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.

Structured Outcomes

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“Let me take Curtis’ point-of-view,” says Barry in a comment to last Friday’s post. We had been talking about Curtis (the Manager) and Roger (the new Supervisor). We were exploring how a Manager turns over increasing responsibility to a new Supervisor. Barry continues,

“While Curtis may BE a micro-manager, I think the BIGGER point is that he’s not yet comfortable in KNOWING that Roger will do the right thing. I would add that Roger should engage Curtis in several conversations – related to, but separate from, any particular assignment – about what Curtis feels IS the right thing. That way, Roger can help show Curtis in non-essential moments that he has a good head on his shoulders and can be trusted more when it comes to doing the ACTUAL work.”

I find a great way to structure these conversations is by using a written document which captures daily outcomes, weekly outcomes and monthly outcomes. This spells out expectations right from the get-go. It also outlines appropriate (expected) moments for follow-up.

These conversations create helpful (rather than meddling) opportunities for coaching. -TF

Focus on Outcomes

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“They told me they wanted me to take on more responsibility, but Curtis, my boss, still micromanages everything I do. Even though I have a new title, I can’t even send a confirmation letter without him changing it before it goes out.” Roger was trying to be a sport about things, but he was frustrated with his new promotion.

“It’s a tough situation,” I said. “Many managers in Strata III love to do Strata II work or even Strata I work. One reason is they like doing that work. It gives them a sense of accomplishment.

“Your question, however, is what do I do? First, sit down with Curtis and work on your job description. Make it crystal clear what you are responsible for and what outcomes have to occur each day, each week and each month. Ask for regular meetings every couple of weeks with an agenda to specifically discuss those outcomes. This exercise will not only refocus you, but refocus your manager. -TF

PS. I’m-OK.org continues to provide a web based messaging system for Katrina evacuees by creating an individual message board tied to their old phone number. Volunteers are now working at aid stations and relief centers to add people to the database. For more information, visit www.im-ok.org.

Finding the Energy

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Jessica was talking about her boss, Matthew. Matthew is one of those special people who, in the midst of a problem always seems to see a solution. In a meeting, where an idea may be shot down, Matthew reverses the energy. He says, “I know it is impossible, but if it weren’t impossible, how would we do it?”

What she finds interesting about Matthew is that when he walks in the room, she feels an uncanny ability to conquer any difficulties in her current project.

Stay away from naysayers, and surround yourself with people who are pathologically positive. In this time of national difficulty, we each have to find the energy to make things happen, to solve the problems around us. Find that person who gives you the uncanny ability to conquer difficulty. -TF

PS. I’m-OK.org continues to grow. On Wednesday around 4:30pm MSNBC.com posted a link on their site and our traffic immediately jumped. Lots of people are still looking for people. If you can help by volunteering some time to register evacuees on the site, all you need is an internet connection, a laptop and a sign that says, “I’m-OK.” We will be posting suggestions on the site that might be helpful. Groups of evacuees are landing in different places all over. Please help. For more on this incredible story, check out Tuesday’s post.

Adherence to the Plan

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I don’t watch much television, but it is difficult to escape the media’s focus on the Gulf Coast. The past few days have been filled with mud slinging about which government leader should have done what. Is there a lesson for us, as Managers, about our role in planning for our own organizations?

I thought about the distinct differences between South Florida’s (where I live) response to hurricanes and what we are seeing in New Orleans. There is no doubt that had Katrina come ashore here as a Category 4, we would have seen similar destruction, but I wonder if we would have seen the ensuing chaos.

When Hurricane Andrew struck South Florida in 1992, we learned a lot. We learned a lot about building codes and we learned a lot about preparedness. Almost every organization I work with has a detailed Hurricane Plan in writing. The path and the storm intensity trigger automatic response to take specific action based on the plan.

The plan takes the emotion out of the decision. So many Managers make their decisions based on emotion rather than strict adherence to a plan. Plans are created in the calm of foresight, to help us take action in the face of circumstances that may be chaotic or difficult to interpret.

