Flat Organizational Structures & Good Mistakes

Much is made of the concept of “empowerment” these days.  Taken literally, all empowerment really means is the act of equipping another person with ability, or enabling them to act. 

All of which is hogwash.

Empowerment means giving workers at lower levels authority to make mistakes.

As applied to business, empowerment has become the buzzword of  “flat organizational structures”.  Relatively few supervisors manage a large group of empowered subordinates in these structures, and the basis of their success is the ability for decisions to be made at lower levels than before. 

Oscar Wilde said that, “Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.”  He was correct.  Learning through our mistakes is the very basis of innovation.  Without the courage to risk failure, things stay the same.  Conversely, a culture of experimentation creates mistakes at a comparatively high rate.  It is through these errors that education takes place, and successful methods identified through a process of elimination. 

Using this philosophy, the flat structured organization succeeds through allowing mistakes to occur at much lower levels on the org chart than possible in traditional hierarchical structures. By making decisions at lower levels, the workers themselves learn the best methods and practices through trial and error.  This then has an infectious attribute that passes successful methods to other workers, who mimic the process.  Failures also become “tribal knowledge” and repeats of the same error are rare.  Methods evolve and change as new ideas are tried and qualified.  Mixed results tend to generate curiosity as to why, and therefore more experimentation to determine the cause of the variability.  These are all natural occurrences in healthy flat organizational structures.

Management in flat structured organizations requires a much different approach than in hierarchical structures. 

This is precisely why so many flat organizational structures fail.

Leaders in the new structure must move away from autocratic methods and towards facilitation.  Managers have so many reports that complete control is impossible, and therefore decisions are made at the lower level.  Facilitating sharing of ideas, opening communication channels, arranging for resources and tools, asking questions and prioritizing workflow … these are all the new primary roles of leadership in flat structured companies.  This new role is challenging in that it is based on communication and coordination, while keeping priority work being accomplished first.  More so than anytime in the past, trust is required between management and the workforce in order to keep vulnerability from inhibiting trial and error.  In short, unless the workers feel that management has their best interests in mind, they will not allow themselves to become vulnerable to mistakes that could harm their standing.  As is so often the case, managers whom the workers do not trust will not be successful.

Corporate politics is also death to the flat structured organization.  Politics create unanswered questions in the workforce regarding motivation, purpose and intentions – all of which inhibit trust.

In fact, complete candor and transparency is required of management in flat organizational structures.  Information must move quickly to those who need it most.  Goals, timelines, project details, workloads, and so forth all have to be efficiently communicated down the chain of command.  Often, more short meetings or electronic dialog is required in order to ensure everyone gets the word, and their questions answered.

Success is a terrible teacher.  Mistakes are the basis of innovation.  These two statements work together to create the formula for much of the trends we see repeatedly in business and in life.  Successful teams rise up from the process of learning through making mistakes.  Conversely, winning teams who lose their most senior members frequently begin to fail because no one is left who can identify those mistakes that are leading the team away from success.  In short, often long-term successful organizations fail to pass on the knowledge of earlier mistakes, thus making them unable to identify the basis of their success.  When errors reoccur, they go unidentified, and the process of re-learning must take place – often at the peril of the team itself.  Successful teams that cannot articulate the basis for their achievements are doomed to eventual failure.

Empowerment, risk taking, and mistakes learned from – all tie together to form the foundation of flat structured organizations.  A lack of transparency, trust or a political environment each has the potential to erode success.  Knowing these dangers and having the correct people in place in leadership is the key.

The Values Void … When Organizations Leave Their Principles

A business core values initiative that is done well affects all levels of an organization as well as all employees.  In the months and years that follow, the level of interest and enthusiasm naturally fall off.  This is when it is the role of leadership to keep the principles alive through constantly reminding the employees of what the mission is about, and how it is achieved.  In the absence of engaged leadership, what happens to the values that are still hanging on the lobby wall? 

There is much written about the negative effects of ignoring culture as an aspect of a healthy business.  Virtually all writers on the subject drill down to the small decisions that are made every day, at all levels, and all over the organization.  What is odd is that no one deals with examples of what those decisions could be, and  then and ties the actions back to the fading or nonexistence of business values.  Here is a set of three examples, followed by an explanation of the forces at work.

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Gary drives a forklift for a living.  He feels like he used to really understand his company, but now he’s not so sure.  Now layoffs feel like a real possibility, and Gary is not sure he now knows what the criteria will be.

A few years ago, after the big “core values” rollout, he felt like things were going in the right direction.  For once, everyone seemed to be working the same plan.  When he was doing a good job, his manager told him.  If a new process was important, he knew why, and what his role was. 

Now, no one talks to him or anyone else on the warehouse floor.  The daily shift kick-off meetings are gone.  He just shows up to work, does his job and goes home.  Gary feels like something is going on, but no one in management is ever available to talk about it.  He also knows that in the years since the rollout, his value to the company has somehow diminished, and this makes him afraid that he could lose his job to a layoff, in spite of his seniority and work record.

The union recruiters were in the parking lot again today, handing out t-shirts, and asking warehouse people to sign cards.  Some of the younger guys signed them.  Gary has been around long enough to know that union membership is something to think about, not trade a signature for a t-shirt.  Nevertheless, he’s been considering signing a card.  The union guys claim they can save his job, and that with a labor contract his seniority will mean something.  Gary also knows that his worth to the company is not that he has been around so long as much as all the things he does right every day he is on the job.  Still, no one has noticed his work in many months.  Maybe belonging to a union is what is best for him and his family after all.

