Manager by Design

Putting out fires: Managers who “want it now” or “want it yesterday” are managing from a deficit

Walter Oelwein — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 15:30:05 +0000

Have you ever had a manager who has a last minute request, “I need this now!” The more extreme version of this is, “I need this yesterday.” Usually, this is a new last-minute request, and this can be very disruptive and annoying to employees, and a sure sign that the manager is “managing from a deficit.”

Now, I’m not talking about jobs where there is a last-minute nature to the job. A firefighter’s job, is, by definition, a “last-minute” kind of job. The firefighter’s boss will no doubt say, “We need to do this right away!” But there is a lot of preparation that firefighters engage in – with the aid and coordination of their bosses — that goes into meeting the demands of that “last minute” request known as a fire.

I’m talking about a boss who interrupts your job to request something new, and it is needed soon. And this request is made with urgency, perhaps with some yelling involved. These are requests that are metaphoric fires, not actual fires.

So if you are someone on a team that seems to have a lot of “fires”, then read on.

Let’s take a look at some of the sources of these last minute requests (a.k.a., fires):

1. Is the request primarily to assure the manager looks better to his manager?

A common source of this kind of last minute request is to provide assistance to the manager in helping him report up to his manager what is going on, most likely the request of the manager above her. So, ironically, the request keeps rolling downhill. If you have an organization with more than three levels, you have at least three “sources” for needs for updates. If the upper management team does this consistently, such last-minute requests can start to appear to be the norm. For example, let’s say that the upper management decides to schedule an “all team meeting” and wants all of managers in the group need to present to the team. And it’s going to happen next week. Last minute request spawned!

So the team needs to stop what they are doing and instead create a report on what they are doing. When this happens, the manager is asking the team to take the “hit” and not the manager. The manager should have the option to say to his manager, “This would disrupt my team in achieving its goals, which have already been prioritized” and provide the level of reporting already agreed upon. The request can be made to add it to future reports, as part of the core team deliverables. The manager can choose to make an exception and start the “metaphorical” fire, but should also note this as an opportunity to renegotiate what reporting –and the timing of it– the upper management needs.

2. Is the request something that has been needed in the past, and keeps coming back?

Sometimes the same “last-minute” request can be the same request, but the manager neglects to identify this pattern. The last minute request comes in again and again, and the same “fires” seem to keep happening. This seems to happen with budgeting a lot. When budget reporting is needed or the budgeting process is kicked off, there is a flurry of activity that ought to seem predictable. Another source is the status update on a program or project. For some reason, managers (who are managing from a deficit) are not willing to use the existing status delivery vehicles (and their existing state), and frequently request new, custom status updates.

To help manage this, the manager who is not managing from a deficit should track the “fires” that they’ve needed to resolve, what the output was created, and the process (however ad hoc) that was used to resolve it. Then the manager should schedule in the work as something that is integral to the team’s operations so that it is more streamlined and of higher quality. If it not integral to the team’s operations, then the manager needs to negotiate in advance that they will not be performing this request.

3. Is the request based on someone else on the team not delivering?

If you’re on a team where the manager shifts the work on to you because someone else couldn’t get it done, this could be a sign that the manager does not know how to assess the capability or strengths of the team or is not able to performance manage the people on the team. It is often easier for a manager to simply shift the responsibility on those who can get it done, and as a result the manager does not get exposed immediately to her boss (see point 1), since the person on the team who can get it done does get it done, at the sacrifice of longer term deliverables. The manager will probably lose that employee over time, especially if that employee who does the “fill-in” work is not recognized for it.

4. Is the request based on increased demand for what the team already produces?

This is, most likely, a “good” kind of last minute request. Someone likes what your team does at its core, and there is more demand for it. If this is the first time this happens, then you’re likely to have the team scramble, but at least it is something they are already doing. However, it should be treated as a sign that this could happen again, and the manager needs to build in increased capacity planning and be prepared to confront not meeting demand, lest she burn out the team or decrease the quality of the output.

5. Is the request based on a change in policy?

In this scenario, the manager learns of a new policy imposed by some outside entity (regulation, internal HR process, whatever), and puts it into place immediately. This disrupts the team in doing its planned-for work. If the manager simply imposes the new policy/process without doing appropriate change management, it will ensure both diminished existing operations and the new policy will not “stick” either, while at the same time putting an undue burden on the team. The non-deficit manager would instead work at negotiating with the source of the policy implementers (especially if internal) to assure that a change management effort is performed in an orderly fashion that minimizes the disruptions to the existing planned work.

