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.

Delegation Management

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I watched as Vincent dropped everything on his desk and excused himself. From the corner window, he had spotted the postal carrier bringing a bag of mail from her truck. Vincent was a senior partner in the firm and he was on his way to the reception desk to perform his daily ritual, sorting the mail. Twenty minutes later, he would return, announcing that eight clients had sent in payments that day. Sure enough, he had neatly stacked the eight envelopes for the receptionist to deliver to accounting.

Take a 3×5 card and write down three things that meet all the following criteria:

  • A task that you perform repetitively.
  • A task that you enjoy doing.
  • A task that is important to the organization.

I often hear the refrain, “I’m not really sure what I can delegate to someone else.” So, take a look at the list. Any task that you perform on a repetitive basis is a candidate. You may have overlooked this task because it is something that you enjoy. You may have even justified this task as important to the organization. Look at the list again. What can you delegate? -TF

Priming the Pump

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“Does anyone have any ideas about how we can solve this problem?” queried Wayne. The team just sat there, staring at him with lizard eyes, fixated, motionless. Sure, it was Monday, but the atmosphere was limp.

It’s almost like throwing a party where no one shows up. You think you have done your job as a manager, assembling the troops to solve a problem, but you get no response.

It’s not lethargy and your people are not stupid. I find the biggest problem is fear. Fear that their idea will be seen as inadequate or silly.

Prime the pump. Simple solution. Pair everyone up. Have team members work two by two for a brief period of time, then reconvene the group. Working in pairs takes the fear out. People can try on their thoughts in the privacy of a twosome before exposing the idea to the group. Primes the pump every time. -TF

Fix What’s Wrong

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“I just wanted to tell you that I have to give my two weeks notice. I found another job that pays more money and I can’t turn it down.” There was an awkward silence as Barbara tried to gather her thoughts to respond to Howard, her best lead technician.

Her first instinct was to find out how much more money and counter the offer, persuade Howard to stay. Patience got the better of her and she replied, “Howard, I know this was a tough decision for you. I also know that decisions like this are complicated and rarely determined by a single factor. You said you were leaving for money, but I have to believe there may be other reasons, too. Since you have made a decision to leave, would you do me a favor and spend some time talking about things we could do differently around here. Your thoughts might make a difference to your other team members.”

Countering an offer for higher wages seldom works. There are usually other more compelling circumstances that drive a team member to another company. As the manager, if you cannot improve those circumstances, more money will only delay the inevitable. First, you have to fix what’s wrong. -TF

Grilling the Candidate

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When we ask more than 100 questions in an interview, are we creating undue pressure that comes off as “grilling?”

The answer is no. In our workshops, interviewers are not used to the pace of questions and so it seems like fast paced, break-neck speed. To the candidate, however, they are simply responding to things they have experienced in the past. Candidates report the experience as enjoyable. They get to talk about themselves and things they have done. It’s everyone’s favorite subject. -TF

Decent Pushback

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I got some decent pushback from my posting last Friday about the recommended number of questions for a hiring interview. Coincidentally, I was teaching a workshop (see HiringTalent.com) and fielded the same sentiment from two attendees as was posted by GBGames on Friday. I know I struck a chord when people disagree.

After observing a ton of hiring interviews, I have created a list of the top things that go wrong in the conversation. Here is a big one:

The interviewer fails to find out important information about the candidate’s experience, skills and behaviors relative to the job profile.

Interesting, since this is the primary purpose of the interview, what causes this failure? Most often, time and again, the interviewer is not prepared to ask the right questions and pursue the details of the candidate’s experience. Manager’s think they can wing it. “Just give me the guy’s resume. I’ll spend a few minutes with him and tell you what I think.”

Quite frankly, I am not interested in the opinion of the interviewer. I am interested in how much hard information was collected that has a direct bearing on the person’s probability for success.

Now, Friday’s pushback has to do with the state of mind of the candidate. When we ask more than 100 questions in an interview, are we creating undue pressure that comes off as “grilling?” More on that tomorrow. -TF

How Many Hiring Questions?

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Rodney squirmed while I was quizzing Claire about hiring questions. “Seven, I had seven prepared,” he blurted out.

“That’s a good start,” I encouraged. “Seven. What about a list of fifty.” Rodney’s eyes got wide.

