Into the Abyss

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They just could not see it. Plain as day to Michelle, the team was having difficulty. She had pointed to the mountain top, but the team was having trouble seeing through the clouds. Hell, they weren’t even looking up. They were looking straight down at the cliff before their feet, straight down into certain failure.

“No, no!!! Look up. Don’t you see it?” cried Michelle.

“No, Michelle, look down. You want us to step off this cliff into the dark abyss. Other Managers have tried this on us before and it always turned out bad. Go ahead, look up at the mountain, but the reality is much worse down here, before we even get to the foothills of that mountain you are looking at.”

Of course, the top of the mountain looks great to the Manager. The Manager can see past all the near term trouble it will take to get there. The Manager can see the long term reward in climbing to the top. The team, however, has a shorter time horizon. They cannot see that far into the future, all they see is that near term trouble. They know they will fail and get blamed for the failure.

That’s why we have to front load rewards on long term projects. Sometimes, those front load incentives seem out of whack with the minimal progress in the first few moments, but it may take that, to gain compliance from the team. They have to suffer through operational changes, learning new skills, short term failure. It stinks. So, front load the incentives to get through it. They will eventually get to the top and understand the longer term reward.

Then, you can point to the next mountain. -TF

End of the World

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It seemed like the end of the world to Raymond’s team. The beta tests were clean, but this was the first customer run with the prototype. As hard as the team had pushed, this project was still going south. As bad as the product was being punished, the thing suffering the most was team morale.

Raymond’s company was not in a mission critical industry. When his product broke, no one died. It was certainly inconvenient, but not the end of the world. It just seemed like it. Looking around the room, he could see the dejection on everyone’s face. They had worked hard, but this project wasn’t budging.

“What is the worst thing that could happen?” he asked. There was silence forever, but forever only lasted thirty seconds.

“Our reputation will be ruined. – The customers will sue us. – We will have to lay off people in our department. – It will probably bankrupt the company. – And our families, too.”

“Okay,” Raymond replied, “anyone else?” Gazing around the table, it was a sad lot. “Look, we have a long history with the two customers who have this product. They know this is the first round out of beta-testing. They have not staked the future of their company on this project. They are not going to sue us. The worst that could happen is that we would have to refund all the money, including the deposits and extend a sincere apology. That’s it. Refunding the money will not bankrupt the company and no one is going to lose their job. Okay? Now, if that is the worst that can happen, how can we improve on that position?”

The purpose of the speech was not to solve the problem, that would come later. The purpose was to move the morale of a beaten team to a position where they could dig in and move forward. When things look grim, determine the worst thing that could happen and improve on that position. -TF

The Name on the Locker

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“They get their name on their locker.”

I was working with a team of branch managers and I had posed the question, “What’s the difference between the home team and the visiting team?” We were discussing impact on performance. Why do teams statistically perform better at home than on the road? Why do teams covet Home Field Advantage in the playoffs?

For Managers looking for superior performance, this is more than an analogy. And someone said, “They get their name on their locker.”

When the visiting team arrives in their locker room, it is adequate for storing equipment and changing into uniforms, but it is anonymous. There are no names on the lockers, no posters on the wall. When the visiting team member opens that locker, it is empty.

What kind of locker room does your team have? In some cases, it is a truck or a cubicle farm. Do your team members have their name on their locker? When you open their locker, is it empty? This is no small thing for a Manager looking for superior performance. -TF

Drama of Ideas

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The scissors and glue were stacked on top of the poster board, the furtive glances around the table showed an attitude of disbelief. Sitting in coats and ties, proper business attire, the assignment seemed curiously odd.

“Working in teams of three, you have two months to prepare a visual display and make a five minute presentation of what this company will look like in the marketplace five years from now. You are encouraged to lift articles from magazines, the internet, draw diagrams, take pictures, and create graphs. Those who use music in their presentation will be eligible for extra credit.”

During the past two annual planning meetings, we had struggled to extend our discussions beyond a 12 month time frame. There had always been lip service to the future, but no grit to the conversation.

Two months later, three stand-up poster board presentations were made that explored the probabilities of the industry, trends occurring with competitors and the influence of world economies. This was just the start of the dialogue, but we had managed over the hump of time travel and truly made it into the future. The leverage point was dramatizing the ideas.

Does your team get stuck in their own logic, unable to break out? Dramatize your ideas. It may be the turning point. -TF

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Next Agenda

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Curtis looks over my shoulder, glancing at my notes. “Can I get a copy of that, when the meeting breaks up?” I worked my way through college selling copies of my lecture notes to other classmates. In most meetings today, I could make beer money doing the same thing.

My notes are not to help remember what happened today, but notes to help create the future. My notes are my Next Agenda.

As the discussion unfurls, decisions occur and assignments are made. My Next Agenda records the assignment and the person responsible. I use my Next Agenda as a real-time delegation tool. Here is the leverage point. The most important decision on my Next Agenda is NOT “how” the assignment will be completed, but “who” is going to complete the assignment.

