomes.

As managers we expect levels of quality from our staff, but it can be easy to forget just how stressful and difficult it is to achieve it. Today was a good reminder for me, but I know that I didn't get my hands involved very often in my last position. As a result I don't think I really knew anymore how difficult it was to achieve the standards I set, and I think that was a mistake.

So, if you're a manager reading this, then maybe you could benefit from spending time on the front line and seeing how realistic your standards are. If you do, then don't play at it, care as much as you expect your staff to care, get as busy as your staff get, and then see what level of stress they are really under.

You may find that your systems are quite as reliable or useful as you'd thought, and understanding the normal levels of stress in your team can only help you to make better choices for them in the future.

Sweet spot

2010-09-15T10:27:00.001+01:00

This is about sweet spots and why we shouldn't ignore them

At 7:30pm yesterday, I met my best friend for a drink. I'd just left work and felt tired, but in a happy way; that tiredness you feel after a long walk in the country, or after a game of football you just won. As I sat waiting with my pint of Guinness, I started to think about why I felt this way. I knew pretty quickly, it was because I'd been great that day, I'd hit a sweet spot. I wish I was great every day, but I'm not. This time, I thought, I would try to work out why today had been so good, and see if I could recreate it.

If you're interested in what my day consisted of, I've put it below*, but knowing what made me hit my sweet spot is only going to help me. What might help managers and workers alike is to think about when they last had a great day. When did your team last hit a sweet spot? What did you do when it happened?

After a great holiday we have photographs and we reminisce about the great times we had. Maybe at work we should do something similar. Take time to reminisce about those sweet spots just after they've happened, and maybe the process of thinking about them will make them a little more likely to happen again.

p.s. if you haven't had any sweet spots... it's time to make a change.

* My "great" day had: a well prepared meeting, a quickly minuted and documented plan for change under time pressure, a creative idea outside of work that I didn't ignore, some consultancy that reminded me where I'd been, a productive creative process that had beautiful logic to it, and finally a slightly late finish so that I had documented that creative process and shared it. My day didn't include any doubt over what work I should do next.

Burst management (versus steady push)

2010-08-31T13:38:00.000+01:00

The Orion Project*

This is recognising why bursts of management may be better than a steady approach

A start-up company is a little like a control experiment when it comes to management. It's rare in management careers that you can so quickly devise, implement and review changes to a company as a whole, if ever. So whilst we've been working at our start-up I've noticed a few interesting management effects, and want to talk about one of them here: Bursts.

It seems natural as a manager that you should be steady and consistent. You should be the ground upon which your teams can settle and then grow. I wouldn't dispute that. The question is, how much should you do as a manager to achieve that, and when should you do it?

During the last couple of weeks, I've noticed that we are able to function without very much management for several days, but then efficiency begins to drop. We need intervention at these times to re-establish priorities and clear issues, and the net effect of these interventions is positive. Conversely, when we know our priorities and have no major issues, we're better being left alone to beaver away, and any interventions here can become interruptions and reduce effectiveness.

Although this might seem straight forward, it isn't a practice I've seen well implemented. In general, I see managers scheduling fixed amounts of time, irrespective of the condition of their teams. Following the burst approach, the manager would withdraw as much as possible until they see the efficiency beginning to tail. Only at that point, would they intervene, but do so in a comprehensive way so that all members have clearly defined objectives and tasks, and feel confident to proceed again.

As a management technique, this would put the burden on managers to know the right amount of intervention and the right time for it, but for managers, shouldn't that be a goal anyway?

* The Orion Project from the 50's was a rocket program based on propelling a rocket through a series of small nuclear explosions. Get the right amount of bang at the right time, and you can launch a rocket with less energy.

Understanding and building relationships with peers

2010-08-18T10:46:00.000+01:00

This is about why it's important to openly discuss the relationships with your peers

Our start-up is just three guys. I've worked with Roger for seven years in a previous start-up, and I've been friends with Mike for over ten years. No matter how long you've worked with people or known them, when you move to being equal partners in a new business, the relationship is going to change, and how you manage that change is going to be a major factor in your success.

Mike and I had an exchange last week to discuss the marketing site. I had my opinion and he had his. They weren't the same, but it wasn't an argument. It reached a kind of stalemate, with me saying Mike should go with what he thinks, and Mike feeling uncomfortable that I didn't agree with his approach.

Mike quickly saw that this was a key point in our new forming work relationship. He opened up a conversation about how we each have our own, well established ways of doing things, and we'll need to work all the time to establish new "ways" that work for us as a pair. Just the act of having that conversation has helped improve our recent work together, and I think returning to that principle of building this new relationship will keep us on track.

It was a great chat, and one I'm thankful we had this early in the company. I wondered afterwards, how many other work relationships could improve if they had a similar conversation. My hunch is that peer relationships in all types of companies could do with a little open conversation and mutual admiration.

Can our choice of recreation affect our performance at work?

2010-08-03T10:39:00.000+01:00

This is a speculation into our choice of recreation affecting our brains and making us better at work.

I'm currently reading a sci-fi novel. I alternate between sci-fi and non-fiction and that's pretty much it. I've known for a long time that the books I'm reading affect how I am. When I'm reading clever non-fiction I feel clever. When I read old novels I use longer words. Until now I hadn't given it too much thought, but then it struck me; sci-fi is making me a better programmer.

