Daily reading. Almost every source cited here, today, is on my daily reading list, and if you are a serious-minded practicing manager, then surely Michael Wade’s Execupundit should be on yours. See what he has to say about getting to the heart of the matter, and about how to approach the question of why you are in charge.

National moods. Please see this WSJ piece reviewing two books, one of which applies classically infantile arguments to malign the American habit of optimism as, itself, infantile, and the other which appreciates optimism, but is pessimistic about its survival in modern American society. Then, for some more realistic perspective, move on to view this article, from BusinessWeek, about India’s prospects.

Manipulative myths. The always worthwhile and thought-provoking PsyBlog offers, here, an item explaining how and why the ham-handed administration of incentive programs is bound to backfire. And please be sure to see this piece, by John Phillips, approaching the question of sanctioning employees from the opposite direction – John always talks straight, something we, perhaps, don’t see enough of in our particular corner of the blogosphere, and surely something you should value in an employment-law lawyer.

Managing management consultants. Here are two outstanding articles from two outstanding authors: Dan McCarthy gives us the straight-from-the-shoulder truth about what HR wants from executive coaches, and Mary Jo Asmus provides some absolute must-read advice about what serious executive coaches want from HR.

Ignoble Nobel. Hard to pass this one up. Steve Tobak, who writes The Corner Office column for BNET, has some strong words on the topic, fueled not by the surprise of the event, but by the chord it struck in a long-considered train of thought about leadership. Then please see this must-read WSJ piece about one rich and important peace prize that went un-awarded this year. And, as long as we’re on the topic, you will surely want to see this take on the matter from the blog written by no less an insider than TOTUS – the Teleprompter Of The United States.

Master trainer. It seems pointless, really, to single out particular posts by Steve Roesler. We should all read them all. But here are a few that you should read again: This and this (read them both!), on what your employees want to know – all managers should memorize these; Sandhill cranes – all self-mesmerized leaders should tape this one to their mirrors, or someone should tape it on their backsides; and please do see the sorts of ideas that just pop in to Steve’s mind when the topic of learning comes up.

There is more, from more must-read sources and authors, but we’ll pick that up on Monday. Have a great weekend!

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Technorati Tags: manager, Michael Wade, Execupundit, WSJ, American, optimism, perspective, BusinessWeek, India, PsyBlog, incentive, John Phillips, employment, Dan McCarthy, HR, executive, coach, Mary Jo Asmus, Steve Tobak, The Corner Office, BNET, leadership, TOTUS, Steve Roesler, employee, leader, learning

One of the most problematic consequences of following template approaches to management is that they require viewing your working environment – and fellow workers – through the lenses implied by these systems. Your employees strive to be empowered, these may argue, or they need to be inspired, re-paradigmed, developed, team-worked, taught how to be followers, or who knows what else.

It’s probably best, in most circumstances, to begin by dealing with your colleagues – especially your juniors – as they are. Don’t try to solve their (non-job-related) personal problems, to evangelize the enlightenment you believe you’ve experienced, or to transform them. Do not assume they have the same motivations as you, the same discrepancies between their personal and work lives, or the same need or methods of reconciling those.

If you thought you had problems before, insisting on imposing attitudes like this on your staff can disabuse you of the misapprehension quickly and unmistakably enough for anyone’s tastes. After all, you may have had your own midlife or other crisis, and found ways to reconcile it – to integrate your attitude about yourself across these aspects of your life – yourself. You didn’t go to your boss to do that for you did you? How would you, honestly, have reacted had he or she approached you about it?

Your employees are grown men and women, and will – like you – periodically face confusion and difficulties in their personal lives which will affect their work, and will – like you – find ways to resolve and move beyond them. Your role is not to do that for them – and certainly not to presume that you understand the uniquely personal ways they perceive and approach such matters, or the particular needs and ambitions they have in their wider lives.

Rather, your role is to help them do the jobs you assign them better in the present, and to enhance their ability to contribute to the unit and the organization more effectively in the future. It is only to this extent, and from this perspective, that you want to explore who they are, discover what their capabilities are, and uncover what hopes and ambitions they entertain for their careers.