There are other sources of “last-minute” requests, but from a management design perspective, it is important to focus on the “self-imposed” fire drills. These are usually the “updates” that go up the chain of command. Good management design finds ways to reward those managers/leaders who minimize these disruptions to the team operations, and who create status reporting that is part of normal operations.

Yet it seems that, frequently, the managers who make many last minute requests for info, who make their teams scramble – and create the most drama — are the ones who are often rewarded. After all, putting out the metaphorical fire seems heroic, while preventing the fire seems boring and somehow all too easy.

What are the sources of “fires” in your organization? Do they seem to come from the management and leadership team, or do they come from external sources?

Check your usage of the word “just.” It could mean you’re managing from a deficit

Are you asking a change agent to make a change, and then resisting the change?

What to do when someone on your team resists change (part 1)

What to do when someone on your team resists change (part 2)

Managers: Know your change events and track these

The Performance Management Process: Were You Aware of It?

Overview of the performance management process for managers

A Performance Feedback/Performance Management Flowchart

Tenets of Management Design: The manager can do a lot to improve “flow”

Walter Oelwein — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 15:30:29 +0000

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s 1990 book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience popularized the concept of “flow” and its importance. So let’s talk about a manager and “flow”. Managers can do a lot to improve flow, and good managementdesign,benefits from being highly focused on encouraging “flow” in the workplace. The more your employees have flow, the more likely they are to produce some pretty amazing stuff. So shouldn’t your management design be focused on improving the “flow” of the employees?

That means fewer disruptions, enabling longer stretches of greater focus. Here are some ideas for managers to improve flow:

The manager can start by not being a distraction. How many times have we had a manager who interrupts our work with both minor questions or new requests for work? With the advent of email, chat, texts, and any other communication mediums including actually stopping by, perhaps the worst offenders are managers who are in the habit of interruptingtheir employees. So good management design would encourage managers not to interrupt employees who are likely to be closer to “flow state.” If the employee seems to be in deep concentration, this is definitely the sign that the employee is not available to be interrupted. If the employee is not responding to emails, this is a sign that the employee is in a focused activity. The manager should have predictable times when they interact with their employees.

The manager can avoid breaking up the day with meetings. Many managers have been observed to schedule lots of meetings. And if an employee has a long stretch of time on their calendar that has no meetings, this should indicate that there is a higher likelihood that the employee can find “flow”, and should not have something scheduled. For many employees, there is nothing more precious than a day (or even an afternoon) not interrupted by meetings.

The manager can “bunch” requests rather then dripping them in. Managers can interrupt employee output by asking for more output. Compare a manager who says at the beginning of the week, “I need the following five things this week from the team.” Now compare that to the manager who sends an email once a day over 5 days with the same requests. The manager who provides the expectations in advance would allow the employees to coordinate and develop those five things, and possibly get them done quickly at higher quality, allowing them to work on non-manager requests the rest of the time. Fewer interruptions, fewer surprise requests, and more flow on the part of the employees. Also, the manager who is restrained from making new, daily requests of his employees will make fewer requests, the requests that are made will be the ones that are most needed, and the core non-manager request work will get done more. Also, it should be stated, employees who are more likely to be in “flow” will come up with ideas, inspiration, work products and whatever else that likely exceeds any “top down” request by the manager.

Managers who are sensitive to and seek to optimize the chances that their employees obtain flow are going to be appreciated by the employees who need to concentrate to get their work done. And the employees are more likely to approximate toward that “optimum” experience Mr. Csikszentmihalyi writes about.

So a tenet of management design is to assure that managers encourage “flow.” And the first start would be to find ways to get managers to not interrupt or distract their employees. Good designs can achieve this, and the absence of design will get what we have now: Managers who feel comfortable interrupting with requests, meetings, questions, and anything else.

Related articles:

Tenets of Management Design: Focus on the basics, then move to style points

Tenets of Management Design: Managing is a functional skill

Tenets of Management Design: Drive towards understanding reality and away from relying on perceptions

Tenets of Management Design: Identify and reward employees who do good work

Tenets of Management Design: A role in management is not an extension of performance as an individual contributor

Tenets of Management Design: Managers are created not found

Tenet of management design: If you don’t have a system, it’s probably being done over email

Tenets of management design: Doing managerial tasks is what adds up to being a manager

Tenets of management design: If you can’t break down a job into its tasks and workflows, find someone who can

Why performance feedback is important – for managers and employees

Walter Oelwein — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 15:30:35 +0000

The Manager by Design^sm blog writes frequently about the importance of managers having the ability to give quality performance feedback. I’ve written about the need to use behavior-based language, and making sure the performance feedback is given in the appropriate timeliness and specificity.

