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.

No Escape

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But there was no escape. “If I am the problem,” Arnie said slowly, “then what’s the solution?”

Calm settled. Arnie was no longer looking outside. There still might be a pang of defensiveness, a throwback of justification, but he was ready to explore the real reason for his turnover problem.

“Do you think you can totally remake your personality?” I exaggerated.

I got a chuckle. “No,” he replied.

“I didn’t think so,” I said, with a reciprocating smile. “But can you shift?”

“Shift?” Arnie asked.

“Shift,” I confirmed. “A subtle shift, that changes everything. You are who you are. That will not change. But can you shift?”

If We Paid Better Wages

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Arnie was quiet. He made his budget for the quarter. Along the way, he lost two critical managers and five of his best production people. Over a period of three months, it didn’t seem like a frenzy, but in the lookback, the numbers stacked up.

“Well, if we paid more competitive wages, we could attract a higher caliber of people, and perhaps our turnover ratios wouldn’t look.” Arnie stopped mid-sentence. He knew it was a well articulated excuse, and he knew I wasn’t buying it.

“What do you think the problem is?” I asked.

Arnie dropped his face and looked directly at me. The silence was long. Finally, his eyes grabbed a thought from the top of the room. “You are not asking me to go through personnel records, or walk the floor, trying to figure out what the problem is,” he started slowly. “You are sitting in my office, looking at me. You think I’m the problem?”

“And?”

His eyes went left, then right, up, left. “Outlast the panic,” I directed. “Be calm.” While his body was calm, his mind was racing, for escape, for avoidance, for denial.

The Numbers Are In

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“The numbers are in,” Arnie exclaimed. “We made budget. Took a lot of hard work, but in the end, we got the result we wanted.”

“I’m impressed,” I replied. “And how many body bags in the wake?”

Arnie looked puzzled, then he understood. He had hoped I wouldn’t notice, or at least, wouldn’t bring it up. “Well, there are those on the team, I mean, that were on the team, that just weren’t committed. Sometimes, you have to weed the garden.”

“So, you will accept some casualties along the way?” I prodded.

“In every battle, there are casualties,” Arnie suggested.

“Yes, and this isn’t a battle. This is a company, with work to do, under client pressure, with regulatory constraints and margin requirements. Why all the body bags?”

Not a What, But a Who

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“Do you really think it’s luck?” I asked.

“I know, it’s not luck,” Vicki replied. “But it seems that every project is different. And the reason that a project goes south, seems to be different every time.”

“So, when projects are predictable, they are more likely to be profitable?”

“Yes, but there is always some variable on the project that drains the schedule, or adds cost,” Vicki pondered.

“So, if you could remove the variability, anticipate the variability or at least have a well planned contingency when things don’t go right, profit might not be as affected?” I pressed.

“But there is always that unanticipated wingnut that comes in sideways and screws things up. If we could just do a better job, seeing into the future, imagining what could go wrong. If we could just figure out what the problems might be.”

“So, you think the problem is a what? You are going about this asking, what’s the problem?”

Vicki stopped talking, so she could think. “Are you suggesting the problem may not be a what, that the problem might be a who?”

Luck? or Variability

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“Okay, we got together and hammered out what we think we are facing, as an organization, moving forward,” Vicki explained. “We wrote it all down on eight flip chart pages. We used your chart on Growing Pains. We think we have moved through the first two stages. We have a sustainable sales volume and we have documented our methods and processes, our best practices. But you were right, our problem is our profitability.”

“How so?” I asked.

“We get most of the way through a project, everything is right on track, then, it all goes out the window. Things happen. We get to the end of the project, and boom, our labor budget lands 40 percent over. Lucky, our buyout was 10 percent under, but we still lose 30 points on the job.”

“How often does this happen?”

Vicki squinted, looking for the answer. “Seven out of eight projects in the past three months,” she grimaced. “And the one project on target was a fluke, dumb luck. There was a problem on the job covered by a bond from another contractor. We got through by the skin of our teeth.”

“You realize, you have used the word ‘luck’ twice in the past 15 seconds?”

Burning Platforms

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From the Ask Tom mailbag –

Question:
I attended your Time Span workshop. So now I am curious, this clearly resonated. But where do we start?

Response:
Why? at the beginning, of course.

There are a number of simple things you can do, as a manager. But, I think, first, is to determine why you would do them. In the workshop, we started with an organizational analysis, to surface the challenges your company has faced, getting to where it is today. And then, to look forward, to understand what changes you will face taking your company to the next level.

In most cases, those challenges are predictable, depending on what stage your organization is moving through. But you have to write them down, with some detail.

This is where I start.

What are the burning platforms, the hot spots? Where do things seem to be stuck? What has to change? Where are the growing pains?

Only when you identify these changes, only when you identify the pain, will you understand the necessity of the solution. This is where I start.

