This is a symptom of a broken decision culture.Originally Posted by ranger
Not saying that viewpoint is rare, but a properly managed organization understands risk is part of the game. When staff spend time avoiding risk instead of advancing the product, the organization stagnates. Without failure there can be no growth: and if the firms not growing it’s just dying in slow motion.
The Minority Marksman.
"When you meet a swordsman, draw your sword: Do not recite poetry to one who is not a poet."
-a Ch'an Buddhist axiom.
Jocko is the current brightest flame burning on this right now. My elder lad is a big fan and is always pushing his podcasts on me. I've only heard the one that was trimmed to a Ted Talk about taking ownership.
“Remember, being healthy is basically just dying as slowly as possible,” Ricky Gervais
A thousand times this. My approach to older, experienced employees is MUCH different than young millennial (I am a millennial as well, but I was raised and am kind of old fashioned about work).
Older employees will do it because the boss said so, the way the boss said so, unless they have some valid concerns. Their priorities are to maintain/grow a paycheck, avoid too much work/stress (in a good way), keep their responsibilities in order, and to be valued. Work is a means to an end as far as supporting a family and providing them with financial independence.
Young employees want reasons why, and often still won't do it the way you told them after all the reasons were stated. They tend to care less about benefits/paychecks and more about whether or not they are doing something worthwhile, etc. They are sometimes looking to work for a purpose, rather than a means to an end. The boss relationship alone is not enough, you have to build a relationship of trust and respect if you actually want them to listen and engage.
There are pros/cons to both groups but my approach to managing each group is very different.
As far as resources, I like some of Simon Sinek's stuff which can be new-agey. HOWEVER, since I have the tendencies/attitude of an old fashioned work place, I concentrate on my weaknesses which he covers well and use the bits/pieces I think are valuable.
Are you a manager/leader/boss of any sort?
I lead the North American strategy and content cells of a startup based in Europe. 17 years of industry experience, five-ish of that leading or managing.
Do you pursue, study, research, discuss, etc ways to be a better leader/manager/boss?
I learned about leadership during three years in the National Guard and over six years in active duty Special Forces units. In the military, we talked/bitched about it at length almost every day. I learned about management by working in and around marketing organizations at Microsoft, T-Mobile, and Starbucks. People there whispered about it behind closed doors and treated it as if it were some high dark magic. I learned how to balance the two by working at ad agencies.
I focus on the difference between management (avoid risk and meet someone else’s expectations) and leadership (care for your people, mitigate risk, and execute the mission). When dilemmas arise, I pray that I fall on the leadership side of the scale.
How would you summarize what you see as current management/leadership theory and practice?
Current management theory and practice suffer from a post-Recession mindset that prizes risk avoidance. It pollutes Baby Boomers as they retire, GenX as they take over from Boomers, and Millennials/GenZ as they learn from everyone else’s mistakes. There’s also an MBA/technocrat class that makes easily avoidable genius-level mistakes and puts good quarterly earnings above vision and longevity. They elevate the worst traits of the managing class to the level of religion. They also write most of the management books.
I’m not sure you can summarize current leadership practice. In our clients, it runs from CEOs and investors who prize growth above sanity to radically conservative private companies that have quietly mastered the (very) long game. The former gets a lot of press but may not be profitable. The latter has the founder’s great-great grandchildren on the board of directors.
Do you think relative generation/age of employee/boss makes for a difference in best practices or approach?
It can, as described above. Temperament (nature) and experience (nurture) matter more, and they span generations. Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers (especially the chapter on Joe Flom) sums up the nature/nurture aspect of it pretty well.
What do you think of the current prevailing theory and practice?
There is no one prevailing idea. The range is huge and reaches from the sublime to the ridiculous. The most corrosive things I see are the rise of the MBA class and how the amorality that seems unavoidable in the tech sector metastasizes into other sectors, especially banking.
How closely do you follow it, or how hard do you reject it?
Not sure that this applies to me. I find that leadership will solve most management problems but it terrifies the managers.
What would you consider to be your management/leadership style or guiding principals?
Accountability as mtnbiker pointed out, plus setting an example, which is really just holding yourself accountable publicly. I also want to be utterly competent and completely prepared for upcoming tasks.
Any books, papers, podcast, videos etc that you find to be particularly useful or helpful?
I have little use for most thought leaders since so many of them are actually thought followers. Most of their theories are for managers who think they’re leaders, and if you're not cracking that nut then you don't understand the problem. If you want to lead, then study people who have led others in life-and-death situations. I like how Secretary Mattis approaches leadership, but quoting him terrifies the managing class. The 90% solution is to understand the difference between leading and managing, treat people justly, and document their actions (positive and negative) so you can reward, motivate, and/or discipline them as needed. Adjust the remaining 10% for your culture/organization, hold yourself accountable to a higher level than you do your peers and subordinates, and thin the herd accordingly when the time comes. Expect the managers to hate you for this.
