Every agreement you make with other people, you ultimately make with yourself. When you cheat other people, you ultimately cheat yourself. When you break a promise to other people, you teach your brain to mistrust your own intentions. You sow the seeds of self doubt. You undermine your own strength and integrity.
Agreements you keep with yourself, that are invisible to others, are the most powerful because they are pure. They sow the seeds of self confidence on a foundation of integrity.
What is the function of management? I often ask.
In organizations, we design roles for people to play. So, what is the role of management?
Every employee is entitled to have a competent manager, with the time span capability to bring value to their problem solving and decision making.
I once asked the definition of an entrepreneur. I was sternly instructed that an entrepreneur is that person who creates an organization that leverages the skills and talents of other people to create something that no one individual could produce on their own.
And, so it is with a manager. That person who leverages the skills and talents of other people to create something that no one individual could produce on their own.
Individual achievement is a myth. The truly great works of mankind are nestled in the collective works of people transformed from a group to a team. Sustained achievement is the collective work of people, transformed from a team to an organization, that continues to create beyond the original ideas of the founder.
For many things in an organization, we document our methods and processes in writing, call them standard operating procedures. SOPs codify the required behaviors in the work that we do together.
Culture is different, because it is mostly an unwritten set of rules that governs our behavior in the work that we do together.
It is always a good idea to have alignment between your standard operating procedures (written), and your culture (unwritten). Because, wherever there is a discrepancy, culture always wins.
If you are in situation with another person, who disagrees with you, you can respond in one of two ways. You can be frustrated that they disagree. You can attempt to persuade them to your way of thinking. You can impugn their intelligence.
Or you can be curious. What led them to their position of disagreement? What evidence do they see in the world that you don’t see? What other people did they listen to, that influenced their thinking? What consequences might occur if their position turns out to be a better description of reality?
Sometimes a discussion looks like an argument. You can tell if you are in an argument if you are talking, telling, directing, explaining and defending.
If you are trying to understand, you can tell, because you are asking questions. Which gets you quicker to the truth?
“But, I am the manager. Everyone is counting on me,” Bryce pushed back.
“Then, why are you in here, by yourself?” I asked.
“I have a problem to solve. It’s a serious problem. Everyone is counting on me to solve the problem. It is my responsibility.”
“Is it your responsibility to solve the problem with the best solution you can come up with, or the best solution to the problem? Have you thought about stepping outside yourself, asking for help, other perspectives? Yes, you are accountable for the best solution, but, no one said it had to be your idea.”
“What’s new?” I asked.
“Just waiting for my ship to come in,” explained Raphael.
“How long have you been waiting?”
“Long time.”
“How do you know your ship will, indeed, come in?”
Raphael looked puzzled.
“Did you send any out?” I asked.
“What do you mean?” Raphael replied.
“For your ship to come in, first, you have to send some out.”
“So, you didn’t like the idea?” I asked.
“No, and I should have listened to my sales-guy,” Rory replied. “We spent a bunch of engineering time creating a perfect solution that the customer didn’t want. We thought the prototype would WOW them to our way of thinking. All it did, was drive them to our competitor.”
“If you had it to do over again, what would you do differently?”
“First, I would listen. Before the problem was completely explained, I thought I already had the answer. I missed some key elements in the problem.”
“And, what else?”
“I think,” Rory glanced to the ceiling and back to me, “that I have to suspend my own judgement for a while. I have to see the problem from the customer’s perspective. Until I can see that, I will make the decision according to my criteria, instead of developing criteria from the customer’s perspective.”
The problem you solve is the problem you name. Make sure you name the right problem. -Pat Murray
“So, just exactly how far out to lunch were you, when you made that decision?” I asked.
Clarence laughed. It was the first bit of levity around a decision that cost his company $125,000. “I know, I know,” he replied. “It was a pretty bone-headed decision.”
“Seriously, what did you miss?”
“I was so focused on the increased productivity we forecast when this new machine came online, that I forgot to ask some basic questions.”
“Like?”
“I assumed the concrete floor would support the weight of the replacement machine. There were plenty of signs to tell me otherwise, but I didn’t pay attention to the floor because I paid attention to productivity.”
“Details?”
“You’re making this painful. When we pulled the old machine out, there were stress cracks in the concrete underneath. I thought, after 20 years, they were just cosmetic. But, there wasn’t enough steel reinforcement in the pad to hold the weight of the new machine.”
“What did you learn?”
“Before you make a decision, you have to lay out – what is an assumption and what is a fact. I was playing paper, scissors, rock with concrete and steel.”
“I don’t have time to think about KPIs,” Marcelo complained. “We have too much work to do around here. I have production quotas to get out the door.”
“How do you know when you have finished a production run?” I asked.
“Oh, don’t get me wrong, we have someone counting units before they go in the box. We build to order. We try to keep finished inventory down.”
“Do you have defects?”
“Yep. Or, so we hear. I always overrun by 10 percent to cover customer complaints. Seems to work out pretty well.” Marcelo gave me that confident look.
“If you were to have Key Performance Indicators, what would they be?” I pressed.
“I told you, we don’t have time for that. If there is a quality problem, that is for the QA/QC department to figure out. Believe me, they will tell us.”
“Sounds like the trilogy, hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil?”
“As long as I don’t look for trouble, I rarely find it.”
“So, if you know you are blind, you will figure out a way to see. But if you don’t know you are blind, you will continue to run into the same problems, over and over.”
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-Adapted from Ray Dalio, Principles