Author Archives: Tom Foster

About Tom Foster

Tom Foster spends most of his time talking with managers and business owners. The conversations are about business lives and personal lives, goals, objectives and measuring performance. In short, transforming groups of people into teams working together. Sometimes we make great strides understanding this management stuff, other times it’s measured in very short inches. But in all of this conversation, there are things that we learn. This blog is that part of the conversation I can share. Often, the names are changed to protect the guilty, but this is real life inside of real companies.

Curiosity Did Not Kill the Cat

Leave a reply

“I don’t feel like a Jedi,” Dalton explained. “My head tells me to move to the next step, but my body feels resistance. The tightness in my chest is unsure.”

“Of course, you are unsure. The future is full of uncertainty and ambiguity,” I replied. “That is why you need all your creative energy to find the best path. With your judge looking over your shoulder, your body will win, taking you back to familiar patterns even though they did not work in the past. Under pressure, most people revert back to what seems familiar.”

“The resistance is the struggle?” Dalton asked.

“Your resistance is the first struggle. But, you don’t have to win completely, you just have to open the door to possibility. Your judge will keep you blinded to a limited set of alternatives, this way or else. It’s a familiar problem in parenting. Under pressure to bring a child into compliance, parents resort to repeating themselves, increasing frequency and increasing volume. If I told you once, I told you a thousand times. Even though it doesn’t work, the familiar pattern persists.”

“And?” Dalton tilted his head.

“And, the struggle against resistance is counterintuitive. You cannot fight it, you have to relax into it, give yourself permission to fail. Resistance only works when you are rigid and frozen. That is the source of the resistance. Discovery and exploration only work when you adopt curiosity.”

The Force

Leave a reply

“Okay, I’ll bite,” I said. “How did you get that from Star Wars?”

Dalton shifted in his chair. “Look, it all started with a calamity on the shop floor. Materials were late, a machine broke down and Fred didn’t show up for work. My manager was miffed because I missed our production target. I am not saying that my manager is Darth Vader, but that is the way I felt. Dark side stuff. Some of that dark side lives inside and I listen to it. My guess, we all listen to it. That is the source of my inner critic, my judge. I’ve lived with my judge all my life, so he is a familiar character. My judge knows me and is very persuasive, always providing a way out, projecting blame on everything around me, so that, should I fail, it is not my fault.”

“And, if that is what you believe, what does that do for your team’s problem?” I asked.

“It certainly doesn’t help me look at alternative solutions. In fact, looking for blame keeps me in the past where there is certain to be a scapegoat.”

“What changed?”

Dalton’s spirit was up. “May the force be with you. You said I had to give myself permission, even permission to fail. The force won’t help you unless you trust the force. I had to slow down, relax. Thank my inner critic for sharing the tightness in my chest. Armoring up to protect myself may provide defense, but it cuts off the creativity I need to solve the problem.”

“Young Jedi,” I pronounced. “You are ready for the next step. Discovery, exploration, creating alternatives that might solve your team’s problem.”

The Dark Side

2 Replies

“Do you think that a change in your thinking can change the outcome of the circumstances with your team? Do you believe that a thought has the power to do that?” I asked.

Dalton was slow to reply. “My brain tells me that is so, but this tightness in my chest has me off-balance. My head says yes, my body says no.”

“So, who is in charge?” I tilted my face. “You know the body is just a connected series of neurons charged up with hormones and other chemical cocktails it produces. If your body could talk, what would that tightness in your chest be telling your brain?”

Dalton started to laugh, proving, in spite of the circumstance, that he had a sense of humor. “My body would be saying – Brain, you are up against a really difficult problem. As your body, we know there is a possibility of failure, so we have served up some chemicals to prepare you for defeat. Brain, we know that you have aspirations to solve your problems, but the body knows better. Do you feel that tightness in your chest? That tightness is just our resistance to your aspirations. We have been driving that resistance all of your life, and that is why it feels so familiar. We know you have aspirations right now, but if you would just put those off until tomorrow, or even next week, we will release the tightness in your chest. In fact, if you could find a smaller aspiration, a smaller problem, we wouldn’t put up such a fuss.”

I nodded my own chuckle. “Where did you get that?”

Dalton nodded. “Star Wars.”

Inside Critic

Leave a reply

“There is a next step?” Dalton repeated.

“Yes,” I replied. “Did you think that just having confidence was going to solve the problems your team is trying to work through? Positive thinking will only get you so far. We have to do a little reality checking. But, you can’t move to the next step until you cut yourself some slack. I know a physician in Kansas City who has a sign up in his office. WELCOME to my practice. Please understand that I don’t carry malpractice insurance, and I make mistakes all the time.”

Dalton erupted a light chuckle, but he saw the irony.

“If he is your doctor,” I continued, “and you are looking to lay blame for your illness, you’ve got the wrong doctor. But, if you are looking for someone to help you discover the best path to take, you may be in the right place.”

“So, what is the next step?” Dalton asked.

“I just told you. Discover the best path. But, you can’t go there until you give yourself permission to fail. You will not be able to clearly see possible alternatives. The judge inside you will cloud your thinking, create anxiety and generally stir up resistance to resolving your team’s underperformance. Your inside critic wants you to feel defeated before you even start.”

Moving from Calm

Leave a reply

“Sometimes you have to slow down to go fast,” I repeated. “How do you find calm?”

“That’s a very strange question,” Dalton replied. “Every part of my body wants to move fast. My manager wants this fixed, now.”

“Let’s temporarily set your manager aside,” I said. “What, inside of you, makes you want to fix this now?”