“I had trouble coming up with seven. I don’t know about fifty.”

It sounds like a lot of questions, but they are really easy to create. First, organize your job description into Key Result Areas (KRAs). Here is a quick list of typical KRAs.

  • Production
  • Forecasting
  • Personnel
  • Administrative (everyone has paperwork)
  • Equipment Maintenance
  • Inventory

That’s six areas, most managers have between five and eight KRAs. For each area, create ten questions relative to the required behaviors, skills, knowledge and responsibilities. For the six KRAs above, that’s sixty questions.

For each prepared question, it is likely that you will ask two follow-up questions, meaning that in a typical interview, you will ask 180 questions, 60 prepared and 120 follow-up. Each piece of information will be directly related to the role you want the candidate to play. Would that be valuable information to know? -TF

Hiring Questions

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“Let me see your list of questions,” I asked. I could see by the furtive glance that Claire didn’t have a list.

“I didn’t have them written, just in my head, but I could probably write the questions down for you, if that would help,” she responded.

“How many questions did you have in your head?”

“Well, none really prepared, I had the resume, so I just asked questions from that.”

It’s not Claire’s fault. No company had ever trained her to conduct a job interview. No company had ever trained her to create interview questions that reveal valuable information to make a hiring decision. Hiring interviews are one of the most critical management skills for the successful manager.

I see many managers conduct the hiring interview solely from the candidate’s resume in their hand. Change this one thing to make your interviews better. Craft your interview questions from the job description rather than the person’s resume. Every question should have a specific purpose to give you data about the candidate relative to the role you want them to play in your company. It’s not what the candidate has done (though it may be fascinating), but what the candidate has done related to the role. -TF

In a Pickle

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Now, we were in a pickle. Our top salesperson for last year, $450,000 in gross sales, was on the chopping block to be fired.

In January, he had been promoted to sales manager, moved to a guaranteed salary equal to last year’s total comp, and now he was failing. Relieved of all, but the most critical accounts, he was supposed to be leading the sales group, holding meetings, inspiring, helping others to set targets and holding them accountable. As a salesperson, he was great, as a sales manager, he was the pits.

This is the classic mistake. Take your best producer, whether it is in sales, production or research and make them the manager. Management requires a totally different skill-set, miles apart from producing technical work.

Once done, tough to get undone. No one likes to move backwards or have their guaranteed paycheck moved back to at-risk. Most importantly, whose fault was it? -TF

Skills Testing

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Trevor was puzzled. On Monday, his new programmer, Dennis, arrived at work. Trevor had been waiting for HR to fill this position for three long weeks. The backlog on programming the CNC machine was building and Project Managers were getting testy with the delays.

But Dennis had been working all morning on a program that should have been completed in twenty minutes. It was becoming clear that something was wrong.

Mustering his courage, Trevor pulled him aside only to find out that, though Dennis had been trained at his previous job, he had only copied existing programs without generating any new code. As a manager, Trevor was now stuck in a situation that could have easily been prevented.

Skills testing should be an important element in any recruiting process. Testing does not have to be elaborate, nor take a great deal of time, but it is important to determine the reality of reported experience.

You see, Dennis had produced printouts of CNC routines that passed muster in the HR department. He just never revealed that those routines had been copied from existing programs. A simple 20 minute test to create some original code could have prevented this bad hire. -TF

Getting Tough for Real

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Question:
Related to your discussion about Reserve Power. I understand not driving your team to the brink of exhaustion. But how do you build Reserve Power?

Response:
Building reserve power for a team would be like any athletic training. The point of athletic conditioning is to build either endurance or sprint power. Athletic conditioning uses drills which are planned and controlled. Here are some suggestions for drills to build reserve power with your team:

  • Cross training drills.
  • What-if drills.
  • Higher volume production drills.
  • All hands on deck drills.
  • Change order drills.
  • Change over drills.
  • Time Motion studies.
  • Broken machine/alternate machine drills.
  • One-person-short drills.

Because these are drills, they can be planned and anticipated. My favorite is the cross training drill. Announce that “the second Wednesday at 10:00am, these selected people will work a 2 hour period in another position. Between now and drill day, team members should prepare with short term training. ”

These drills build reserve power so when things get tough for real, your team can effectively respond to extraordinary demands. -TF