When I read sci-fi novels, I find my mind switches into a more futuristic mode, and it seems to stay there even after I put the book down. Similarly, whilst I'm reading, I find that my thoughts flicker into programming, much more than when I'm doing other things, and it makes me want to be in front of my screen tapping out beautiful new code. It occurred to me that if I feel like this, do other people? I googled it.

My brief research showed a lot of sites explaining the benefits of reading fiction; relaxation, escapism, stimulation of the right side of the brain, role-playing your own reactions through simulation etc. I don't think any of these are what I experience.

I think that what I experience could be this: I love programming because it is a blend of creativity, expert knowledge and problem solving. I think that when I'm in a development cycle, the parts of my brain that manage these skills are more active. I think it's possible that sci-fi novels excite similar parts of my brain, and kind of keep them revved up. So when I read sci-fi I think about programming, and because I've kept that part of my brain revved up, it's easier to motivate myself to get back in front of the computer.

OK. So I'm clearly no neurologist and I have absolutely no foundation other than what I think I'm thinking. But imagine the implications if this were even half way true. If we were able to identify the parts of our brain that are firing when we are performing well at work, and we were able to match it with an enjoyable past time that did a similar thing. We could help ourselves, and our teams, perform better and with more ease by getting them into recreational activities that kept them revved up. Of course, I'm not advocating telling people what to do in their spare time, but I wonder how many people would find it useful to know how their recreation affected their performance and enjoyment of their work. For my part, I'm going to stick with sci-fi until our software is written and see how it goes.

Face up to video calling

2010-07-20T18:40:00.001+01:00

This is why I think video calling/conferencing is a must for all internal comms.

Collaboration between individuals is what makes companies more than just the sum of their parts. By working together we elevate ourselves above our individual limitations and can create great things. Despite the importance of collaboration, larger companies still use telephone to communicate within teams and across them. For me, it’s the equivalent of putting together a crack team and then asking them to perform with one hand behind their backs; no body language, no visual cues, no group collaboration. There is a better way.

When we started the new company, I wanted to create clear communication right from the outset. Since we were all in different homes, separated by about a ten minute walk, I felt it would waste time if we had to meet up in person every day. On the flip-side, I also felt that not having daily face to face group conversations would also slow us down and weaken the sense of being a team. The solution: video conferencing. We installed web cams, a bit of software called oovoo, and we were away; three-way video conferencing for $9.95 per month.

I don’t make any phone calls to my colleagues anymore; I only video call, and it’s as easy to speak to two people as one. What’s more, I get those missing visual cues and seeing everyone’s face at the same time enhances the feeling of ‘team’. Sure, I still value true face time, but we’re using that to think freely and bond over lunch rather than for rattling through task lists or issue resolution.

I’d love to know how many companies implement this technology. I can’t believe that it can be much longer before internal company telephone calls are a thing of the past, and internal communications use video. The software is cheap, the technology is sound, and the money invested in basic telephony systems has to be questioned at some point. Maybe now the iPhone 4 has video calling as standard, there will be a renewed wave of interest and some decision makers will try it out. Whatever and whenever it comes, I’m certain that once video communication is installed in the work place we’ll all wonder why we waited so long.

One year on: a new start

2010-07-13T17:52:00.000+01:00

It is exactly one year from the day that I stopped updating this blog. I was a technical director and line manager to around a dozen people or so in a 50 man company that I helped to start. As I write this post, I’m sitting in my kitchen at the beginning of a new venture with two friends hoping to repeat the success of my last seven years.

This time, to make sure that nothing is lost or forgotten along the way, I have decided to keep a blog to record the trials and tribulations of a new start-up second time around. Pop over to www.manageastartup.com and join Mike, Roger and me to see what happens.

So, why update this blog? Well, everything I learnt in creating the manifesto is going to shape what I do in this company. Can I form this company in the image of the manifesto? What would such a company look like? Does the manifesto end up getting changed as a result?

I don’t know whether our new company will succeed. I feel it will and I feel we have the ability to make it happen. So if ever there is an opportunity to see what works with the manifesto and what doesn’t, it’s this. I’ll update this blog with the management specific stuff and hopefully you’ll join me in seeing what happens to me, the company and the manifesto.

My fingers are firmly crossed.

Time for a timeout

2009-07-13T11:50:00.000+01:00

For six months I've been testing out a different management philosophy that is about as far from my old technique as you could get. Has it worked? I don't honestly know, you'd need to ask my teams. I believe that it's made me a better manager, but I'm not entirely sure how I'd measure that.

What I can measure is that I have less motivation now to write this blog. It's not a question of time, simply a question of desire. If the desire returns then I think the blog will come back too. In the meantime, I wish you all good luck in seeing through the confusion and insincerity of management babble and put your people right at the front, top, and peak of everything you do.

Good luck, and goodbye for now.

Management philosophy carnival (July '09 edition)

2009-07-01T11:00:00.001+01:00

If you read my last post then you'll know that I'm a bit overstretched at the moment. Sadly that's having an impact on how much time I have to write this blog. Still, never fear, thanks to blogcarnival.com I still have some great articles for you to read this month. Enjoy:

Why wouldn't you invest heavily in the first few weeks of a new employee.. they're your future.
http://orderofrayne.wordpress.com/2009/06/08/the-power-of-orientations/

11 leadership tips. Either start doing these or pat yourself on the back for having done them already:
http://vivavi.co.uk/archives/433

Along similar lines, this is one for new managers:
http://www.greatmanagement.org/blog/204/what-is-management-and-what-do-managers-do/

And finally...