Unfortunately, it often takes a bit of hindsight, and sometimes a devastating event to teach us the lessons of planning for the worst. -TF

PS. Please pass along the link to our “I’m-OK” message boards in the search for people displaced in Hurricane Katrina. You can read more about our site in yesterday’s post. The link is www.im-ok.org

Incredible Story “I’m-OK” (long)

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I want to tell you an incredible story.

Last Wednesday night, a close friend of Managementblog, Cathy Muth, CEO of O. R. Colan Associates, watched the stream of video from Hurricane Katrina and recognized the need for a central place where family and friends could locate people displaced from the disaster. Her company manages relocation programs for public agencies and has worked for FEMA in the past. She contacted us with an idea to see if we could help create a web registry called “I’m-OK.”

So, we became a team. OR Colan immediately agreed to fund the site. Our chief programmer Brandon Stone (photoblogs.org) had specific ideas of how this site had to be put together to accomplish its goal.

We thought long and hard about how to handle the data requests, how to make the site quick, accurate and simple. We looked at other boards and noticed that they were jumbled, jammed with messages, ultimately irrelevant to the search for a family member or a friend. In 99% of the searches, it was all noise. With im-ok.org, the user puts in a phone number and immediately finds information about a person.

Or not. On most message boards and other registries, if there is no news about a family member, it might take an hour or more of useless searching to find that out. With im-ok.org, using the person’s phone number, the search takes three seconds. If there is no news, the visitor knows that immediately. The design team did not want to string someone out for an hour searching a database in vain.

We observed other message boards that became overloaded to the point where users experienced significant slowdowns. We knew that if the site proved successful, it would get hit hard. All of this was carefully considered in the architecture of the site before a stitch of programming was done.

The idea was simple, yet overlooked by most people trying to create registry sites. Tell a database programmer that thousands of people are going to input data and watch him cringe. How many different ways can you spell New Orleens, Biluxi and Metaree? Designing a site using a traditional database approach is flawed before it gets out of the gate. The overhead to handle the queries and the variations of queries is of immense proportions, which is fine if you have three or four months and an unlimited budget. Im-ok.org was structured in a few hours and functional within 24. We chose a single piece of meta data (a person’s telephone number) and created message boards around that. The site was up and scalable.

The launch was critical. Friday, September 2, at noon, the site was up, yet, no one knew about. We contacted newspapers, television stations and networks, but quickly understood that traditional media outlets might not be effective or fast enough. Because of our active participation in the blogging community, we knew the success of the launch would depend on the power of the internet and its connected groups of people.

The momentum began to pick up steam with blog postings, email lists and message boards. After two hours, people were posting real messages on the site. Within 24 hours, sampled traffic rates were running 1200 hits per hour. We put a stats stream on the site, so visitors could see, in real time, who was clicking through back- links from other sites all over the world. After 36 hours, we held number one listings on Google, Yahoo and MSN for Katrina I’m OK. MSN search also showed number one for I’m OK. The Alexa rating for the site hit 46,005 on Sunday, just 48 hours after launch.

The success of www.im-ok.org will ultimately be determined by how useful and helpful it is. It was created so other people could assist in its proliferation throughout the internet. It was a simple idea, to create a scalable application, using message boards centered around phone numbers so people could truly help each other in this time of chaos.

Here is where we need your help

You can help by coordinating volunteers at aid stations and relief centers to relay information back to people with computers to input the data. It is quick, just a phone number and a name. Then click a button that says, “I’m OK!” This will take initiative on the part of people to just do this. We are in Florida and cannot physically be there to do that work. We have more information on the site. You can volunteer at this email address: volunteer.im.ok@gmail.com. Please help. -TF

Survivors can register “I’m OK”

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Special Edition of Management Blog

Survivors can register “I’m OK”

The site is now up and operational. It’s scalable and should do the job.

Family and friends continue to search for people displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Our new web registry will allow someone to search for a specific person instead of combing message boards organized by city.

Survivors can register “I’m OK” or have someone else register for them that “I’m OK.” Aid stations and relief centers can use this registry to assist people in making their whereabouts visible to their family and friends.

The search side of the site allows for a specific pinpoint search for a person by household rather than generic searches by city. All the search requires is the person’s telephone number from before the disaster. Family and friends searching for the same person can communicate with each other through the message board tied to that phone number.