But is giving feedback really necessary?

Yes.

Leslie Allan has a great article on the Business Performance blog that highlights the importance of quality manager feedback on employee engagement. She cites a Gallup survey conducted in 2009 that identifies how different “feedback styles” can have a huge impact in employee engagement.

The article highlights that a manager who does not provide any feedback will have almost no employee engagement. Then those who do provide feedback have much more employee engagement, with those managers who focus on strengths getting even more engagement — they’re 30 times more likely to manage engaged workers than no feedback.

So when it comes to employee engagement, the absence of feedback is worse than managers focusing on negative feedback, while managers focusing on strengths create the most engagement.

So the question I have from a management design perspective is the following:

How much feedback does a manager get in being a manager? I’ve written about it here, where I conclude that managers get relatively little feedback in performing their role as managers compared to other roles. Using this survey as an indicator, this appears to be a guarantee of disengaged managers as managers, and not just employees.
How much effort in your management design to assure that managers are providing feedback? Is this measured in your organization – at all? According to this Gallup survey, even having managers who focus on the sub-optimum things (weaknesses, negative feedback) still have markedly better employee engagement.

Imagine an organization that a) Measures the feedback b) Checks to make sure the quality of the feedback given (i.e., specificity and immediacy) and c) Drives toward encouraging focus on the positive strengths of the employees rather than weaknesses.

There are relatively few artifacts of “feedback given” in many organizations. I advocate that managers keep a performance log on their employees, primarily in that it would improve the quality of the feedback (focus on things that actually have an impact, be performance based, etc.). But based on this survey, managing a performance log would also have the benefit of revealing who on your management team is, uh, engaged in the feedback process.

A blank performance log would reveal one of those dreaded managers who gives “no feedback”. A filled-in performance log would reveal both what kind of feedback (strengths or weakness-based) and the quality of the feedback (specific, immediate, and behavior-based). The performance log would be an “artifact” that the manager’s manager can directly review and. . .provide feedback on. Ostensibly, this would allow the manager of manager to “engage” with her managers on how the manager manages. (Yes, that’s a mouthful.)

In other words, does the manager get feedback on managing? Reviewing the performance log would accomplish this.

Good management design would encourage this activity. The lack of management design would create the high-variance scenario that the survey seems to indicate: Some managers give feedback, others don’t. Some focus on negatives and weaknesses. Some focus on the positive. And, in absence of a good management design, this variance of these behaviors likely occurs within the same department and organization. Employees better hope they get one of the “good” bosses that at least occasionally give them feedback.

Does your organization have a high variance in how managers give feedback? Is there any structure and feedback on how your organization’s managers provide feedback? If not, this might be something to design in to your organization.

Related articles:

Management Design: How managers receive performance feedback compared to other jobs

The Art of Providing Feedback: Make it Specific and Immediate

An example of giving specific and immediate feedback and a frightening look into the alternatives

Performance feedback must be related to a performance

What inputs should a manager provide performance feedback on?

When to provide performance feedback using direct observation: Practice sessions

When to provide performance feedback using direct observation: On the job

Areas of focus in providing performance feedback based on direct observation: Tangible artifacts

Behavior-based language primer: Steps and Examples of replacing using adverbs

Behavior-based language primer for managers: Examples of how to improve employee corrective feedback and how to get rid of damaging adverbs

Behavior-based language primer for managers: How to tell if you are using behavior-based language

Behavior-based language primer for managers: Avoid using value judgments

Behavior-based language primer for managers: Stop using generalizations

The annual review reveals more about the manager’s performance than the employee’s performance (part 1)

Without a strategy articulated, perhaps it’s time to start crowdsourcing one

Walter Oelwein — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 15:30:24 +0000

In my previous article, I discuss how a necessary component of leadership is setting and articulating a strategy. If this is not done, then leaders become managers executing a strategy that has not been articulated, and, in essence, multiplying the number of managers executing a non-existent or randomly generated or constantly changing strategy. In other words, chaos.

In an earlier article, I discuss how one way to assure managers actually know the strategy is to ask them what they think the strategy and ask those reporting to the managers what they think the strategy is.

Now lets combine the two. Let’s go ahead and ask people in the organization what they think strategy is. Whether there is an articulated strategy or not, this process will, in essence, reveal what people in the organization think the strategy is.

Setting and articulating a strategy is not necessarily an easy thing to do, and even those in leadership positions seem to struggle with this. So “crowdsourcing” is at least a way to generate ideas and kick start the process of identifying and articulating a strategy.