Not all news needs to be good to lift your spirits. Read this and see if it doesn't raise a smile. What on earth?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8125191.stm

Avoid overstretching yourself

2009-06-17T09:43:00.005+01:00

So we've turned a corner, now new ideas are coming to the front again and we're actually implementing them. It's great to feel the pace of change. Great to see new people being given opportunities to strike out on their own, form their own roles, and improve the company. There really is very little more satisfying at work than making someone happy by giving them work they love and own. I'm actually smiling as I write this.

There is a word of caution here though. The more I've seen successful change starting, the more I've wanted to see it elsewhere. My hand is up like the excited school kid in the classroom. Me sir.. me sir! Unsurprisingly, there are plenty of people willing to hand tasks over to me to get the mtrlar treatment. I'm not saying that it's perfect, but I think that when someone stands up for something that's clearly defined and communicated, it almost comes second whether people agree it's the best idea, they're just happy that someone has a plan.

Thanks to my enthusiasm for taking on new tasks, I now have a quite considerably increased workload. In my head I thought it would be fine. On paper, the amount of work I've got is fine. The problem is that I didn't include on that paper all the unplanned issues and tasks that spring up daily. They take up lots of time and shunt other tasks to the back. Of course, I don't want my newly acquired tasks to suffer so it's my other roles that get delayed. What are they? Oh, nothing much... just pro-actively managing my teams. That's right, believe it or not, my appetite for spreading the gospel of good management has started to impact on my ability to implement good management!

Don't panic. I think I can still get it all done, I'll just need a little more sweat and some sensible delegation. There's no way I want my teams to suffer for my own hubris. Still, it's a problem I never considered. So beware, if you're successful at becoming an ambassador for change at your company, then make sure that the work required to do that doesn't stop you being the very thing you promote. Personally, I'm going to switch up a notch to catch up, and then work on delegation and training to help maintain the pace of change. My hand will still be going up... maybe only on the core issues... maybe.

Team hug!

2009-06-10T11:00:00.000+01:00

There is no advice here today, no words of ‘wisdom’, no links to bloggers much better qualified than me. Today is just a little story of something that happened to me this week that made me smile.

This last two weeks or so have seen big changes at our place. They may not appear big from the outside, but we’re now working together so much better that the output of improvements has rocketed. I’ve been so enthused by this that I’ve taken on quite a bit of work. It’s good. I’m not complaining. But I do have more work than previously and that has meant a little extra pressure. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not talking about crazy pressure… just remember I do spend a lot of time having barbeques on the beach, so pressure is relative.

So, here I am getting a little pressured and then we get broken into. Luckily there was nothing major stolen and the biggest expense was replacing the office doors, but still… an unexpected issue to deal with. More pressure.

Finally, this week, I came in to find that we had left a door open to the office. I couldn’t believe that this had happened given the recent break in. Nothing bad happened, but it really set me back. Of course it was just a simple mistake, and nobody was to blame, but it really knocked me. It shouldn’t have.

That morning I felt the pressure spilling over the rims of my tolerance cup and I could feel I was projecting unhappiness and was not being a good manager. I knew I needed to fix it but I just couldn’t shake it off. I couldn’t think my way out of the cul-de-sac of self pity, and it wasn’t even 9am yet.

Then, when one of my team arrived, a guy that is normally very dead pan and low key, he saw I wasn’t my usual self, and came and gave me a hug. Then another one of my team joined in and tried to cheer me up. Of course their actions helped, although there is always an awkward back slapping moment when two guys hug... but hey. More than that though, what immediately cheered me up was to realise that I have a team of people around me that care about how I feel. It isn’t just one way traffic where I’m giving to them – of course it isn’t. In fact, now I think about it, a few weeks previous to this, a member of one of my other teams said that I was always helping other people and that if they could ever help me then I should let them know. How had I missed this?

What’s the point of this post? I’m not sure really. All I can say is that something amazing exists in my teams. Something that I think I’ve been working to create all of the time without really knowing it. It’s the reward that I’ve secretly been working to create but have never acknowledged; a team that cares about their manager. Now there’s a thing of beauty.

Have a lovely day.

Management philosophy carnival (June '09 edition)

2009-06-03T11:00:00.001+01:00

Hello all, and welcome to a sunny June edition of the ManageASmile blog carnival. I hope you find these articles as interesting as I did.

As a slight change to the carnival, I have added a word count to help you choose based on how much time you have, and I've also added an article that I read and made me smile. I'll try to find at least one article like this for future carnivals. If you're feeling low, then skip to the end and get your smile count up.

Consider how you communicate to get the maxmum results and improve your leadership (612 words):

http://www.greatleadershipbydan.com/2009/05/heart-of-leadership.html

I tweeted this it was so good, but hold on to your hats as Penelope Trunk doesn't pull her punches. This article is about how we pick people we work with (691 words):

http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2009/05/06/how-to-pick-the-people-you-work-with/

There are many factors that make a great work place. This article describes some of the key factors to consider (391 words):

http://blog.threestarleadership.com/2009/05/26/8-characteristics-of-highly-effective-workplaces.aspx

Ok, let's not get defensive, but here is some tips on avoiding work place sabotage... we've all had it (971 words):

http://shiftack.com/understanding-sabotage-in-the-workplace

....and finally, here is a little news article that made the hair on my neck stand up and kept me smiling all day (289 words):

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8039240.stm

What are job lovers?

