Mintzberg’s New Book “Managing”

Author: Dave Crisp

23 Nov

Wow. This is the next “Good to Great” – and only 7 years after that, not 20 as Collins’ book was after “In Search of Excellence.” Mintzberg once and for all establishes that management and leadership are immensely complex and have to be learned in the heat of practicing them, not from books or traditional courses. It’s one thing to say this to people and quite another to assemble a massive review, in very short, but dense form, proving it in the words and findings of a century of researchers.

I wrote the rest of this post to a friend, another keen observer, David Creelman of Creelman Research, who brought it to my attention. I realize this is actually a review:

Just finished Managing and have some thoughts it seems good to put down here. It’s an impressive assembly of far-reaching thinking. I think it will probably frustrate and confuse a lot of readers, which is too bad, but possibly an inevitable step in recognizing what really works. The management/leadership complex is just that – very, very complex without any clear single answers, very situational and requiring unique fit or adaptability to succeed at. I agree with the general premise, but would word it a bit differently. I would say not have said we are wrong to hold up leaders as worthy of examination and sometimes praise, but we are wrong to deify the idea of leader and leadership (and wrong to talk about it as a set of things that can be learned by the usual rote learning we get in schools). However, I believe that leaders do make a difference if they operate as Mintzberg outlines – constantly learning and reflecting and by trial and error efforts to improve things. I’m sure he would agree and wonder a bit why he didn’t make that more clear.

As I see it, organizations solidify the ossified structures they form in hopes of sustaining themselves as the original driving leader(s) move on. Theoretically the structure that worked should be able to adapt with new people coming into the slots and changing them to fit changing circumstances, but we haven’t paid nearly enough attention to that concept. We treat the structure almost as sacred once it’s in place (despite the tendency to constantly ‘re-organize’ to solve every problem, which really amounts to re-arranging the deck chairs – it doesn’t really change much – the power hierarchy is too attractive to those rising in it). To some extent the organization structure does ensure some continuity, but for how long if it doesn’t evolve?

It’s easy for those appointed to assume that they somehow inherit the stature of those who built the organization in the first place, not realizing it wasn’t a one-person show, but a cooperative effort that may be seen from outside to be one person. The fact that some initial leaders are strong-man types who create by force and maintain power by force leads to confusion as well. When we know that 90% plus of leaders believe they’re in the smartest 10%, it’s easy to see why they are so willing to try to impose their vision as Mintzberg points out is so common among those newly promoted. At that moment you’re at the peak of confidence in your infallibility; it’s just been proven, so why not impose it? Then it’s hard to back down and reveal your uncertainty as things begin not to work. You may not even realize it isn’t working and just apply more force to drive things the way you ’see they will work if only everyone cooperates (with your vision).’

We need to help people see that maintaining and developing existing organizations is no less challenging, but very different from the initiating, entrepreneurial phase, that a different type of leader, adept with equally difficult, but different challenges, is needed – one who needs to manage and lead in a very different way, with more visible involvement of others typically, building a truly learning organization, which has to start with a learning leader.

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Filed under: 1 Balance - Judgment, All That We Know, Coaching Others, Coaching over Command Leadership, Fix The Jerks, Leaders of the Future, Learning Organization

Why Isolation from People Matters

Author: Dave Crisp

3 Nov

Auto Industry task force leader Steven Rattner’s comments about why Obama had to remove Rick Wagoner as head of GM have been widely reported. While it might seem more important that $100 million deals were approved based on PowerPoint slides instead of solid research, it’s interesting that another key example was how badly they were isolated from people, including their own employees.

Senior GM execs had a private elevator key that allowed them to get from their guarded top floor suite to their private garage without stopping at any other floors to let anyone on, Rattner notes as a typical example. Perhaps not quite as obviously dreadful as flying in private corporate jets to ask the President for bailout money, but maybe more significant. At least one can argue the economic value of a corporate plane – sort of.

Cutting oneself off from team members and from their casual input on a day-to-day basis, even as much as one might pick up in an elevator ride, is deadly to leadership. Worse, it reinforces your status as untouchable by rank and file. The message is clear – don’t tell us anything, we’re not interested. If relationships never develop on any sort of casual basis, people will hesitate and decide not to approach you about things they worry might be important, but not important enough to risk embarrassment if you turn away or get annoyed.

Not everyone fears speaking to a senior executive just because of their title, but many do. Seeing others engage in casual conversation helps everyone feel OK about it, too. Every leader has to constantly work toward encouraging all sorts of comments. It doesn’t just happen by accident that people keep their leaders up to date. So the private key isn’t just a symbol, but one more actual roadblock that only the worst sort of leaders set up.

