Working With Others

A number of years ago, I wrote an article for The Albuquerque Journal titled “How to Set a Bad Manager on a Better Path”. At that time, I remarked that if one did a Google search on the keywords “bad manager” there would be more than 7 million hits.  Now the same search yields more than four times that number.  And what is more striking is that the websites devoted to the topic of “bad managers” have gone from telling stories about them to actually rating them – and naming names!

One such site is http://ebosswatch.com.  The basic premise of this site is that workplace bullying is fast becoming THE critical work place issue and that “nobody should have to work for a jerk”. So this site allows employees to rate their bosses and lists the results by name and organization.  Since I spend a lot of my time teaching new and experienced managers how to be great managers, I did a quick search of my client organizations and fortunately found them missing from the list!

Bad managers have been around for decades. And study after study indicates that employees leave organizations for reasons related to a bad boss. Conversely, more recent research from within major companies shows that great managers help employees feel totally engaged and willing to go that extra mile. So why does the problem persist?

I think there are at least three reasons:

1. Organizations promote outstanding individual contributors into the management role by making the assumption that a great individual contributor will also be a great manager. The reality is that being a successful manager requires an entirely different set of competencies than being a successful individual contributor.
2. Many organizations take a “they’ll figure it out approach” to training new managers.  Unless an organization helps a new manager become self-aware, value style differences, manage performance, and realize that they are now accountable for getting work done through others, the probability of that new manager being successful is left totally to chance.
3. Many organizations are scared to deal with a jerk.  Unlike fine wine, bad managers will not improve with age.  Organizations need to hold managers accountable for not only what business results they achieve, but how they achieve them and deal swiftly with problem managers.

I am interested in hearing your thoughts about the causes and cures for the persistent problem of bad managers.

“I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!” I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell – “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!” Things have got to change. But first, you’ve gotta get mad!… You’ve got to say, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!” Then we’ll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it.

-Howard Beale from Network, 1976

I think I know how Howard Beale felt.

I am the owner of a 2009 Toyota Corolla and it is one of the models that this auto manufacturer has recalled for both the sticking accelerator problem and now the floor mat problem. Hindsight is always twenty-twenty, but as someone who has owned multiple Toyota vehicles since 1986 – 24 trouble free years with only routine maintenance to deal with – I’m a little torqued.

I’m not upset that there is a recall notice on my vehicle. Stuff happens. In fact, through the years, Toyota has issued voluntary recall notices on a variety of relatively minor problems – seat belts that didn’t retract properly, parts that were not performing to their standards of quality, etc. When I have received such a notice, I would call the nearest Toyota Dealer, arrange an appointment – sometimes the same day – and be on my way in less than 30 minutes after visiting the dealer. What is upsetting in this case is that Toyota is stumped.

In the past, the press release concerning a recall would say something like “Toyota has issued a voluntary recall on X number of Corolla’s because of Y. Owners these vehicles will receive a recall notice within the next ten days. They are to make an appointment with the nearest Toyota dealer who will remedy the situation in a timely manner. This time, the press release announced the recall, but there is the troubling, “Toyota will determine the appropriate remedy as soon as possible. They still don’t know.

And may not for awhile. According to other news reports, Toyota claims the problem is due to “to worn pedal mechanisms that increase friction in certain conditions and cause the accelerator to stick sometimes. The manufacturer, CTS Corp in Elkhart, Indiana is saying it’s not true. They maintain that “the friction problem accounts for fewer than a dozen cases of stuck accelerators, and in no instance did the accelerator actually become stuck in a partially depressed condition.

What really torques me is that this is a situation when organizations and the people in them – in this case brilliant engineers – really need to “work and play well with others” to solve this problem. I have this image in my mind of a group of engineer’s from Toyota and CTS Corp sitting in a conference room in the Narita Hilton in Tokyo blaming each other for the problem instead of trying to solve it. This is a case where the inability to work and play well together could have dire consequences for the brand.

Today would have been my father’s 90th birthday. He died in October, 1991 of a smoking related cancer. With Father’s Day just two days ago, he has been in my thoughts a lot.

