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.

Stuff They Don’t Teach You in Harvard Business School

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Yesterday, we kicked off our new Subject Area in our Working Leadership Program, Goals, the Essence of Time Span.

This community is growing. We currently have 81 members with an additional 72 people participating in the Free Trial. This activity level is unbelievable and we would like to share it with you. We are going to hold our Free Trial open for two more days. Follow this link to Working Leadership Free Trial.

Here is what we know about our community.

  1. Our participants have a day job, as a manager.
  2. Our participants are really busy.
  3. Our participants want to be more effective, now.

This is Real
Working Leadership Online is practical. There are no quizzes or tests. There is no make-work. This is not extra work. The Field Work is real.

At Your Pace
Participants login on their schedule.

Unforgettable
The problem with most training programs is they stop. After a few classes, it’s over, good luck. Working Leadership Online goes year-round. It changes the way you think about your role as a manager.

How This Works
Your first Subject Area is on us. Then you decide. We are holding the next 50 slots. Word is already on the street, so we expect to close this offer in the next few days.

Here’s Some Feedback

This program is anti-matter to today’s barage of costly management solutions. The program covered a great deal of critical leadership material that managers can immediately benefit from. -Cathy Darby

Some people live online and I’m not one of them. I’d much rather be in a human presence. Having said that, after Tom’s first response he won me over. His honesty and feedback is invaluable. -Jane Hein

There’s a lot of valuable information in this course that isn’t easily available elsewhere, and the coaching from Tom in addition to accountability for actually carrying out the assignments makes for a solid learning experience. Keep up the good work. The online format makes the course accessible, and makes it easy to put into practice directly in a work environment. -Erik LaBianca

www.workingleadership.com

Here is the schedule for the coming year.

2010 Subject Area Schedule (Total 15 Subject Areas in 2010)

  • Jan 11 – Planning – Your 2010 Business Plan – COMPLETED
  • Feb 1 – Goal Setting – The Essence of Time Span
  • Feb 22 – Decision Making – Time Span of Discretion
  • Mar 15 – Managing Time – Managing Yourself
  • Apr 5 – Spring Break
  • Apr 12 – Communication – Mineral Rights Conversation
  • May 3 – Delegation – Leveraging Time Span Capability
  • May 24 – Control Systems and Feedback Loops
  • Jun 14 – Team Problem Solving – Time Span Inside a Team
  • Jul 5 – Summer Break
  • Jul 12 – Coaching – Bringing Value as a Manager
  • Aug 2 – Coaching Underperformance – Time Span and the Employment Contract
  • Aug 23 – Coaching High Performance – Time Span and Maximum Capability
  • Sep 13 – Fall Break
  • Sep 20 – Managerial Authorities – Time Span and Accountability
  • Oct 11 – Managerial Authorities – Time Span and Hiring Talent
  • Nov 1- Time Span and Effectiveness
  • Nov 22 – Break (Thanksgiving USA)
  • Nov 29 – Bringing Out the Best In People
  • Dec 20-Jan 9, 2011 Winter Break

Reserve your spot today – Working Leadership Free Trial

Spoon Feeding Answers

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From the Ask Tom mailbag:

Question:
One of my biggest frustrations, as a manager, is the expectation from the people that report to me that I ‘spoon feed‘ them answers to all of the problems and challenges that they face. Do I have the wrong people? How can I get out of this trap?

Response:
Your solution is in your question. You are spoon feeding them the wrong stuff. When you provide answers to your team, you are creating a co-dependent relationship that you turns you into Radio Shack (you’ve got questions, we’ve got answers). You are actually training them NOT to solve their problems, but to bring them to you for solutions.

So, STOP it.

Every team member is entitled to have a competent manager, with the Time Span capability to bring value to their problem solving and decision making.

As a manager, you do NOT bring value by spoon feeding answers. Learning happens through questions, not answers. As a manager, your greatest value is in the questions you ask your team members. And if you are not getting the response you want, then you are asking the wrong questions.

Respect at Risk

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From the Ask Tom mailbag:

Question:
I have been a department manager for four years and things are going well. I have created systems and have few problems with my staff. I also managed to establish good communication with outside groups that need our services.

All is well, my boss thinks I’m getting bored and now wants me to transfer to another office with more staff. The were problems with the previous manager. My specific instructions are to help them improve productivity and quality.

Here are my issues:
1. Most team members have worked in the company longer than me.
2. The company grapevine tells me they are difficult to manage, stubborn.
3. There is conflict among the team leaders, about priorities, methods, allocation of resources.