This does not have to be a difficult process. Using whatever survey method you have at your organization or using focus groups, you can ask the following of all or a randomly selected group of people:

What is your department’s strategy?
What is the company’s strategy?
How do you contribute to the department’s strategy?
How does the work you do reflect the company’s strategy?

I would also recommend tracking the job title/role of the people in the organization (line employee, manager, leadership) in gathering these responses.

This survey/focus group effort would aid in the following:

If your leadership team feels like it has a good strategy in place, this is a good measure to see how well those in the organization understand it and are working in alignment to the strategy. If not, it can identify how better to have the workforce align to the strategy, or surface refinements to the strategy. If nothing else, it provides a discussion point between strategy setting and strategy execution – the inflection point between management and leadership.
If the leadership team has yet to “set the strategy”, this is a great way to learn what the de-facto strategy or strategies are. This gives a starting point for the leadership team to start being leaders. By having real content with which to work, actual decisions can be made based on real information. Better yet, where people are doing work in alignment to the eventually-agreed-upon strategy, there is, by definition, alignment with at least part of your organization. Where there are pockets that the work is not in accordance to the eventually-agreed-upon strategy, that is where the management can perform better as managers and start executing on an actually agreed-upon-strategy.

In any case, the collective intelligence of your organization is likely going to surface more and better strategy ideas than a leadership team on its own and from up on high, and this should be taken advantage of. It also affords the leadership team to be more thoughtful and inclusive in the strategy setting process.

Finally, in the situation where the leadership team doesn’t even have a strategy, and thus needs one, this is a relatively rapid-fire way to get the basic fodder that answers the question, “What is our strategy” and turn it around from “there is no strategy”. It uses real ideas and concepts from real people doing real work in the organization, and surfaces the basic tools that management needs to do the job of managing.

Now the leadership team just has to stick with it and not go down some other path.

Related articles:

Do your managers know the strategy of your organization?

Tips for how your managers can better execute strategy

Tips for how your managers can better understand your strategy

How do managers learn strategy?

Do your leaders know and articulate the organization’s strategy? Read on for a deconstruction of leadership.

Management Design: The designs we have now – Manager knows and supports only one possible strategy

Do your leaders know and articulate the organization’s strategy? Read on for a deconstruction of leadership.

Walter Oelwein — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 16:30:31 +0000

The last few articles I’ve published describe some tips for helping managers – strategy executors – to better understand and articulate an organization’s strategy. But perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself here – do the leaders even know the organization’s strategy and do they articulate it?

Let’s take a look at two grids developed by the Manager by Design^sm blog.

In this first one, the Leadership/Management mode, those who are leading are basically the ones setting the strategy and then take steps to roll out that strategy. That’s what defines leadership here at the Manager by Design^sm blog. But what happens if you don’t have leaders who do this? If that’s the case, they are doing something else. They are in a “leadership position” but are not leading.

So what are they doing? They basically are giving themselves a “demotion” to that of manager, where the main job of the manager is strategy execution.

But wait – how can you be doing strategy execution when there is no strategy? In this dynamic, we have people who are supposed to be doing strategy, but are instead doing strategy execution without strategy. It’s a logical impossibility, but one that we see play out in organizations from time to time.

In this dynamic, you have a false premise that, by virtue of people being in a leadership role, being in a leadership role equals doing leadership, when it is often the case quite the opposite. Someone in a leadership role not doing leadership, but doing something else under the guise of leadership. Do this enough, and one starts to believe that this “something else” is leadership – the something else of not doing leadership. That something else — that “thing-other-than-leadership” is managing, and to be more precise, it’s managing without a strategy.

Which takes me to this second grid:

By focusing on “strategy articulated” and “no strategy articulated” axis, this puts the burden on whether Leadership has done its job and continues to do its job. If there is no strategy articulated, then the organization is automatically relegated to the bottom two quadrants, where either the strategy is created by random pockets within the organization, or it is created by the managers.

Amazon.com WidgetsBut in the dynamic where “leadership” is not articulating the strategy — and this can also mean re-articulating and reinforcing the strategy — you have both the leadership and management creating a strategy. Under this dynamic, the strategy is most likely a mishmash of events, sudden reactions to outside forces, frequent crises and ideas that emerge and disappear. It isn’t clear where the strategy is or what the “real” strategy is. So the longer this dynamic plays out, the more the organization’s strategy will drift to the lower left corner – an organically created, random strategy of mysterious origin and of ever changing nature. Strategy as entropy. But on top of that, now you have multiplied the number of managers – both the leadership team and the management team are doing the same job – entropic strategy execution.