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Joe is a Sales Manager and he is feeling vulnerable.  Sales are down this month, as they have been on his team for 3 of the last 6 months.  He and his salespeople are struggling just to hit last year’s volume.  He has seen some good managers let go for results like this.

Back after the values initiative sales were strong, and the salespeople were flying high.  The merger last year brought a fair amount of confusion to the business though, and some brands left the company.  What was supposed to bring a dynamic “synergy” of complimentary strengths had actually made the sales role more confusing, and competitors had taken advantage. 

Joe’s new Division Sales Manager was not on board yet at the time of the core values rollout.  In fact, Joe has the feeling that the new boss wouldn’t have had enough patience for the type of leadership that was developed at that time.  The new boss is all about action with no excuses, so losing brands and having less to sell was a non-starter conversation.

At the demand of the new boss, Joe has been spending virtually all of his time working with his salespeople in the trade in order to help get orders up.  At first, the sales team welcomed Joe’s assistance.  Over a few weeks it became apparent that Joe was not going to go back to occasionally working with them … the new normal was that he was going to be with them often.  Joe spent the most time in the territories where sales were down most. 

Jenny was an experienced sales representative whose area was most affected by the lost brands.  One day Jenny asked Joe, “Do you remember when you trusted me enough to be out here on my own without you shadowing me all the time?”  Joe was taken aback.  Joe said, “Trust has nothing to do with it … the boss says to help those whose sales are down the most, and that’s you.”  Jenny turned in her notice the next day…the competition had been waiting for years for a chance to steal her away.

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Susan is CFO, and she has mixed feelings as to what to do next.  The Chief Executive Officer wants the quarterly financial report on his desk in the morning.  Susan just had an argument with the Controller over some general ledger adjustments that were made at the last minute. 

 At issue was nearly $100,000 in “other” income.  This is the line on the income statement that is used to describe sales of non-product nature.  This could include income from recycling, rebates, allowances from suppliers and so forth.  It appeared to the Controller that one of the sales executives had turned in a credit for a supplier-funded sales training session that the Controller was quite sure never took place.  The credit was already in the AR system, having been hand posted earlier that day.  Citing the company’s mission statement and values, the Controller wanted to back out the credit from the income statement.  It was already 6:00 PM, and only 14 hours before the financial summary was due.  Anyone who knew about this particular line item had gone home for the day, and, the supplier credit in question was just enough added revenue to hit the profitability goal for the quarter.

What made matters worse is the entire executive group had a lot riding on this quarterly report.  In the wake of suppliers leaving earlier in the year, no one in senior management had received their portion of the shared profitability bonus for the last 2 quarters.  Visits from sales executives, the operations VP and others had been frequent in the past couple of days as they all wanted to know how the bonus looked.  Susan herself had much to lose if this report did not show the company hitting its target because she also shared in the bonus.

If the controller was correct, and this was a fraudulent supplier credit, then it was more than an unethical attempt to pad sales in order to hit the targeted numbers.  It also could jeopardize the company’s relationship with the supplier, and everyone knew that another supplier leaving would not be good news.

She thought about what to do.  Susan had no personal knowledge that this credit was not valid.  If it were problematic, she could back it out at the end of the next quarter.  The supplier would understand the correction if one were needed, and everyone would be happy that the company hit it’s quarterly projection, and bonus checks would be cut tomorrow afternoon.  Susan set the financial report on the CEO’s desk, and went home.

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Communication is the common denominator in the Value Void.

An issue can be a lack of information coming down to the employees, as was the main issue with Gary, the veteran warehouse worker.  Absent the flow of communication Gary had been used to, he began to fear for his job.  Whether this anxiety is warranted, ironically, does not matter.  Gary is still evaluating what is going on around him, and making decisions based on those conclusions.  All humans will attempt to “fill in the blanks” when information is not forthcoming, and the warehouse people were no different.  His dilemma regarding whether to sign a card giving his support to union representation is a direct consequence of management failing to talk about what is going on, and failing to recognize great performers.  The result to the company could be the necessity to negotiate with a union representing the warehouse workers, a condition that could cost millions over the next few years.

A second way that poor communication causes issues in the Value Void is when new comers are not initiated into the company properly, and with no reference point.  This is what was causing much of Sales Manager Joe’s problems…his new boss had been brought into the firm without education in the company’s values and beliefs.  Joe was told to get sales up by riding the sales people, and because Joe was also afraid for his job, he did it.  The loss of Jenny, the veteran sales person, was unwanted turnover caused by a new manager entering the company without grounding in the company values.  Turnover is a major indicator of issues in the company culture, especially when the most experienced employees begin to leave.

The final and potentially most deadly of the communication traps is sending mixed messages.  Susan the CFO was definitely feeling the Values Void.  She was pressured by the CEO to execute to an unreasonable deadline.  Simultaneously, she felt the stress of politics weigh upon her because not only her own, but the other senior managers had their quarterly bonuses ridding on the outcome.  Meanwhile, the Controller was doing her job in indentifying possibly fraudulent credits that could be a threat to the business.  In the end, Susan did nothing, and let the financial report stand – not because she did not have her own doubts, but because of the mixed messages she was receiving.  Integrity is an important value in virtually all companies, but when all the CFO is hearing is that the report is due, and the results had better look good, misrepresenting the profitability of the company gets very easy to do.

Symptoms of a Values Void:

1.  Lack of Communication
2. Lack of Reference
3. Mixed Messages
4. Turnover
5. Inconstancy
6. Politics
7. Deception
8. Fear
9. Uncertainty
10. Distrust
11. Cynicism

Once employees perceive that the organizations stated values have no meaning it is going to be long road getting back to where decisions are made based on them.  The range of options available contain no easy to implement solution, yet it can be done.  As a starting point, here is a partial list of strategies.

