Category Archives: Timespan

The Sandbox

Myra continued to stare, the (mis)behavior of two top executives, one in engineering and one in sales, rattled in her mind. “I know I need each system to run smoothly, efficiently, but they need to work together, or at least act like they are working together.”

“Look, you’re the CEO. From where you sit, what does their not-working together look like?” I asked.

“Here’s one,” she started. “We get a sale, a contract, which goes to engineering. Engineering takes the contract and starts to moan and groan about why they cannot engineer the elements of the contract. They complain there is missing information or the customer has a problem, but the engineered product isn’t going to solve the problem, or may even make matters worse. Then they complain that the sales people just aren’t smart enough be sales people. At that point, everything kind of goes off the rails.”

“So, there is a handoff meeting between sales and engineering that isn’t working?”

“What meeting?” Myra replied. “They both think meetings are a waste of time, so they just email contracts and drawings back and forth. Don’t get me wrong. I think our sales team does a really good job of getting interest and contracts from our customers. And, I think we have one of the best engineering teams around.”

“When a company starts off, they just have to get people to play their roles effectively,” I nodded. “But, once we have people effectively playing roles, and the company gets bigger, those individual roles have to work together. It’s a sandbox game that we learned when we were four or five years old. You have to get both teams in the same sandbox so they can learn to play together.”

Island Fever

“No man is an island,” I nodded.

Myra stared back, returning my nod. “I agree. I’ve got one hot-shot technician and one rainmaker on my executive team. Between the two of them, they are driving me crazy.”

“How does it show up?” I asked.

“It seems like they are in it for themselves. All they ever do is talk about me-me and my-my. My budget, my team, my resources. And the salesperson thinks nothing happens until a sale is made. He struts around like a rooster. I have to remind the both of them that we are a team. If the sale isn’t made, we don’t have budget. And if the product isn’t engineered, we have nothing to sell.”

“It’s a trouble in most growing companies,” I replied. You have a couple of core systems that hum along, high pace, high quality, but the other systems tip-toe around, get pushed around, underperform, pretty soon the wheels of the entire organization get wobbly.”

“What do I do with these two characters?” Myra wanted to know.

“That’s the hat trick for every manager working in a company that has grown multiple systems. The silo effect takes hold.”

“So, I need to get rid of my silos?” Myra stated in the form of a question.

“Nope,” I smiled. “You put those silos there for a reason. You needed them to be efficient, internally profitable, no waste, no idle, charging pace. But, now you have multiple systems who don’t care about each other. You have to convince them that the company is larger than their individual system. Each system is interdependent on all the other systems.”

Myra was quiet. Shook her head. “So, how do I do that?”

Internal Necessity

“I don’t get it,” Landon lamented. “Three of the team did it the way they were trained, two of them did it another way. In the meeting, they all agreed, described the method they were going to use. I wish I could figure out a way to understand why they say one thing and do another?”

“Let’s look at the facts,” I replied. “What is the difference between the three team members who followed the training, completed the task and the two team members who failed?”

“I don’t know,” Landon shook his head.

“For the three team members who followed the training, it was necessary,” I said. “For the other two team members, it wasn’t necessary.”

“What do you mean, necessary?” he asked. “I can’t chop off their fingers, though I could promise to yell at them.”

“As if yelling at someone, lecturing someone, writing up someone makes it necessary?” I observed. “Those are things on the outside. What makes for internal necessity? Tell me, Landon, what is something you do every day, that you aren’t particularly enthused about, but you do it anyway?”

Landon thought. “I brush my teeth. Not something I enjoy or pursue, but something I do every day.”

“Simple enough,” I agreed. “Why? Why do you do it every day. Why do you find it necessary to do every day?”

“Because I don’t want my teeth to rot out, obviously.”

“So every day, you imagine being 90 years old sporting a set of pearly white teeth?” I wanted to know.

Landon chuckled. “No, maybe that’s what my dentist tells me, but I do it, just because I do it.”

“Landon, you do it because it is necessary. It has become necessary, as a habit, you just do it. Habits are internal necessities that we repeat over and over. You would not think of skipping, because it has become necessary. When you look at your team, where do you see necessity? What is different about the three who did from the two who did not?”

Compared to What?

“We finally nailed down all the details. I think we understand our situation. We understand the players and all the pieces,” Sebastian declared.

“Compared to what?” I asked.

“What do you mean, compared to what?” he wanted to know.

“Just because you have a collection of assembled facts doesn’t tell you much, except what may be behind you in time. How does this collection of data help you get where you want to go? How does your understanding of the current situation prepare you for the destination? Who are the players now and who are the players that will be with you when you arrive? What gifts and contributions exist in your players relative to the obstacles you will encounter? And, all the pieces? You never know all the pieces.”

Accountability and Authority

“I am so frustrated,” Julie stammered. “We have a project with a tight deadline. There is one way to get it done on time and a dozen other ways to get it done late. I don’t know why the team doesn’t see it my way.”

“This is a cross-functional team?” I asked. “You are not the manager of the other people on the team?”

“No, that’s the problem,” she said. “If it was my team, I could just tell them what to do. This team is temporary just for this project. I can’t dictate anything. We have to discuss, agree, then execute.”