The Manager by Design^sm blog’s mission is to identify how to systematically design-in great management. One way to do this is to have great leadership, and the bar I’m setting for great leadership is to have a consistent strategy that is well articulated and reinforced, so the managers can then execute on it.

Just as it is tough for someone who has never been in management to transition into management, it is also tough for someone to transition into leadership. This is why this skill of setting the strategy – and reinforcing it – should be considered the top priority and perhaps the only priority of leadership. And this is a learned skill that requires practice. All other priorities are management issues, and this should be done by the managers, not the “leaders.”

Now, in many organizations the managers and the leaders are often the same people – and the first grid above shows a common design of people having to do both jobs. But that also underscores the necessity to know when one job is being done – setting and articulating the strategy – and when the other job is being done – executing the strategy.

Otherwise, it’s a formula for chaos.

Related Articles:

A model to show the difference between managing and leading

Do your managers know the strategy of your organization?

Tips for how your managers can better execute strategy

Tips for how your managers can better understand your strategy

How do managers learn strategy?

The Cost of Low Quality Management

Management Design: How to include your managers in the strategy development process and develop leaders at the same time

Walter Oelwein — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 17:57:51 +0000

If your organization has a strategy, it’s probably important that your managers – the strategy executors – be able to understand, articulate, and interpret the strategy well. If not, then this is bad management design. The Manager by Design^sm blog’s leadership/management model makes the distinction of managers as strategy executors and leaders as strategy developers. So it is important that the managers be able to understand, articulate and interpret the strategy well.

One good design is to include managers in the strategy development process. It looks something like this:

But this should be designed to be done smartly and not in a haphazard way. An example of being sloppy in the design of “including the managers” is through having the management team regularly sit in on leadership meetings. This is a big waste of time, and would no doubt chart as low quality meetings.

Instead, the managers’ involvement needs to have the following elements:

a) Specifically selected managers (not all managers)

b) Be focused specifically on the strategy development process (not all leadership meetings)

c) The role needs to be defined with expectations to participate included (not just sit in)

d) It needs to be articulated that managers are assisting with the strategy development process (as opposed to, say, “You’re attending the ‘Leadership Meetings’”)

e) There needs to be an end to this process so the manager can go back to managing (not a standing invitation).

As a bonus, if the strategy development process is an involved one, the managers involved would be temporarily relieved of their duties as “strategy executor” manager, with the understanding that they will go back to this role.

In this process, not only will the manager become better at managing, in that she (and her employees) will be able to articulate and interpret the strategy better, but she is also is aware of the strategy development process as a specific process, allowing her to become a better “leader” in addition to being a better manager.

Perhaps that manager will someday make a transition to being a “leader” and will be able to do – when in that leadership position — the following things:

Articulate that there is a strategy development process
Describe what that process is
Replicate it and improve upon it when in the role of strategy developer
Include the managers in the process

All of this while doing work that assists the current organization needs, and done on the job and not in a separate, abstracted training class. So the “leadership development” of the manager would look something like this:

The manager learns how to manage (strategy execution) and then learns how to lead (set strategy) and understand the difference between these actions, versus conflating these myriad of actions all as “leadership.”

As an extra bonus to including a manager in the strategy development process, the strategy itself will likely be better, as she can provide the needed perspective from the “strategy executors” on what they need to execute the strategy, and whether the strategy is going to work. As a double extra bonus, she will be to assist with the strategy implementation to other managers, assist with the ongoing interpretation to the other managers, all things that seem to assist with the current needs of the organization. In short, this is “leadership development” while doing the current job better.

The alternative I have seen is to have leadership development happen external to the job – -usually through a leadership development class or series of classes. These are effective at introducing the concepts, but do not allow for immediate applicability. This time delay will usually mean limited (if at all) application of the concepts. If you need classes at all, a better design would be to have the “strategy process” be taught to the manager (strategy executor) just prior to participating in the strategy development process.

Does your organization include the managers in the actual strategy development process? Or does it rely on developing its leadership through either classes or “sink or swim” methods?

Related Articles:

Management Design: The Designs we have now: The paths to management and leadership

Management Design: An alternative path to management and leadership: Loop in and out

Management Design: Structure and Feedback in a focused area of leadership

A model to show the difference between managing and leading

Do your managers know the strategy of your organization?

Tips for how your managers can better execute strategy

Tips for how your managers can better understand your strategy

How do managers learn strategy?