Dalton struggled with the question. He finally breathed. “If I don’t fix this, now, I will have failed. I was just promoted to manager two months ago, I was proud. Now I am failing. Maybe I was promoted by mistake. Maybe I don’t have what it takes to be a manager.”

“Which part of you is thinking that?” I asked. “What part of you is telling you that?”

Dalton’s eyes darted the room, looking for an answer. His vision finally settled in his lap. “It’s just a feeling, a tightness in my chest,” he finally said. “I feel it now. It feels bad, and as long as I feel this way, I don’t know what move to make.”

“Who else do you think you might disappoint?”

“I think about my father. He passed away seven years ago, but he is still on my mind.”

“And, what would your father say to you right now?”

“He wouldn’t judge me. He would probably tell me that he had confidence in me.”

“Can you give yourself permission to say the same thing?” I asked.

Dalton thought, and nodded. “Yes.”

“Then, we can move to the next step,” I said.

“There is a next step?”

Calm

Leave a reply

“But, there were reasons that the team didn’t hit their output target. Materials were late, a machine broke down, and Fred didn’t show up for work,” Dalton explained. “Ever since I got promoted from supervisor to manager, it seems like everything lands on me.”

“Indeed it does. How does that feel?” I asked.

“I fell overwhelmed. There are so many more moving parts. And, my manager expects me to anticipate and prevent things going wrong.”

“So, what do you think is causing your distress?” I prodded.

“It’s my manager, all the stuff that is going on around me,” Dalton commiserated.

“And, how do you feel about that?” I continued.

“Frozen. I don’t know what to do next. When I was a supervisor, I just had to react and fix. But, now, fixing doesn’t happen fast enough. There is too much going on,” Dalton breathed.

“How do you find calm?”

Dalton stopped. “Calm?”

“Sometimes you have to slow down, so you can go fast. How do you find calm?”

The Source of Our Trouble

Leave a reply

“Did you hear the one about the horse that walked into a bar?” I asked. “The bartender walked up and said – why the long face?”

Dalton looked up and a grin flashed across his face. “You’re talking about me, aren’t you?” he said.

I nodded. “Why the long face?”

Dalton sat up. “I just had a talk with my manager about my team’s performance, or should I say lack of performance. I tried to tell him the reasons why, materials late, a machine that broke down, Fred didn’t show up for work and didn’t even call in.” Dalton stopped. “My manager didn’t want to hear the reasons. He just told me to get out there and fix it.”

“And?” I prodded.

“And, I’m not sure what to do. I am almost in shock that my manager didn’t want to hear my story. My stomach is upside down. I feel guilty, like it’s all my fault. I know I will figure it out, but right now, it doesn’t feel very good.”

“May I share something with you?” I asked. “It’s not going to make your long face go away, but it will give you a place to start.”

Dalton’s eyes widened. He leaned forward.

I continued. “Whenever I am in distress, I realize that all of my discomfort is self-generated. All of my emotions like disappointment, resentment, anger, stress, guilt all comes from inside me. I may want to place that feeling on something outside of me, like my manager, but until I acknowledge that it is me, creating those emotions, I will stay stuck in that emotion.”

“Yeah, but this is different,” Dalton protested.

“I said ALL my distress. If you allow even one exception, you start down a slippery slope of placing all blame on things around you, instead of looking inside. So, why the long face?”

Output Capacity

Leave a reply

“Is is possible for sales to sell so much stuff that operations struggles to fulfill?” I asked.

“Yes, it happens,” Hector replied.

“So, what’s the problem?” I added.

Hector scratched the back of his neck. “Well, I would say that we have a communication problem. Sales isn’t communicating effectively with operations. Or, it could be a personality conflict that the sales manager doesn’t like the operations manager.”

“It always looks like a communication problem,” I replied. “But, more likely it is a structural problem, looking at output capacity. The output capacity of sales has outstripped the output capacity of operations. You can have all the communication seminars you want or conduct personality testing, but you will still not fix the problem until you understand the output capacity of each function. The solution is optimizing the output of each function so that it doesn’t outstrip the capacity of its neighboring functions. That’s integration.”

Not a Communication Breakdown

Leave a reply

“I think we are having a communication breakdown,” James shook his head.

“How, so?” I asked.

“My Sales Manager says the Operations Manager told him to stop selling, that Operatons was having trouble keeping up with the orders already in backlog.”

“That communication sounds pretty clear to me,” I replied.

“But, it’s creating friction between the two departments,” James said.

“I don’t think you have a communication problem. I think you have an accountability and authority problem.”

“What do you mean?” James wanted to know.

“Is the Sales Manager the manager of the Operations Manager?”

“No.”

“Is the Operations Manager the manager of the Sales Manager?”

“No”

“So, you have two people who have to work together, but neither is each other’s manager. And, you failed to define, in that working relationship, what is the accountability and who has the authority to make which decisions. It looks like a communication breakdown, but it’s an accountability and authority problem.”

Act of Creation

1 Reply

From the Ask Tom mailbag –

Question:
I see the guidelines for creating a vision, but it seems a little far-fetched. Actually, I think most vision statements are far-fetched. They are too vague, or too warm and fuzzy. They describe a world that doesn’t exist.

Response:
Exactly, a world that doesn’t exist. Planning is about creating the future. And you are right, most vision statements are too vague. A vision statement should describe a specific point in time and should be detailed, rather than vague. Whenever I write a plan, my vision statement is often the longest part of the whole plan. It is detailed in its description of how things look and how things work. The more descriptive the vision, the easier the rest of planning steps flow.