The Two-Faced Manager

While there is a lot of truth to Pfeffer’s argument, he misses an important point. There is no law that says you have to be one or the other. There are two audiences at play – your team and the management team, including your peers and higher level managers – and you are the interface between them. You can and should present a different face to each audience.

When it comes to surviving in the corporate world, being two-faced is not only okay, it is absolutely necessary. You need to be the most supportive, collaborative manager possible in interactions with your subordinates, and you need to be as strong as possible (without being overbearing) in interactions with your peers and higher level managers. Not only does this improve your image (and promotability) with the management team, it also helps to ensure that your team gets its fair share of the goodies.

Strong Does Not Mean Nasty

The other common mis-perception (which Pfeffer clearly does not share) is that you need to be visibly “tough” or even nasty to be strong. While this kind of behavior may make you look strong in the short run (and even longer in a dysfunctional organization), it is ultimately a sign of weakness, not strength, and will eventually be seen as such.

This does not mean that you can’t be firm with your team, and critical when called for, and it doesn’t mean you need to turn into an SOB when you interact with managers. And, it especially doesn’t mean that you need to lie to either audience. Instead, you need to understand that there are two audiences, with different needs and expectations. To be a good manager for your team, your organization, and your career, you need to give each audience what it expects and needs.

Over the course of 100+ messages (I stopped counting at 100:-), the discussion has ranged from serious (does certification help or hurt job seekers) to off-the-wall (is the STC an evil organization bent on world (or at least tech comm world) domination).

However, to me, two critical questions have gotten short shrift: what can any certification program reliably say about the competence of an individual in a particular role, and how can participating in a certification program improve an individual’s skills as a technical communicator?

In short, can certification perform a useful function for both participants and hiring managers? I think it can, and I would suggest that STC look towards the FAA pilot certification program for insight into both the strengths and limitations of certification.

Pilot certification has the following critical components:

1. Well-defined and limited scope: Your first pilot certificate is for small, single engine aircraft. To pilot more complex or larger aircraft, to work for hire, or to fly in the clouds, you need to complete additional training and testing.
2. Appropriate subject matter: The FAA tests knowledge of regulations and practical flying skills. They recognize that they cannot reliably measure judgment, even though they recognize that good judgment is critical to flying safely.
3. Clear standards for proficiency: The standards for passing both the knowledge exam and the practical test are clearly defined and documented. If you have ever taken a flight test, I have no doubt that you knew whether you passed or failed the test before being told. The standards and the acceptable variance are well understood and clear.
4. Direct evaluation: While there is a multiple choice written test, the critical test is a check-ride, where you fly with an examiner who evaluates your performance against the standards. The examiner will also orally quiz you on your knowledge.
5. Recurrent training and evaluation: To maintain your pilot certificate, you must pass a flight review at least every two years. In addition, various ratings have specific requirements for what it takes to remain current.
6. A recognition that certification isn’t everything: Regardless of your certificates or experience, no one will rent you an airplane without a check-out with an instructor, and no airline will hire you as a pilot solely on the basis of your certificates. The certificate only says that at a particular point the holder was able to pass an exam and demonstrate a minimum set of skills. It says nothing definitive about whether someone is competent to perform in any particular capacity.

I’d argue that these characteristics are critical to any certification program. That said, there are aspects of the FAA program that do not apply to a certification program like the STC. These include the following:

1. The FAA is empowered by law to make and enforce regulations: The FAA is the sole authority for granting and taking away flying privileges. This is clearly not what anyone would want the STC to do (including the STC itself).
2. A pilot certificate is a requirement to participate: Without a certificate, it is illegal to fly an airplane. Clearly that is neither true nor desirable for technical communication.
3. Public safety: The primary purpose of the FAA pilot certification program is to help ensure public safety by imposing standards on the people who fly aircraft. While the safety of the people who use technical documentation is important, it certainly isn’t, and shouldn’t be, the primary concern of an STC certification program.

We can set these aspects of pilot certification aside, except to the extent that they color our perceptions of certification. In the case of STC certification, the biggest danger is that certification will be seen as a “requirement to participate.” More on that below.

Let’s take a look at how the STC program stacks up against the FAA model. The announcement for the STC certification program provides some important clues as to how the program is shaping up, but the program is still under development, so what follows is based only on what is public at this time.