Management Design: A proposed design so that new managers embrace learning management skills

Tips for how your managers can better understand your strategy

Walter Oelwein — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 16:30:50 +0000

The Manager by Design^sm blog has recently been focusing on how managers – or “strategy executors” – can better align their work to . . . strategy executors. The Manager by Design blog believes that managers are strategy executors and leaders are the strategy developers. In my previous article, I provide tips for infusing the strategy into the manager’s goals/objectives, and testing whether the managers – and their employees — can articulate what the strategy they are supposedly executing is.

But managers need better performance support than simply putting the strategy in their goals. You want to make sure your managers are capable of making good interpretations of the strategy, and have some sort of specific and immediate feedback on these interpretations. Makes sense, huh? But how would you describe how your organization provides ongoing support for helping the manager interpret the organization’s strategy?

Here are some tips for improving this:

1. Provide access to those who developed the strategy

It’s one thing to have a group that develops the strategy, and it’s another to have that group accessible to help interpret the strategy. A strategy is, in essence, a summary statement of intent by leadership, so there are times when those who are carrying out the intent need to check in on whether their understanding of the intent is correct. To help with this, check the communications paths that are available to your managers. Do they have access to those who went through the strategy development process? Do they even know who developed the strategies? On the flip side, do people in the group who developed the strategy know who will be executing the strategy? If not, then there is a much lower likelihood that the strategy will be understood or interpreted by the strategy executors.

2. Include some managers in the strategy development process

First, I’m assuming that there is a strategy development process in the organization. If this is not the case, then perhaps it is time to consider one. If you do have such a process, how do you include the managers in the process? Many times the “inclusion” is the “announcement” of the strategy as a handoff to the managers, and that is it! But this, too, is a low percentage proposition in assuring your managers can understand, re-articulate and make good decisions based on the strategy.

Amazon.com Widgets

One way to improve this “handoff” is to identify how managers are included in the process of strategy development when the process takes place. You don’t have to include all managers, and it doesn’t have to be the same managers each time the strategy development takes place. In doing this, no only do you assure that you have management inclusion, but when the strategy is “announced”, there are resources (see point 1) that are nearby that can better articulate the intent of the strategy and how it should be interpreted.

There are other benefits for including managers in the strategy process. In my next article, I’ll provide tips on how to include the managers (a.k.a., strategy executors) in the strategy development process and what some benefits of this process are.

Related articles:

The Art of Providing Feedback: Make it Specific and Immediate

A model to show the difference between managing and leading

Do your managers know the strategy of your organization?

Tips for how your managers can better understand your strategy

How do managers learn strategy?

Management Design: The designs we have now – Manager knows and supports only one possible strategy

Management Design: The Designs we have now: Part time strategist, part time manager

Current management design: The one with the ideas becomes the manager

Tips for how your managers can better execute strategy

Walter Oelwein — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 16:30:57 +0000

The Manager by Design^sm blog defines “management” as being the role of strategy execution, assuming your organization has a strategy. (See here for more on this topic of the management vs. leadership model). So one key to great management would be to assure managers are aware of the strategy, can articulate the strategy, make good interpretations of how the strategy translates to actions, and give feedback on how to improve the strategy.

How to make sure this happens? You want your managers to be good at strategy execution, and part of this is being able to understand and appreciate the strategy that is being executed. As part of the management design, you want to make sure that this understanding, articulation and evaluation of strategy execution is included into the manager expectations.

Have you ever had a manager who wasn’t able to really articulate why they were doing the things they were doing it? Instead, they are enforcing something? Or actively subverting the strategy? These are often bad managers. If they are bad at understanding the overriding strategy, their decision-making will be poor, their credibility with the workforce will be limited, and the results will not be aligned with the strategy.

Here are some management design ideas to help your organization have managers who are more aware of and more supportive of the strategy:

1. Create manager objectives aligned to the strategy

The first thing to try is to make sure the objectives of the strategy group (or wherever the strategy is coming from) — perhaps the strategy itself — are articulated in the manager’s objectives.

As a simple example, Southwest Airlines has a famous overriding strategy of being “THE low cost airline.” That is a strategy. The managers need to know this strategy, but if it isn’t in their objectives to assure that they are “THE low cost airline,” then the likelihood of them enforcing this strategy is low.

Ideally, the managerial objective would start with the strategy: “[Manager] will contribute to executing the strategy of being THE low cost airline in the area of baggage handling by. . .”

If the strategy isn’t in the goals and objectives, then you should assume that the manager will make up his own strategies, which may or may not then be explicitly stated to the team. This is a recipe for randomness. The “made up” strategy by the strategy executor may be a good one. But in most cases, it will be a poorly formed one, or one that misses the mark and create unaligned or unintended results. The manager inadvertently replaces the strategy with the manager’s strategy. Instead of “THE low cost airline,” a new ‘strategy’ will manifest: “We will be number 1!” “Show up to work on time.” “We are a no complaining zone.” In any case, it will be different in some way from the organizational strategy.