2009-05-27T11:00:00.000+01:00

"There are all kinds of love in this world, but never the same love twice".

When F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote those words I very much doubt he was thinking about people loving their work. However, I've noticed that "love" has become a two tiered word these days, and now as well as the top tier of the love between two people, you also get a second tier of a love for things, for objects and also for experiences.

How often do you hear people say "I love my job" or "I love where I work". When I hear people say that (I'm going to call them "job lovers") I get a warm fuzzy feeling inside, but what do they mean?

I'm certain I'll never get a fully agreed definition of the word "love" here, so we'll go with my interpretation for now. That is, the second tier of "love" in the sense of "I love my work" or "I love my new phone", is to like something so much that you actively tell other people how much you like it. Not just when you're asked, but proactively go out there and start conversations about it, enthuse to others about it, become an advocate of it.

To have people at work who love their jobs is an amazing feeling. They are naturally more proactive, they will push harder, go further, and feel more connected than other people. You can't tell people to love their jobs, it happens because you've employed someone in something they enjoy, and then given them a structure to work within that fits their character. Oh and you also need a sprinkle of luck.

The only problem with people who love their jobs is that they, like two people in love, can be more sensitive to failure or change. If you fail an employee like this then it may have a much more significant effect on their performance, and you may find that they go from your best employee to your worst almost over night. What's the saying; "Hell hath no fury like a lover scorned"? Well, a team has nothing as demotivated as a job lover treated badly.

So, should you stop people becoming job lovers? Of course not! If you don't get a huge thrill from working with and around job lovers then you yourself are in the wrong job. If you don't want to spend your time helping to create job lovers then you've settled for second best from your teams. It won't always be easy, and the love will be strained from time to time, but take the risk, enjoy the feeling, and make sure that you're the biggest job lover of all.

Enjoy it!

2009-05-20T11:00:00.002+01:00

Are you smiling right now? Were you smiling a minute ago? Going to smile in the next hour? I hope so.

I've spent the last few months writing about the different experiences I've had changing from a metrics manager to a people manager. I've explained what I think you should do... what I think you shouldn't do. I don't imagine I've got it all right, but it felt right at the time, and I definitely feel I'm improving as a manager and my teams are improving as a result. However, I did forget to mention one little point; enjoy it!

The great thing about treating people as human beings rather than numbers, is that it feels good. Treating and being treated as a person, an individual, with opinions, ideas and a future, feels right. Ok, sometimes we have to try a few different techniques to connect. Sometimes there is such a history of poor treatment that it takes a long time to restore trust. But ultimately, if your working relationships are good, and you treat people well, it will feel right, and you will feel happier.

Not sure? Well imagine turing up at a waiting room and being told to take a number and sit down. It doesn't feel great to be treated like that, and yet if you arrived in the same waiting room and were greeted by a smiling face who asked your name, how you were, and told you roughly how long the wait might be, you'd feel better; happier, right? Well the ridiculous thing is that it's not just you who'd feel happier, the receptionist would too.

We're force fed lots of images every day about what will make us happier, but you may have noticed that the ad men no longer resort to showing pictures of their products, they show images of people connecting, sharing, kissing, laughing. They sell their products by selling the idea that you will have great experiences with other people if you buy their widget cream. Unlucky for them then that you can get all of that for free, right in your place of work. No widget cream required

If you're not sure what I'm on about then strike out today and do something caring for a colleague or team member and see how you feel. For eveyone else, enjoy smiling today.

Instruct or inspire?

2009-05-13T11:00:00.001+01:00

A couple of weeks ago some of our team were up at an event where they were fortunate enough to hear Will McInnes speak about social media. The people watching the speech had different backgrounds and roles but each one found the talk inspirational and were motivated to do something new as a result. This got me thinking about the process of management, and whether I had missed something important.

The bog standard management process is to get a task, assign it to an individual, train them on how to do it, and then monitor how they get on. I hope that my manifesto has encouraged a bit more dialogue in management than that, but essentially, the goals are the same. We try to ensure that the individual understands what they are doing, and I also try to ensure that they believe in what they are doing. This is quite an instructive method of management. It's about passing on knowledge (and motive) from the manager to the individual.

A draw back in using this management approach is that it doesn't have any method for getting tasks coming the other way. That is, it doesn't provide a framework within which we work to get the individual proposing new tasks and asking for new responsibilities. When I heard the reaction from Will's talk, it occurred to me that my manifesto was missing an important dimension; inspiration.

What is inspiration? I think that inspiration is like a pipe cleaner for the brain. I think our minds get blocked up sometimes and the blockages prevent us from achieving what we're capable of. The blockages can come from apathy, repetition, boredom or even just lack of interest. If we are inspired by something or someone, it's like the blockage is removed, and our energy and thoughts can flow again.

Inspiration is different from motivation. Motivation is the force that is applied to the individual to get them to do something. We often try to generate this force by using salaries, commission, bonuses, promotions, and other incentives. Some people even use punishments. Different motivations can have different levels of effect, or force. However, it's hard to keep this force applied. Hard to ensure that the force remains the same strength over time. For example, look at the motivational effects of a pay rise and how short that motivation lasts for.