1. Well-defined and limited scope: This is, maybe understandably, still hard to judge. However, to be successful, there will need to be a clear definition of what each of the core competencies comprises. I suspect that over time, the STC will need to turn each core competency into a “track” that contains a selection of topics.
2. Appropriate subject matter: I think this is one of the most dangerous areas for the STC. There are aspects of any field that are not amenable to certification. I don’t see how you can certify that someone possesses good judgment or the personal skills needed to work with a Subject Matter Expert (SME). It may also be difficult (or at least open to a fair amount of subjectivity) to certify the ability to select the right material for a particular deliverable and organize it correctly. Does that limit certification to purely mechanical skills like the ability to perform a set of tasks in FrameMaker? I hope not, but it will take experimentation and careful observation to draw the line between appropriate and inappropriate subject matter.
3. Clear standards for proficiency: Here is where STC can judge how well it has defined the scope and appropriateness of its topics. If you can’t define what it means to be proficient at a topic, then either it’s not amenable to certification, or the topic is too broad.
4. Direct evaluation: Evaluating a portfolio seems to me to be a useful and necessary, but not sufficient, step in this direction. I would add an oral exam and more direct interaction with the student as part of the evaluation.
5. Recurrent training and evaluation: The three year duration of a certificate makes a lot of sense. It might be good to expand this into a recurrent training program that would allow people to maintain a certificate by taking and passing evaluations over that three-year period. It would also be useful to integrate the program with college and university technical communication programs.
6. A recognition that certification isn’t everything: This is clearly another contentious issue, especially for technical communication. With pilot certification, an appropriate certificate is necessary, but not sufficient. With technical communication, it is neither necessary nor sufficient, but there is a valid concern that hiring managers will only look at candidates who are certified, or assume that possessing a certificate makes someone qualified. I’m not worried about the latter; any manager who persists in making that assumption won’t be a manager for long, but a manager who will not consider candidates without a certificate may never realize that there are competent people who don’t have one.

To go back to the questions I asked at the top:

• What can a certification program reliably say about the competence of an individual in a particular role?

  About the best it can do is say that at time T, person A demonstrated the ability to convince the examiner that he or she met the requirements to earn the certificate. It says nothing about the ability of that person to perform any particular job, and it says nothing about whether that person has retained any knowledge or skills beyond the date of the test.

• Can participating in a certification program improve an individual’s skills as a technical communicator?

  For a well-designed program, yes. Even for an experienced pilot, reviewing the knowledge and skills required of a new pilot are valuable. That’s why a flight review will always include skills, like stalls or short-field landings, that are required of a new pilot. It’s also why even the most experienced and skillful writers can benefit from re-reading Strunk and White or having their work edited by a skillful editor.

I find it hard to sum up my thoughts on this. I think there is a place for certification, but only if that certification provides a way for people to acquire or reinforce useful skills, and if that certification helps hiring managers. That said, I have concerns:

1. Will the program reach too far and try to certify knowledge and skills that are not amenable to certification?
2. Will the program provide well-defined, appropriate levels of achievement?
3. Will the standards for earning a certificate be high enough to mean something?
4. Will the program integrate well with college and university technical communication degrees?
5. Will hiring managers and HR departments turn certification into a hard requirement?

The STC has direct control over the first four of these, and I hope they address them as part of the program.

The fifth issue highlights a tension inherent in the program. For certification to become widely accepted, it has to have value for hiring managers, and if it has value for hiring managers, they will want to see certification on résumés. That’s good for participants and good for the STC, but not good for qualified non-participants.

I don’t think you can avoid this in a successful program, but there are a few things that might help tamp down this effect:

1. Make certification selective (i.e., rare) enough that it can’t become a common job requirement.
2. Make certification specific enough that it doesn’t ever appear to apply to the totality of a technical communicator’s job.
3. Make certification affordable, so money is not a barrier.
4. Make certification valuable enough that members see it as worth their effort to participate.

Beyond this, I’d say let the chips fall where they may and let the program prove itself.

–Pip Coburn The Change Function

Good ideas alter the power balance in relationships, that is why good ideas are always initially resisted.

– Hugh MacLeod, Ignore Everybody

Pip Coburn’s quote captures the most common reason good ideas fail. The pain of our current situation simply isn’t great enough for us to accept the pain it will take to change that situation. Yet, even when a rational analysis of a situation makes it clear that a change is essential, great ideas are frequently not adopted. The key to understanding Coburn’s point, and to implementing great ideas, lies somewhat hidden in Coburn’s quote, specifically the word “perceived.”

Our perceptions of both our current pain, the pain of change, and the benefits of implementing a new idea are all distorted by human nature. We underestimate the pain of our current situation, overestimate the pain of changing that situation, and underestimate the future benefit. We also often completely miss the effect a good idea has on the balance of power in an organization.

We underestimate the pain of our current situation

It is human nature to become as comfortable as we can with our current situation, even when it is dysfunctional (that doesn’t stop us from complaining, but we do become accustomed to whatever our current situation is). Over time, we become used to our situation, adapt to it, and make it work for us as well as we can. The result is that we may perceive our current situation as being better than it really is.