2. Ask the manager, on occasion, to articulate the strategy they are to execute

This may be a simple exercise, but one that I have not observed frequently. If a manager is expected to execute a strategy, an important order of business would be to check if the manager can articulate the strategy. It’s a simple act: Ask the manager: What are the strategies you are expected to execute? This will reveal the actual strategy that is being executed. Check for whether it the responses are consistent or not, or whether they reflect what the “upper” management (a.k.a., leadership) believes to be the strategy.

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3. Ask the employees, on occasion, to articulate the strategy

This tests whether the managers are articulating the strategy to the employees, or using the strategy to aid in providing expectations or specifying the work output. This should not be a test of the employees, but a test of the managers of the employees. This would be an “artifact” of the manager output – can the employees articulate or summarize the strategy of the department and/or organization? If they can, then they sure are more likely to make decisions, proposals, provide ideas, and execute in a way that aligns to the strategy.

4. Include in the manager objectives that employees will be able to articulate the strategy

We’ve come full circle. Not only is the articulation of the strategy in the goals important, but an output of the manager is an employee who can articulate the strategy. Here is an example: “To support the strategy of being THE low cost airline, [manager’s] employees will be able to describe the overall company strategy of being THE low cost airline and at least one way they contribute to this on a daily basis.” If the manager has employees who can do this, then they are more likely to support your strategy. Also, this does not have to be just the company strategy, but the departmental or team strategy.

Of course, if your organization or department doesn’t have a strategy or vision, then it is highly likely you’ll get a wide variance in responses. Asking your employees to articulate what they think the strategy is will, at the very minimum, will reveal to you what the actual strategy is, whether you have an articulated strategy or not.

In my next post, I’ll describe a few more ways managers can improve in their understanding and interpretation of an organizational strategy.

Related articles:

Do your managers know the strategy of your organization?

How do managers learn strategy?

Management Design: The designs we have now – Manager knows and supports only one possible strategy

The art of providing expectations: Tie the expectations to the larger strategy

Teams should have a team strategy document. Here’s an example.

Do your managers know the strategy of your organization?

Walter Oelwein — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 15:30:36 +0000

Most organizations, both at the highest level and the departmental level, are supposed to have a strategy. And the managers of these organization are expected to execute that strategy. Seems simple enough, but let’s test these assumptions.

Think about your organization. What is the overall strategy? Can you articulate it from memory? Can you look it up somewhere? What activities are you doing in your department that support the strategy? Do you know where the strategy comes from?

Now think about your department and the managers in it. Do they know the organization’s overall strategy? Can they articulate it from memory or look it up somewhere? Do they know where it comes from? And. . . do they have a strategy articulated for how they execute the larger strategy?

Let’s take a look at which quadrant your organization or department may be in:

In this view, I’ve placed four general possibilities in the grid. On the Y-axis, we have the scale of whether the overall organization has a clearly defined and articulated strategy. The lower on the axis, the less the strategy is articulated and the more it is assumed to be implied, or, perhaps, completely lacking. On the X-axis, you have manager awareness of the strategy. Sure it’s important to have a strategy, but how aware are your managers of it? The further you go to the right on the X-axis, the more the manager is able to articulate and interpret the strategy.

According to the Manager by Design management/leadership model, managers are generally in charge of strategy execution, so this would seem to be an important thing to examine!

Given these four general quadrants, we can see that there are four possibilities for “strategy execution” based on the state of your organization’s strategy process (or lack thereof). Let’s take a look at these and consider which best describes your organization.

Lower Left: No Strategy/Manager Unaware

Basically, your organization has no strategy. The manager is unaware that there is no strategy. So, in absence of a strategy, a strategy will emerge and organically develop. The accidental, organic strategy may even emerge to be a strong strategy, and be interpreted as a defined and desirable strategy later on. But in the meantime it is purely by chance what strategy will emerge, where it will come from, and how strong or effective it will be. For many organizations, this may actually be the intended strategy, but it is certainly a high-risk one and one that is difficult to manage. If it is a large organization, then you are going to have high variance in results and execution, and anyone who uses the word “alignment” will most likely be scoffed at.

Lower Right: No Strategy/Manager Aware

In this scenario, the manager is aware that there is limited or no direction on what the overall strategy is. This gives the manager leeway to create her own strategy! Then the manager can then execute that strategy. If the manager is good at creating strategy, then you may get lucky and have some great results. However, if you have lots of managers, then you’ll get some wildly variant results. Expect pockets of greatness, and huge chasms of misery.