Begin at the top.  It is time for soul searching.  At some point in the past, it was an enormous effort to design and roll out the company values.  Somewhere in the top leadership of the organization, apathy towards the initiative took hold.  What was designed to last virtually forever did not.  If the leadership does not have the courage to look at themselves first, then nothing is going to change.

Redesign.   Going back and going though the process of selecting values and beliefs for the company a second time can yield results if done well.  Taking the time to get people at all levels involved in the initiative will create interest and buy-in.  Coming up with the same list of values that the organization collectively ignored may create more logical conflicts than enthusiasm.  However, it is likely that there was nothing wrong with the values selected … just adherence to them was lacking. 

Re-Roll Out.   Reintroducing the same values can create renewed enthusiasm for the initiative.  By getting the values out there in meetings, emails, posters, coffee mugs, you name it … awareness can be built-up again.  Without consistency from all levels of management however, the message will once again fade to apathy.  A re-roll out requires a level of humility in senior management.  Someone from the top needs to admit that organization has strayed from its stated direction and way of being in order for a re-roll out to be effective.  Absent this message, employees are very likely disbelieve the initiative is rooted in sincerity since the values were ignored in the past.

Build Supporting Company Values into Management Job Descriptions.  Often this missing piece has lead to the ignoring of company values in the first place.  When championing values-based decision making is part of each supervisor’s job then keeping core values alive can become much easier.  A key element is make sure that this is included in all management performance evaluations.  Judging management on how they have personally supported and lived the values during evaluations is key.  When future advancement, raises in pay and so forth are tied in to supporting the company values then buy-in becomes second nature.

Realize that some managers will not “get it”.  In every core values initiative, a supervisor somewhere in the company will ask, “This stuff is great, but how am I supposed to do this and my regular job?”  The answer is simple … supporting core values is your job!  In the final analysis, senior management has to be brave enough to acknowledge that some very good managers may not be qualified to lead the organization in this manner.  Skilled supervisors who do not live the company values are simply not good enough.  This is likely one of the factors that lead to the decay of adherence to the values to begin with. 

Getting back on track after a company enters the Values Void is hard work.  The common theme for what it takes to get the importance of values reimplemented is courage in senior management.  Often, this is where the problem started.  Therefore, humility and candid self-evaluation is what begins the recovery.  Without this first step, the stated values of the company will remain just words hanging in the lobby.

Business Execution: What I Learned from the High School Dance Team

I had just finished reading “Execution – The Discipline of Getting Things Done” by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan.  I found it to be an excellent primer on what business leaders have to do in order to get results from their organization.  It is seemingly all “in there”… such as the importance of strategy, developing people, and hands-on involvement with the operations of the company, or department.  Asking hard questions, knowing the organization, emphasis on action … this is a great read for all managers.  Yet, for all of the book’s great teachings, it left me with a cold feeling, and I was not at first sure why.

 A couple of days after completing the book I was out cleaning my garage.  The neighborhood association uses some of its funds to have 40-yard drop boxes left at a couple of spots around the subdivision for the residents to use for household clean up.  Having missed the last drop boxes, I had quite a bit of various junk to sort through and lob into the receptacles.  As is usually the case, in order to clean up a mess I had to make a mess.  The garage was a maze of various piles of this and that, the meaning of which only made sense to me, and only somewhat at that. 

In one corner was a pile that I had not made just that morning: it was the collection of cans and bottles that we had accumulated over the past few months.  In Oregon, as well as many other states these days, there is a deposit on beverage containers.  So, with each bottle and can worth 5 cents, we gather them up rather than put then out on the street with the recycling.  When the pile of paper bags gets big enough, the family breaks down, loads them into the mini van, and runs them to a grocery store to stuff into the can counting machines.  This process alone takes a couple of hours, and I was loathing the idea, as I was still a couple of hours away from completing my current junk removal and reorganization project.

About this time, I notice four teenage girls making their way from house to house.  They were wearing red and white tee shirts – the colors of the local high school.  When they arrived at my open garage door, a skinny blonde girl approached me and cheerfully said, “Hi!  We’re from the high school dance team.  We’re going from door to door today to see if you have any bottles or cans that you could donate to our team so that we have funds for uniforms, traveling to competitions and stuff like that.  Do you have any?”  What great timing!  I thought to myself, this must be $40 worth of bottles and cans, but this is a great cause, why not?  I didn’t know where I would find the time to recycle them myself anyway.  So I told them, “Today is your lucky day…that whole pile in the corner is yours if you want it.”  I felt a little sheepish as I said it, because there is something grotesque about a stacks of leaky, smelly beer and pop cans, and for some reason, it’s even worse when they are someone else’s.

To my surprise, all four girls literally shrieked with excitement.  The blonde girl smiled broadly and said, “Thank You!”  Without a word, the three other girls grabbed large plastic bags, which they produced from their pockets, and began transferring the bottles and cans from the paper bags into them.  They were chatting and laughing as they worked.  The blonde girl grabbed a cell phone from her pocket and called one of the parents who were helping out.  She asked that the mom to bring a vehicle to our address to load the bonanza of bottles and cans into.  Then she joined her teammates dumping our recyclables into their plastic bags.

In a couple of minutes, the mom arrived in an SUV pulling a small utility trailer.  The trailer already appeared to be full of plastic bags of cans and bottles.  To make matters worse, the neighborhood dumpster was almost right in front of our driveway, making backing in near our garage very difficult.  Mom got out to size up the situation.  She first checked to see that the girls had enough plastic bags, and gave them some extras for good measure.  Then she got back in her SUV, and masterfully backed the trailer past the dumpster and right up to the garage.  The girls shared their excitement with her at finding such a large stash, and mom jumped right in and helped them finish bagging. 

