See the whole board

Some people just get it.  When faced with decisions they seem to see what others can’t.   One second before they gave their view, you were floundering, not sure which way to go.  Now it seems so obvious it’s almost embarrassing.

We know this ability when we see it.  Here’s a 3-minute clip so you can see an example for yourself (link here if you can’t see anything):

At 2:20 Sam Seaborn says “I don’t know the word”, as he’s trying to work out how President Bartlet pieces it all together.

Well….there is a word.  Two words.  It’s called cognitive capability, Read more…

How to create organisational silos

Silos - you can do it

If a siloed organisation is what you’re after, here’s how to go about doing it.    The only pre-requisite to being able to form silos is people who have a genuine urge to get work done and who care for the organisation.  Don’t worry, we’ll set it up so these natural instincts are naturally turned toward silo behaviour. Read more…

Politics at work start early

Politics - embedded

Here’s four quick quotes from current jobs being advertised, spot the common word:

• “You will posses demonstrated leadership, influencing and negotiation skills”
• “…excellent communication and influencing skills”
• “..combine specialist knowledge with strong management and influencing skills”
• “Excellent communication and influencing skills at all levels”.

All of these jobs are operational or audit roles, not sales or business development.  Which means the people they are influencing are internal people in the same organisation.  We have set up a political organisation from the start.

Read more…

The five factors of individual performance (it’s not personality)

I think out of the box, I'm a type J.A.C.K

Managers in Australia love to try to ‘get into the mind’ of their people.  Robert Spillane’s book The Rise of Psycho Management in Australia‘ contains an excellent analysis of how this came about, and the effects that it has had.  One fact that might be startling to some is that the empirical evidence shows that the amount of performance difference that is due to personality is 4%.

Yep, 4%.  In other words, 96% of the variation in performance is due to something other than personality type.

So what are the factors that determine performance?  I like to use the model put forward by Elliott Jaques, if you want to go to the source, track down either Executive Leadership which he wrote with Stephen Clement, or Requisite Organization.

Here are his factors:

Cognitive Capability: does the person have the ability to handle the amount of variables, options and choices the role requires.  This Read more…

Have you created meaningful work?

I was given a great book by a colleague at work – it’s called “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell, and it looks at the factors around success.  It builds a great argument that although a certain seed is there in all the ‘successful’ people that we know, an amazing run of right time, right place, upbringing and cultural heritage is also required to coincide for the tree to ultimately grow.

It’s an excellent read, if this stuff interests you, don’t hesitate to get it.

There was one bit which particularly caught my attention – a description of the New York City garment industry in the late 1800s, which sowed the seeds for a group who’s grandchildren would become some of the most powerful businesspeople in New York.  The garment industry required 18 hour days, back-breaking labour over sewing machines and often atrocious unsafe conditions.

It’s not a surprising image, and these work days were repeated in farms across America.

But Gladwell makes a key distinction for those in the garment trade: Read more…

Five simple manager mistakes

There are some pretty common mistakes managers make at any level.  How do I know this?  I’ve made them.  Here they are:

1. Not knowing your own job.

Every manager has generic things they need to do because they are accountable for the work of their team, but they also have a unique contribution to make beyond managing their people.  For example, a manager who is in charge of multiple teams is also accountable for improving the way work occurs across all of their teams, while a general manager is responsible for moving the business into new areas and shutting down the old. Read more…

Explain how it matters

I was catching up with one of our most talented younger people the other day, discussing some good advice she’d received recently about motivating people.  She spoke about the importance of providing context for people when you ask them to do things, like taking the time to point out how the task or the job fits into the rest of the work going on, and why it matters.

All good stuff.

The reason its true is that it goes right to the core of human respect.

Asking people to do something without explaining why sends a message that they are not as important as you.  It says that you don’t deserve an explanation because you’re not worth it.  If we take this to the extreme, we can arrive at serfdom or even slavery, where people have the same status as firewood – a resource to be used up.

But as humans in the world, we want to matter.  To our friends, our family, our colleagues, or failing all of this, even to the police or the jailer.  Whether it ends up good or bad, we want to matter.  It makes us real. Read more…

Arguments are opportunity

I’ve been lucky enough to have a situation where my people have been arguing.  Classic stuff too – the Sales Manager arguing that the Operations Manager isn’t delivering while the Operations Manager argues that the Sales Manager is selling what can’t be done.

Both are strong people who have an excellent feel for the overall business, and run their departments well.

Why am I lucky?

Because we’ve uncovered a genuine strategic question, which is: should we be in that market at all?

Reminds me of a great scene described in Robert Pirsig’s classic book Zen and the Art of Motorcyle Maintenance where a fellow college teacher asked him what the noise coming out of his classroom was about.  He calmly answered “we’ve come across a genuine question, and the shock of it is hard to recover from”. Read more…

What do managers do?

I was at a Bucks Show on the weekend, at the awesomely old-school pool hall Chalkers at Glenelg.  I played a game with Joe, who is an excellent bloke I get to see around the social circle from time-to-time, and as I successfully avoiding potting the 3-ball into the pocket I was aiming, he asked me what did I do before I became a consultant.

As I started to bore him with the details of what the business I used to oversee actually did, he stopped me with “yeah…but what was your job?”.

I had a quick think, and answered with my job title back then – General Manager.

He laughed and said “If someone could explain to me what managers actually do, that would be great”, then headed off for a pit stop.  Read more…

Who should get the milk?

In the kitchen at work the other day, I made a coffee, opened the fridge to grab the milk and there was none.  After the initial surge of disappointment and frustration passed, I put my cup of black coffee with one sugar in a safe place and commenced the trudge down the hall toward the canteen.

Got to thinking along the way – how do we work out who should get the milk?  In my area we don’t have a defined role to take care of this sort of thing, which leaves it up to everyone.  At the same time, we seem to share an assumption that menial tasks such as milk collection should not be done by ‘important people’.  So how do we work out who is important? Read more…