Disabling the Team

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“I’m stuck,” Remi flatly stated. “When I was first promoted to manager, things were okay. I could sit in my office, get my work done, the team knew what to do already. You know, do the same thing as yesterday.”

“Sounds like a cush job,” I replied.

“But, then, people started stopping by with a question here and a question there. Still not too bad, but then the floodgates opened. Sometimes, there is a line outside my door with people needing an answer, more direction, solving a problem. It’s a constant stream of distraction.”

“Why do you think your team has come to depend on you for answers to their biggest unsolvable problems?” I asked.

Remi shrugged her shoulders. “You got me?” she said.

“No, your team has you,” I smiled. “In a few short weeks, you have trained your team to bring all their unsolvable and solvable problems to you. And you were happy to help. We are always happy to help. But, what did you train them to do?”

“I get it,” Remi shook her head. “But, I’m the leader. I’m supposed to support my team. But, they seem to need support for everything.”

“Yes, you are the leader. But, the best form of leadership is self-leadership, and you have, by your good intentions, stripped that away from them. In a way, you have disabled your team from thinking for themselves.”

“So, what am I supposed to do? Not help?”

“The most effective managers are not those who tell people what to do. The most effective managers are those who ask the most effective questions.”

The Sandbox

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Myra continued to stare, the (mis)behavior of two top executives, one in engineering and one in sales, rattled in her mind. “I know I need each system to run smoothly, efficiently, but they need to work together, or at least act like they are working together.”

“Look, you’re the CEO. From where you sit, what does their not-working together look like?” I asked.

“Here’s one,” she started. “We get a sale, a contract, which goes to engineering. Engineering takes the contract and starts to moan and groan about why they cannot engineer the elements of the contract. They complain there is missing information or the customer has a problem, but the engineered product isn’t going to solve the problem, or may even make matters worse. Then they complain that the sales people just aren’t smart enough be sales people. At that point, everything kind of goes off the rails.”

“So, there is a handoff meeting between sales and engineering that isn’t working?”

“What meeting?” Myra replied. “They both think meetings are a waste of time, so they just email contracts and drawings back and forth. Don’t get me wrong. I think our sales team does a really good job of getting interest and contracts from our customers. And, I think we have one of the best engineering teams around.”

“When a company starts off, they just have to get people to play their roles effectively,” I nodded. “But, once we have people effectively playing roles, and the company gets bigger, those individual roles have to work together. It’s a sandbox game that we learned when we were four or five years old. You have to get both teams in the same sandbox so they can learn to play together.”

Island Fever

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“No man is an island,” I nodded.

Myra stared back, returning my nod. “I agree. I’ve got one hot-shot technician and one rainmaker on my executive team. Between the two of them, they are driving me crazy.”

“How does it show up?” I asked.

“It seems like they are in it for themselves. All they ever do is talk about me-me and my-my. My budget, my team, my resources. And the salesperson thinks nothing happens until a sale is made. He struts around like a rooster. I have to remind the both of them that we are a team. If the sale isn’t made, we don’t have budget. And if the product isn’t engineered, we have nothing to sell.”

“It’s a trouble in most growing companies,” I replied. You have a couple of core systems that hum along, high pace, high quality, but the other systems tip-toe around, get pushed around, underperform, pretty soon the wheels of the entire organization get wobbly.”

“What do I do with these two characters?” Myra wanted to know.

“That’s the hat trick for every manager working in a company that has grown multiple systems. The silo effect takes hold.”

“So, I need to get rid of my silos?” Myra stated in the form of a question.

“Nope,” I smiled. “You put those silos there for a reason. You needed them to be efficient, internally profitable, no waste, no idle, charging pace. But, now you have multiple systems who don’t care about each other. You have to convince them that the company is larger than their individual system. Each system is interdependent on all the other systems.”

Myra was quiet. Shook her head. “So, how do I do that?”

Collusive Behavior

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Carson was deep in thought. “How do I, as a manager, interrupt the cycle of victimhood, to shift a team’s mental state from negative to positive?”

“It’s not quite as simple as that,” I replied. “If the only states were negative and positive, we could solve that with a motivational speaker and posters on the wall.”

Carson smirked. “Yes, we tried that. The teamwork posters became wallpaper that eventually faded.”

“It’s not negative vs positive, though that is a start,” I nodded. “This is not a binary condition, like a switch we can turn on and off. Humans, teams and their mental states are more subtle. Let’s take a look at a number of parameters, and I will concede to the first as negative vs. positive.

  • Negative – Positive
  • Irrational – Rational
  • Unscientific – Scientific
  • Collusive – Cooperative
  • Uncontrolled – Controlled
  • Unconscious – Conscious

All of these are mental states. How do you, as a manager, influence a shift in the mental state of the team?”

Infectious

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“You said, being a victim is a mental state?” Carson wanted to explore.

“Yes, it can even be more pervasive,” I replied. “There is a continuum – a mood, which is temporary, to a mental state, or a prolonged mood, to the way we see the world, a belief, which is longer term, persistent, base on a thought we think over and over. Moods are easy to change with ice cream. A mental state, not so much. And beliefs become ingrained, not permanent, but doggedly stubborn.”

