Management Craft

Managers, Are You Telling TOO Many Stories? Be a little more messy. @tylercowen

I really like this TEDx talk from economist Tyler Cowen called Be suspicious of stories. I think anyone in a leadership role should watch it and think about what it might mean. Like Tyler, I am not advocating we stop using story - but it is useful to think about the potential ramifications of oversimplifying things through story. Stories, by their nature, are easy to remember and draw broad conclusions.

For managers and leaders, stories can pull people in, galvanize them, and build momentum. The down side is that many situations are more complex than can be told in a story and are not helped when made into a punchline.

I have seen employees roll their eyes and have heard them say their manager was clueless after hearing him/her oversimplify a situation. Work life (and personal life!) is messy and stories can increase mental laziness.

Check out the talk here.

My favorite line from the video is, "It might just be a mess." How often do we force one or two plotlines onto something that is not plot driven? How often do we assume intent where there is just chaos? How often do we rush into a convenient narrative that does not fit the circumstance because we can't find a narrative that works?

Share this video as pre-work for your next team meeting and see what happens.

 

Fireside Chat with John Kay - Obliquity #bizbooks

Are you a fox or a hedgehog? Check out this podcast!

During this 24 minute podcast, I chat with John Kay, author of Obliquity: Why Our Goals are Best Achieved Indirectly. For those of you who manage others, set goals, create stratgy, and/or strive to build a great workplace and life, this podcast and book is for you. John, who is a well-regarded economist and has taught at institutions such as Oxford and the London School of Econimics, brings the idea of obliquity - an indirect and adaptive approach - to many aspects of life in his book (it is not a book about economics). Listen and learn why John is a critic of reengineering practices, why the most profitable companies are not the most profit oriented, and why the happiest peopple are not those who puruse happiness.

You can listen to my podcast with the John Kay by clicking here.

You can also download an MP3 version of the podcast here.

And just a reminder.....

Here is the Podcast Feed for the entire Fireside Chat podcast series:

To see the complete list of podcasts in this series, select the Podcasts and Webcasts category on this blog. You can also find this series on iTunes (and several other podcast sites), just search under my last name or Fireside Chat.

Talk about stress...Turn off the Tech

Talk about stress... who knew that some of the causes of stress can be from technology.  Wait a minute, isn't technology supposed to make us feel less stressed?  Do you feel more productive with or without your emails, mobile phones, and the internet?  Do you feel like a rat experiment every time your phone beeps with a text message.  Beep... pick up phone    beep... pick up phone    beep... pick up phone, etc. 

Give your brain a rest by giving it exercise that doesn't demand technology.  Here's a book called Train Your Brain.  Engage your team by starting out a meeting with a brainteaser or a math problem.

And check out this great post on Management Issues from Myra White about the technology treadmill.  And BTW, I have never given anyone a chance to overhear my conversations in the bathroom stall... that is just something I don't do!

In Synch - The Nature of Synchrony

I love this TED talk from applied mathmetician Steven Strogatz on synchronization. One line from the video: "There is a fourth rule. When a predator is coming, get out of the way." It occurred to me that sometimes managers are like predators, and teams like flocks. As managers, we don't want to be perceived as predators but as part of the flock.... Happy Friday, I think you will enjoy this video, it is beautiful. And I wonder how this idea might apply to teams.....hmmmm....

 

Work/Life Balance Not So Important?

I am doing some research and came across this interesting study published in the Journal of Management and Organization called, "Work–life balance or work–life alignment? A test of the important os work-life balance for employee engagement and intention to stay in organizations." Louise Parkes and Peter Langford assessed 16,000 Australian employees. Here is a brief snippet from the abstract:

"We also explored how individual and organisational variables were related to work–life balance aiding further development of theory integrating work with other aspects of life. Results showed that of 28 organisational climate factors, work–life balance was least related to employee engagement and intention to stay with an organisation."

Fascinating results that might seem a bit counterintuitive. The factors that ranked toward the top of the list (out of the 28) included:

• Change an innovation
• Mission and values
• Rewards and recognition
• Organization objectives
• Involvement
• Career opportunities
• Leadership
• Customer Satisfaction

By the way, also near the bottom of the list along with work/life balance was teamwork, facilities, and talent. All of these factors are positive and important and help improve the workplace, but it is interesting to contemplate the relative differences in impact to engagement and juxtapose these findings with our assumptions and practices.

Do these results surprise you? I am not surprised that work/life balance ranked near the bottom because very few highly engaged people I talk to seem to be focused on this (less engaged employees seem more interested in this). I am also not surprised by the relative importance of change and innovation and find that most of my clients are struggling with the pace of change combined with a need for greater innovation.

Another quote from the study that gives us a good bottom-line perspective:

"By comparison, aspects of the organisation such as effective change management and belief in the mission and values of the organisation were strongly correlated with engagement."

