Jurassic Management and You

We live in times when communication is flowing faster than ever. Not only the tools we work with are evolving fast, we are evolving fast. People don't have careers anymore --they have jobs-- and jobs change quickly! Work can be distributed around the globe (think croudsourcing), and collaboration rules (think wikis and open source). Shift really happens (and if you haven't seen any of the "Did you know" videos you are really out of touch). So...to the point: the management you have observed looking up the corporate ladder is probably not the management you have to replicate. Unfortunately there is no road-map to follow... and I can only help with a few don'ts and some tips.


Don't #1 - My first advice is not to copy your "good'old boss".

If you are reading this blog chances are that you belong to the generation X, and you will be managing a mix of gen Y's and X's and a few boomers. Your boss is probably a baby boomer who manages gen X's. By all means, learn from him but do not copy him. He probably has a different challenge than you have so don't replicate... It just won't work the same way.

Don't #2 - Don't get in the way of things. PR-managers talk well, and their value comes primarily from reporting-up what the team is doing and managing down whatever the business guidelines are. Today, value can't come from being a communication agent. E-mail, webcasts and instant messages are fast and efficient. CEOs are emailing their employees like that: zap! ... and some are blogging or twittering. Same thing for micro-managers...the volume of things going on is so huge that it's impossible to keep-up with everything that is happening. Both the PR-manager and the micro-manager will get in the way of things and add very little in the process... well, other than slowing-down everyone's work by adding time; They are poised to fail. 

Don't #3 - Don't be a father for your team. I still see some "papa-managers" out there... If you are one of them, you take care of your team members as if they were family; you protect them from the cold corporate world and nourish them with your experience. Get real; it won't last long; the family will be devastated by turnover and you'll fall into depression.


Enough Don'ts... time for some constructive tips!

Tip #1 - Understand your organization and culture. No one is better placed than the manager to understand how the organization and culture play at the different levels between the company, the business unit and the team. Spend time on this. Organizations are getting more complex. The management structures have evolved from pyramids to matrices, to .... let's call them hyper-organizations. See the big picture: where do you fit with your company organization, your stakeholders, your suppliers, the corporate process owners, your business environment? What moves the myriad of players around you, how can you leverage them (how can they leverage you?), and what creates barriers to the success of your team's mission? Map this, do a force field analysis. Think about the culture as well. You can only underestimate the impact it can have in the success or failure of a project. 

Tip #2 - Hunt for complexity. Simplification is in vogue. People communicate well and can digest the work for you. Powerpoint presentations, 3 bullets per page, one hour reviews to skim the surface, "you only need to know this", big picture bla, bla, bla! I see this everyday! Today it's too easy to get out of touch with what happens on the ground, what things really mean, or metrics really measure (no, I don't work in finance... but the story is the same, we manage a system we don't always understand). How simple everything looks! But look under the hood and see the complexity! If you decompose how things work you'll be amazed: in my work, to close a "simple action" you have dozens of people involved from 5 places around the world, relying on systems that are unreliable and that are managed in _ _ _ (fill the blanks). You get the picture... things are getting more complex and it's your job to see where the complexity is.

Tip #3 - Take action. The first tips are about doing good analysis... so don't forget to use your analysis and take action. Sometimes you can simplify things. Do it! Sometimes you can only do risk management. Hey, better than nothing.


Tip #4 - Outsource yourself. Well, not literally. What I mean by outsourcing yourself is that you should tap into others when you can. Use your networks and the distributed resources that are available for free... How? By asking questions an helping others to better communicate. If you ask questions you'll have other's brains working for you. And if they can tap into other brains themselves... you see the picture. Sometimes I ask a difficult question and I get an answer right there, on the spot. I hate it, I did a bad job asking or whomever answered didn't get it. I wanted him or her to ask the question as well and then come with many better answers. In summary, If you ensure that your team members are well connected and communicate well, you'll receive direct benefit through networks effects. Use that network!

How many balls can you juggle?

This summer I was reading a Business Week's cover story that I highly recommend: a very interesting interview of Obama on Business. I particularly liked Obama's thought on his agenda towards the end of the interview. The dilemma is whether he should focus and get more things done... or try to do more but risk to have unfinished business.

I can bet: you all have had the same dilemma right!?

Stop! Let's get real:

We are not Obama, we don't have his stellar team nor his political goodwill, we don't have all of America's resources and we do not have to deal with the worst crisis since the 30's...

Nevertheless... the dilemma is similar:

How many balls can you juggle?

When is it too much?

I asked a colleague of mine this question and his answer was:

Answer 1 - "As many as you are able to."

That was a good answer... but inspired by Business Week's article I said: "what about...:

Answer 2 - As many as you need to."

My colleague laughed at me and added:

"What if you are not able to juggle as many balls as you need to? Shouldn't you go back to juggle as many as you are able to?".

Here our ball-juggling analogy breaks... in management --like in politics-- there is an important thing called d-e-l-e-g-a-t-i-o-n. Once you acknowledge that as a manager you can have others juggle some balls you start thinking about which ones you should juggle, if any at all! So... ready for the tips?

Tips:

1) Never forget that you don't necessarily need to juggle balls, you need to get results. How common is that you ask for a status on results and people tell you what they are doing!Arghhhh! Don't focus on showing that you are juggling (i.e. working hard) but focus on getting the work done... and go golfing if you do get results without juggling.

2) Don't think of delegation as giving the leftovers that someone else can deal with (because it is a lesser risk task, or a lesser visibility task). Look at your team and see who can better run which tasks, you get the leftovers.

3) Don't forget that you are ultimately responsible for all the juggling... watch the jugglers, ensure they are well trained, and provide the needed support.

4) Hire the right jugglers...

5) Hate prioritization, don't fall in the priority trap... you need to do what you need to do. If you are a bottleneck you are not doing a good job: step back and reorganize.

6) And if you find yourself playing golf too often as a result of your good management ... feel good, you are ready to move on to your next challenge!