Then the girls went about re-arranging the load in the trailer.  With mom directing, they quickly figured out how to make room for almost all of our cans and bottles, and stuffed the last 2 bags in the back of the SUV.  Mom thanked my profusely, jumped in the SUV without the girls, and drove off to the recycling center.  Each girl said thank you to me, and within 15 minutes of when they had arrived, the dancers were off to the next-door neighbor’s place in search of more cans and bottles.

I took a break with a beer as I pondered what I had witnessed.

The handling of my donation of bottles and cans was brilliantly executed.  Bossidy and Charan would have been impressed.  Strategy?  – Check.  Trained people? – Check.  Operational excellence? – Check.  Moreover, I doubt any of the high school dance team, or any of the volunteer mothers, had read “Execution”.  What the high school dance team knew that Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan had missed is enthusiasm.

In fact, if you look in the index of their book, there is not a page on which the importance of enthusiasm is listed, or any other synonyms of the word.  There is quite a bit of referencing business culture and values and beliefs and such, but nowhere is the importance of enthusiasm brought up.  This is why their book had left me cold – there is an absolute magic to an enthused organization, and this emotional engagement is the fuel that execution runs on.  Remove it, and the most basic motivation to perform is absent.

Instilling enthusiasm as part of a strategy of building a culture of execution is absolutely essential.  It is also hard, takes time, and requires an enormous amount of training.  It is such a large part of execution itself that I feel that Bossidy and Charan would do well to write a follow-up book to address just this component of execution. 

As taught to me by the high school dance team, here is what I feel is the more complete list of core activities that enable great business execution.

 

1.  Instill enthusiasm… in the team at all levels.  Every business has an essential mission to be done for its customers, and every employee has a sub-mission that is part of that.  Do the people know their role, and its importance?  Even more meaningful – Does each person feel connected to a team that is executing a job worth doing?  Does each person feel they are part of a team doing something bigger and better than they could do on their own?  This is the emotional basis for both enthusiasm and the common desire to execute.

When the organization has enthusiasm, it has the magic to do what others cannot.  Without it, inconsistent performance will be the best that can be achieved.  Could you imagine a task force from your company cheerfully going from door to door in search of donations of smelly cans and bottles?  If this job were loathsome, which it easily could be, what would the execution level be like then?  Being part of a team that agrees on the importance of the mission makes execution of the plan the focused goal, and makes failure very unlikely through the power of the team dynamic.  In addition, as the dancers showed, even tasks that are unpleasant can become play when an enthusiastic team works together on it.

2. Have a plan.  Way too much is made of “strategy”, and this is truer the higher up in an organization you go.  Bossidy and Charan identified this as being true, and yet devote more time than needed to strategy.  There is need for great planning and strategy, but having admitted that, far too many managers are caught up in believing that this sort of higher-level thinking is what makes their company or department great.  In reality, it is the choices that the everyday folks actually doing the work are making each minute of each day that have the potential to make an organization great.  Planning is good – doing is far better.  The four dancers knew what to do, and had a good plan to do it.  Most importantly, they decided to immediately execute the plan.  Note that this would not be possible without enthusiasm for the task.

3. Communicate…to all levels of the organization what must be done.  Notice I did not say, “how” to do it.  Speaking candidly about what needs to happen is a lost art.  One thing about the truth…it rings true!  Telling the story of how things are going – bad and good – is exactly what many leaders simply do not do often enough.  Taking this to the next level…explaining what leadership has decided to do next is even rarer.  Great organizations have excellent communication all the way through the company, and it is engrained in the culture from the top down as a fundamental leadership requirement.  Laying out the plan in plain English, and allowing people at all levels to get involved in that solution is part of the magic of great executing entities.  I doubt the parents that were assisting the high school dance team told them every detail of how to gather up the cans and bottles, but they clearly had been told the goal, and they then relied upon their teammates and themselves to execute.

4. Be Present.  Bossidy and Charan make this point well, while misidentifying the most important detail.  They go back to asking difficult questions as the most important part of showing up.  Having the courage to ask difficult questions is essential in great leadership.  What is more important is excellent listening, which to be fair, is brought up in the book, but with nowhere near enough emphasis.  How in the world do great leaders know what questions to ask?  Well, they have listened carefully to everything everyone has told them, and formed ideas and opinions for themselves.  Outstanding managers are indeed human question boxes.  Not all of their questions are difficult however.  In fact, the discussion with the janitor that starts out about the game that was on TV can end up being the most important discussion of the day…because the janitor wants the leader to know what he knows!  Saying hello to everyone, walking around and chit chatting … this is a far greater skill than asking difficult questions because the bits of information that come through are the essence of what makes the harder questions themselves.  If the janitor thinks the new procurement program is running great because he gets what he needs faster, then it probably is!  The questions for the manager of the new procurement program just got more detailed and insightful because there is at least one new data point from the janitor indicating the program has started working. 

5. Give It Away.  “It” is almost literally everything.  The traditional view of management is an illusion, and only leadership is real.  What I mean by that is that the idea that a company or department can be “managed” … handled from above – is completely outdated.  Today business entities must execute quickly, innovate, and learn as fast as fast as possible in order to compete with the best competitors.  This means that the traditional view of the manager as the controlling influence of all aspects of the business unit is dead.  Instead, managers have to transition into becoming cheerleaders, coaches, mentors and even philosophers.  Business leadership still involves everything it did in the past, yet the difference is staggering in its importance … nearly all information has to be immediately given away to those who can use it right now.  Empowerment is hard on everyone and line mangers and people doing the work cannot move as fast as the team’s potential until they have all the data.  Sales down?  Tell them.  Trend on new product category looking promising?  Tell them.  Layoffs possible?  Yes, even tell them this.  It is amazing the creativity that great teams apply to such problems.  

