Continued…Cross-functional relationships: Start with one!

Ethan was ready to start making life better for his people by sorting out how their roles fit together across the organisation. I suggested he start with the role of Quality Engineer. He reached for the phone.

“Don’t do that” I jumped in. Ethan looked surprised. I continued; “it’s not up to your Quality Engineer to decide the work system, it’s up to you. We’re going to get her input for sure, but first, tell me what you are ultimately holding her accountable for”.

Ethan didn’t answer.

“We’ve found our starting point.”

“OK….” Ethan said. I needed to explain;

“Work occurs because someone gets someone else to start doing something, wait before doing something, or stop doing something.”

“Sounds reasonable”.

“And why do they do this…why does it happen?” I asked.

“Because…it’s their job?” Ethan ventured

“Yep. Or to get right to the bottom of it, they feel they are accountable for a particular thing happening or not happening, so to make sure they can do what they believe they are accountable for, they go and talk to someone else”. Read more…

The buried leadership fundamental

The volume of stuff out there on leadership has buried a fundamental.  Amongst the personality-based fads and need to become motivational, inspiring (or resilient and courageous as the latest additions), we’ve buried what leadership actually is –  the act of getting of group of people to work collaboratively and effectively together toward achieving a goal.

And in burying this, we’ve buried that the key contribution from anyone in a role that requires leadership (which applies to all managerial roles), is to develop plans that will successfully get the group to where it needs to go.

The military is not to everyone’s taste, but it can be agreed that leadership tends to be a no-nonsense matter in a situation where people can actually be killed.  General DePuy, US Army leadership trainer wrote:

“Concept of operation is the supreme contribution of the commander to their command and to success”.*

Think about that term – concept of operation.  Read more…

Improve your life – sort the work system

If you’re a manager, you’re in charge of a work system.  I’m not talking about technology systems, I mean a system as in there’s an external world that puts things in, your area does things with them, and then something comes out to the external world.

A system.

You might even have done that thing where you draw the boxes and arrows, some ‘swimming lanes’ if you’re fancy and so can now declare “there’s my work system.”

Nice one.  So how come you still don’t have enough hours in the day?  Why is there still a line of people outside of your office?  And why does that diagram just fester on your G: drive and you didn’t know that your Visio licence expired two years ago?

The reason is because your work system isn’t so great.  You haven’t yet put in focussed effort to see your area as a work system, and then, every time something requires your intervention, see this as a work system failure.

That’s right – every time one of your people needs to come to you to ask a question that is not of the nature of ‘why do we do this?’, it is actually a failure of your work system. Read more…

Cross-functional relationships: start with one!

Ethan was enthused and exasperated at the same time.

“OK, I can see there’s this model for sorting out our cross-functional relationships.  Tears, tars or something, and a lot of words like audit, monitor, coordinate and stuff like that.  All sounds great.”

“You don’t seem to think it’s all great” I offered.

“Well it’s not.  We’ve got a million of these relationships.  Everyone talks to everyone, and to go through and work out every role relationship in the place would take a decade, and wouldn’t it just turn us into a bureaucracy anyway?”

“Sure would”.

Ethan looked surprised – “but you’ve seen this stuff work before”.

“Yep”.

“So what do I need to do”?

“We fix one“.

“One?”

“Yep, one”. Read more…

Planning in five minutes

Are you a manager?  If so, you are accountable for providing the organisation and your people with a plan for the work of your area.  It’s not a bonus thing to do if you get time for it, it’s actually one of the things you are paid to do.

So here’s how you do it.

Write down a) where your area needs to end up at a future point, then b) how it got there.  How far into the future?  Use this simple guide:

• If you run a frontline team, write down what’s been completed at the end of the year, both in terms of business-as-usual volumes and any new stuff you’ve done.  Now write down what the team did to achieve that (what training, methods, techniques, layout, rosters etc. got them there).  Your job is about doing it better. Read more…

Stop happying and start helping

“HAPPIER EMPLOYEES ARE MORE PRODUCTIVE” screamed recent headlines as a study from the University of Warwick hit the streets.  Music to the ears of some HR practitioners who see their role as Entertainment Officers with the responsibility of making work fun for employees, rather than their actual role of assisting managers to provide the conditions to lift productivity.

I don’t think the study is necessarily wrong.  An employee that does not feel that their organisation respects them, that can’t trust the organisation to not cause them harm, and who gets treated in a way that does not feel fair is never going to put their best effort forward.  And they’re not going to be happy.

But to conclude from the study that organisations should provide chocolates and bean-bags or offer free meditation sessions for every employee is simply not valid. Read more…

How to take the confusion out of your people’s career development

There is a simple way to sort out the career development of your own direct reports – stop doing it!

Asking a manager to take accountability for both the output and behaviour of their people as well as considering their future aspirations is asking a lot.   But….people knowing that the organisation has someone concerned with their future beyond their current role (even if it means not leaving the current role)  is a key part of creating the trust that ultimately sees people being willing to provide their full commitment.

So who is that someone?  We use the Manager-once-Removed, put forward by Elliott Jaques in a number of his works.   The Manager-once-Removed, or MoR is your boss’s boss.  Your skip-level manager.  We make each MoR accountable for building the pool of talent that sits below their own people,  that is their skip-level reports.   Read more…

The highest returning recognition program I know

Recognition programs.  We make them hard.  And we make excuses.  Meanwhile our people, who are actual human beings, would simply like to be recognised for what they are doing.

So while you’re waiting for the ‘reward and recognition program’ which you know is never going to emerge,  lets get on with it.  Here’s a simple recognition program that simply works; it has the highest rate of return I know:

1. Hand out a block of 50 post-it notes to each manager
2. The  use of them is for their people to unexpectedly find, whenever they have done something that was particularly effective, a post-it  on their screen saying  ‘great work on [INSERT CURRENT INITIATIVE], thank you’.
3. Inform each manager that the block needs to be used over the coming 12 months, and it has to be for actual effective performance.

That’s it!   Read more…

Four fundamental acts of leadership that will instantly help your people

Are you a manager?  Great!  You’ve got the chance to improve the lives of those that work for you by doing these four simple things.

1) Remind everyone of the context they’re working in.

What I’m talking about here is the environment you and your team are dealing with.  You might think this is obvious, but the reason you’re the manager is to make this stuff obvious.  Want an easy spot to start?  Ask your own manager what they’re dealing with.  This creates the wider context in which you and your people work.

Do it now:  Open your calendar and schedule a meeting with all of your direct reports.  Topic: Context.  Read more…

The simple way to good service area relationships

“I can’t win” sighed John.

“Tough day?” I asked.  John was the Senior Manager of Work Health & Safety in a large organisation.

“It’s my senior colleagues from other areas” he began.  “We need a better approach to work health and safety around here, but that’s not going to happen if they don’t listen.”

“Why don’t they?”

“Because if I was them, I’d be doing exactly the same!  They’ve got serious businesses to run, they’re all on the hook for more profit next year and delivering services better.  Then along comes one of my team and somehow they’re supposed to prioritise my stuff’?” Read more…