“And infectious,” Carson flatly stated.

“How so?” I asked.

“I can have a teammate in a mood, less say, not so positive, bordering on negative. That mood influences other teammates, mostly at the water cooler. ‘You wouldn’t believe what happened to me on the way to work today. This guy cut me off in traffic, almost crashed my car’.”

“And, now you get a better story from someone else, and on it goes, until it creates a mental state for the whole team,” I smiled.

“What’s worse, the team now has to solve a real work problem from a triggered state. And, the real problem becomes the vehicle of bad luck, for which the team has no accountability.”

“It’s a cycle,” I nodded. “How do you interrupt the cycle? How do you, as a manager, shift the mental state of the team?”

Obesity

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“Yes, luck would be easier to blame things on,” I nodded. “Luck is something outside of our control. It is popular, because it allows us to be off the hook on accountability.”

Carson chimed in. “Good luck or bad luck is a common scapegoat. Luck doesn’t require us to understand what happens when things go well, more specifically, what we did in sequence when things go well, things we might repeat. It was just luck. Luck allows my team to shrug their shoulders when things go poorly. It was just luck. It allows the team to exist as a victim, without agency that might impact the outcome one way or another.”

“And, being a victim creates a cottage industry of people, consultants, special programs to manicure external circumstances to suit the victim mental state,” I said. “We used to describe the role of a parent, and you can think the role of a manager in a similar capacity, was to prepare the child for the path of life. We now see parents, consultants, special programs preparing the path of life for the child, who now has no accountability.”

“Like lung cancer is no longer the fault of the smoker. Or obesity is no longer the fault of the overeater, or more directly, the grocery shopper. It is a matter of corporate greed and the solution is a GLP-1 drug,” Carson mused.

“So, how do we improve the situation, prevent the death spiral of victimhood?” I asked. “How do we prepare the child for the path of life. How do we prepare our team members for the path of their employment?”

Mastery and Practice

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“And, how does the rest of your team see Carl?” I asked.

Carson smiled. “I get it. You are right. The rest of the team sees him as a brown noser. They laugh behind his back. Maybe secretly jealous.”

“Jealous of what,” I prodded.

“Carl gets some preferential treatment. If we can only send one person to training, we pick Carl, because we know Carl will come back and share what he learned.”

“Does the team see Carl as successful?” I wanted to know.

“Yes, they do, but they think it was all about luck. Sometimes, I have to step in and mitigate some of the taunting.”

“So, having someone competent, inquisitive and curious on the team can create a problem for you?”

“Yes,” Carson nodded. “As long as people see success as luck, it can be made fun of. As the manager, I have to be vigilant and communicate success as a mastery and practice of fundamentals, enthusiasm and support of the team.”

“Of course, it doesn’t hurt to be a little lucky.”

If It’s Not Luck

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“When you recruit a new person onto your team, what are you looking for?” I asked.

“I think we have dispensed with luck as a criteria,” Carson replied.

I smiled. “Yes, we can dispense with luck. What are you looking for in a new team member? In fact, let’s take a look at your current team. If you had to hold someone up as a model, what would I see in that person?”

Carson nodded. “Carl. It would be Carl.”

“And, what would I see in Carl?”

“Easy. Carl shows up a half-hour early, stays a half hour late, every day. In every training session, he always has his hand up asking questions. When he makes a mistake, he always owns up to it, then fixes it. I would like everybody to be like Carl.”

“So, here are four questions.

  • Do you trust him to make good decisions at his level of work?
  • Does he practice the skills required in his role, every day?
  • Do you observe commitment to the practice required in his role?
  • Does he meet the required behaviors in the work he does, for safety, for cooperation?

“It would be easier, if it was all about luck,” Carson said.

Are You Lucky?

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“What do you think it takes to be successful?” I asked.

“Luck,” Carson snapped. “Sometimes, pure dumb luck.”

“And, do you feel like you have been lucky?” I wanted to know.

“Not lucky enough,” Carson replied.

“If luck can’t get you where you want to be, then what is it? You see, Carson, everyone looks for the magic fairy dust, the secret formula that reveals the hat trick. But, if you’re not lucky enough, and most people aren’t, then what does it take to be successful?” I asked again.

Carson was silent, thinking.

“Let me change the question,” I said. “What does it take to become competent? I think you will find the answer is NOT luck.”

And, at the Bottom?

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“It still looks like a communication problem,” Nolan insisted. “They are in a meeting, they are talking. Yes, there is a checklist. That is what they are communicating about.”

“I will agree, there is communication, but that is not the problem. The problem is that there are no dumpsters on the job site to haul away the debris and your project gets delayed by a day.”

“But, they are talking about a checklist, it’s communication,” he continued to push back.

“Yes, they are talking about the items on the checklist, but I helped design that checklist,” I nodded. “What is at the bottom of the checklist?”

Nolan was trying to imagine the checklist and what checklist item was last on the list.

“Below the items on the list,” I directed.

It suddenly became clear. “You are right,” Nolan admitted. “At the bottom is a signature line for both the estimator and the project manager to sign. It’s not just a checklist, it’s a commitment list.”

“Not a communication problem,” I said. “It’s an accountability and authority issue.”