The ideal situation is where the individual is producing this motivational force themselves. When this happens we see individuals not only reaching their goals, but going beyond them, pushing forward new ideas, thinking outside the immediate problem into new areas and solutions. When this happens, we get a little managerial magic, and our teams start making us look better than we are. It's no surprise that this would be popular, but the question is how to create this force, and I believe that inspiration is the ideal way of doing it.

The hard part in all of this of course is how to inspire people. I don't believe that it's essential to get inspiration from others in your field, I think we can all be inspired by many things. Imagine the incredible story of survival told in the film "Touching the void". That story is an inspiration to everyone about courage and determination, and I think it can have an effect on people in the work place too. The problem with this remote, detatched inspiration is that it can fade from our thoughts. If we can create inspiration within the work place, then it can provide a constant source for individuals to motivate themselves. Look around your office and ask yourselves whether you have people that could inspire. How could you harness that ability and then communicate it across your company? Why aren't you doing it already?

At our place, communication has been allowed to fall behind. We have an opportunity now to create a few inpirational speakers who can communicate our products, services and culture across the company and out to a wider audience. My primary focus when this happens will be to point this inwards and to re-kindle the fires of enthusiasm across the business. I've already been inspired by people at work and it's given me the boost I needed to progress. If we can generate the same effect in every person, then who knows what wonders we can achieve.

So instruct or inspire? Well, I doubt good management will ever move away from the need to instruct your teams. However, we can multiply the results if we also inspire our teams, and if we succeed in doing this at our place, then this will be a very good year. So, instruct and inspire.

Management philosophy carnival (May '09 edition)

2009-05-07T09:25:00.003+01:00

Hello to one and all, and welcome to the latest blog carnival at ManageASmile. Today's carnival is a little different as I only have two posts for you. Why? Well mostly because the main post is so good, that I don't think you'll want to digest anything else after you've read it. It's also five pages long. The second post is a little snackette for anyone too busy to take time right now for the main meal. Enjoy.

"In a sense, management theory is what happens to philosophers when you pay them too much." This is just such a great post that you'd be crazy not to read it (in my humble opinion). It's a long one, but the pay-off is a three point management philosphy... no skipping to the end!

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200606/stewart-business

Ok, so you don't have time for five pages? Get a quick fix food for thought here on why promotion might not be all you hoped for:

http://www.greatmanagement.org/blog/74/just-got-a-work-promotion-let%E2%80%99s-celebrate-or-may-be-not/

Statistics can lead to bad management

2009-04-29T11:00:00.002+01:00

It's strange that I have so much difficulty explaining to people why statistics are dangerous. I wonder whether this has anything to do with how many of them we're bombarded with through all of the different news media every day; "people are now living to 70 years old", "one in three marriages is ending in divorce", "eating burnt toast will increase your cancer risk by 50%". I made 63% of those up by the way.

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love Excel, I studied accounting at University, and at almost every turn I like to crunch numbers and see what happens. However, with every number I see, and every spreadsheet I write, the numbers are there simply to provoke a discussion to find out what is happening in reality. I firmly believe that reality is held in the heads of the people affected by what you're measuring, and not in a set of numbers determined from whatever data was available to you.

I hear the sceptics out there saying that numbers are much more reliable than people's opinion, that you can't categorise opinions without numbers, and anyway, numbers do describe things. Well do they, really? I mean, "how many apples do I have on the table?", Oh, the answer is five. Excellent, we have a number that describes the number of apples on the table. Now try to make a decision, say, how many apples to take from the table and eat for lunch. You'll probably ask for some more numbers such as how many more days there are in the week or how many other people want an apple, but you'll be convinced that you can still use those numbers for the decision. Well, on paper (a very tiny bit) you might be right, but in reality life is much more complex. How ripe are the apples? Are some of the apples off? Do you like all of the variety of apples available on the table? Do you even like apples?

I see numbers as an approximation of real life. In Plato's Allegory of the Cave, he considers a scenario where slaves are locked up in a cave and unable to look anywhere except the back wall of the cave. On that wall are cast the shadows of the events and people happening outside the cave. The slaves can't see the real people outside the cave because they cannot turn their heads. If they were able to turn around, then they would see that the shadows were simply dull, flat representations of reality, and the true reality was rich in colour, depth and detail. It strikes me that people relying on statistics to describe real life are doing something similar. I don't want to make decisions based on shadows, I want to turn my head and see the real people, the real events, and then I'll make my decisions.

Some of you still waivering? Still want your statistics to give you a warm and fuzzy feeling when you point to a chart on a wall? Then consider this. Not only are we relying on statistics that are mere analogies of real life, but we're then performing agreggation on those statistics to reduce them even further to a single figure! I regularly see averages talked about at work. Averages are, in truth, an abomination of statistics if you intend to make any real decisions. What does an average of anything actually tell you? Since I know you all like charts so much, take a look at the chart on the right. This would provide you with the same average for all three series of data. Imagine what potential mistakes could be made by relying on the average.

Ok, the number crunchers amoung you would say that you just need standard deviation as well as the average. Well I would then point out that this is simply two dimensional and represents just a single set of numbers. We've already explained that a single set of numbers is misleading, so we'd need more numbers. Now you're into your multi-dimensional statistics. After three dimensions the graphs are going to get a bit tricky so we abandon them. Now we've lost a visual representation and are looking are reams of numbers, cross referenced and inter-linked. Stop! Surely you could have saved yourself a lot of trouble and got the people affected by whatever it is you want to measure, put them in a (metaphorical) room, and asked them. That includes customers. It doesn't need to be everyone, just a few of them. You even get to use statistics to choose the sample if you need to, that'll give your Excel fingers something to play with.