Giving away the authority to make decisions at a much lower level is jut as important as providing all the facts.  Policy cannot be made at lower levels, and decisions about people always need to be carefully monitored to ensure they conform to the values of the organization.  And … the authority to try new methods, experiment with tweaks to established processes, and have meetings to gather ideas and discover what is working and what is not, has to happen as a regular method of operation at levels far lower than at any time in the past.  Giving away permission to try, and fail is everything.  In fact, glorifying the courage to risk failure is a wonderful culture to promote.  Success is a terrible teacher, but failure clearly defines boundaries and sets up the next success.  The high school dance team had authority to operate independently … a parent only showed up after they had called for help to get their bounty loaded up.

 

The dance team illustrated what Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan had left out, that great execution is so much more than strategy, people building and operational follow through.  The heart and soul of great execution lies in the desire and motivation of the team to get the job done.  This is instilled by developing enthusiasm for the mission through empowering the team to do so by using their own innovation and effort.  The best leaders simply tell the team the way things are, and what must be done, and then allow the team to determine how to execute the goal within that framework.  These managers will communicate at all levels of the business, and do more than ask difficult questions of the supervisors, they will engage teammates in everyday conversations that create a fertile ground for revelation of facts and experiences…the upward feedback of knowledge.

Most importantly, great leaders “manage” by giving away mission-critical information to those who need it most, while enabling success by encouraging trail and error by the team itself.  In this way execution is work that is turned into play, and something difficult that is made attainable through empowered teamwork.

Why Johnny Can’t Trust, and What to Do About It

It is day one on the job.  After a brief tour and review of general company information, the Human Resources spokesperson begins handing out forms, sign-off sheets and copies of the employee handbook.  With the mundane state and federal forms out of the way, the HR representative explains each sign-off sheet.  You will not harass at work.  You will not let your auto insurance lapse if driving for work.  You will not abuse the company email system.  You will not damage company property.  Now, it is time for the thick employee handbook.  There is a brief review of three sections.  You sign the back page that indicates you have received your copy of the manuscript.  Before walking you to meet up with your new supervisor, the HR representative gives you her business card, and tells you she is here for you if you need anything.  Right….the same person who just spent 45 minutes on legal paperwork to protect the company from the new hires is here for … me.  Right.

This same scene plays out all over the country on the first day of work.  The very first thing that a new employee learns about the company is – do not trust HR to take care of his or her problems.  The first reason employees may not trust their employer is that the effort to be seen as trustworthy is inadvertently sabotaged soon after the new teammates walk in the door.

Some naïve supervisors actually ask, “So what?” to this.  These are likely the same so-called leaders who complain about lack of commitment, absence of engagement, poor execution and bad attitudes among the team.  What the inexperienced supervisor does not appreciate is that trust is a basic component of well-being, and this is no different at work than in any other relationship or setting.  Without first trusting, there is always a reason not to care.

Now that Human Resources accidentally created an initial gulf in trust between the company management and the employee, it is now up to the line-level supervisors to repair this damage, and set the tone for a positive relationship.  In cultures of trust, this responsibility of management is identified, trained and monitored.  Communication, or its lack, defines the existence or absence of trust at every step of the employee experience.  An essential part of leadership is recognizing this, and making attention to trust within the team a fundamental part of the job. 

Employees may not trust the company simply because they hear nothing from management about what is going on.  This is far worse in that if management had said something that was incorrect: information that is not factual can be corrected later, which actually serves to increase trust…admitting mistakes is part of a trustful relationship.  Consistent, transparent and timely communication regarding all subjects that effect employees is a foundation of trust.  Regular, candid information – good or bad – from all levels of management is a required component of a culture of trust.

Another part of trust building that is most obviously lacking in some business cultures is the other side of communication … listening.  Every business management team will insist that they listen to their people.  The difference is a culturally engrained method for soliciting feedback from the teammates doing the actual work.  Just listening to those brave souls who knock on the office door is not nearly enough.  Keeping an open door is a necessary policy in all trusting cultures, yet those data points alone create a uniquely biased viewpoint of what the entire team of workers is experiencing. 

Very brief daily or very regular meetings are an irreplaceable venue for listening.  Inexperienced managers will often shy away from meetings altogether.  They see them as a waste of time, and without new daily information to deliver, an addition to total hours worked, or overtime generated.  This attitude is systemic of one of the fundamental causes of mistrust – there is no value placed on information that comes up to management from the workers.

Meetings cannot only be about management dispersing information.  Listening to feedback from the team is more important than the information going out from the supervisor.  This data is that which is most relevant to planning and monitoring what is working and what is not.  Without it, management is literally guessing at what is happening.  The inexperienced manager goes without this daily feedback, and creates a gulf between him or her and the team.  The natural assumption from the workers is that the reason the forum does not take place is because management does not care what they think, and mistrust creeps in.

Group settings are an intimidating environment for some people.  In fact, it is normal for feedback to come from only roughly 1/3 of the members in a team meeting.  One of the best ways to engage the others is to meet with them one on one.  Getting out of the office everyday just to talk to the troops individually is a basic part of a trusting business culture.  The 2/3 of the group that does not offer feedback usually has something to say.  Making a regular tour in order to ask questions and listen to the experiences of these people rounds out a manager’s view of what is happening, and engages everyone in the communication process.  Conversations breed trust, and creating events for dialog to occur is part of every trusting culture.