My father did not have an easy childhood. He spent his early years in the coal region of Shenandoah, PA. His younger sister drowned when he was nine. At age ten, his parents separated and he was sent to live with his Uncle in Philadelphia. By the end of the summer of 1929, he had learned how to navigate the trolley system to get to Shibe Park to watch the Philadelphia Athletics. (Some argue that the ˜29 Athletics were the best professional baseball team ever-and my dad saw them play.) I don’t know this for a fact, but I would guess my father made two promises that summer. The first was that if he ever had children they would learn how to swim. And he would take his kids to their first professional baseball game so that they would not have to go alone. He kept both promises.

To be honest, there were many times when my father and I did not see eye to eye. However, I am grateful for the lessons he taught me and I want to share them here because each one contributed to the work I do today in helping people work and play well with others.

1. A deal’s a deal. I’ve written about this lesson before.(See On Commitment.) My father maintained that one of the best things someone could say about you was that you were dependable and that you would do what you said you were going to do. He lived his life by that rule and I’ve tried to do the same.
2. Baseball. My father marched me out into the backyard as soon as I could walk and taught me how to throw and catch and how to hit a baseball. On a warm July evening when I was six, he took me to see my first big league game – the Philadelphia Phillies and the BROOKLYN Dodgers. The players were larger than life and the grass was the greenest I have ever seen. And this was the season after the Dodgers had finally beaten the Yankees in the World Series. I was hooked. Baseball is a team game. A collection of super-star players does not automatically guarantee a great team. Building a great team is hard work and I have never forgotten that lesson.
3. Don’t give up. Both of my parents were of Polish ancestry. There is an expression in Polish that translates literally to “don’t give up. Whether it when I was trying to complete an impossible school assignment or fight my way out of a batting slump, my father would use that expression. To this day when I am feeling overwhelmed, I hang in there because I can still his voice. Years later when I visited Acoma Pueblo west of Albuquerque, NM I learned that there are words in their native language that are almost exactly the same that every child learns – “never quit.
4. Sense of humor. My father had a wicked sense of humor and he also loved to laugh. I have very fond memories of Saturday evenings spent in hysterical laughter. What is significant is that I remember the laughter and not necessarily why we were laughing.
5. Interdependence. My father was self-employed. He had his own shipping room supply business and his office was in our basement. In fact, it wasn’t until I got to High School that I discovered that most of the other parents actually left the house in the morning to go to work. So I guess the fact that I have been an independent consultant since 1991 is genetic. What my father was very clear about, though, is this: We all need to find out what our gift is – what we can do really well. And we need to appreciate what everyone else’s gift is as well because we need each other to create a better world.

When my father was born nine decades ago, the United States was less than a year from being out of World War I, the Great Depression would start ten years later, and World War II was twenty-two years away. When he died, my aunt told me “John, your father was a good man; you could always count on him. Thanks, Dad.

As I am getting ready to do another week-long new management development program with my friend and colleague Linda Houden, I am thinking about a question that we are often get asked by participants: “Can you recommend any books on leadership/management for us?” I have written previous blogs about my bias against popular “business books. However, the question is a legitimate one and I have decided to devote the next few blogs to answering it.

An easy recommended reading is Difficult Conversations by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen of the Harvard Negotiation Project. One of the challenges that I find often confounds even the best leader is how to have that really thorny conversation. This book really helps. It is so accessible and practical that even the busiest leader will find it a worthwhile read. More to follow¦

“When it comes to establishing your worldview, I was curious, what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this to stay informed and to understand the world?

This is the question that Katie Couric asked Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Media critics have labeled the question gotcha journalism. When I look at the current Presidential campaign through a leadership lens, I not only think it was a fair question, I think it was an essential one.

One of the characteristics that I value in leaders is the ability to think critically , that is, to be intellectually curious, to entertain opposing viewpoints, to see the big picture, and to be able to anticipate the second, third, and fourth order consequences of the actions they take and the decisions they make. One of the clues to how a leader thinks is found in what they read. In my coaching practice, I will often ask a leader, “What are you reading? And I must say I usually get a specific answer such as the “Wall Street Journal, Jim Collins “Good to Great, “The Harvard Business Review, etc. And I will suggest other possibilities for new readings that may challenge that leader’s viewpoint. And most are willing to try those suggestions.

And when I have the opportunity hear an executive speak, I will often ask that person what they read. And sometimes the answer surprises the audience , as in “I just finished reading Aristotle’s “Neomachean Ethics and now I am reading David McCullough’s “John Adams.
Every so often I come across a leader who tells me they don’t read anything other than memos or emails. That kind of answer makes me worry about that leader’s ability to think critically. So Katie’s question was a fair one when it comes to trying to get insights about one’s leadership.