In all seriousness, statistics are a vital part of business, but they are only a very small part of management. People are way too complicated to be defined by a few numbers, and whilst you're looking at those numbers, those shadows of reality, you may miss the really important detail that could make the difference between an OK decision and a great decision. If all it would take is to ask a few questions, listen to a few people and then have a discussion, what are you afraid of?

Small problems cause unhappiness

2009-04-22T10:45:00.001+01:00

When I lived in London, many moons ago, I was at a pub with my (then) girlfriend and having a chat with one of her friends about life, when he handed over to me a small, framed, ink blot painting and told me it was a gift for me.

On the back of the frame were two potential titles; the first "can I set fire to your poodle missus?" and the second "A voyage into the multidimensional integrity of nonduality (man)". He signed off in what I think is an Indian script, but I can't help thinking that it looks quite a lot like a boy's graffiti of breasts.

I have to confess I was just a little bit confused, and wondered how many of these things he carried around for just such an occasion. I was all for writing this guy off as a fruit loop or an artist (it's sometimes a fine line), when he said "the small problems eat away at you every day. You have to fix them quickly". He could see my slightly blank look and explained how he had a squeaky floorboard, and every day he could hear this little squeak when he walked through the corridor. Each time that squeak happened there was just enough to be heard, to cut through into his consciousness and, for a brief flash of a moment, remind him that there was something that needed to be fixed and he was too lazy to fix it, and then it was gone. Never enough of an impact to actually fix the squeak, but just enough to make sure he knew there was something he hadn't done. He told me that I we needed to recognise how these little things can have big effects on how we feel, but that the effect is slow to build up and hard to spot. That we need to see these little problems for what they are; big problems waiting to grow, and we should fix them as soon as we see them.

I've never forgotten this advice because it seems to ring true so often. I think that this advice is important for us individuals living our own lives at home, but imagine scaling this up to your company. Imagine these little problems that exist, impacting 10, 50, or 100 people every day. Think of all the hard won happiness that is being erroded by these drip feeds of unhappiness. The little problems can be any number of things; the hot water tap not working, cleaners not cleaning desks properly, or even an individual trying just a little less hard than those around them. None of these things may appear major to you, and none or them may appear serious enough to need fixing. However, try to imagine them multiplied by the number of people affected and the number of times they are affected and imagine it all happened at the same time on the same day to the same person. That should give you an idea of how much happiness you're losing. When you think about how hard you worked to get that happiness in the first place, maybe you'll think harder about fixing the problem.

Management philosophy carnival (April '09 edition)

2009-04-08T11:00:00.003+01:00

Hi, and welcome to the April edition of the Manage A Smile blog carnival on management philosophy. I've got some great posts for you to read this month, although I have cheated slightly as I found a couple of great posts from 2007 and snuck them in.

I hope these posts help you along the path of enlightened management, or at least give you something to think about.

I'll start with the first of two posts from the Zealise blog in March. This article is about the benefits of being able to let go.

http://blog.zealise.com/zealise_blog/2009/03/are-you-sabotaging-your-success.html

The second post on Zealise is a wise word on company principles. If you read this and think it's something you should be doing, then pop over to my manifesto for some ready-made people centric principles to get you started.

http://blog.zealise.com/zealise_blog/2009/03/will-your-principles-stand-the-test-of-time.html

That last post linked to a previous contributor to the carnival at the Slow Leadership blog. Now, if even governments have decided that they need to focus more on people than profits, isn't it time you did?

http://www.slowleadership.org/blog/2009/03/what-is-business-for/

It's a shame that this next blog is no longer updated. I managed to stumble across it on a link from Positive sharing (see inspiration list), and I couldn't leave them out even though they're old.

http://www.hiddenmojo.com/2007/05/the-best-way-to-motivate-your-people/

http://www.hiddenmojo.com/2007/05/how-to-get-your-people-to-accept-decisions-they-dont-like/

This last post was at least genuinely published in March, so I feel a little less bad. If you set goals, then have you considered all of the effects? They may not all be good.

http://trustedadvisor.com/trustmatters/522/Sacred-Cows--or-Goals-Gone-Wild

I've saved one of the best 'til last. If you're not delegating work as a manager, then crikey. Read this now!

http://www.organizeit.co.uk/2007/04/13/a-no-nonsense-guide-to-effective-delegation/

In case you're new to this blog or haven't kept up with life at Manage A Smile, then this March I posted on the following:

Happiness needs process, or just because I care about you being happy, doesn't mean that you don't use flow charts any more:
http://www.manageasmile.com/2009/03/why-happiness-still-needs-process.html

Ouch. This on hit a nerve, but I still stand my the idea that sacking people may be necessary in order to create happiness at work:
http://www.manageasmile.com/2009/03/when-to-fire.html

I love to recruit, it makes me feel like a football manager:
http://www.manageasmile.com/2009/03/enjoying-recruitment.html

The first of two posts that mention poetry. I fear this may dent my credibility with some parts of the audience. I refer those people to my previous analogy of football manager:
http://www.manageasmile.com/2009/03/investing-in-feeling.html

That's it for this month's carnival. I hope you find these articles as useful as I did. I look forward to hearing any comments or suggestions for other bloggers.