Don’t, in your role as a manager, presume you have a right or obligation to involve yourself in matters beyond that. And don’t assume you know the answers to those riddles – just keep your eyes open, your questions non-leading, and let them tell you. You’ll find that if you do that well enough, they’ll do all the transforming they need or want all on their own, to everyone’s satisfaction.

That is a major aspect of management in the context of this discussion: developing the bases for collaboration – not imposing consensus or compliance.

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Today’s tip: Speaking of the consequences of making impositions on your employees, please see this outstanding piece on how to encourage and attract innovation by letting it go where it wants, by Fred H. Schiegel.

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Technorati Tags: management, workplace, relationship, work, contribution, collaboration, colleague, employee, follower, ambition, organization, perspective, career, manager, innovation, Fred H. Schiegel

But you will be doing something else, as well: over time, you will be developing your own personal philosophy of management. You will be coming to an understanding that – for all the admirable efforts undertaken by academics, consultants, and practitioners to codify it as a generalized concept that can be understood, defined, and replicated as and where necessary – it is really, at bottom, an extension of your personal ambitions, ideals, strengths, and weaknesses into your obligations as a manager in your organization and to the colleagues with whom you collaborate to that end.

You will see your work as a dynamic that revolves around how organizational and personal perceptions, needs, and preferences telescope into and emanate from each ever-changing moment during which they converge into events or interactions that you must manage. You will employ practices, techniques, character traits and the like according to the demands of the moment, rather than interpret and exploit the moment according to the dictates of such doctrine. They will become relegated to the most they can reasonable aspire to be: your tools – not your guides or crutches, and certainly not substitutions for your initiative and judgment.

Your management philosophy will be highly tailored to your current position, duties, and workplace environment. But because it is derived from an understanding of what is happening and needs to happen in each evolving moment, it is also agile and adaptable, and can effectively migrate across managerial levels or even industries.

And yet, there is another key to doing this productively – one which brings us back to the initial purpose for embarking on this discussion. We’ll close with that, tomorrow.

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Today’s tip: Speaking of looking at an issue from everyone’s – rather than merely your own – perspective, please ask yourself these essential questions posed by Cultural Offering.

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Technorati Tags: relationship, work, colleague, perspective, management, academic, consultant, practitioner, manager, organization, manage, initiative, judgment, Cultural Offering

If you, per yesterday’s example, have an immediate need for a task to be performed, the easiest thing to do is simply to relieve that tension: issue an order to whichever appropriate junior first comes to mind, and forget about it until the deadline arrives. With so few factors impinging on the interaction when using this approach, you are left with a lot more freedom of maneuver with respect to how you engage in it. You can be matter-of-fact, distracted by the next matter demanding your attention, brusque, or you can even devote unwarranted attention to it either because you are an instinctive micro-manager or you are unduly or artificially solicitous of how you are viewed personally by your staff.

But, again, what if you back up to view the tasking in the context of the role it plays in a larger event; the junior’s strengths, weaknesses, and ambitions; your own needs for talent, ability, and skills of various types throughout your unit, and the like? The point here isn’t merely that you have reframed your perspective so that you can see how matters fit in to the larger picture; it’s that you have expanded the number of previously un-noted factors related in various degrees to your immediate issue that now fit into that picture.

This requires – or allows – you to get a better view of how things affect each other, whether negatively or positively. You may see that the narrowly-focused approach you considered at first could have been better assigned or handled, or even could have been harmful in previously unrecognized ways, once you back away and look at the larger workplace landscape.

On the other hand, you may find yourself backing away too far. This may happen because some of the new factors that enter your frame as you widen it encourage you to nudge it further out, distracting you from the central problem. Or, you may just overshoot the mark. What you will notice in either event is that the factors you are considering begin to de-cohere, and the matter at hand starts to get lost in the traffic of implications you are trying to deal with.

So, experiment with the focus. Pull back until the new elements entering in to your field of view help you comprehend the issue more clearly. But when they increase to the point that they obstruct your vision, and you notice that they are beginning to obfuscate rather than clarify the issue, draw back in until the pieces fall back in to place.

Just bear in mind that there is no correct focal length for a given situation. You don’t back up this many organizational levels for a tasking or that many for a project proposal. You adjust to the extent that makes sense of the situation for you.