“In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed. – Charles Darwin

I came across this quote in a blog on zenhabits.net titled “12 New Rules of Working That You Should Embrace Today. Aside from the fact that article is a little judgmental and reductionist (why not 14 rules or even 20?), I think the themes of collaboration and improvisation are noteworthy , and are valued especially by the twenty-somethings of the millennial generation about whom I have commented in prior blogs.

First, let’s talk about collaboration. One of the characteristics of the baby boomer generation is its competitiveness. As my colleague on generational issues Wendy Shannon points out, boomers are competitive because there are so damn many of them! I had to try out for the baseball team, the orchestra, the play, and compete for a place in my entering class in college when there were way more applicants than spaces. And when I was in graduate school in the early ˜70’s the reality was that there were way more Ph.D.’s than open positions. My friend Tom Brady, who was a philosophy graduate student at the University of New Mexico at the time, told me that UNM had an opening for an assistant professor in philosophy and that there were over 500 applicants! So the boomers learned how to compete.

In organizations today, boomers hold the majority of leadership positions and therefore set the direction and policy for those organizations. Hence, most organizations are more competitive than they are collaborative. It is one thing to compete externally in the marketplace for customers and talented employees. However, competitiveness often gets out of control internally when employees on the same project or department are competing to get ahead in their careers because of the policy of “up or out that seems to dominate most organizations. Peter Senge in “The Fifth Discipline talked about how mental models or assumptions that people hold can shape the way people think and act. He emphasizes the importance of questioning assumptions to see if they have become outdated. I think the assumption that internal competition is a good thing for an organization needs such questioning. The idea that collaboration is the new productivity tool is worth examining. The twenty-somethings understand the value of collaboration. Maybe the Boomers can learn something from them – instead of seeing them as so different.

Second, let’s address improvising. In the context of the blog, improvising means adapting, changing ways of working, and utilizing technology most effectively. I know a lot of boomer leaders in organizations who find trying new methods, new ways of thinking, and new technology too scary and so they resist change. As a result, I think there is a possibility that large corporations may become casualties because of their failure to adapt. Rapid changes in markets and resource availability , especially non-renewable fuels- will force improvisation. And I see examples of corporations resisting change frequently. Here is a simple – almost trivial example. There is a readily available piece of software called Skype. It’s free and with a camera and microphone attached to your laptop , which is usually built in in newer machines, you can talk with and see people anywhere in the world there is Internet access. And yet, the norm is to hop on a plane, travel across country or continent in order to meet face to face. Just think how adapting new technology can aid collaboration.

The author of “12 New Rules of Working That You Should Embrace Today, Leo Babauta, ends by stating that the ideas he put forward in this article do not have main stream acceptance. So as I reflect on the quote that sparked this blog, I wonder how many corporations will prevail?

People in my seminars and workshops often ask me “what business books do you read?  I answer, “I don’t read business books. The group is usually stunned.  What I found through the years is that  many business books don’t really offer any new ideas and often lead readers to the conclusion that there are simple answers to complex problems. Here are a couple of examples to illustrate my point.

Patrick Lencioni is a writer and consultant that a number of people admire.  His books often have a number in the title: The Five Temptations of a CEO; The Five Dysfunctions of a Team; The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive; and The Three Signs of a Miserable Job. Let me be clear that Patrick Lencioni and I probably have a great deal of common ground in our shared passion for making workplaces better.  His books are very accessible and seem to have struck a chord because his book sales are off the charts.  And I do not disagree with the major themes in the books above.  What is a problem for me is how the work gets applied.  Most people in organizations who cite his works tend to have read them non-critically and believe that, “if we can only overcome these five dysfunctions we will be a better team.  What is missing is the question, “might there be a sixth or seventh dysfunction or temptation that is really tripping us up?  Patrick Lencioni provides an example of what philosophers refer to as reductionist thinking – the tendency to reduce problems and solutions to the simplest set of principles.  Another example would be Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.  The finite number of principles that reductionist thinking yields are not necessary bad or incorrect principles.  I have worked with teams that, in fact, exhibit all five dysfunctions about which Lencioni writes – as well as others!.  However, reductionist thinking has a way of making people lazy.  Instead of asking “are these really the three, four, or five things in play or better yet, might there be other principles that would apply, there is a tendency to accept as true the results of this reductionist thinking.