The burden of change

2009-04-01T11:00:00.002+01:00

There are often times when I trip and stumble along the path of the manifesto. Sometimes so much so that I wish I could get off the path and hide in the dark forests of stagnation and systemic discontent. There are times where my ego won't accept another's mistakes on my shoulders without saying it's so, times when I'm unable to absorb personal criticism and turn it to constructive advantage, and times where I allow the burden of other work to brush aside the pillars of manifesto thinking.

Whenever the melancholy from this difficult task looks to be winning the battle for my soul, I have to dig deep and re-find my conviction that the change I'm trying to make is a change that ultimately benefits everyone. I have to try to suppress the all too dominant ego and to absorb criticism, ridicule and blame, because I know that these are simply the pressures that have built up through neglect, and which burst free from the first outlet provided to them.

I've recently begun to contemplate whether any manager can have both the necessary emotional control to remain calm in all situations and also the emotional vigour to promote the cause of change. I know that I struggle continually to remain neutral in the face of criticism without losing the energy that created the need for change in the first place. In fact, I'd be ashamed to list the number of times I've told myself to just give up fighting for the manifesto because I've taken a hit or two.

As I considered what sort of person it would require, the words of the classic poem by Rudyard Kipling came to mind. I've always remembered the first two lines but that's about it. I looked up the poem and was shocked to find that the first two verses travelled so closely to the life of a manifesto manager that it could almost be a motivational sermon printed on the back of the managers' guide to manifesto life.

Here are the first two versus:

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

Does this person exist? Can this person exist? I know that I wish a thousand times over that this person was me, and maybe if it was then the manifesto would be stronger and I would be a better manager. However, on the other hand, it could also be possible that the only way to be this person is to travel the journey of a manifesto manager, to be crushed almost flat by the pressure of failure and doubt only to pick yourself back up to take another step forwards. Maybe it's the journey towards this ultimately impossible goal that is the true purpose of the manifesto, and the resulting changes within the manifesto managers are the rewards.

Some say it's better to journey in hope than to arrive at a destination and if, after all, the journey turned me into a better manager with happier teams, then the scars picked up along the way will all have been worth while.

Investing in feeling

2009-03-25T13:14:00.004Z

I recently bought a small book of Haiku poetry. I don't know much about Haiku, or poetry in general, but I was interested to find out. When I was in the shop, there were only three books on the subject. One was too specific, the other two were general introductions to Haiku, and both contained poems by the same authors.

Two books, very similar content, similar price, how to choose? One book was a paperback with plain pages and simple text. The cover was also plain. The other book was a hard back with glossy pages and photographs of wilderness scenes from Japan. Some of the pages that contained the poems were coloured red. In principle, I was buying a book of poems, and either book would be suitable. However, I found myself tending towards the hard back book with coloured pages, so I bought it.

I've had the book for a few days now, and I've noticed that I get huge amounts of pleasure opening it and reading a verse or two. Something about the design of the book affects me as I open the pages, before I've even read a single word. I thought about this, and I realise this effect could be linked to my manifesto, and even to the software I develop. I'll explain.

I've come to realise a little late in life that humans are a complicated bunch. When you try to manage them, if you only look on the surface, at the procedures they perform and the words they say to you, then you won't manage as effectively as you could. The number of different factors that affect how a person feels is huge. As managers, we'll never be able to see all of them, but we can extend our vision to include a few more than we currently do. Take the office environment for example. It's impossible to measure the effect it has on someone if they have spare parts or rubbish kept in their office. They may not complain about it, but that doesn't mean that it isn't eating a little happiness away.

Similarly, the noise, temperature and light in an office is a permanent factor affecting how people feel. Most employees simply put up with it, or don't notice the effect it's having. However, if you can improve it, then you may notice the odd extra smile, a slightly more relaxed posture, or even just a happier tone in the voice. These aren't miracles, but what we're talking about here are small increments of improvement which added together make a difference.

These ideas may all sound a little vague and soft. You may find yourself asking how you could even begin to identify these issues. My advice would be to do as I did with my Haiku book, and see if you can identify something in your life that is giving more than just utility. Try to identify that extra feeling it gives, and then hold on to that experience. That's what you're searching for in any changes you make at work, and you may need other people to do the same thing in order to help you. One thing is certain, you have to loosen the purse strings a little and invest in making this happen.

Enjoying recruitment

2009-03-18T11:00:00.013Z

Some managers don't like recruitment. I find that amazing. I think a manager needs to enjoy recruitment to do it well, and good recruitment is essential for a happy team. To help managers to enjoy recruitment they might need to change the way they view it, and definitely need to have created enough time to manage it properly. If managers don't have enough time to recruit, then I would ask whether they have enough time to manage generally etc etc. Personally, I get excited about recruitment. I wonder what skills they will bring to the team? Will they boost existing members of the team? How much more will my team be able to achieve?

I guess there are a lot of different ways to recruit. I don't know the best way and I would imagine it depends on the role you're recruiting for. I see four main parts to recruitment; planning, reviewing, choosing, and training. The first part is planning. We've really fallen down in this area in the past, and I recently had to withdraw a role because I hadn't done enough planning and felt uneasy when the CVs started coming through. I should have known exactly what their role would be, what projects they'd work on, what the market value was, and how their role would grow. I didn't and it cost me time and money.