Before I assume my new position, I plan to talk to each and every one of them to get to know them personally. I will conduct an interview to understand the existing difficulties and how I can help. I hope that I can develop solutions to make them more productive and stop their fighting. To be honest, I don’t have 100% confidence that I will be successful.

Response:
It’s like getting married. You never know you if made the right decision for a soul-mate, until after the ceremony. And once you are in, you can’t go back.

Tenure and age can create friction, sparks, smoke and small outbreaks of fire. Respect, authority and accountability will be the dynamics at risk. Yet, younger managers can be successful in a team with older, tenured workers. Here is your mantra.

Bring value to their decision making and problem solving.

If you are able to bring value to their decision making and problem solving, you will immediately earn their respect, establish your authority and gain the ability to hold them accountable. Easy to say, hard to do.

How do you bring value? You don’t do it by telling people what to do. You bring value by asking questions. Your intuition tells you that is the first move, conduct interviews, gather data and do some analysis. It is your ONLY move. And when you come to your conclusions, delivering the news to the team about the “new” way, must also be done with questions. And if you are not getting the response you want, then you are asking the wrong questions.

You have your intuition. I have my intuition. My intuition tells me that your boss selected you for some very good reasons.

Management and Leadership

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Great comments coming in, as we continue our discussion. This is from Jim D’Wolf.

“To further muddy the waters, I have found that people who study the numbers and people who manage the people will not always share a common language or common goals.Both perspectives are equally important in managing an operation, but getting them on the same page is a challenge. It helps to define effecient as the use of resources in being effective and to define effective as the degree to which you meet or exceed the customer’s needs or requirements (George Eckes – Six Sigma).”

Jim’s comment stirs the continuing debate over the difference between managerial practices and leadership practices. In some sense, it is very simple. People do NOT want to be managed. People want direction and strategy. People want to be led. By the same token, you cannot lead a process. A process has to be managed. Manage processes, lead people.

In the end, it takes both, managerial leadership practices to make this engine run.

Efficiency as a Mantra

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A comment caught my eye, posted by Pablo Edronkin, in response to our discussion about Goals. I often run into attitudes of impatience in the design part of management. Pablo captures it well in his comment on Efficiency.

“This lack of quantification is the basis of many of the problems that we see today in the world’s economy. Nobody flies a plane without calculating the fuel needed to get to the intended destination, it would be suicidal to jump in and just fly; and the same applies to any activity in which important things might be at stake. Efficiency as a mantra for profit is just a belief, instead of a measurable goal, and money and beliefs do not tend to mix well.”

The problem with analogies, like flying airplanes without fuel, is the correct answer makes so much sense. This sense in the world can be elusive in the daily chaos of management. So, how do you see the world, so it makes sense, for your decisions?

Production Without Goals

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“Wes, efficiency is only one side of the story. And cost-cutting could put you out of business,” I said.

“But I was told to reduce as many costs as I could,” he replied.

“As a manager, you have some decisions to make. Most of your day to day decisions will be about Pace and Quality. Pace and Quality.”

I could see Wes repeating those words to himself. Pace and Quality.

His head began to move from side to side, “But we work as fast as we can and Quality is always at the top of the list,” he stated proudly.

I stared at Wes, silently for fifteen seconds. “Bullshit. Without metrics, targets, you have no idea how fast you are working and you use your Customer as your Quality Control department.”

Open Enrollment

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“Time Management and Accountability. Those are the big two,” I replied. “And here is something I have discovered over the years. Most managers get here without direction or training in these areas. Most of you, as managers, landed in your role and had to figure out.”

I could see the heads nodding in the room. This was my Orientation speech.

And this was my classroom. Fifteen to twenty managers at a time, an intense six weeks. More than a thousand managers over the past 15 years. I still like the classroom, but there had to be a way to bring this program to more people.

Over the past couple of years, we kicked the can around and have finally created Working Leadership Online. After a year of testing, last month, we enrolled 110 participants and I am blown away with the results.

Every three weeks, we can bring new people into the cycle, so we are opening 50 more slots for a Free Trial. Our next Subject Area starts February 1, deals directly with the source of Accountability, and demonstrates how managers make decisions about the necessity of a task, the priority of a task and who gets the task assignment.

If you would like to participate in our next Subject Area, follow this link to Working Leadership Free Trial.

Here is what we know about our community.

  1. Our participants have a day job, as a manager.
  2. Our participants are really busy.
  3. Our participants want to be more effective, now.

This is Real
Working Leadership Online is practical. There are no quizzes or tests. There is no make-work. This is not extra work. The Field Work is real.

At Your Pace
Participants login on their schedule.

Unforgettable
The problem with most training programs is they stop. After a few classes, it’s over, good luck. Working Leadership Online goes year-round. It changes the way you think about your role as a manager.

