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.

Full Speed Off the Cliff

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From the Ask Tom mailbag –

Question:
I just joined the HR team here, working on a project to identify the complexity of mental processing of our team members. I just wanted to know, is there any effective tool/test available to identify the 4 types of mental processes. Can you please suggest other techniques apart from interviews to identify the 4 processes. I would be required to use this for recruiting and to assess the (CMP) of current employees.

Response:
STOP! You are headed in the wrong direction off a cliff.

I know you think you want to get inside the heads of your employees and have some support for a number (1-4) that you think will be helpful in selecting talent. DON’T PLAY AMATEUR PSYCHOLOGIST! You didn’t take courses in psychology, you don’t have a degree, much less an advanced degree in psychology, you are not certified by your state to practice psychoanalysis. Don’t play amateur psychologist.

Play to your strengths as a manager.

The four states of mental processing (Declarative, Cumulative, Serial, Parallel) can easily be used to determine the Level of Work. That focus will put you on solid ground. What’s the Level of Work? Look at your Role Description. In each Key Result Area (KRA), what’s the Level of Work? What are the decisions to be made in the role? What are the problems to be solved in the role? What are the accountabilities in each KRA? Write those elements into your Role Description.

With the Role Description in hand, create a bank of written interview questions, ten questions for each KRA that will reveal the candidates real experience making those decisions and solving those problems. I know this looks like work, it is. This is managerial work. Don’t play amateur psychologist, play to your strengths, as a manager. It’s all about the work. It’s all about the Levels of Work.

Flowcharting the System

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“So, what does it take to create a system like that?” I asked. “To create a system that would notify for rejected parts along with lead times for replacement parts and alternate suppliers?”

Valerie was shaking her head. “I know our computer software pretty well and to program that functionality would be pretty expensive.”

I reached in my bag and pulled out a handful of 3×5 index cards. “Suppose I said that you were not allowed to modify your software and the only tool you could use were these 3×5 cards? Now build a system. Let’s start with how frequently it happens.”

“You’re right,” Valerie started. “It doesn’t happen that often. Our QC guy who certifies incoming parts, could send a card with the details to our purchasing person. Our purchasing person has access to lead times and alternate vendors. Purchasing gets their order quantities from sales orders, so they could run a reverse report to find out what orders would be impacted, that’s easy.”

“What else do we need to know to effectively respond?”

“We would need to get our sales people involved to find out what wiggle room we have on those orders. Since we are three weeks ahead of the game, there are all kinds of adjustments that can be made with ample notification.”

“If I asked to draw a picture of this on a piece of paper using circles, arrows and labels, could you do that?”

“You mean, like a flow chart?” Valerie asked.

“Like a flow chart.”

What a System Delivers

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“Well, I thought our team did pretty well, given the circumstances,” Valerie continued to protest.

“Yes, they did,” I replied. “And those circumstances should never have existed. To come down to the wire and find you are missing 500 critical parts on an order should never have happened.”

Valerie shifted in her chair. “But stuff happens.”

“Yes, stuff happens all the time and that’s why your system should detect these conditions. When did you find out that your supplier had shipped 500 defective parts?”

Valerie looked to the left. “Three weeks ago.”

“What difference would it have made if your system had delivered a report three weeks ago that showed 500 rejected parts along with replacement lead time, a list of alternate parts vendors and their lead times, along with all orders pending that required that part?”

Valerie’s head was nodding. “We would have had three weeks to work on the problem instead of three days.”

System Detection

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“But, we got the parts in and shipped the units. I thought we handled that quite well,” protested Valerie.

“You are right, your supervisor did a good job. That’s what supervisors do. But your work, as a manager, was not done,” I replied. “The job of the manager is to create the system. When you discovered you would be short of parts, it was your supervisors job to go find the parts, but it was your job to ask

  • Why didn’t our system anticipate this shortage?
  • Why didn’t our system detect this shortage as soon as the order was placed into our system?
  • Why didn’t our system spot our supplier’s inventory and indicate a shortfall in those parts?
  • Why didn’t our system have alternate vendors for those critical parts?
  • Why didn’t our system continually track alternate supplier inventories to find odd lots at aggressive pricing?

“The job of the manager is to create the systems, monitor the systems, improve the systems. It’s great that we have a supervisor who knows how to scramble. But I prefer a system that responds to our constantly changing circumstances. The role of the manager is to create those systems.”

Scrambling Around

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“Then what is my role, as the manager?” Valerie asked. “I do all the same stuff as the supervisor, it’s just that most of the time, I handle the bigger problems.”

“Bigger problems, like what?” I followed.

“Like last week, we had a large order for a customer, an international customer, and one of the components from a supplier was defective, 500 units we had to reject. The customer is screaming because he already sold the first three shipments that we can’t deliver.”

“What did you do, as the manager?”