We overestimate the pain of adopting a new idea

The perceived pain of nearly any change is elevated because it is largely unknown and because we either have direct experience with or have heard horror stories about previous changes. Given the success rate of implementing change of nearly any type, this is not an unreasonable reaction, but even so, we still tend to overestimate the pain of change.

We underestimate the benefits of implementing new ideas

Humans tend to ignore long-term benefits in favor of short-term comfort. That’s one reason most of us exercise too little, eat too much, and take up habits like smoking. We know the consequences, but that doesn’t stop us. Dan Ariely’s new book, The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home, is worth checking out if you’re curious about what a scientist has to say about the question of why we act this way.

However, regardless of why we act this way, we do, and that has an impact on our perceptions about change. The further out the benefit, the stronger it will need to be for us to act.

We misunderstand the impact a new idea has on personal power

Finally, we come to the question of power. Accepting someone’s idea gives that person power and increases his or her standing relative to others in the organization. Any shift in power creates losers, and those losers will feel the urge to resist. If there is just one “parent” to an idea, then there are lots of “losers” who will perceive the cost of change as including a reduction in their power.

In practical terms, if you keep hearing about something as “Mary’s idea” or “Fred’s idea,” then you know there will be resistance based on power. If Mary’s idea is accepted, that increases Mary’s power, and if it’s rejected, it reduces Mary’s power. While power may not be a true zero-sum game, it’s close enough in some organizations that there will be people who at least subconsciously will want to reject Mary’s idea because it will reduce her power relative to their power.

What’s a manager to do?

The net result of these effect is that the perceived benefits of any new idea must be greater than they logically ought to be, and the perceived pain of adopting that new idea needs to be lower than it logically ought to be. Pure logic will not guarantee the success of most good ideas (even a lot of brilliant ideas). You need to “round up” when calculating perceived pain and “round down” when calculating perceived benefit.

The earlier you can show benefits from adopting a new idea, the better. Near-term improvement, even in small increments, will be more effective than big, but longer-term improvements. Even benefits that are peripheral to the change can be effective. For example, consider deploying new equipment to handle a new application earlier than strictly needed; the power of giving a techie a new toy should never be underestimated.

Heed the words of President Harry Truman, who said, “It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.” Even if the idea is yours, spread the credit around; incorporate ideas from others and give them full credit. Get away from saying “me” and “I” and aim for “us” and “we.”

To quote another president, John F. Kennedy, “Victory has a thousand fathers; defeat is an orphan.” If the project succeeds, everyone will take credit, so why not give them some ahead of time? You will gain advocates and increase your chance of success. Beside, you’ll probably get some great ideas along the way.

These are all good suggestions, and I wouldn’t want to suggest that you shouldn’t build a strong relationship with your new team, however, you also need to deal with the environment outside the group.

In particular, there are three more sets of interactions that will have a material effect on your success: interactions with your own manager, the managers of the teams you support, and your customers.

• Your manager: I’ve never seen a management change where the new manager’s manager didn’t want some change in the way the group was being led. (Just as a writer cannot look at another writer’s words without finding something to change; upper level managers will always want some kind of change when a new manager comes in.)

  You also need to be absolutely sure that you and your manager are 100% clear on the group’s objectives and priorities.

  Finally, just as you need to build a relationship with your team, you need to build a relationship with your manager.

• Your peer managers: You are really joining two teams, the team you manage and the team of peer managers; these are the people who manage the groups your team works with. You need to build a working relationship with them as a team, understand what they need/want from your team, and understand any problems they may be having with your team.

• Your customers: You need to interact with your customers to understand their needs and concerns. While this may seem obvious, documentation managers too often treat the internal teams they support as their customers and ignore the people who actually use their documentation.

  The other reason for placing some emphasis here is that as a new manager you have the opportunity, and obligation, to take a fresh look at what your team is doing and institute changes. But, it’s very dangerous to make changes without understanding the customer impact and their needs. Plus, you can use customer input to help drive change.

Taking on a new job as a documentation manager is a serious challenge, and you are guaranteed to have a few bumps in the road. If you’re interacting frequently with the right people, you’ll be more likely to avoid the bumps or at least see them in time to take action.

Anyone who has seen a chain saw in action knows this.

A CMS (Content Management System) will not tell you how to organize your content or understand your processes. To use one safely, you must organize your content, understand your processes, and understand the problem(s) you want the CMS to solve.

Anyone in technical communication should know this.

The only difference is that most people know that chain saws are dangerous and plan accordingly.