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.

The Practice of Competence

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“When you are in the hunt for a new team member,” I asked, “what are you looking for? You have a whole pool of people from which to choose. What are you looking for?”

“Experience,” Leo said. “The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.”

I waited. “And what if that past behavior was incompetent?”

“Well, that’s different,” he replied. “I need someone whose past behavior was competent.”

“So, how do you tell?” I wanted to know.

“There is always skill,” Leo nodded. “If they have the skill, that would make them a good team member.”

“Have you ever known a candidate who talked a good game, but in the thick of battle became mercilessly useless?”

“Oh, yeah,” he agreed. “They have to be able to do more than talk. More than technical know-how. They have to be more than enthusiastic. They have to be able to do the work.”

“The best measure of performance is always performance,” I said. “So, what creates performance? Technical knowledge plays a role, it’s necessary, but not sufficient.”

“The best people on the team not only understand the technical part, but more importantly they practice. Day in and day out, until it becomes a routine grooved behavior.” Leo began to rock back and forth.

“So, when you ask about skills, you have to ask for more than technical knowledge. You have to ask about practice. What is your frequency of practice? What is your duration of practice? What is your depth of practice? What is your accuracy in practice? Because if you don’t practice a skill, what happens to competence?”

Life Happens or Does It?

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“I can’t believe what just happened,” Cora explained. “We have been waiting for six weeks for a special material. Today, it landed on our loading dock, and it’s the wrong material.”

“And?” I asked.

“It’s got a six week lead time. We’re two weeks beyond deadline already,” she lamented. “The customer calls me twice a day. Yesterday, I told them the material would be here today. And, now it’s going to be another six weeks. I checked the SKU number and saw the mistake we made in ordering.”

“It seems like this is happening a lot, lately?” I made a question out of a statement.

“I just don’t know what it happening to us. Bad luck, I guess.” Cora looked disoriented.

“Is that the way life is? A series of things that happen to you?” I wanted to know.

“Yes, isn’t that just the way life is?”

“Depends on the way you see things,” I nodded. “If you see life as a series of things that happen to you, things will continue to happen to you. If you see things as a series of accomplishments, you will behave differently.”

“How so?” Cora looked at the ceiling, then back to me.

“If this project is just something that happens to you, then the project will take its own twists and turns before it ends eight weeks late. If this project is a series of accomplishments that you personally drive, what changes?”

“You mean, we might double-check SKU numbers?” she smiled.

“Double-check SKU numbers, create a project schedule that accommodates real lead times on materials, call the customer before they call you to manage expectations. It’s all in the way you see the world and how you participate.”

Permission and Competence

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“That makes sense,” Nadia agreed. “I have been guilty of empowering my team to do things they did not have the capability to do. Didn’t turn out so well.”

“Yes, that weasel word of empowerment has very little to do with granting permission,” I replied. “Empowerment, or rather authority to make a specific decision has more to do with competence. It is competence that creates authority, not permission.”

Authority and Competence

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“So, accountability and authority go together?” Nadia asked.

“You cannot have the accountability for an outcome, unless you have the authority to make the decision that goes with it,” I nodded. “You cannot have the authority to make the decision without the accountability for the outcome. So, yes, they go together. One more element, however. Do not give someone the authority to make a decision for which they do not have the competence to make.”

“What do you mean,” she asked.

“Do not give a shipping clerk the authority to make the decision on an engineering spec for a raw material. The shipping clerk may receive it from a vendor, but it is likely the competence to determine the correct specification for the part lies with someone else. Be careful who you delegate authority to.”

Permission?

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“But, I want to empower my team,” Nadia explained. “They shouldn’t have to ask permission for every little thing they do.”

“Do you think empowerment is all about permission?” I asked. “Empowerment is such a weasel word. What are you really trying to accomplish?”

“I just want them to know that I trust them, that I have good intentions toward them,” she replied.

“That you trust them in general? Or that you trust them with something specific?” I pressed.

“Trust them in general I guess,” Nadia shook her head. “To trust them with something specific, I would have to know what the specific thing was.”