“Well, I scrambled around and found 500 units from a supplier in California. In fact, they were leftover stock and we got them cheaper than our normal supplier.”

“Why didn’t your supervisor locate them for you?” I asked.

Valerie looked sideways. “Well, actually he did. I said I scrambled, meaning my supervisor scrambled. He is the one who found the parts. It was kind of a lucky break that solved the problem.”

“So your supervisor did his job, as a supervisor, and you failed to do your job as a manager.”

Valerie looked puzzled.

From Concrete to Conceptual

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From the Ask Tom mailbag –

This is Part 5 of 5 in a series. This post is in response to a question by Herb Koplowitz, contributing editor to Global Organization Design Society. It is based on a discussion about Collins’ organizational model.

Question:
I didn’t read Collins’ levels as layers, but as personality fit to being a good manager. (He actually describes behaviors and then ascribes them to the manager as though ones manager has nothing to do with ones behavior.) Please explain how you see Collins’ levels as relating to Jaques’ strata. What is Stratum I about being a capable individual, what is Stratum II about being a contributing team member?

Response:
Last Friday, we looked at Collins’ Level 4. Today, Level 5.

Level 5 – Collins – Level V Leadership. Decisions inside Stratum V (Requisite Organization) roles consider the organization as a whole in the context of its market. The direct output of this role is the articulation of a clear and compelling vision relevant to the market. There is a shift in thinking from tangible, concrete elements to the world of conceptual ideas.

  • What is the market need?
  • Is the market big enough?
  • What is the product or service that meets that market need?
  • Does the market value the product or service higher than its cost to produce?
  • What is the appropriate organizational structure (what are the Levels of Work) necessary to sustain profitable production?

Understanding that markets always change, these decisions are fluid and adaptive. Stratum V roles require declarative processing at a conceptual level, defining and articulating a clear and compelling vision relevant to the market. Longest Time Span tasks range from 5-10 years.

The understatement of Collins book Good to Great is the short shrift he gives to the infrastructure of Levels I-IV. The most capable CEO (S-V) will falter and fail, if thrust into an organization without the proper infrastructure at Strata I-IV.

What is the most defining characteristic of a successful CEO? It is not personality or charisma. It is that person who has built functional teams at each Level of Work. Where there is weakness at any Level of Work, the organization will cave to that level and remain stuck until they have restored the roles with the necessary capability.

Stay Stuck or Scale?

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From the Ask Tom mailbag –

This is Part 4 of 5 in a series. This post is in response to a question by Herb Koplowitz, contributing editor to Global Organization Design Society. It is based on a discussion about Collins’ organizational model.

Question:
I didn’t read Collins’ levels as layers, but as personality fit to being a good manager. (He actually describes behaviors and then ascribes them to the manager as though ones manager has nothing to do with ones behavior.) Please explain how you see Collins’ levels as relating to Jaques’ strata. What is Stratum I about being a capable individual, what is Stratum II about being a contributing team member?

Response:
Last Friday, we looked at Collins’ Level 3. Today, Level 4.

Level 4 – Collins – Effective Leader. Decisions inside Stratum IV (Requisite Organization) roles consider issues of pace and quality related to organizational systems. Stratum IV organizations are typically populated by multiple systems, each competing for budget and managerial attention. Peter Senge (Fifth Discipline) describes this system friction as reinforcing systems and balancing systems. The impact of this friction modulates total organizational output, the capacity of one system throttling the pace of its sister system. The organization can either stay stuck or scale depending on the effectiveness of roles at Stratum IV, to integrate those competing systems (departments, silos) into a whole system, optimized for growth and profitability. Stratum IV roles require parallel processing, seeing system inter-dependencies, contingencies, bottlenecks and constraints. Longest Time Span tasks range from 2-5 years.
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Our next Orientation of Hiring Talent begins today, April 23, 2012. First Session begins next Monday, April 30. For more informaton follow this link – Hiring Talent.

End to End System Accountability

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From the Ask Tom mailbag –

This is Part 3 of 5 in a series. This post is in response to a question by Herb Koplowitz, contributing editor to Global Organization Design Society. It is based on a discussion about Collins’ organizational model.

Question:
I didn’t read Collins’ levels as layers, but as personality fit to being a good manager. (He actually describes behaviors and then ascribes them to the manager as though ones manager has nothing to do with ones behavior.) Please explain how you see Collins’ levels as relating to Jaques’ strata. What is Stratum I about being a capable individual, what is Stratum II about being a contributing team member?

Response:
Yesterday, we looked at Collins’ Level 2. Today, Level 3.

Level 3 – Collins – Competent Manager. Decisions inside Stratum III roles (Requisite Organization) revolve around pace and quality, but the scope is extended to the efficiency and predictability of that pace and quality. There is end to end (system) accountability to define the necessity and sequence of steps. Jaques defined four managerial authorities for this role.