Hannibal drank from puddles alongside his troops; Genghis Khan rode with them. No one doubted who was in charge, and you can bet they talked. If you’re afraid to talk to your boss about every day work stuff, you can bet most others including his or her highest lieutenants are, too – so nothing is getting through. Time to be dusting off the resume.

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Filed under: 2 Positive - Feelings, Coaching Others, Fix The Jerks, Leaders of the Future

Who Makes Bad Leaders?

Author: Dave Crisp

17 Aug

Or are leaders bad all on their own? Among recent blog posts one asked whether employees are setting bosses up for failure by expecting perfection on every issue. Can bosses actually succeed? Why does it seem so many are vilified? What can be done about it? It does sometimes seem as if bosses can never please employees. How much is up to the employee?

These are powerful, important questions that we’re finally beginning to see asked and answered more often. I like this practical answer at Chief Learning Officer magazine online. But it’s important to understand the role employees play and what anyone can do about it.

This came to mind again with a phone call from a colleague wanting to know what makes a good leader and venting about two hours they’d just spent listening to a manager gripe about their CEO in a small company. “The boss is selfish, lazy, uninterested in anyone’s ideas for improvements,” went the complaint, “My great talents aren’t being used; I’m only staying for the money.” Sound familiar? We’re told about half of all employees or more feel this way much of the time.

In varying degrees we hear this everywhere. I’ve quoted Bob Eichinger of Lominger/Korn Ferry before – that only about 18% of managers have the key people skills for leading and developing others, that these skills fall in the lowest 20% of skills among most managers. Yet, to answer my friend’s question about what leadership is, people skills ARE leadership, so the scarcity of them indicates exactly how scarce effective leadership is in organizations. If we could raise that just 10% or 15% across the board, results would skyrocket.

Once a company grows beyond about 25 to 50 employees in size, employees can no longer be simply extensions of the leaders abilities. Until then a really hardworking boss can probably get around and tell each employee exactly what to do and how every day. Above that size the futility of that should be obvious. Employees have to be empowered and entrusted to take initiative and do things the boss hasn’t specifically ordered or blessed, so the leader’s role becomes encouraging, stimulating creativity, coordinating and supporting initiative where it makes sense – a very different job than controlling every activity day by day.

We shouldn’t be vilifying weak leaders as much as asking ourselves how best to improve their skills and help them transition from command and control styles to coaching and developing. Companies, even many of the biggest and best funded, some of whom spend millions on leadership training, are doing a lousy job of this in the main. How else to account for the finding that 82% of leaders lack the most critical skills for their roles. Hopefully the blizzard of articles and books on what it takes to get results with people will start to make a dent in that gap.

Happiness is Multi-faceted

Author: Dave Crisp

11 Aug

This may be more than one post’s worth of ideas, but researching following the World Congress of Positive Psychology (mentioned in an earlier post) led to some great resources.

Perhaps the most important concept is that happiness isn’t a single thing. When thought of as if it were you tend to think of leisure and joyful moments, but it really runs much deeper. Todd Kashdan makes the point in his excellent brand new book Curious? that we might not even want to set happiness as the most important goal in life. That’s carried through in the very interesting Positive Psychology News Daily (PPND) web site authored by graduates of the first MA programs in the field.

In fact, the PPND site impressed me with several graphics or “image maps” that allow you to click on elements that make up, for instance, ‘a life well lived image map‘ and find the components to a ‘positive emotions image map‘ and other facets of living well. The concepts they capture reinforce Kashdan’s point that maybe we’re barking up the wrong tree trying to focus on happiness alone.

A similar point emerges from another new book, The Happiness Equation, by others of the Positive Psych movement. It gives brief information about 100 items that add to or subtract from happiness and well-being – quite a list, from which you can generate a score to assess how happy you are relative to others, but even more importantly you can see from that which factors are contributing or are missing that create a sense of a good life.

Once again one of the most impressive things about this is the vast amount of research and publication that’s been done in the few short years since this field of study emerged. It really puts in perspective the sort of counseling that goes with mild mood prescriptions to form what Jonathon Haidt and others have shown to be the best antidotes to depression and how closely some of these relate to the elements needed for people to be happy and engaged at work.

While it might seem that these are intensely personal concerns, the fact is that happy employees have consistently been shown to produce better results. It isn’t either/or, but both/and. We can do the right thing by helping people identify what would make them happier and simultaneously improve profits and market share. What a concept! Great to see it born out again and again in modern research.