“Now, you have clarity,” I chuckled. “Trusting someone in general is what makes empowerment such a weasel word. It is only operative under specific circumstances. I would rather replace the word empowerment with two other words, authority and accountability. Under a specific circumstance, you, as a manager and at your discretion, delegate the authority to make a decision. When you delegate the authority, you also delegate the accountability that goes with the decison. You can’t have one without the other.”

Questions and Stupidity

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“Instead of telling my team what to do, you want me to ask them questions?” Eliana confirmed.

I nodded.

“But, won’t that make it seem like I don’t know the answers?” she protested. “I don’t want to look stupid.”

“Better to ask a question, and appear stupid for a little while,” I replied, “than to never ask the question and be stupid for a long time.”

What We Know

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“But, what am I supposed to do with what I know?” Eliana prodded.

“Ask better questions,” I replied.

“Isn’t it easier just to tell the team what to do and how to do it?” she wanted to know.

“Yes, easier, for sure. But, the problems we face today were caused by what we knew yesterday. What we knew yesterday, if we stick to it, will prevent us from solving the problem today. As long as we are stuck in what we knew yesterday, we continue to be part of the problem, today.”

But, I Know the Answer

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“Yes, we have this meeting, once a week, where I get the team together to ask me questions,” Eliana explained. “We bring in pizza, I call it Lunch and Learn.”

“Learning is good,” I nodded. “In that session, what are you learning?”

“I don’t think you understand,” she replied. “They are the ones with questions. I am providing the answers. I am not the one in the meeting who is learning.”

“I think I get that,” I smiled. “They have questions and you know stuff. They come to learn, in learning mode. You stand at the front, in knowing mode.”

“Of course,” Eliana flatly stated. “They are young and I have more experience.”

“But, my question was – what are YOU learning?” I asked. “More importantly, when you are in knowing mode, what are you NOT learning?”

“But, shouldn’t I share my experience of what I know?” Eliana pressed.

“The purpose of experience, or expertise, is not to demonstrate your knowledge (knowing mode). The purpose of experience is sharpen your mind to ask better questions (learning mode). Better questions that lead the team to mission, vision and purpose.”

A Zone of Judgement

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“I tried it,” Bowen shook his head. “I got stuffed. The team resisted. They told me everything was fine, that I was worried about nothing. They said, if my manager wasn’t happy with the team’s output, that was their problem. If my manager didn’t like it, he could just fire the whole team. They thought that was funny, knowing we would never just fire the whole team.”

“Okay,” I nodded. “So, what does that tell you about comfort zones?”

Bowen thought. “Comfort zones infect the way we think. It’s like a habit, so grooved that anything out of the zone must be wrong. The comfort zone looks like a position of judgement, self protecting the way we have always done things.”

“So, while habits help us routinize a process,” I said, “that habit lulls us into a sense of comfort that prevents us from seeing obstacles on the periphery. We ignore those obstacles until they become front and center. So comfortable is our zone, we may continue to deny the obstacle, call it unimportant, maybe not fair.”

Bowen looked straight at me. “I run a fine line. I want to create habits to ensure a consistency of output, that we are doing things the best way, efficiently. But, we also have to watch out that our comfort zone doesn’t cause us to deny new problems or circumstances that require a new response outside of our habit.”

I smiled. “And, how do you imagine getting your team to that point?”

Comfort Zones

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“I call it constructive discontent,” I nodded.

“What do you mean?” Bowen asked.

“You wonder why things don’t improve around your team, you seem to always fall just short of expectations, and you can never figure out why.”

“But, I have a very experienced team,” he said. “They know how things are done around here. There just always seems to be some curve ball that throws us off our game.”

“Sounds like things are comfortable, maybe too easy. Until you get the curve ball? Why do you think the curve ball throws you off your game?”

“It’s unexpected, out of the ordinary, a variance in our routine. When it happens, and it happens regularly, we get off balance, like a deer in the headlights.”

“And, you are not happy about this?” I smiled.

“No,” Bowen frowned. “Most of the time, things run really smooth, but these hiccups in our process seem to constantly put us behind.”

“Perhaps, it is your comfort zone, the comfort zone for the team that prevents an appropriate response to the hiccup. Perhaps, you should create some artificial hiccups, change the pace, increase a quality spec, move the deadline, so your team could practice being out of their comfort zone. Have your team create a stress test exercise, and then, practice. Practice being out of your comfort zone.”