  • Selection and de-selection of team membership
  • Defining and assigning tasks to be completed
  • Defining a reasonable amount of time for those tasks to be completed (Time Span)
  • Evaluating the effectiveness of those assigned to complete those tasks

These roles require serial processing, seeing cause-and-effect relationships between steps, and the creation of alternate paths to the goal (planning) in the face of obstacles. Longest Time Span task assignments range from 12-24 months.
____
Our next Orientation of Hiring Talent begins April 23, 2012. First Session begins Monday, April 30. For more informaton follow this link – Hiring Talent.

Pace and Quality Output of the Team

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From the Ask Tom mailbag –

This is Part 2 of 5 in a series. This post is in response to a question by Herb Koplowitz, contributing editor to Global Organization Design Society. It is based on a discussion about Collins’ organizational model.

  • Level 5 – Level 5 Executive
  • Level 4 – Effective Leader
  • Level 3 – Competent Manager
  • Level 2 – Contributing Team Member
  • Level 1 – Highly Capable Individual

Question:
I didn’t read Collins’ levels as layers, but as personality fit to being a good manager. (He actually describes behaviors and then ascribes them to the manager as though ones manager has nothing to do with ones behavior.) Please explain how you see Collins’ levels as relating to Jaques’ strata. What is Stratum I about being a capable individual, what is Stratum II about being a contributing team member?

Response:
Yesterday, we looked at Collins’ Level 1. Today, Level 2.

Level 2 – Collins – Contributing Team Member. The central decisions in Stratum II roles (Requisite Organization), are also about pace and quality. But no longer, necessarily about my pace and my quality (individual output), but the output of the team. Calibrating Stratum II roles, I typically see job titles like supervisor, coordinator, project manager. This enlarged role requires a higher level of capability in solving problems and making decisions. It is the first layer in the organization where I hold the supervisor (coordinator, project manager) accountable for the output of the team. These roles require cumulative processing, adding many elements together in a coordinated recipe, with longest Time Span task assignments landing between 3-12 months.

Tomorrow, we will look at the decisions associated with Stratum III.

Collins and Jaques

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From the Ask Tom mailbag –

I have to set this up, because the source of this discussion began in January of this year. On this site, under Organizational Models, I listed a specific reference to Jim Collins and his take on organizational layers.

  • Level 5 – Level 5 Executive
  • Level 4 – Effective Leader
  • Level 3 – Competent Manager
  • Level 2 – Contributing Team Member
  • Level 1 – Highly Capable Individual

What makes this question special is that it was posed by Herb Koplowitz. Herb is a contributing editor to the Global Organization Design Society, a deep, international resource on organizational design, based in large part on the research of Elliott Jaques.

This is Part 1 of 5 in a series.

Question:
I didn’t read Collins’ levels as layers, but as personality fit to being a good manager. (He actually describes behaviors and then ascribes them to the manager as though ones manager has nothing to do with ones behavior.) Please explain how you see Collins’ levels as relating to Jaques’ strata. What is Stratum I about being a capable individual, what is Stratum II about being a contributing team member?

Response:
Since 2003, I have conducted more than 300 workshops for more than 3,500 CEOs, sharing the research of Elliott Jaques. By a show of hands, I always ask, who has any exposure to this research. Over the years, less than 100 have raised their hands.

“Next question,” I ask, “Who has read Good to Great, by Jim Collins?” Almost 100 percent have read, own a copy of the book and memorized that most famous bus analogy, right people, right seats.

I look at Collins, not because he is the best place to start, but because his book is a familiar touchstone in the room.

I didn’t piece some of this together until I was working with an independent school district in Detroit. Their organization, mildly different from manufacturing, held roles like superintendents, principals and teachers. There was interest to look at Requisite Organization to see how it might help in understanding the accountability and authority tied to each role.

And everyone in the room was familiar with Good to Great.

Collins provides a chart depicting his framework of Level Five Leadership. His focus in the book was on Level V, leaving us with only brief descriptions of the levels of work below. Rather than pick them apart, I looked for intersection, to see where Jaques could be instructive and helpful in understanding each level described by Collins.

Level V – Level V Leadership
Level IV – Effective Leader
Level III – Competent Manager
Level II – Contributing Team Member
Level I – Individual Contributor

Level 1 – Collins – Individual Contributor. When I think about the decisions at Stratum I (Requisite Organization), most of those decisions fall to pace and quality.

  • In my role, given my work instructions, am I working fast enough to complete the task within the time span allotted?
  • At that pace, is the output of my work within the quality standards set by my manager?

That is my accountability.

My authority is to adjust my work-pace and attention-to-quality to meet the task assignment. My authority is to judge whether I can meet the pace and quality set by my manager, and if not, then it is my accountability to tell my manager. It is all about me and my work, with the longest Time Span task assignments landing between one day and three months.

Tomorrow, we will look at Collins-Contributing Team Member and Jaques-Stratum II.