Another book that I have seen get mis-used is Jim Collins’ Good to Great.  Collins talks about great organizations making sure that they have “the right people on the bus.  I have talked with a number of executive who extol the virtues of this book and especially cite the part about getting the right people on the bus.  The way this passage gets interpreted is to hire (that is get people on the bus) who look like, think like, and act like the people doing the hiring.  So without real diversity do we really have businesses that can be as great as they could be?
So what do I read?  I read biography, history, and poetry.  I am currently reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals.  This is the story of how Abraham Lincoln selected for his cabinet four of his rivals for the Presidential nomination in 1860 and forge them and others into a team that lead the United States through the Civil War. If you really want to learn about getting the right people on the bus and building an effective team read this book. But read it with a critical eye, ask questions, then decide how you want to move forward.

I have a few minutes before I head back home after doing two days of training and based on some of the emails I have received about yesterday’s blog “On Commitment, I think an addendum is appropriate.

I do believe that “a deal is a deal.  However, I also remember one thing that my father added.  Sometimes things come up.  Sometimes things change and the nature of the deal changes. Sometimes something gets in the way of following through on a commitment. In that case, as my father would say, you need to communicate that fact to the others involved.  If circumstances change, maybe the nature of the commitment (or the deal) needs to change as well.  To those who have emailed me, I hope this addition helps.

Whenever I work with a group around the topic of commitment, someone usually offers the following quote: “In a breakfast of ham and eggs, the chicken is involved and the pig is committed. And in the spirit of true confessions, I’ve also shared the same quote with organizations. And it has always bothered me because taken to its logical end, one could conclude, commitment involves death. That is a rather grim image of an otherwise honorable term.

So what is a good way to talk about commitment? One of the terms that my friends Will Stockton and Marjorie Herdes use is committed action. And I might add that Marjorie is quick to add as a corollary to the above quote that the pig was really coerced!

A few weeks ago I happened to catch the HBO documentary titled, “Brooklyn Dodgers – The Ghost of Flatbush. It is mostly about the love affair that the people of Brooklyn had with the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team. Now for those of you who have a passing familiarity with the history of baseball, the residents of Brooklyn adored their Dodgers , even though they would repeatedly disappoint their fans , until, of course, 1955, when they finally won the World Series by defeating their hated rivals, the New York Yankees. In the documentary, when asked why after so many years of disappointment the fans would continue to support the Dodgers, one of the interviewees simply said, “You stick by your guys. In other words you hang in there through thick and thin because your guys are there for you and you are there for them , to accomplish something greater than any individual could. Brooklyn fans would refer to their team as “Dem Bums (there is a certain way of casting the English language that only people from Brooklyn know how to do) , and woe be tied to anyone not from Brooklyn who called the Dodgers bums. As loyal fans would say, “they may be bums but they are OUR bums¦

My father also had a way of talking about commitment. He would say, “a deal’s a deal. In other words, if you are member of a leadership team that agrees to a certain approach to move forward, you have made a deal with that team. And you stick by your guys (or girls!). If you renege on the deal , in my father’s frame of reference , that is one of the worst things a person could do because a deal is a deal. It does not entail death , but it is serious business. It does mean that you don’t let others down. It means you can count on each other!

Sometimes real life events stop us in our tracks. By now everyone has seen the reports of the tragic I-35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis, MN.  This event hit me personally because I lived in the Twin Cities for many years. And I have family and friends there. Of course, I wondered immediately if any of them were casualties of this catastrophic accident.  My stepdaughter called me to say she was fine.  And to report that my stepson and his family were also OK , even though they had just crossed this bridge a mere 5 minutes before the disaster. So far, many others have checked in to say they are OK as well.

I offer two observations.

First, the emergency response of the city of Minneapolis was incredible.  Law enforcement agencies and the fire department, and rescue squads worked in complete synchrony and were on the scene within minutes.  Hospitals were mobilized immediately.  And most importantly average citizens helped where they could.  All certainly worked well together.

Second, this event reminded me of just how fragile life is.  And that the ending of day can be quite different from its beginning.  I am reminded of a conversation I had with a professor of mine who told me after his wife died unexpectedly, “There were things I wished I would have said to my wife. If there is something you want to say to someone you care about, tell them.  Because you may never have that chance again.  So if there is someone you care about and there is a message you want to give that person, don’t wait.