Illusion of Control

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“You say that the best on your team, given a wrinkle, a bump or a calamity simply make it go away,” I nodded. “But, you said, you only had a precious few. What makes the difference?”

“When I first started out as a manager, I thought I was in control,” Madison started. “I thought I was the one who brilliantly solved all the hard problems. I thought I was the one who made all the hard decisions.”

“And?”

“My first realization is that control is simply an illusion. I was never in control,” she replied. “Oh, I could plan, I could train my team in our best practices. I could speed up our output, increase our quality standards, but I was never in control.”

“What was the lesson and how did it arrive in your lap?” I asked.

“Easy,” Madison replied. “The harder I tried to control, the worse things got. Even things like pace. I would try to control the pace, increase the rate of output, but the more I leaned in, the slower things got. I would see someone on the team do something stupid, so I would take away their authority to do it. So, instead of leaping on a problem, the team would hang out waiting for me to solve it. It was definitely passive-aggressive on their part, but I am the one who created the monster.”

“So, what was the tipping point?” I wanted to know.

“One day, everything stopped,” she said. “We ran out of a raw material and production ground to a halt. I was out visiting a customer, so I didn’t find out until the next morning.”

“No one thought to call you?”

“They were scared to call me. I was such a control freak. Bottom line, we had more material received on our shipping dock, but the paperwork hadn’t been processed, so no one dared open the crate.”

“And so you yelled at them?” I laughed.

“That’s when I realized I had to delegate. And, I don’t mean delegate in the classic sense of getting stuff off my plate. I mean delegate decision making. I got the team together and asked what would have solved the problem and kept the line going? Two people raised their hands with suggestions. I gave those two people expressed authority to open an unprocessed crate.”

“But, wouldn’t you lose control of inventory on hand?” I pressed.

“For an afternoon,” Madison was clear. “Our Bill of Materials system would have backed into the number based on finished assemblies, we could reconcile with the paperwork that would eventually be processed and we would not have lost an entire afternoon of production. More importantly, I now had two people on my team who could make the decision without me. Forever.”

Wrinkles, Bumps and Calamities

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“Tell me, Madison,” I prompted. “When you think about your team, what are the characteristics you find most valuable in a team member?”

“That’s a tough one,” she replied. “I have a pretty good team. I could look at it by who produces the most output, but I manage the incoming work and spread it out evenly, so no one person gets overloaded. I could look at it by who produces the highest quality work, but we have a defined set of performance standards that every project has to meet. And, these are not mediocre threshold standards, but identify the quality that sets our company apart from our competition.”

“I understand, pace and quality are good measures of output, but still, you have team members you lean on more than others. Step through your team, one by one, what are the characteristics you look for?” I pressed.

“When things run smoothly, there is little difference,” Madison pondered out loud. “But, you know things never run smoothly. There are always wrinkles, bumps in the road and the occasional calamity. My best, and there are only a couple on my team, are those who take the wrinkle in stride, hurdle the bumps with a little adjustment and gather themselves to meet the occasional calamity. It’s when things go wrong that the best people shine.”

“Example?”

“When things go wrong, meaning something unexpected happens, most people tense up. Their logic narrows. They force solutions that don’t work, rely on old fixes that didn’t really fix. My best team members feel the same tension of uncertainty, but open alternate solutions. In fact, my best team members think about alternate solutions before the wrinkle occurs. It’s as if they are in flow in ambiguity. They remain calm. Their focus narrows, but their logic opens up to see underlying causes to the bump in the road. When they fix something, it addresses the specific situation AND provides a lesson in anticipation. In short, they make wrinkles, bumps and calamities go away. Those things still happen, but I rarely hear about them until we debrief the project.”

Gratitude for Past Mistakes

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“You look happy this morning,” I said.

“Indeed,” Amira replied. “It’s a new year. We get a clean slate. Our mistakes are in the past. We can go forward with a renewed sense of optimism.”