This starting place is obvious, you and your management team already know this pain. You have likely discussed it, in meetings and in the hallway. So, write it down. Fishbone out the details. Don’t try to solve the pain, yet. Just document it.

Slow down.

Don’t jump to conclusions about solutions, because you, now, have this new lens, this new framework to look at these challenges. Before the workshop, you thought you had a personality conflict or a breakdown in communication. Most often, those turn out to be a misalignment in organizational structure.

Reframe your challenges, now, in the light of Time Span. This is where I start.

Dysfunctional Undermining Behavior

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From the Ask Tom mailbag –

Question:
Does the Manager-Once-Removed (MOR) have the tendency to undermine the Manager to show that they cannot do their job well?

Response:
Sounds like a simple question, but it is actually complicated. Let’s start by laying out this structure visually.

Manager-Once-Removed (MOR)
__________________________

Manager
__________________________

Team Member

Your question is about undermining. This could be undermining authority, undermining performance, no matter, it is dysfunctional coping behavior. So what could be going on with the MOR? The undermining behavior is not the problem (I mean, it’s a problem, but not THE problem). Simply stopping the undermining behavior will not solve the underlying difficulty.

When I see this kind of dysfunctional behavior, which could present as undermining, micro-managing or just being mean, I always look for structural problems. Most would think we have a personality conflict or that we need a communication seminar, but both are smokescreens for a misalignment in organizational structure.

Most likely we have promoted the MOR to a role for which they are unprepared. I look for one of four underlying causes of the underperformance –

  • The MOR lacks the necessary capability
  • The MOR lacks the necessary skill
  • The MOR does not value the work of an MOR
  • We failed to contract for the necessary behavior of an MOR

So, who do I hold accountable for the underperformance of the MOR? It is the MOR’s manager (yes, the MOR has a manager, too) that I hold accountable. It was likely a faulty selection decision to promote this person to the MOR role with insufficient due diligence or testing.

More Problems Than We Had Before

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“Let’s look back at your org chart,” I suggested. “You have 110 employees and twelve layers of supervision and management. Two people quit yesterday, so your org chart is already out of date. What do you think you need to change?”

Sydney’s mood had turned from generous to perplexed. “Our intention was to make sure everyone had someone appropriate to report, and to make sure no manager was overburdened.”

“And you ended up with?” I pressed.

“And we ended up with people in positions, creating more problems than we had, before we announced this new reorganization,” Sydney explained.

“I want you to shift your approach to this problem. Instead of trying to figure out who should report to who, determine which manager is accountable for the output of which team. And for this exercise, I want you to reduce from 12 layers to four.”
____

A friend of mine in Buffalo NY, Michael Cardus, published a short piece on the impact of role-crowding, too many layers. Take a look.

Too Many Layers

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Sydney thought for a moment. “We just promoted Justin to Team Leader. The rest of the guys on the crew say he is breathing down their necks. He is obviously not ready to be a full supervisor, and we are losing his productivity as a machine operator.”

“And?” I prodded.

“And I really don’t know what to do,” Sydney replied.

“Let’s look again at your instructions to Justin. You said if a team member has a problem, help them solve it, if they have a question, answer it and make sure all the work gets done by the end of the day. And yet, you said he was not ready to be a supervisor? Sounds like you gave him supervisor tasks, but you already know he is struggling with those tasks.”

“Yes, but, if we are going to have the team report to Justin..” Sydney stopped. “So, I took my lead technician and tried to make him a supervisor, even though we already have a supervisor. It looked good on paper.”

“Actually, it didn’t look good on paper. You have 112 employees and twelve layers,” I observed.

“I know, I said 112,” Sydney explained. “Now it’s 110, two people quit this morning.”

Looks Good on Paper

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I was looking at Sydney’s org chart. I could see a familiar pattern.

“We have been working really hard on this,” Sydney explained. “Every manager knows who reports to them, so there should be no confusion. And every direct report has a manager.”

“I am just looking,” I said, “how many layers, or levels do you have on this chart?”

“That’s what took so much time,” Sydney replied. “We have 112 employees, in twelve layers. Pretty good job, neat and tidy.”

“Well, it all fits on one page,” I observed, “even though it’s a big piece of paper. Where did you get this printed?”

Sydney laughed. “The problem is, it looks good on paper, but not so good in reality.”

“Oh?” I said, with a diagnostic look on my face.

“Yes, like the guys on the shop floor. They all report to a Team Leader, Justin, best equipment operator we have. We told Justin, from now on, if they have a problem, you help them solve it. If they have a question, answer it. And at the end of the day, all the work needs to get done.”

“So, what’s the problem?”

Sydney took a breath. “The guys are now complaining that Justin is breathing down their necks. They say they already know how to do their jobs and that if they have a real problem, Justin is no help, they have to go to the supervisor, anyway. What’s worse, even Justin’s productivity is suffering, eight out of the last ten production days have been short to the work orders.”

“So, what do you think you are going to do?”