Most of us do not get the chance to build a team from the very beginning.  Usually we inherit a team with an existing culture, and if mistrust is part of the theme of working there, then it can be a long road to move towards a trusting workplace.  Utilizing communication and feedback will start the process, but more is needed when a history of mistrust has taken hold.

Dr. John F. Helliwell is an internationally recognized economist and expert on well-being and the effects of trust.  In an interview for the Gallup Management Journal on August 14, 2008, Dr. Helliwell made the following response to the question “…what genuinely builds trust?” …

 “I think you build trust by doing things together that embody two of the other key elements of well-being: engagement and efficacy. Pro bono work is great for that. You’re working together doing what you normally do, but in a different context.”

An expert on trust therefore identifies volunteering time and energy as a team as a method for building trust within a work group.  Dr. Helliwell singles out pro bono work as a way to do this.  When worthy volunteer work is available that the team identifies with and responds to this is the best-case situation.  Getting behind community causes and actively being part of something bigger than oneself is one of the most fulfilling experiences that a person can have.  Doing that as a team builds trust through devotion to a common cause outside of the workplace.

Taking this idea a step further, any community service cause that engages the work group and is outside of the norm is a terrific trust-building opportunity.  The task need not be pro bono in the sense that the work need be the same as what is done everyday on the job.  In fact, getting the group involved in activities that support the community that are somewhat outside the comfort zones of the participants has an added advantage.  Actively engaging in a worthy cause that is unusual creates a bond among all those who experience it together.  Because it is volunteer work and no one is being paid, doubts about anyone’s motivation for being there are greatly reduced.

Many such opportunities exist for group volunteerism.  The local United Way chapter is a great source to get started looking for ways to get involved.  The important element is that it is a cause that the team can get excited about supporting.

Creating a workplace with the foundation of trust is not an initiative, project, or line on a to-do list.  It is also more than a part of the leadership job description.  In many ways, building trust IS leadership.  Creating a culture of trust is the most basic and essential element of a business that executes well, consistently, with innovation and endurance.  Organizations that fail to recognize the importance of trust are bound to be inefficient, and short lived.

After Staffing, Start Casting

The Walt Disney Company refers to their hiring efforts as “Casting”.  Given their theme park’s theater-like atmospheres, this makes sense. 

This article is about the type of casting that needs to takes place after the hire of the right person for the company.

The definition of staffing is to “provide with a staff of workers”.  In comparison, definition of casting is the “selection of actors or performers for the parts of a presentation.”  This later description is the missing piece in so many team-building efforts today.

In his book, “Good to Great”, Jim Collins uses a bus as an metaphor for what it takes to find the right people to build an enduring company.  The idea is eloquent in its simplicity … getting the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, the right people in the right seats, and then driving the bus in the right direction.  Getting the people in the right seats is deceptively difficult, and what so many organizations today fail to do well.

“Casting” requires an examination of available talent in order to fill roles.  The “seats on the bus” do not fill themselves.  In fact, the best person for the seat will most likely not ask for it.  This is where leadership must step in to create the best possible team.

Every human being has strengths and weaknesses.  Great managers know this, and are constantly working with their people in order to strengthen each teammate based upon where their skills are today.  The best leaders will take this a step further.  Rather than simply fielding a team of qualified workers, the best managers will specifically cast their players into specific roles that maximize the benefit to the company of their strengths, while minimizing the effect of the their weaknesses.

For example, we will say that there are three supervisor positions within a specific working unit, and three supervisors available to assume the roles.

Position 1 has a small seasoned crew, and a relatively uncomplicated mission to perform.  Position 2 has a large team of mostly new hires who also execute a relatively simple mission, yet the team is hampered by turnover.  Position 3, (the open position), leads an over-worked medium sized crew, with a mixture of seniority, who are challenged daily with ever-changing variables that complicate the effort.

To take our example a step further, we have 3 supervisors to match to the jobs.  Supervisor 1 is very experienced and creative – a hands on type of leader, but poor at analytics.  Supervisor 2 is young and hungry, very hard working and analytical, but makes over-aggressive mistakes … communication can be a problem.  Supervisor 3 is new to the company, has lots of leadership background, is well liked by nearly everyone, but is still learning the industry.

What happens too often in this situation is that the new supervisor is placed in the open position, and that is the end of it.  The logic here may be that momentum should not be lost in other areas just because of an opening elsewhere, and therefore it makes no sense to move unaffected supervisors from one role to another.  In addition, some companies make the mistake of thinking all teams are the same, and identical job descriptions are literally the same, thus ignoring the differences that all teams and roles have.

The concept of casting requires that an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the individual supervisors takes place in order to understand where the company can best utilize their skills, as well as an examination of the mission and challenges of each team.  In our simplified example, the most favorable results for the company would be as follows.

Supervisor 1, our experienced, hands-on leader will enter into Position 2 – the large team of new hires that are hampered by turnover.  The experience that this individual brings is a perfect match with the relatively new crew.  In addition, the hands-on approach will allow this supervisor to experience what the new hires are going through, compare it to what has been normal, and make adjustments to reduce turnover from there.  In addition, the mission is simple, and therefore this supervisor’s lack of analytical skills will likely not be an issue for the team.

Supervisor 2, our young, aggressive and analytical leader will tackle Position 3.  This group has its mission complicated by many changing variables.  The skill of compiling and comparing data is needed here in order to understand the variables that are creating stress on this team in order to make adjustments accordingly.  The traits of work ethic and willingness to make mistakes are just what this group needs.  Monitoring will be required to ensure that communication problems do not arise between this supervisor and the team.