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Filed under: 2 Positive - Feelings, Books, Coaching Others, Fix The Jerks, Learning Organization

Work-life Balance Getting Better?

Author: Dave Crisp

8 Feb

Just when you might be depressed by the thought that work pressure only goes up, up, up and things only get worse, recent reports note the opposite only a few months ago in mutually confirming studies.

While it remains to be seen whether the current economic crisis will reverse this again, it’s reassuring to know things can improve. In the UK concerns about work stress seemed to be reaching an all time high when I spoke to their national HR group a couple of years ago. Recently the same group noted cautiously that work hours are falling and that this seems to indicate that individuals are exerting more control.

At the same time, Queen’s University’s Industrial Relations Centre highlights an international study of nearly 10,000 executives from the Journal of Applied Psychology (2008, Vol 93, #4, pp.789-805) showing some male and female managers achieve better work-life balance and, moreover, those who do actually have higher career advancement potential.

Interestingly, an HBR book published last May, Total Leadership, by Stewart Friedman, founding Director of Wharton’s Leadership Program, reinforces this, arguing convincingly that leaders can only improve their work performance by simultaneously improving in four areas of life – work, community, family and self. The subtitle: “Be a better leader; have a better life!” Balance!! Need I say it again?

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Filed under: 1 Balance - Judgment, All That We Know, Business/Strategy, Coaching Others, Leaders of the Future

Great to see casual press pick up on HR skills

Author: Dave Crisp

23 Nov

Reading everything in sight as usual I happened to run across three articles on the same page of a store promotional publication no less on the subject of Human Resources (HR) and people skills. It’s great to s Nov/Dec 2008 Costco Connection for Canada ee to see such stuff making its way into mainstream press of any sort. The more people read and know about how to handle such things the better. It was just a bit of surprise to come across it where it was November’s Costco Connection for Canada (page 13 if you’re looking for it).

One article talks about how to retain staff, advice as it happens from a fellow speaker, sales guru Jeff Mowatt. To help employees stay engaged by finding the interesting parts of even a dull job, he likens this to the Japanese Tea Ceremony, where the details become interesting even in a supposedly mundane event. By so doing, you keep them excited about what they can do for the customer of the job even when many people would find the work by itself boring.

In another, another fellow speaker, Steven Little, encourages rewarding oneself for basic achievements that take work – in his case, a milkshake for getting himself to a distant speaking engagement. And then he proceeds to casually outline five keys to effective leadership in organizations as an added bonus.

Then Berlitz Canada offers advice on adding key skills that improve your thinking and career options simultaneously – no surprise this would be learning another language, a bit obvious, but nonetheless very true.

More and more we see popular press picking up bits that in years past would have appeared only in management magazines. Today every employee wants and needs to know about the skills involved not only in managing their own success, but what would help organizations they’re involved in, too. The great value of this is that it makes managing more transparent for everyone, demystifies it and shows the links between what’s good for the individual as well as the organization at the same time.

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Filed under: 3 Strategic - Thinking, Building A Career, Business/Strategy, Coaching Others, Human Resources (HR)

Wise Words straight from a CEO

Author: Dave Crisp

3 Oct

A benefit of being invited to speak at events, albeit as a last minute fill-in, is you get to hear other presenters. At the Conference Board of Canada HR 2008 annual conference last week, it was a pleasure to hear Bill MacKinnon, CEO, KPMG Canada, discuss how he’s helped them embrace great leadership as a true objective throughout the organization. He keynoted the main conference theme – Influential Leadership – anchored to how this improves results.

He kicked off with the emphasis on why paying attention to leadership is becoming so much more important – because organizations, the challenges they face and the tasks of managing and leading them have become so much more complex. He proceeded to virtually itemize the same five key elements I build on.
Most striking of all, he very much emphasized the importance of leaders remaining “calm” (to use his term) in the face of the daily onslaught of challenges we now face. In other words, developing and maintaining the skills of balance in the midst of furious activity ended up being the point he stressed more than any other. I couldn’t agree more.

And balance, of course, involves including all the elements that must be balanced together so you don’t get blindsided by something you’ve forgotten about… like people’s attitudes and engagement, for instance, while you are nonetheless pushing for results. “Both/and” becomes a big challenge of complexity that many managers struggle with. Practice makes perfect. It was great to hear a CEO of a major organization put it in such a “must have, every day” light!