The next step is reviewing. We try to look through each CV in detail and select the dozen best ones for telephone interview. However if we're so inundated by CVs that we simply cannot work through them all in any reasonable fashion then we use objective measures, such as arbitrary educational requirements. We don't like using this type of criteria though and don't put these requirements onto the advert itself. We use the telephone interview to see how enthusiastic and communicative the candidates are, and pick six or so from this process. We then set them a task to complete such as some research or an online apptitude test. We don't expect more than an hour of work, but it really weeds out the time wasters. I mean, if they can't be bothered to spend an hour applying, then they probably aren't that committed. Finally, we invite the best from these for a face to face interview. This part of the process is only really used to check whether the candidate's personality is a good fit with the company. We're not looking for demographics, it's about enthusiasm, communication, and energy. This means that the face to face interviews need to have a very senior member of staff who truly understands the company culture.

When it comes to choosing one candidate, we're normally pretty clear on who is the most suitable before the face to face interview. If this is the case, then the interview just confirms that we think they'll be a good fit and we pick them. If there is more than one strong candidate, then we compare each candidate subjectively, and pick the one that offers the most to the company as a whole. This means that we may pick someone who's over qualified for the role, because we want them in the company, and we'll make it our job to find them the best role to be in. This is a really important point. I just want to be surrounded by the best possible people. Job roles can be discussed and changed if they need to be.

All of this is pretty straight forward, but the next step is something we've also done really badly in the past. When you've put so much time and energy into recruiting, it's crazy not to spend an equal amount of time preparing for their training. We used to just kind of sling the new starters into their chair and get them to shadow colleagues. These days we know the value of a training timetable and structured time over the first few weeks. It's also important to spend time getting the new person socialising with their team so that they can begin to know them as a person, and start building those all important relationships. A new starter is the most important person in our teams, if we don't acknowledge that then we'll pay the consequences later.

Where we've recruited well, we've created teams with a strong bond and are able to create a happy environment. Where we've recruited badly, we've had to spend time fixing teams and repairing relationships. I don't think it's much of a revelation to suggest that good recruitment makes the manifesto very easy to implement, and bad recruitment consumes time and can leave us with problems that need to be fixed (see my previous post). It's for this reason that I think that recruitment is the most important part of the manifesto: We only employ people who have the ability to do their job and ask for help if they need it.

When to fire

2009-03-11T11:00:00.001Z

There must be thousands of posts on how to manage people. Most of them will rightly tell you to create a job summary, communicate goals and continually assess performance. If the people above you, below you or around you aren't able to achieve their agreed goals then you'd be right to expect them to be asked to leave. What I would like to consider here is what to do if they are achieving these individual goals, but are failing to apply the rules of the manifesto. What happens then? How serious should you take it?

Before I answer that question, let's make sure we're clear on the issue of management generally. Good management will involve communicating responsibilities and goals, regular reviews, and open and frank discussion when things aren't going to plan. I want to make it as clear as possible that you have to have strong, capable managers. If you don't have this, then don't try to get them to implement the manifesto. They'll screw it up! Instead, focus your efforts on training those managers. Get them to understand the importance of communication, and individual growth. Most of all, make sure they see a team of exciting individuals, not cost centres and numbers. When you have that sorted out, then you can get them to implement the manifesto.

So, assuming you are confident you have strong, capable management and you find the manifesto not being followed, what next? I have had this happen myself in some of my teams. The individuals are successfully completing their tasks, but they're losing focus on what is really important and what really matters; the relationships between colleagues. When individuals forget the importance of relationships, they can elevate stress (and volume) levels and damage the working relationships in teams. Is this important? You bet it is. For me, failure to consider team mates is as bad as failure to perform a role. Working with people is a vital part of every role. If you find individuals are well managed but they still aren't applying the manifesto, then you need to consider a few things:

Do they understand the manifesto?
Never forget the possibility that the manifesto hasn't beeen properly communicated. Make sure that you talk to the team to explain why the manifesto is important.

Do they agree with the manifesto?
So they understand it but they think it's rubbish. What are you going to do? Well, I'd repeat the issue above. I find it improbable that anyone wouldn't want to work under the manifesto, but maybe that's just me. Will you allow one person to work to a different set of rules? Of course not, if people don't want to sign up to the manifesto then they aren't right for your team. Explain that this is a requirement to work in the team and if they aren't able to join the movement then explain that you'll need to replace them with someone who can.

Do they have the ability to implement the manifesto?
Some people just don't have the ability to work well with others. If you have people like this and you think that they are still suitable to work in your team, then I would say that you're asking for trouble. I don't care how technically talented an individual is, if they aren't able to integrate into a team of people then they have no business working for you. They need to go and find a job that doesn't require interaction. Possibly working freelance from home or something similarly anti-social.

The point I hope I'm getting across in this post, albeit clumsily, is that the manifesto is really that important. Don't get the idea that if someone is doing their job then you can tolerate non-manifesto behaviour. If you find an individual or manager that is not following the manifesto then they are causing a drain on your team somewhere. If you like, you can investigate where this drain is happening, but if you're sensible you'll accept that anyone in your team that can't work to the manifesto has to go. They're bad news. Oh, and if I haven't made it clear already... anyone that can't do their job should already be gone!

Sorry that this might sound like a negative post, but I believe that the most important parts of any team are the relationships between people. That's why recruitment is the most important thing any manager will ever do. I hope to perk you all up by talking about the recruitment process next week. So stick with me and stay positive!