Upper Left: Strategy Articulated/Manager Unaware

Many organizations work really, really hard to develop a strategy. Then they throw it over the fence to the different departments, expecting it to stick somehow. So the strategy may be well thought out, but it goes nowhere. Certain elements of the strategy may seep through, as it could be expressed in various resource allocation decisions, but without full internalization of the managers, it is going to be either ignored or interpreted poorly. The strategy execution will look much different than what the strategists envisioned. Doing strategy is hard, but not having it understood by the strategy executors verges on making it pointless.

Upper Right: Strategy Articulated/Manager Aware

If your organization is serious about having a strategy, great! If the managers are able to articulate what that strategy is, then even better! At that point, you’re also increasing the chances that the line employees can also articulate the strategy. In this scenario, you are the most likely to see the organization’s strategy executed, or, if it doesn’t pan out like the strategy believed it would, you’ve at least removed one variable – manager awareness – that hurt the execution or the quality of the strategy.

So for those organizations that have a strategy that they want executed, a crucial element is the design in which managers learn, articulate, and express the strategy. If your organization is doing well with the more organic notion of strategy (lower left quadrant), be aware that lack of strategy is your strategy, and take your chances. You can get lucky and get good results, but at least keep a look out for when things aren’t going well, because you can’t assume that they always will go well.

In my upcoming articles, I’ll discuss how management design can help organizations bridge the gap between strategy and strategy execution.

Related articles:

A model to show the difference between managing and leading

How do managers learn strategy?

Management Design: The designs we have now – Manager knows and supports only one possible strategy

Management Design: The Designs we have now: Part time strategist, part time manager

Current management design: The one with the ideas becomes the manager

Management Design: The Designs we have now: The paths to management and leadership

Management Design: An alternative path to management and leadership: Loop in and out

How do managers learn strategy?

Walter Oelwein — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 15:30:15 +0000

The Manager by Design^sm blog believes that there is a distinction between management and leadership. Management is tied to strategy execution, and leadership is tied to strategy development. Having a better understanding of this differentiation can help improve the “designs” in which organizations develop both managers (strategy executors) and leaders (strategists). Sloppy management design, in turn, is when you expect both management and leadership skills get developed all at once, or are delivered to your organization via recruited “talent.”

Here is the Manager by Design leadership and management model:

In the commonly held notion of “becoming a manager”, the path looks like this:

In this notion, the individual producer becomes in charge of the team doing the producing. The new manager is in charge of “strategy execution.” This is a fine model if there is some structure and feedback in performing the new managerial role, and a terrible model if there is no structure and feedback. It all depends on the management design of the organization. Are the managers designed to be great? Or are they left to their own devices in determining and creating their management practices?

Assuming that the manager has guidance in the core people management practices, there is another potential flaw with this scenario: The manager does not develop strategy skills or does not appreciate the act of developing strategy.

If your organization is looking to create leadership capability (in my model, the “develop strategy” quadrant), then there are a few paths that can be designed in to help with this potential design flaw while doing the job of managing.

1. Create objectives aligned to the strategy and clean handoffs between the strategists and the strategy executors

2. Assure and encourage access to the strategists and articulation of the strategy

3. Temporarily and cleanly have the manager participate in the strategy process

4. Provide the structure and feedback in developing the strategy for the strategy execution

Having elements like these in your management design will improve how managers who are in charge of strategy execution understand better the strategy, and, in turn, execute the strategy. The emerging field of Management Design must take this into consideration, and create designs that encourage the interaction and handoff between strategy and strategy execution.

It is the goal of the emerging field of Management Design to encourage managers to seamlessly execute the strategy of an organization. If it is being done poorly or haphazardly, then you will not get strategy execution, a main task of management. You may get some sort of execution, but will you get strategy execution?

In upcoming articles, I’ll discuss these potential designs for assuring that managers know the strategy, contribute to the strategy process, and develop their own strategy setting skills.

Related articles:

Management Design: The designs we have now – Manager knows and supports only one possible strategy

Management Design: The Designs we have now: Part time strategist, part time manager

Current management design: The one with the ideas becomes the manager

Management Design: The Designs we have now: The paths to management and leadership

Management Design: An alternative path to management and leadership: Loop in and out

Management Design: Structure and Feedback in a focused area of leadership

Management Design: A proposed design so that new managers embrace learning management skills

Tenets of Management Design: Focus on the basics, then move to style points