Moreover, it is entirely appropriate for you to make different determinations regarding that than your colleagues facing comparable conditions at similar levels of management in other companies or industries, or even than your peers in your own company and division. Your own managerial personality, professional biases, and even periodic areas of particular operational concern, are themselves factors bearing on the matter in a perfectly legitimate way.

There is no school solution – just the one that works for you, your team, and your purpose at the particular time that you are addressing it. It’s the one you see. Just be sure you position yourself where you can best make it out.

We’ll try to close this up tomorrow. See you then!

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Today’s tip: Speaking of integrating new perspectives on an ordinary-seeming issue, please do spend just a few minutes with this outstanding video about thinking and boxes, courtesy of the incomparable Eclecticity.

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Technorati Tags: relationship, work, perspective, task, micro-manager, ambition, workplace, organization, colleague, management, Eclecticity

Moreover, you should consider that question from their perspective as well. In doing so, you want to bring to light how your various answers can influence or alter your individual responses to the interaction. The ultimate result should be a collaboration based on a solid and productive assessment of how you each can contribute to each others’ – and the organization’s – goals.

And that points to a key feature of the approach that bears examination on its own: perspective. When you do these calculations about what you want the outcome of an interaction (whether it is a tasking, a delegation, a proposal, a negotiation, or even an offer of assistance) to be, your result is obviously going to be influenced by how broadly – or narrowly – you view the context in which it takes place.

For example, you may simply want a junior to do something, with that as the extent of your evaluation of your desired outcome. As a result, you could default into a view that his or her desired outcome is little more than accomplishing your tasking. In such an event, with such a narrow and shortened perspective, the manner in which you approach the interaction might seem to be of little importance to you. In fact, you may simply determine that the most efficient use of your time is to bark out orders and impatiently demand results.

But what if you backed away a little, and considered the matter in the context of your unit’s mission, your role as a manager together with the obligations it places on you with respect to that mission, and the potential and ambitions of the junior. Does this suggest any different concerns to incorporate into your interaction?

The thing is that both approaches might seem perfectly appropriate and natural if you are comfortable with the perspective from which you engage in them. But a problem may be that you don’t consider the possibility that there are other, more suitable perspectives. And another suggested by that one is that you even if you do, you may not settle on the appropriate one.

Better to have the second problem than the first. Whenever you interact with anyone at work – again, regardless of their specific role relative to you – develop the habit of not only examining carefully the nature and demands of the encounter, but also of evaluating and determining the best overall perspective from which to do so. You will be looking for the one which best balances the various and sometimes conflicting factors of the situation, and which makes the greatest organizational sense of them.

Time and urgency may compel you to take recourse in a narrowly focused perspective. But doing so may also prove shortsighted, complicating future interactions and undermining broader goals. On the other hand, taking too expansive a view of things may develop into its own bad habit, merely offering you an excuse to prevaricate, or depriving you of sufficient contrast for making needed decisions.

Making the effort a part of your operational discipline and managerial instinct will help you add perspective to rapidly developing events on the fly, and to incorporate meaningful and actionable traction into the long view.

And it will do something else for you, as well. We’ll look at that next. See you then!

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Today’s tip: Speaking of appropriate perspective in varying situations, you will surely want to see what Michael Wade has to say about brainstorming and narcissism at work.

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Technorati Tags: relationship, work, coworker, perspective, collaboration, organization, perspective, manager, potential, ambition, decision, discipline, Michael Wade, brainstorming

It’s a powerful question, and one that really should be asked before any undertaking in the workplace: a meeting, a new initiative, a delegation, a negotiation – even a chance encounter; we should develop a mindset for approaching work this way which serves as the basis for our thinking and reactions in any setting.

So, it is worth taking a moment to make the argument again that this is neither calculating (or, at least, not coldly so), nor does it proscribe the eventual development of richer personal relationships than those based on “what can we do for each other?” assessments. What it is, though, is the fundamental basis for any relationship that begins at work – however more complex that relationship may become or into whatever other parts of our lives it may come to reach.

It provides the core integrity of any such relationship, one that does not rely on mistaken assumptions about others’ interests or one’s own perhaps pretentious self-regard.  Moreover, whatever further aspects a relationship may take on, continuing to ask this question also remains the necessary basis for the interactions at work between the parties to it. If it isn’t, the entire relationship risks degenerating under the distortions suffered by those that were poorly sown and grown from the start.