Managers continually get wrapped around the axle trying to figure out “how” to get things done. The most important role of the Manager is to decide “who.” Take a look at the notes from your last meeting. Do they meet the Next Agenda “who” criteria? -TF

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Sharon’s Funk

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Sharon was finally proud of somebody else. It had taken three years since her promotion to let go. Tonight, her lead technician walked across the stage to accept the honor that Sharon had coveted for so long, and it was okay.

The VIP Project had been awarded to Sharon’s department two and a half years ago. Everyone realized this would be a landmark project for company. But there were problems.

Six months in, the difficulties began to bottleneck, the discrepancy reports began to pile up on Sharon’s desk. Working twelve hour days, she could not solve all the problems that rose to the surface. With timeline charts turning from green to red, Sharon was called on the carpet at more than one project-oversight meeting.

It was late on a Friday, somewhat depressed, Sharon came to a realization that changed everything. She had placed herself as the pivot point in the project. She had wanted hands-on control of every aspect, all spokes led to her. Nothing occurred without her approval and involvement. Why?

Sharon wanted the credit. Sharon wanted to walk across the stage. Sharon wanted to be the hero. Sharon was the problem. It was only when she thought about spreading responsibilities to her team that she emerged from her funk. It was only when she imagined that one of her team would walk across the stage instead of her that she became truly effective as a manager.

Tonight was the night. -TF

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Dogs Are Never Late

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Goals are a curiously human phenomenon. Did you ever notice that dogs are never late? Dogs never miss a deadline. Goals create the second dimension of time, the dimension of intention.

I spend time with runners, people who casually run and people who seem particularly driven to run. Something curious occurs when a runner decides to enter a race. Most of the field knows they will NOT be among the place finishers, yet there is a definite change in behavior. Casual morning runs become certain distances. Times are recorded in training logs. The runs are counted, the days until race day are counted. The goal drives behavior.

How do you keep your goals visible? Often, I suggest something visual, a compelling description, a drawing or a photograph. With computer scanners and printers, you can make multiple copies and post them in several places, your bathroom mirror, your refrigerator, on your desk, the dashboard of your car. You can imagine that I have a photograph of a bicycle on my desk with a yellow sticky note that says “Buy now.”

Goals drive behavior, can you see yours? -TF

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Control Systems to Feedback Loops

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Overheard at the water cooler: “I am sick and tired of Al coming in every morning and chewing our butts out for something we did yesterday. Where was he yesterday? Now, when he finds a problem, we have take unit out of the staging area and move it back into production. That stops everything. And there is never enough room because we have units doubling up waiting for the rework to be done. Starting tomorrow, we are going to pile up the units in the staging area so he can’t do the inspections. That way he won’t find the problems and we won’t have to pull the defective units back into production. That will fix him.”

Scary, eh?

Here’s the thing. Al was making his inspections based on a checklist. We simply made a change by giving a copy of that checklist to the floor supervisor who inspects the unit before it moves to the staging area. We went one step further and distributed sections of the checklist to each work station so inspection can be completed before each piece is moved to the next workstation.

Now, Al still comes out and inspects in the staging area, but he has found zero defects in the past three weeks. The quality program has changed from a delayed control system (done one day after production) to a real-time feedback loop where corrections can be made immediately. -TF

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Discipline of Time Management

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Question: I am interested in your opinion of the most effective Time Management techniques.

Response: There are only a handful of Time Management strategies. You have heard of them all, nothing new. Here is a quick list:

  • Awareness of how time is spent – keeping a diary
  • Prioritizing – keeping an ABC priority list
  • Independent production – finding uninterrupted time to complete top priorities
  • Goal setting – creating goals to keep the mind focused

The power of Time Management strategy is NOT in the technique itself, but in the discipline of execution.

A priority list is easy to understand, but the leverage comes from creating and reviewing the list on a routine basis. Independent production, or uninterrupted time is often overlooked by Managers. Some Managers even feel guilty about closing their door. In my mind, what good does it do to know your top priority task if you do not schedule uninterrupted time to complete it. Again, the leverage comes from the discipline of execution.

Bottom-line, discipline creates habits, habits create consistent action. Success is seldom built on occasional good luck, but more often on consistent profitable action. -TF

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What’s a Blob?

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That’s Blog, with a “g,” not Blob. I chuckle, then explain. Blog is short for Weblog, it’s like a daily journal, kept on the web for all to read. This innocuous writing form earned its journalistic stature in 2002 when Trent Lott was slated to become Senate Majority leader in January 2003. Most recently, bloggers were credited with the debunking of a Dan Rather report on 60 Minutes II about a letter related to the military service of President Bush. More on the origin of blogs.

So, what is ManagementBlog?

I spend most of my days with managers and owners in this great free enterprise system. We talk about the frustration, consternation and downright pig-headedness they experience as managers. We talk about business lives and personal lives. We talk about goals and objectives, measuring performance, in short, trying to get groups of people to work together as teams.

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. ManagementBlog is that part of the conversation I can share. Often, I change the names to protect the guilty, but this is real life inside of real companies. -TF

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