Beyond that:
• Separate the behavior from the person. The time I spent in Jungian therapy after my divorce gave me a solid foundation here. I can read a room and I can get a good feel for what drives a problem personality. Then I put that on the table for a broader, more talented team to address.
• Anyone can spot the obvious. Invert their logic and spot what they miss. Remain silent until you can articulate why that matters.
• For a pure focus on effectiveness and efficiency, I like Rumsfeld’s Rules (https://planetpdf.com/planetpdf/pdfs/rumsfeldsrules.pdf) which circulated widely during the Bush II presidency and the Viet Nam era Detachment B-52 TTPs (http://www.sfa31.org/deltarecontips.pdf). Neither is directly applicable to business, but people like us can read them as parables and they’re far more entertaining than Sun Tzu.
Okie John
Last edited by okie john; 07-26-2019 at 01:33 PM.
“The reliability of the 30-06 on most of the world’s non-dangerous game is so well established as to be beyond intelligent dispute.” Finn Aagaard
"Don't fuck with it" seems to prevent the vast majority of reported issues." BehindBlueI's
Are you a manager/leader/boss of any sort?
Yes, I lead an engineering department.
Do you pursue, study, research, discuss, etc ways to be a better leader/manager/boss?
Yes. I have informal meetings with my HR manager where we discuss management principles and issues and how to apply them to my team. I have also attended more than a few management courses at a previous employer, one with a relatively well-known facility and faculty.
How would you summarize what you see as current management/leadership theory and practice?
Responsibility and flexibility. No one punches a time clock; the goal is to get the work done when it is due to the customer. Not as many useless meeting. No more annual performance reviews, replaced by informal continual feedback and coaching.
Do you think relative generation/age of employee/boss makes for a difference in best practices or approach?
Not as much as the personality of the employee. Every employee is different, and each requires something unique from me.
What do you think of the current prevailing theory and practice?
I am not sure there is a single prevailing theory; there are a myriad of approaches. I tend to grab ones that make sense for particular team members.
How closely do you follow it, or how hard do you reject it?
I take what makes sense and discard what does not. I am about results, not dogma.
What would you consider to be your management/leadership style or guiding principals?
I never ask someone to do something I am unable or unwilling to do. My role is to enable my team to succeed; my role is not to tell people what to do. Each team member knows I care about their success. Team members get the credit; I take the blame.
Any books, papers, podcast, videos etc that you find to be particularly useful or helpful?
Not in management theory; most of my reading is staying current in my field.
Management by wandering around seemed to be the prefered method where I worked.
My supervisor usually didn't know where I was or even what I was supposed to be doing.
Made my job pretty easy and his too. Mostly they just reviewed my work and that was good enough.
I worked in an engineering/design/construction group and most people had professional licenses including me.
Last edited by Borderland; 07-26-2019 at 10:43 PM.
In the P-F basket of deplorables.
I've worked in DoD for over 30 years as both a contractor and as a government employee. I became a manager late in my career when I became a branch chief supervising 15 scientists and engineers. I did that job for 5 years. As the typical introverted engineer, I never thought I'd like being a manager or that I would be good at it, but I think I was effective at managing my people. What I wasn't effective at was dealing with management above me. Since then, I've moved on. Last year I was offered an SES position, but turned it down partly because I'm a couple of years from retirement, and I am in a sweet spot as a non-supervisory GS-15. (I also turned it down because it was a no-win position filled with drama, but that's another story.)
I've never taken management classes or read any books. They never seemed to be beneficial to me, but I could be completely wrong. I'm not against learning, and I'm far from perfect, but those books and classes seem filled with lofty theories and pithy sayings, whereas it's just common sense. Again, maybe I'm wrong. I think one of the biggest problems with managers is that they are not introspective, constantly thinking about what they can do to improve. I don't mean that they should be insecure and second-guessing themselves, or be locked into a paralysis-by-analysis deadlock, but they should objectively look at what they are doing, and how they are doing it. One of the hardest things to do is to find your blind spots. What are you doing wrong that you are completely unaware of? I guess I applied the same analytic methodology I would apply when tackling a scientific problem to how I was managing my people.
Like BBI, I figured my job was to facilitate the people who worked for me. How could I enable them to do their job? That's not the same as doing it for them. I considered it my job to deal with management, secure funding, have a strategic vision for the projects, coordinate work between teams. My employees knew that I was an advocate for them. At the same time, I wasn't doing their work for them, and there were plenty of times I told them to do something that was inconvenient or even a little unreasonable. Sometimes what I made them do was something dumb that management wanted them to do and I couldn't protect them. That's life. But I'd often thank them for it.