You can get the entire paper here (there is a fee). How could you use this information to start a fresh conversation about how to best engage and retain your talent?

A response from Aubrey Daniels to my post about his Dan Pink Slam Post

A couple of days ago, I wrote a post called: http://www.managementcraft.com/2010/01/aubrey-daniels-versus-dan-pink-bam-management.html

Aubrey Daniels tried to leave a comment on that post, but the system did not let him because of its length. He emailed his comment to me and I said I would share it here.

See Aubrey Daniels' post about Dan Pink's book Drive here.

Find Dan Pink here.

See my original post here.

Now here is the comment from Aubrey Daniels. Thanks, Aubrey, for taking the time to share this!

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Lisa,

Thanks for the comments about my blog post about Pink. I would love to have a long discussion about this whole topic with you and Pink as well but lacking that I will make a few comments about your post.

The issue about intrinsic motivation is not its importance at work or in the rest of our lives, but how to create it.  How is it that people come to love their work?  Were they born loving a particular job?  Can you decrease intrinsic motivation?  Can you increase it?  If the answer is yes, then it follows that the environment is responsible.  Some environments increase intrinsic motivation and some decrease them.  The science of behavior analysis seeks to understand just how that happens. 

I have been working in the private sector for about 40 years and I can tell you that we have seen many examples where managers have "tapped into that inner fire" and turned a dreadful workplace into one where discretionary effort is the norm.

You say we need to "build our organizations around the idea of how can we work so that everyone can and will be driven to do their best work."  I certainly agree, hence my book, Bringing Out the Best in People.  You also say we should train managers differently.  I also agree but quite frankly I don't know how to do that without some pretty specific guidance, even to the point of using templates and routines.  When you have a manager who for decades has never told one employee that he liked, valued or appreciated her work, how do you get him to the point of showing "admiration, gratitude, and care.?"  It is not easy but we think it is worth the effort.

My bottom line is that everybody has opinions about motivation but until the subject is researched scientifically, we will never know which opinions are correct.  In the meantime, if we are wrong we can not only decrease intrinsic motivation but severely limit employee's ability to express themselves fully in all aspects of their lives.

In the last hundred years, behavior analysis, the science of behavior, has discovered a lot about why we behave as we do.  Unfortunately, most people (including Dan Pink) don't know it. Until they do we will continue to waste time, our most precious resource, being influenced by persuasive opinions even when they are "wrong headed."

Aubrey C. Daniels

 

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I believe in good, healthy, debate about things of importance like these, and I thank Aubrey Daniels for taking the time to share his thoughts on Management Craft. In his comment, he asked:

When you have a manager who for decades has never told one employee that he liked, valued or appreciated her work, how do you get him to the point of showing "admiration, gratitude, and care?"

This is a common problem, for sure. I would first ask, what is the root cause of the problem? On what basis is this manager deciding what to do, what to communicate, and how to manage? Often what I see is that the only training this manager has received has reinforced the wrong things (paternal practices, a focus on extrinsics, and that people are essentially machines - although it is usually phrased less directly) and that what needs to happen so that the manager can improve is a shift in his or her thinking about how to best manage people. Well intended structure with forms and check sheets will only reinforce the old and inadequate beliefs that underlie a detached management style.

Aubrey also asserts that he thinks we need to give managers pretty specific guidance. I wonder if he is suggesting that I think managers ought to be taught abstract and broad concepts and not trained on the specifics of what great management looks like. Actually, Aubrey, you and I agree that specifics are important. I think that the specifics we each recommend would be quite different, however (as related to motivation).

Also, I think that we know more about motivation - scientifically - than Daniels seems to believe.

What's your take? Read all the posts and information and weigh in. This is fun!

Fireside Chat With Jeffrey Kluger - Simplexity

Why is it that less talented teams sometimes outperform others that have more skill and experience? Check out this podcast!

During this 34 minute podcast, I chat with Jeffrey Kluger, author Simplexity: Why Simple Things Become Complex (And How Complex Things Can Be Made Simple). Jeffrey is a senior editor and writer at Time magazine, principally covering science and social issues.

If you are like me - interested in how things work and complexity science particular - you will love this podcast. It SOOOO relates to how we manage our businesses, manage people and make decisions. Jeffrey offers up some great stories (including some from the Apollo mission - he co-wrote the best selling book Apollo 13 with Astronaut James Lovell, based on which the movie was made). We talk about guppies and a logic that would conclude telemarketers ought to get paid more than CEOs. Yes, you will want to listen to this one!

You can listen to my podcast with the Jeffrey Kluger by clicking here:

You can also download an MP3 version of the podcast here.

And just a reminder.....

Here is the Podcast Feed for the entire Fireside Chat podcast series:

To see the complete list of podcasts in this series, select the Podcasts and Webcasts category on this blog or see the list on my main website here.

You can also find this series on iTunes (and several other podcast sites), just search under my last name for Fireside Chat.