From the Ask Tom mailbag:

Question:
What do you do when you have a team member with an over-inflated ego. This person does NOT have the capability to work at a higher level. Yet, because they have been here a long time, they think they should be given a promotion and the compensation that comes with it. They are already overpaid in their current role.

Response:
This is where titles and compensation get all mixed up with egos and status. The one thing that gets left out in the cold is the WORK. In most cases, I could care less about the title in the role, I care more about the WORK.

Whenever I am approached about promotions, raises, change of title, my first response is, “Fine, let’s talk about the WORK.”

What you describe is not an isolated incident, but a systemic problem where your organization has had no calibration to determine the level of work (capability) required in its roles. Compensation gets out of hand, people receive raises and title changes based on time served (like we are running a prison).

So, the answer to your question is not a specific technique to resolve this specific situation with this specific person. This is a systemic solution which requires the organization to continually define the WORK, the capability required to complete the work, and to assess the effectiveness of the people we have in those roles, doing the WORK.

This assessment, the Personal Effectiveness Appraisal, continually calibrates, over time where the person is, in relationship to the WORK. This is a simple assessment, a required managerial leadership practice. It asks these questions.

1. Is this person working satisfactorily in the role?
2. In that role, is the person working as effectively as someone in the top half of the role or the bottom half of the role?
3. And in that half, is the person working as effectively as someone in the bottom, middle or top of the role?

This simple calibration, discussing the work and effectiveness, helps everyone – the team member, the manager and the manager once removed (MOR) to have helpful discussions about appropriate task assignments where team members are working at (at least near) their maximum capability.

When used over time, with all roles, the organization creates higher levels of trust by engaging in productive conversations about the work (in roles) and effectiveness. This prevents a lot of nonsense where team members have inappropriate (miscalibrated) understandings of their own capability related to task assignments.

From the Ask Tom mailbag:

Question:
I was in your Time Span workshop last week. Fascinating. Where do we start? What are the first moves that we make?

Response:
The first moves are always with yourself. Elliott’s intention was that Requisite Organization be a comprehensive organization-wide managerial system. And the first moves are always with yourself.

Organize Around the Work
Define the roles that are necessary. The first missteps an organization makes, is to focus on the capability of their people. Before you examine that capability, you must know what capability is necessary in the roles. It’s like MBWA. Before you do all that walking around, it would be a good idea to know what you are looking for.

Defining roles is fundamental managerial work that most would like to skip, and that is where it starts. What is the work that is necessary?

Only after you have defined the market need and determined a viable product or service, where there is enough value that the customer is willing to pay for, that we can profitably produce, with enough volume to create an organization, we can begin.

Organize Around the Work
What is the work that is necessary? What is the direct output of our production teams that creates the product or service that our customer experiences?

Organize Around the Work
With our production teams, how do we maintain the pace of that production to meet market requirements (sales orders)? What are the roles necessary to coordinate all the materials, machinery, equipment and people at the right time, to create our product or service? How do we maintain the quality standards demanded (necessary) by the market? How do we count what we produced, overproduced, underproduced to make sure production got done?

Organize Around the Work
As your volume builds, things begin to happen, problems crop up. Over and over. Some of the new work has less to do with production and more to do with operations, operational work. With some analysis, we begin to systematize the work with an eye to operational efficiencies and profitability. What analytic work is necessary? What systems need to be constructed and monitored? How do our systems prevent problems? How do we change our systems to accommodate new problems?

This is where you start, by looking at the roles in the organization. Organize around the work.

From the Ask Tom mailbag:

Question:
Can a third party, like a consultant, operate in the capacity of the MOR?

Response:
The Manager Once Removed (MOR) is a specific role inside the organization. On the surface, it may appear plausible that someone from the outside could step in and move things along, but, there is a missing critical element.

We may give an outside person, like a consultant, authority to act in some capacity, but they are still outside the organization and being on the outside relieves them from accountability. At the end of the day, they get to walk away.

Examples abound in government. There are lots of people who would like to have “oversight” on a given issue, jump in with both feet, throw some people under the bus, act all high and mighty, spout their obtuse opinion. But at the end of the day, they get to walk away with no accountability. Doesn’t it make sense that if you have the authority to call the shots, that I should hold you accountable for the moves you make?

The MOR must have both authority (oversight) and accountability. It is that accountability that makes the oversight effective.

“Don’t you think you are being a little hard on me?” Torrey floated.

“Not at all. I am just heading off the excuses I expect to hear when your team doesn’t meet your goal,” I replied.

“My goal. But it’s not really my goal,” Torrey protested. “It’s the team’s goal.”

“No, the project goal is your goal. It is you, the Manager, that I hold accountable for the project goal. Regarding your team, I only expect them to do their best.”

“But, but,” Torrey sputtered.

“But, what? You signed off on the project budget, based on the resources and the schedule. You signed off on the Goal, the What by When. I will judge your effectiveness, to manage the project resources and the schedule along the Time Span of this project.”

Sitting in an airplane, with daylight fading behind the tail of the aircraft, watching the city candles flicker in the valley below. Three days working with groups in San Diego, got to spend time with Ozzie Gontang who always makes me think.

As this recovery struggles along, I find myself working, more and more, with new managers and I am struck by the remarkable role they play in the fabric of our organizations.

“You have just completely redefined the role of the manager,” came the observation from the other side of the room.

I don’t think it was me. I think it was somewhere between Elliott Jaques, Wilfred Bion, Jerry Harvey and Lee Thayer.

“You are not a manager so people can report to you. Your role, as a manger, is to bring value to the problem solving and decision making of the members of your team. And you, as a manager, are responsible for the output of your team.”