More generally, I was very careful to look out for my employees. One thing that we often did was long field tests. These would involve a week or two (or sometimes more) of being in a remote place, working long hours. It was a bit of physical work getting our equipment ready. Sometimes we'd get short-notice demos where we'd have to get a vehicle and all of our equipment ready for a drive-by demo for a flag that lasts all of 15 minutes. I'd do my best to give my team as much notice as I possibly could. Afterwards, I'd send a note to my division director pointing out that good work that the team had done, and mention them by name.
Probably my biggest skill is that I listened to my employees. I didn't always agree with them, but I was always willing to listen to them. That doesn't mean they had infinite time with me, but when we talked, I truly listened to what they said. I think this is a huge interpersonal skill that is lacking today in general. When a manager listens to his employees, he is making them part of the team. He is valuing their contributions. And as I said, it is a basic interpersonal skill.
(My biggest peeve with my current supervisor is that he absolutely will not listen to me. I can't even finish a sentence before he interrupts and goes off in a direction I had not intended, and after listening to him ramble for 5 minutes about what he wants to talk about, I've go to my happy place and start counting down the months until I can retire. I've gotten to the point now that I just don't bother speaking up. Don't be that person.)
Related to this is the decision-making process. I liked to discuss ideas and courses of actions with my employees. Sometimes I'd let them make the decisions, sometimes I'd make the decisions. I avoided committee think, and I was famous (and well liked) for squashing the good-idea fairy. I also avoided non-decisions. Sometimes I'd need to think about something before I made a decision, and sometimes I would change my mind, but it would be for a good reason, and not because I was wishy-washy.
I was also good at meetings. Again, I fostered discussions and a collaborative environment, but when we had a meeting, I could stay focused on the topic, the reason we were there. Sounds simple, but I've spent a significant fraction of my career in rambling meetings where we're just admiring the problem, and not solving it. If it was appropriate, I'd summarize clearly what I wanted done by saying "That was a good discussion. Now what I want is for Mary to do X, Robert to do Y. Sound good? OK, then, thank you." And then the meeting would be over.
When I became supervisor, I was very careful to keep my ego in check. I've seen a lot of people become supervisors, and they start thinking that their sh!t don't stink. I was careful not to be that person. I also have a PhD, and I've always been careful not to be that arrogant pr!ck who thinks they know everything about everything. One of our directors always had to prove he was always the smartest guy in the room, and that was obnoxious and counterproductive. Not me. I was never afraid to say "I don't understand that. Could you please explain it to me?" I could also be quiet during meetings and let me SMEs talk. If my management above me was at the meeting, I think they might have viewed that as being lazy or incompetent but I didn't view meetings as d!ck measuring contests to prove how smart we were. My dad was an E9 in the Navy. He was generally quiet, but when he spoke, it was for a reason. I wanted to be like him.
MBWA.... aka.... The HP Way.
Good book.
https://www.amazon.com/HP-Way-Hewlet.../dp/0060845791
"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." - Thomas Jefferson, Virginia Constitution, Draft 1, 1776
Are you a manager/leader/boss of any sort?
Yes
Do you pursue, study, research, discuss, etc ways to be a better leader/manager/boss?
Frequently
How would you summarize what you see as current management/leadership theory and practice?
This depends on the company and its culture. Some companies intentionally seek improvement in leadership as an actual strategy for competitive advantage. Other companies just throw the warm body in the seat; the guy who is dumb enough to raise his hand kind of thing.
Do you think relative generation/age of employee/boss makes for a difference in best practices or approach?
Somewhat.
What do you think of the current prevailing theory and practice?
See comment above...I detest companies that don't invest time and real energy in improving leadership. All they have are managers or bosses...people who just make sure folks show up on time.
How closely do you follow it, or how hard do you reject it?
I reject it every chance I get.
What would you consider to be your management/leadership style or guiding principals?
A mix of Jocko and Toyota/Lean...a variant of servant leadership.
Any books, papers, podcast, videos etc that you find to be particularly useful or helpful?
John Shook; Mike Rother; David Mann; podcasts from Jocko
If you’re. To a leader/manager/boss, or even if you are but you’re not the top guy, what do you think of your superiors’ approach? What do they do well and what could they improve? What lessons do/would you take and incorporate into your own approach
My boss has no vision. He can't inspire anyone. He doesn't think in terms of improvement. He is there to just get things done. He needs to establish some form of true north for his department that can really elevate the company trajectory for success. There is an absolute desert of this.
I’m not sure that the military understands and teaches it best anymore, but you’re absolutely right about the ground combat part. I have a slightly different theory on why, but in very broad terms, infantry and SOF leaders are far better than any others in the Army, both in quantity and quality. It’s very sad how little attention is paid to developing leaders in non-combat oriented branches and is arguably the biggest problem in the Army IMO.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Last edited by Wake27; 07-27-2019 at 09:24 AM.
Reply With Quote