Supervisor 3, the new hire, takes on Position 1, the small seasoned team.  This supervisor has a good leadership background, but needs to learn the industry and the company.  The experienced team will be great teachers, and the experienced leader will know how to work respectfully with a seasoned crew.

This casting approach worked in our example to gain the maximum benefit to the company, while minimizing the potential losses do to the players weaknesses.  What happens too often is that not only doesn’t this happen, but just the opposite occurs.

If Supervisor 1, the experienced, hands-on, non-analytical veteran had been leading Position 3, with the ever-changing variables, then he was miscast.  His active role may not have uncovered the causes of the variability.  Using the “Good to Great” bus analogy, this supervisor would be the right person on the bus, just in the wrong seat.

What happens too often is that organizations take a cookie-cutter approach to both its job roles and the teams themselves.  If all the supervisor positions are thought to be the same, and all teams generic, then clearly there must be something wrong with the leadership.  This is how very talented and experienced leaders are sometimes expelled from organizations needlessly. 

The concept of casting maximizes the benefit of each individual, while giving each person an opportunity to work on their weaknesses without unnecessarily putting the company at risk.  Casting creates the best possible team, while eliminating the risk of losing good people due to being miscast.

Making Safety Sexy

The meeting is always the same.

The CFO sits at the head of the table.  Around him, line-managers from around the company sit expectantly.  Before him is a stack of Power Point handouts with both the logos of the company and the insurance carrier on the cover.  The results are in.  There have been too many accidents in the past year.  The insurance rates are going up.  For the first time in a year, safety is suddenly important.

It took the insurance company’s notice of rate increase to get the attention of management.  The issue is not that teammates are getting hurt at work.  The problem is that it is starting to cost money.

The CFO’s leadership is paramount to closing the barn door, after the cows have already gotten out.  I have personally sat in this meeting 4 times, at 2 different organizations.

Safety is the universal slippery-pig of operations.  It is hard to achieve, and easy to fall behind.  Cultures that profess values of respect and integrity still fall short, time and again.  The problem with safety isn’t money, politics or caring.  Safety is a way of being, and without buy-in by the senior management, the clock is ticking down to the next meeting.

There are few subjects as dry as safety.  All the sleep inducing factors are here … government regulation, insurance rates, and so forth.  The challenge to every company is to find a way to make Safety Sexy.

In distribution, manufacturing and construction environments, the basics start back at the definition of fundamental priorities.  Those have to be, in order, Safety, Quality and Productivity.  By keeping safety at the top of the list, it works its way into every initiative, communication and effort.  This is step one to delivering a culture of excellence.  This though, is not sexy.

Making safety exciting has to do with the approach of management putting tools in place that focus rewards on improvement.  The easiest place to start is with the Safety Committee.

Anything government required tends to settle to the lowest level of execution allowable.  This is too bad for the Safety Committee.  Here is the already formed team that can influence culture within the organization.  Unfortunately, it is usually given the lowest possible level of thought by company management.

An engaged Safety Committee can make a difference.  Membership has to be encouraged by management, with financial rewards in terms of bonus pay for successful participation.  Education of the committee members through on-line training courses should be required, and are free.  Classes in Hazard Recognition, Accident Investigation, and Safety Committee Methods are offered by OSHA.  Paying teammates to take the classes adds credibility to the team, and fosters interest in participation.

Also, giving the Safety Committee priorities is key.  Not only should the group review accidents and recommend safe guards, the committee needs to be charged with developing awareness programs to keep the accidents from happening in the first place.  This implies that the Safety Committee be allocated a small annual budget for such programs.  Failure to fund the committee is the most common mistake that leads to ineffective results.  It is amazing what an educated, engaged and funded committee can develop to keep safety top of mind.

Creating incentives for managers and supervisors on safety results is as important as putting bonuses in place for any other form of execution.  Reporting results by team creates the sort of infectious competition that starts the upward spiral of improvement.  Management has to be financially rewarded for great results in safety.

Also, no incentive program for the teammates doing the actual work is complete without safety as an element.  This can be in the form of a qualifier in order to receive an incentive, an individual, or a group incentive.

Lastly, reporting and measuring the number of days with out an accident has an infectious effect on a team.  This tried and true method of generating awareness is too often absent.  A simple dry erase board with the number of days since the last accident has a huge non-verbal impact on safety awareness.  Also, reviewing with the team any event or close call generates focus on safety in an immediate and  meaningful way.  Resetting the counter to zero is a learning opportunity for the team that should not be missed.  Creating milestones for days without an accident is also extremely effective.  Company paid lunches for hitting important targets works wonders to develop a top-of-mind position for safety in the heads of the workers themselves.

By making safety a real and important part of everyday work life, the dreaded meeting with the CFO can be avoided.  Not only that, but the CFO can publish a memo when the insurance rates go down, and thank the team for their efforts, while reinforcing the company’s commitment to safety as the organization’s number one priority.

Safety can be sexy.  Best of all, safety can be the cornerstone of a caring work culture that breeds teamwork and job satisfaction for everyone.  As with all important initiatives, the difference is always leadership.

The Fine Line between Pride and Arrogance

Pride gets a bad wrap in business and society.  Yes, it can come before a fall.  I certainly never thought it was worthy of being one of the seven deadly sins though.  In fact, I feel that pride is an important part of a culture that people feel good about operating within.  Along with that though is the reality that pride is a dangerous thing.