“Who is ultimately accountable for the project?” I wanted to know.

“Well, there is a project leader,” Julie responded. “She has the authority to decide how the project will go.”

“And, your accountability?”

“I’m just a member of the team,” she rattled off.

“But, don’t you still have accountability, to show up to the meetings, think about your best strategy, be persuasive in your point of view, debate the alternatives?”

“Yes, that is true,” Julie nodded.

“So, each of you has accountability, you to actively participate with your best thinking, and the project leader accountable for the output of the project. But, the authority to ultimately determine the methods and construction of the project rests with the project leader. Once you get clear on the accountability and the authority in the project, most of your frustration should disappear.”

Gratitude

We have a formal holiday in the USA this time of year, to give thanks for the opportunities and people in our lives.

And so, I want to thank each of you for the opportunity to come into your busy day, at least for a few moments, to stir the pot, rearrange some things in your head. I started this blog in November 2004, so by my count, that makes 20 years. I thought that ten years would be a milestone, never thought that 20 was possible. And I have you to thank. Some ask, how do you keep doing this? The real question is, how could I stop?

I think it’s time for a beer. Happy Thanksgiving, November 2024. -Tom

Record Sales?

“You are right,” Riley admitted. “Our record sales this year depended on one non-recurring project. But, don’t you think we will get lucky next year and get another project like that?”

“Maybe so, maybe not,” I replied. “But can you relax and depend on luck? I worked with a company that increased its prices an average of ten percent, and then were so proud that revenues were up seven percent. They didn’t count the trend in units sold. A bit of self-delusion at the celebration party.”

“But, we still have record sales this year.”

“No, you had one record sale this year,” I nodded. “In the immortal words of Abe Lemmon, you scored one more point than a dead man.”

Timespan in Your Role

From the Ask Tom mailbag:

Question:

My boss feels I am very good at my work, but that I don’t take responsibility. I tried to ask him what he means by that. He said that I have to be told every time what I must do. So, I tried to do things on my own initiative, but then he questions me “who told you to do this?” Most of the time when I ask about something I think I should do, he says “no” and asks me to do something else. How do I impress my boss that I am a person who takes responsibility or is at least willing to take responsibility?

Response:

Your attitude and willingness are in the right place, so let’s make one small change. I want you to ask your boss to meet with you to plan out your work for an entire day. I want you to create a checklist on paper and then work the checklist. The problem is not responsibility. You appear to be a responsible person.

The problem is time span. You appear to work on a single task at a time and then return to your boss for more direction. I want you to lengthen the time span by creating a checklist with a sequence of tasks for the entire day.

At the end of the day, you will be able to show him the checklist and what items you have completed. That will be evidence that you are, indeed, a responsible person.

The key is time span.

The Silent Recession

Are we in a recession or not? The S&P just made a new record high. The consultants response is always a handy – it depends.

If you are not paying attention, a recession could pass you by without hope of your own recovery. Even large scale macro-economic contractions spread the pain in different places and exert more pressure at different times. And, the winds could come from both the market side and the supply side.

In the sweltering heat of the summer, you would think a swimming pool would be a good investment. Indeed it was during COVID, when everyone was stuck at home. There were market pressures on other industries, but swimming pools were all the rage. But, now, the winds have shifted. According to a POOL report, the construction cost (materials and labor have risen 72%, from an average of $43k to $72k. In 2023, there was a 23% decline in new pool construction and POOL expects another 20% decline in 2024.

Are we in a recession or not? It depends. What indicators are you looking at, external and internal? When is your turn to go into the tank? Don’t get caught unaware.

Why Do Mission Statements All Sound the Same?

If I broke in and stole all the mission, vision, value statement plaques, mixed them up and replaced them, would anybody notice?

Timespan gives us insight.

We are very good at planning. Planning is temporal, mostly short term, rarely extending out more than 12 months. And, we are good at it. We can imagine the specific requirements, resources, people, interim checkpoints, quality standards, inspections, proofing and format of the final output. All of this is tangible, concrete.

Beyond tangible concrete ideas, are intangible conceptual ideas. Measured in timespan, those ideas are further into the future. And we are not very good at thinking in those terms, much less expressing ourselves in writing.

But, we are told we must. We must think about the future. We must think about the future of our organization and we must do so in the form of organizing documents, mission, vision, values. And, we struggle

Sure, we can dream, but most dreams lack meaning, and it is meaning that drives our organizing documents. Those organizing documents are in the pursuit of meaning. A company can dictate a purpose, well laid out in a plan, but to gain enrollment from our teams, the mission of the company seeks to define its meaning. Without meaning, it all falls apart, eventually.

Meaning is seldom found in a 12 month plan. Meaning requires us to think further into the future. We are mostly ill-equipped to do this. We don’t spend much time thinking conceptually and when we do, we all sound the same. Hence most mission statements sound the same. To be the premier provider, serving our customer with value add, providing shareholder value for their investment, although if you have more investments, you can also try a sip mutual fund calculator to learn your return over the years.

What is meaningful about what your organization does?
What is captivating to your organization’s imagination?
What is helpful to your community?
What will sustain your organization beyond your 12 month plan?