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Filed under: 1 Balance - Judgment, 3 Strategic - Thinking, Coaching Others, Coaching over Command Leadership

Bosses Make The Difference

Author: Dave Crisp

24 Jul

Again today I found myself giving a would-be human resources (HR) manager the same advice I give all job hunters – the new boss is the most important factor in any job you’re considering. A great boss can encourage you, give you projects, mentor, coach, guide and introduce you to a world of further possibilities. In other words, they can make your job exciting, worthwhile and a continual learning experience… or they can pigeon-hole you from day 1 and demand nothing, but routine, even menial results.

You can spot the good ones because they are alive, people with plans themselves for things that need to be Bad Bosses kill initiative or could be done that aren’t yet. They will talk about possibilities not only for you, but for themselves, their teams and the organization. You can feel them inviting you into the process. Others in the company will speak highly of them as coaches and cooperative supporters. Just ask around.

By contrast I very often get to hear (from people looking for new jobs) about current bosses who can’t imagine their report ever progressing. No one in their opinion is ever ready. They’ll consider hiring outside in almost every situation before looking at anyone internally… or they’ll constantly pick people they believe will simply follow orders. “Loyalty” plays big with the latter type. Cross them (ie: have a new idea they didn’t tell you to pursue) and you’re on the hit list forever. Bosses who aren’t interested in growing people abound. Which makes it easy to be a great boss.

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Filed under: 2 Positive - Feelings, Building A Career, Coaching Others, Fix The Jerks, Leaders of the Future, Uncategorized

Bunko or Bunk – Gen Y and HR Challenges

Author: Dave Crisp

18 Jul

I’ve spoken with two university researchers recently who express concern that the hoopla over the uniqueness of Gen Y recruits may be overblown.

It’s been 4 months since futurist Dan Pink (other books: Free Agent Nation and A Whole New Mind) jumped into the fray with The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You’ll Ever Need, said to be the replacement for What Color Is Your Parachute specifically for Gen Y.

Maybe. It’s light and light-hearted in manga comic format so it’s clearly targeted there. Many reviewers are quite taken with this, but the questions remains, are Gen Ys buying it or reading it when it’s bought for them.

Dan’s advice is six simple (all in favor of that!) principles for career path choices: Dan Pink's manga format Johnny Bunko

There is no plan. [The economy changes too fast for your career to have a plan]
Think strengths, not weaknesses. [Find your advantages]
It’s not about you. [Serving others serves you best]
Persistence trumps talent. [Keep showing up]
Make excellent mistakes. [Take risks, but fail forward]
Leave an imprint. [Do something that matters]

The issue is, of course, there never was a plan. We mostly stumbled into careers before so that’s not new. Neither are the other items.

Will Gen Y really change the workplace or, when they get mortgages, spouses and kids, will they “sell out” just as everyone acuses boomers of doing? More to the point, will our concern for what Gen Y thinks continue past the first blush of staffing shortage. Will we genuinely start listening to diverse employees’ needs and interests?

Meanwhile Pink doesn’t substitute for good career ‘how to’ books like Parachute or Barbara Moses’ excellent What Next. It’s a useful add-on whatever your generation – things we should all be considering, not just when we’re starting out, but for once, could we hear from Gen Y if they actually want this stuff instead of hearing from “grown ups” that they for sure will? If we’re really as interested in listening as we say, perhaps we should show it by doing so. Anyone heard what they think?

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Filed under: 3 Strategic - Thinking, Books, Building A Career, Coaching Others, How Simplicity Works

Developing Leaders is Developing Everyone

Author: admin

14 Jul

Sometimes you just read something and say, “Right on, brother.” David Malouf’s post today is one of those! And they say accountants don’t understand people.

David Malouf's blog post

Often we discount others’ abilities to understand. Many times in frustration, we get at the real truths under the every day stuff we keep hearing over and over. I particularly like his comment about being tired of “leaders” who never interact with their protegés. Although I’m one of those who promote the (in my case) “five” irrefutable laws of leadership, I like to think all I’ve done is take the simplest advice available and used it to encourage exactly that – interaction with the people you’re trying to grow and lead.

Thanks David.

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Filed under: 2 Positive - Feelings, 4 Honest - Finding Reality, Building A Career, Coaching Others, How Simplicity Works, Weblogs

Archive for the ‘Coaching Others’ Category

Mintzberg’s New Book “Managing”

Why Isolation from People Matters

Who Makes Bad Leaders?

Happiness is Multi-faceted

Work-life Balance Getting Better?

Great to see casual press pick up on HR skills

Wise Words straight from a CEO

Bosses Make The Difference

Bunko or Bunk – Gen Y and HR Challenges

Developing Leaders is Developing Everyone

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