“But didn’t the past deliver you here, to where you are today? Didn’t the mistakes you made teach you lessons not to repeat? Didn’t the struggles you had with the problems you solved put you a step ahead in the grand scheme?”

Amira paused her thinking. “But that was in the past. Can’t we forget and move forward?”

I shook my head. “No, we cannot forget. More important, those things in the past were great teachers if we listen. Tell me, Amira, if you really look back, what are you grateful for? What happened to land you in this place of optimism today? Yes, it’s a fresh start, but built on a platform of gratitude for the part of the journey we have already completed. What are you grateful for?”

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As the season winds down, we are going to take a publishing break to enjoy the holiday. I suggest you do the same.

Originally published Dec 2005.

As Matthew looked across the manufacturing floor, the machines stood silent, the shipping dock was clear. Outside, the service vans were neatly parked in a row. Though he was the solitary figure, Matthew shouted across the empty space.

“Merry Christmas to all, and to all, a good night.”

He reached for the switch and the lights went dark. He slid out the door and locked it behind.
—
We hope you all have a wonderful holiday. Management Blog will return on Monday, January 5, 2026.

Shortstop or a Line Backer?

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“I got this from HR,” Nancy explained. “It’s a role description, talks about what kind of person we need. It addresses things like good communicator, detail orientation, team player, integrity, goal oriented. I am going to pair these up with some interview questions, and then we should be good to go.”

“Okay,” I nodded. “But let me ask, in what way do we describe the work? If you were recruiting for a baseball team, would you recruit for a wide receiver or a linebacker?”

“I’m not much of a sports fan,” she replied. “But, I think you have your metaphors mixed up. Baseball teams don’t have linebackers, that’s football.”

“So the mission of the organization will determine what roles we need?” I pressed.

“Of course,” Nancy was quick to clarify. “The output of my team is welded assemblies. So, I don’t need someone who is an expert in electronics.”

“Where does your role description talk about that?” I wanted to know. “It makes a difference. An organization designed as an airplane will never travel under water. And, an organization designed as a submarine will never fly.”

Fog a Mirror

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“It’s really hard to find good people these days,” Miranda lamented. “I don’t need a nuclear scientist, I just need someone to show up and follow some simple directions.”

“Over and over?” I asked.

“Well, yes, it’s a pretty repetitive job,” she replied. “I think that’s why I have a lot of turnover on my team.”

“So, anyone could walk off the street and almost immediately perform the tasks to your satisfaction?” I wanted to know.

Miranda nodded. “Yes. If we had a budget for some robots, well, we don’t have a budget for robots.”

“That’s right, no budget for robots, you’re stuck working with people. And, those people turn over. But, it seems like a simple enough job. Success does not look complicated. So, why do you have the turnover?”

“Look,” Miranda’s face tightened. “In about 30 minutes, I can get someone up to speed. You’re correct, the work is not hard. I think they leave because there is no forward path in the company, no real skills for them to develop, no innovation in the process. It’s just the work.”

“Do you think you may not expect enough from your team’s performance? If someone can just walk in off the street and immediately do the job, what is the point in that? In what way could we describe the role, to expand its decisions and problem solving, to challenge each team member to their highest level of capability? I submit, it is for you, as the manager, to ask these questions.”

Honor for the Game

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“Gentlemen, today is the day we play for the national championship. Today, I want to talk about honor. Honor for the University, honor for each player in this room and honor for the game.

“The university’s role is to be a part of a larger institution that collects intercollegiate athletes like yourself to play the game. We provide the uniforms, the playing field, the referees. It is our honor to create this space for you to play the game.

“And, also to honor you. It is your honor to wear the uniform, not to only to represent the university, but to represent yourself. Honor for yourself. This team did not arrive on this field today because we were good at trick plays. This team arrived here because of its discipline to fundamentals. You catch the ball because you are a half step faster than the defender. You run through a short gap because the linemen hold their blocks a half second longer. You do not get penalized because you are disciplined to focus.