How This Works
Your first Subject Area is on us. Then you decide. We are holding the next 50 slots. Word is already on the street, so we expect to close this offer in the next few days.

Here’s Some Feedback

This program is anti-matter to today’s barage of costly management solutions. The program covered a great deal of critical leadership material that managers can immediately benefit from. -Cathy Darby

Some people live online and I’m not one of them. I’d much rather be in a human presence. Having said that, after Tom’s first response he won me over. His honesty and feedback is invaluable. -Jane Hein

There’s a lot of valuable information in this course that isn’t easily available elsewhere, and the coaching from Tom in addition to accountability for actually carrying out the assignments makes for a solid learning experience. Keep up the good work. The online format makes the course accessible, and makes it easy to put into practice directly in a work environment. -Erik LaBianca

www.workingleadership.com

Here is the schedule for the coming year.

2010 Subject Area Schedule (Total 15 Subject Areas in 2010)

  • Jan 11 – Planning – Your 2010 Business Plan – COMPLETED
  • Feb 1 – Goal Setting – The Essence of Time Span
  • Feb 22 – Decision Making – Time Span of Discretion
  • Mar 15 – Managing Time – Managing Yourself
  • Apr 5 – Spring Break
  • Apr 12 – Communication – Mineral Rights Conversation
  • May 3 – Delegation – Leveraging Time Span Capability
  • May 24 – Control Systems and Feedback Loops
  • Jun 14 – Team Problem Solving – Time Span Inside a Team
  • Jul 5 – Summer Break
  • Jul 12 – Coaching – Bringing Value as a Manager
  • Aug 2 – Coaching Underperformance – Time Span and the Employment Contract
  • Aug 23 – Coaching High Performance – Time Span and Maximum Capability
  • Sep 13 – Fall Break
  • Sep 20 – Managerial Authorities – Time Span and Accountability
  • Oct 11 – Managerial Authorities – Time Span and Hiring Talent
  • Nov 1- Time Span and Effectiveness
  • Nov 22 – Break (Thanksgiving USA)
  • Nov 29 – Bringing Out the Best In People
  • Dec 20-Jan 9, 2011 Winter Break

Reserve your spot today – Working Leadership Free Trial

Efficiency

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“I am curious about your goals,” I observed. “They describe a process, but don’t speak to the outcome. In the end, what are you trying to achieve?”

“My goal is to increase efficiencies. We just need to be more efficient,” Wes attempted.

“Why do you need to be more efficient?”

“Kind of obvious, isn’t it? Every company has to be efficient.”

“I get the concept,” I replied. “But what is the outcome, what is the result if we are more efficient?” I could tell Wes was getting impatient.

“We make more profit,” he blurted.

“How much more profit?” I pressed.

“I don’t know, whatever it turns out to be.”

“So, you have no way to measure the effectiveness of your intention to be more efficient?”

The Most Important Managerial Decision

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“I see all of that,” Dale responded. “Timing, urgency, quality, priority and necessity. I get it. And I see how understanding Time Span helps me make those decisions.”

“But that’s just the beginning,” I pointed. “There is one more decision. The most important decision a manager makes. As managers, we spend so much time figuring out what to do, how to do, when to do. But the most important decision is who.”

“You’re right,” Dale replied. “And if anything is going to come back to bite me, it’s the decision about who.”

“And Time Span helps us make that decision. Not only does Time Span point to timing, urgency, priority and quality, but Time Span is an indicator for complexity. The shorter the Time Span of a task, the less likely it is to be complex. The longer the Time Span of a task, the more likely uncertainty will creep in and influence the outcome.

Each person is born with an innate ability to deal with a certain amount of uncertainty in the world. That capability can be objectively measured in Time. If we understand the Time Span of the task and understand the Time Span capability of the person, we can create a match. The most important decision a manager has to make is who.”

Management Decisions

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“Think about it,” I continued. “Time Span governs the timing of the action, the pace of the action, the urgency of the action, the ultimate quality of the action, the priority of the action and in many cases, whether the action occurs at all.”

Dale sat for a moment. “So, I run around here, telling people what to do. At the end of the day, when everyone has gone home, I try to figure out if I won or if the alligators won. The alligators win most of the time. I ask myself, what happened?”

“Whether the alligators win, is a very important question,” I responded. “But your analysis takes place after the fact. Analysis is important, but I am talking about design. Designing your day, designing your week. Management is all about decisions. And here are the most important decisions managers make.

  • Timing
  • Pace
  • Urgency
  • Quality
  • Priority
  • Necessity

“And there is one more decision managers have to make, the most important decision of all.”