The calculations prompted by the question, though, can be problematic, if not organized and worked out from the right perspective. We’ll look at that tomorrow. As always, we hope you’ll join us.

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Today’s tip: Please be sure to stop over and visit this month’s Leadership Development Carnival, hosted by Becky Robinson of LeaderTalk. It is a brilliantly organized collection of terrific resources, and it includes a clever link to a page allowing you to follow those authors that are on Twitter. Outstanding – check it out!

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Technorati Tags: interaction, colleague, work, relationship, workplace, meeting, initiative, delegation, negotiation, assumption, perspective, Becky Robinson, LeaderTalk, Twitter

Principle among these, surely, is the habit of thought it instills into managers when properly executed. We have noted here before three key examples of how it does this: through its inescapable emphasis on 1) clear taskings, 2) operational integration, and 3) strategic integration.

Unfortunately, the discipline often seems impenetrable to generalist managers and executives, or even technical experts. It is perceived as the intimidatingly complex domain of engineers and specially trained denizens of the new profession of project management; best just to leave them to it and then take possession of the products of the process.

But the truth is that neither can specially trained project managers properly discharge their duties, nor can organizations enjoy the substantial benefits that the project management approach and mindset has to offer, unless senior managers are fully and intelligently on board. They need to do three things: 1) understand the basic principles of project management, 2) be prepared to intelligently initiate and manage specific projects and project portfolios, and 3) understand how to integrate the project management activities of the organization with its other operational structures.

The solution is Michael Bender’s book, “A Manager’s Guide to Project Management: Learn How to Apply Best Practices.” Bender is an expert project manager, and has a thriving business teaching the subject to practitioners at all levels around the world. In the course of his own on-the-job work, consulting experience, and feedback from seminar and workshop students, he has assembled a comprehensive appreciation of what up until now has been a missing ingredient in the acceptance and effective application of project management in both commercial and not-for-profit organizations.

This book is the product of that analysis. And it will undoubtedly set the standard for such work for years to come. It is an exceptionally efficient and readable guide to the subject for senior executives and functional managers in organizations that want to incorporate project management into their operating structure in a sustainable and meaningful way.

Bender has produced an actionable how-to guide, combining the theory necessary for the generalist manager of project managers, with clear and detailed protocols for applying them in the real world. Following this pattern throughout, the book is organized into fifteen chapters over five parts:

1. Understanding Projects and Project Management
2. Aligning Project Management with the Organization
3. Project Management Oversight
4. Projects as Capital Investments
5. Globalization and Resource Management

If you are interested in how to make better use of project management in your organization – regardless of your current level of experience in that regard – you will want to get this book. If you are a professional project manager, you will want to gift copies of this book to your senior management team and functional manager colleagues.

And, as mentioned at the beginning of this review, even if you are neither, you will benefit from this view of project management from the outside manager’s perspective for the brilliant and vivid lessons it offers about management generally, as well as of an increasingly important approach for pursuing it.

Michael Bender’s “A Manager’s Guide to Project Management” is both a quick and engaging read, and a thorough and actionable guide to the subject. You can read it through, or easily and effectively scan and navigate right to those parts you need most. In either event, you will find the book occupying an easily accessible place in your professional bookshelf as a prized reference.

Pick it up, and enjoy!

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Today’s tip: Speaking of book reviews, please see this one in The Economist of two books about the British army in Afghanistan. In particular, look for how one of the authors praises the courage of his soldiers, and consider the implications of the peculiar way in which he does so.

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Technorati Tags: business, project management, manager, integration, discipline, generalist, executive, expert, profession, project, organization, management, Michael Bender, Economist, courage

We’ve been talking about how we sometimes find that we have an unanticipated and urgent need to reconcile our personal and work lives, or even to review our commitment to our careers. As it happens, following this sort of advice is one of the things that can provoke such a wake-up call.

There are a lot of problems with the approach. In the terms of our current discussion, the principal one is that it is about your boss, you, and how you relate to him or her – it is not meaningfully or essentially about how the two of you together relate to the work. What’s more, your relationships with your peers and juniors are entirely defined and driven by that one. This unleashes story lines that almost always end badly.