“Finally, to honor the game. For some of you, this will be the last organized game you will play. And, you will remember this day for its joy that allowed you to play. It’s a game that required practice, individually and drills as a team. Mastery in synchronized movement. It is the game that collected these two teams today. The other team traveled the same journey to get here. They are meeting together, just like we are meeting together, huddled in a spirit to honor the game.”

Who’s Decision Is It?

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“I hear you have a hole on your team?” I asked, knowing the answer.

“You are right,” replied Rolanda. “I sent a note to HR to find someone for me. I hope they can place somebody fast.”

“You sound a bit casual, like the decision is in the lap of HR?” I wanted to know.

“Yes, I am a little tired, covering for the lack of manpower on the shift. The sooner they can find someone, the better.”

“Is it possible,” I said, “that it’s not HR who can recognize the best person for your team. That decision falls to you. The most important decision you will ever make, is who is on your team. That person will either make you successful or cause you to stumble.”

Is Flexibility a Skill?

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“Three things you described, not paying attention, someone skipping a step, or someone too lazy to double-check, it sounds like a motivation problem,” I said, “but, you describe it as a skills problem?”

“Yes,” Addison replied. “I assume everyone comes to work each and every day with the full intention to do their best. And, yes, sometimes, their best isn’t good enough. But it is not because they don’t want to perform at a higher level, it’s because they don’t know how.”

“But, not knowing how, points to some sort of training response on your part. And, yet some people return from training and the underperformance persists?”

“I think,” Addison thought out loud. “Maybe our focus in training misses the mark. We think that training is all about technical information. We train on our sequence and standards, but our failure points are not because we don’t have a process or standards.”

“Where do you see the failure points?” I asked.

“It could be something as simple as flexibility. We have a process, but each project introduces some nuance that is not part of our process. If we don’t pay attention to the nuance, because we are not paying attention, or we aren’t looking for the nuance because we are following a rigid checklist, we are then surprised by a failure point. But, we don’t train flexibility.”

“Is flexibility a skill that can be trained?” I pressed.

“If we can break it down, yes,” she said. “Let’s take safety. We have a safety protocol we follow on every project, it’s a checklist and it’s a hard checklist. No compromise. But, it doesn’t cover everything. We have to be flexible. The height of a project makes a difference, confined space makes a difference, flammable materials make a difference, the depth of a dig makes a difference. We have to be flexible, to make adjustments to rules to accommodate differences. We don’t train flexibility.”

Is Paying Attention a Skill?

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“Meeting, after meeting, after meeting,” Addison lamented. “If it’s not a meeting about this, it’s a meeting about that.”

“Management is about meetings,” I replied. “If you stood back from all the meetings your company has, what is the big subject area for most?”

“That’s easy,” she nodded. “Most meetings are about some shortfall, some underperformance, a debrief on why something went wrong, a meeting to fix something next time. If you listed all the meeting subjects, you would think we were a company of incompetent stooges.”

“When there is a meeting about underperformance, how would you characterize the conversation?” I asked.

“Again, that’s easy. It starts by looking for the reason why. It ends up attempting to blame someone or some thing. It gets defensive right away, everyone CYA. No real accountability for the consequence.”

“You described the play as a group of incompetent stooges. Setting aside the stooge part, is it a problem of competence?” I wanted to know.

“Yes, you could say it that way,” Addison stopped her thought. “The blame conversation usually describes someone not paying attention, or someone skipping a step, or someone too lazy to double-check. But, I don’t know if its just an unwillingness to pay attention, or a lack of skill in paying attention.”

“Is there a skill in paying attention?”

“If you break it down,” she explained. “What should catch your attention? How often do you pay attention? What distracts you from paying attention? How do you know when you are paying attention?” A few seconds of silence lingered. “We train on the steps. We train on the sequence. We train on the quality standard. But, we never train on paying attention. And, not paying attention causes most of our problems.”