We need your help to make this registry known ASAP. Please forward this link to people you know who may be searching for people affected by the disaster.

www.im-ok.org

Your help is sincerely appreciated.

-Tom Foster

Elements of the Design

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We had a thoughtful response from Adrian to yesterday’s post about the design of the people system. Here is an excerpt.

I’m not convinced you can “design” the interactions between people. That smacks of the old authoritarian ideal of being able to control the people who report to you. The interactions themselves depend on individual values, thoughts, emotions and levels of understanding. We can try to affect reality through our actions (and interactions) but we can’t predict or control it.

Are some individual values, thoughts, emotions and levels of understanding important to a person’s success in a role on your team?

As the Manager, these are of great concern in designing the people system. For example, in the design of a customer service department, I am interested in team members who value helping other people, and emotionally can empathize with the customer. When I think about the hiring process, I am certainly going to interview for these exact qualities.

As the Manager, the more I can identify the qualities I want in my team members, the more likely I am able to recruit those folks to be on my team. As the Manager, the people system is the most important system you work on. -TF

Designing the People System

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“So, you want me to really take a step back and look at the interactions between people?” quizzed Lawrence.

“More than just look, I want you to design the interactions between people.” I stopped to watch Lawrence’s face. There was a question behind his eyes.

Since I had his attention, I continued. “Think about these kinds of questions.

  • How are team members given work assignments?
  • How often are they given work assignments?
  • Do team members depend on work product from other team members?
  • How do team members hand off work to other team members?
  • When a team member completes a work assignment, how does their supervisor know?
  • When they complete a work assignment, how do they know what to work on next?
  • Does anyone review or inspect their work?
  • How often is their work reviewed or inspected?
  • Are they permitted to continue on additional work before their current work has been reviewed?
  • Do they work on multiple assignments simultaneously?

“The people system is the most important system you work on. This is just the start.” -TF

Working as Designed

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I was just about to leave when Lawrence stuck his hand in the air. “What about the people?” he asked. We had been laboring over the role of the Manager for some time.

“The role of the Manager is to create the system and make the system better. The most important system is the people system. How people work in your organization is top priority for the Manager. Look, here is the bad news. Right now, your people system is working exactly as it was designed to work.”

“How can that be?” retorted Lawrence. “Our people system sucks.”

“You designed it that way, or by choice, you decided to leave it to chance. Either way, you designed it to suck.”

“But, it’s not my fault. I have only been a Manager here for two months.” Lawrence was backpedaling big time.

“And so, for the past two months, you have supported a system by doing nothing about it.” I replied. Lawrence was looking for a better excuse, but I stopped him. “Look, in the short time you have been a Manager, have you drawn up a little diagram about how people work around here, how they relate to each other, how they depend on each other? Have you written job profiles to document the specific responsibilities of each person on the floor?

“Lawrence, you are in charge of the most important system in your company, the design of how people work together as a team.” -TF

Value-Add

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“So, what does all this mean to the organization?” I asked, finishing my conversation with Lawrence about structure. “What contribution comes from each strata?” The wheels were turning inside Lawrence’s head. He struggled.

“Take it strata by strata,” I said. “What is the role of Strata I?”

“They are the people who do the work,” replied Lawrence.

“And their contribution is quality. All of your quality initiatives must be driven down to Strata I. They alone, have the power to instill quality into your product or service.” Lawrence nodded.

“What is the role for Strata II?” I continued.

“Strata II makes sure the work gets done.” Lawrence snapped back.

“The value-add for Strata II is completeness, thoroughness, accuracy, timeliness. They make sure there are no gaps in service and that things happen on time.” I paused. “And the role at Strata III?”

Lawrence was ready, “Strata III works on the system, creates the system, makes the system better.”

“And the value-add for Strata III is predictability and consistency. Ever had a McDonald’s hamburger in Memphis? Ever had a McDonald’s hamburger in Seattle? How do they taste?”

Lawrence nodded. “They taste the same, because they have a system.”

“Lawrence, does your company have a price list for its goods?”

“Yes.”

“Your company has a price list because it can predict its costs. A price list is evidence of a predictable system. The value add of the manager is to maintain that predictability.” -TF