But the question of what your boss needs is a good one. And that of what your peers and juniors need, as well. In particular, as you interact with them at work, you should always be asking yourself not only what that is, but also what it is that you want from the interaction – with respect to the work purpose for which you all enter into it.

You will begin to engage in a multi-dimensional calculation: what will advance your goals or benefit your projects, what will do that for your partners in the exchange, and how your and their possible responses will affect these potential outcomes for all of you. The key is to always look for the result you want to obtain, but to do so mindful of the needs of your seniors, peers, and juniors to do the same.

This seems on the face of it to be coldly calculating. But what you are really doing is looking beyond yourself to others. You are considering yourself as a provider of answers to their problems, rather than just them as answers to yours. Moreover, you are beginning to see all of you as answers to organizational needs.

You are asking the questions regarding them that they ought to be asking themselves. You’re doing so from the perspective of the organizational work you all are engaged in. And in doing so you are beginning to understand their wants and needs better, and in a proper and sustainable context.

As you develop this instinct, you also begin to develop richer, more reliable, even warmer relationships with your colleagues. You become a more alert, aware manager with a broad ability to comprehend organizational issues and anticipate collaborative responses for all of your seniors, peers, and juniors alike.

But there’s more to do. We’ll look at that next week. Tomorrow: a review of a terrific book. See you then.

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Today’s tip: So, you don’t always do what others – even your boss – want. But how do you say “no?” This list from Michael Wade will not only tell you how, but why.

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Technorati Tags: career, advice, boss, work, perspective, colleague, manager, Michael Wade

In the meanwhile, please see these excellent resources:

• An interesting WSJ column on what may be behind the drive to refine the GDP as a standard of national well-being.
• A terrific article on why smart executives can make dumb decisions – hat tip to Michael Wade, the Execupundit.
• A very good list of reasons your team is losing patience with you – read this!
• Why globalization of technology can be good – a terrific story from The Economist.
• Check out David Noer’s blog – hat tip to Eclecticity.
• See Mary Jo Asmus, on asking questions – start here.

See you tomorrow!

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Technorati Tags: WSJ, GDP, executive, decision, Michael Wade, globalization, technology, Economist, David Noer, Mary Jo Asmus, Eclecticity

That may seem a harsh claim to make, but if we engage in this sort of thing with colleagues for its own sake, it is inevitable. It means that we are essentially focused on ourselves, and for that very reason are losing our ability to be effective at our work. In such an event, what we wind up with is a disorienting mish-mash of motives and misunderstandings spinning around our attempts to relate to each other.

What we really should be doing is establishing and reinforcing the core basis of our mutual presence in the collaborative enterprise – the relationship of each of us not to each other, but to the work we have gathered together in our organizations to undertake. In the workplace, any relationships nurtured on any other ground than that are bound to wither – and often destructively so.

But if we are mindful of the real context of our connections, we can build them into truly meaningful and rewarding – rather than artificial and self-aggrandizing, even self-deceptively manipulative – relationships. Every facet of such interactions will be reinforced with manifest integrity and purpose – to the benefit of our organizations, surely, and via that of ourselves.

It is under such circumstances that work takes on its powerful secondary role in our lives, as a venue for social interaction and contribution. And it is in this way that we will have begun to resolve the perceived contradictions between our personal and our work lives.

So, when you are attempting to reevaluate your place in your work and its place in your life, consider this view of the matter: you will better weave both parts of your world into a coherent whole if you treat each of them as appropriate to the context in which they occur. We don’t – at least a first – love whoever we happen to work with like family. We don’t – at least in the beginning – view our co-workers as our faithful friends or good neighbors just because we happen to have the same signature on our paychecks. We neither expect from nor do things for our coworkers that we would with regard to our actual family, our true friends, or our real neighbors.

It can come very close to that, though, in time. But only because we sow these relationships in the right soil, soil to which they are native and in which they will flourish.

More on what this means to you in your daily work, tomorrow. See you then.

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Today’s tip: Speaking of connecting with your staff and developing a strong, effective, workplace culture, please see this excellent post on the subject by Miki Saxon.

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Technorati Tags: manager, leader, employee, perspective, maturity, discipline, colleague, effective, work, enterprise, organization, workplace, relationship, integrity, purpose, co-worker, culture, Miki Saxon