Pride breeds good and bad things, and the difference is leadership.  Organizations instilled with pride have a feeling of prevailing exuberance, an undefined infectious energy, and enthusiasm.  This is the feeling that visitors feel as they walk in the front door, that mystery aura that all great cultures exude.  It simply feels exciting to be there, and everyone from the receptionist to the president to the janitor reinforces a sense of purpose.  Pride creates a common positive outlook, which is precious, and can lead to trouble as well.

For as many great things that pride brings to a company, pride has a dark side.  In order to maintain the positive results, pride must be tempered with humility.  Herein lays the basis for the well-founded and pervasive fear of pride.  There is a very fine line between pride and arrogance.

It takes great leadership to instill pride into an organization.  Like in all relationships, trust must be the first stone placed in the foundation of the culture by the leaders.  This alone takes years to develop, and can never be removed from focus.  Pride can then follow, with communication of the importance of feeling proud about the mission of the organization … and in every message, the principle of humility must be imbedded.  This creates the balance that allows pride to flourish without arrogance taking hold.

Vulnerability to arrogance creeps in over time, often with a change in leadership.  It is amazing that in this age, so many leaders have no focus on culture whatsoever.  Execution is certainly the result of what we do, but how we do, it is the fabric of who we are.  This simple idea is clearly lost on too many top-level managers today.  Pride absolutely will morph itself into arrogance if the leadership does not manage the culture of the organization.

Arrogance breeds toxic attributes within a company.  While pride creates a sense of unity, arrogance founds a feeling of exclusion.  Prideful organizations that act with humility are constantly looking outward, and asking how, why, and why not.  There is no barrier to self-examination or benchmarking with others, because humility dictates that no one has all the answers. 

Companies instilled with arrogance are introverted, and tend to be self-examining only.  The concept that other businesses may have ideas that can be learned from is foreign to the arrogant organization.  This difference creates drastic variations in how the two cultures operate.

The organization instilled with pride and humility is a student of the competition.  Learning happens to the prideful operation from empowering those that operating within it to experiment and innovate, while making insightfulness a cherished commodity.  Awareness of what other organizations are doing is a key component of plans within the pride-driven business … humility results in an outward look towards other cultures to find better and best practices.

Arrogant organizations look exclusively inward, because it is not possible that other entities could have come up with a better concept first.  This builds a political structure where-in power is concentrated in those who hold the information.  There is no incentive to collaborate or share the knowledge because success is based on individual value within the inward-looking company.  Unofficial power brokers pop-up around the company, who use their influence to maintain the status quo.  A culture of fear can follow, wherein those who operate within the business tend to keep all ideas to themselves to both protect their turf, and to keep superiors from gaining even more power from the knowledge.  This makes arrogant cultures slow to evolve, and reverses the primary benefit of pride … the energy to create.

The formulas are these …

Trust + Pride + Humility = Cultural Energy

And …

Trust + Pride – Humility = Arrogance = Cultural Depression

Arrogance is expensive.  Pride is free.

Avoiding Project Management Landmines

You live, you learn.  Implement projects, and you certainly do.

I am not a career project manager, just like most people who assume the role.  Therefore, what I have learned about the subject comes from the experience of jumping into the position when needed.  These points are intended for those who also find themselves in the role of project management as a sub-part of their regular jobs.

Project management is a dangerous endeavor by design.  Whenever change is involved, risk is present also.  Although we all recognize the need to change, there are far too many examples of when change hurt rather than helped. 

There are many success stories to read on-line.  Most have a similar ring, largely because they are designed to sell software, consulting or project management services.  This is not that sort of article.  I find that disaster is a better teacher than success.

In order to assist those that are embarking on projects, the following is a list of the potential errors that I would have preferred to have not experienced for myself. 

 1.  The “Light Switch” Error:  Big projects tend to come with deadlines and expectations.  This implies a self-created D-Day.  Due to the complex nature of projects, there often are many small initiatives wrapped up in the larger effort, as well as many departments or areas of the organization that are affected.  Make the change all at once, and it may be difficult to diagnose what is happening immediately after implementation.  Often there are just too many moving pieces to track.

If possible, it is preferable to implement in stages, so that each piece can be tested and monitored before the next portion is installed.  This eliminates the confusion caused by mass simultaneous installation of many small changes.

2.   The “Deadline Tail Wags the Project Dog” Error:  The project will take…as long as the project takes to implement.  Often factors outside of the change initiative itself cause the timeline to be set at a point that is not related to the reality of the implementation.  Absent a reality check that justifies outside expectations to the project itself, and you have the formula for disaster through incomplete work due to the looming deadline.

3.   The “What Project?” Error:  Within every project, there are complex layers of stakeholders and players that need to know what is happening.  Some are suppliers, or vendors, others are from other departments or work at different sites than the location implementing the project.  Does everyone really know what is happening, their roles, and when they need to execute?  Sometimes there is so much work to do on the minutia that the over-view communication does not occur until its too late to keep from offending those that should have been informed early in the planning.  Regular updates to all effected parties including new dates, roles, progress and so forth should go out at periodic intervals.

4.   The “You Never Asked Me” Error:  Similar to number 3 above, this is the deadliest error of all.  The need for projects originates from a variety of sources, managers, workers, and officers can all be the catalyst for change.  Projects are eventually approved at high levels, and the layout and timing then tend to then roll down hill to those directly affected.  This is the wrong sequence for the best result…a step is missing.  After a project is approved, those who will be most effected need to be consulted for advice.  Senior management and even mid-level managers are too often removed from the day-to-day issues that the users of any system experience.  Early on in the implementation, the feedback from the users of the processes that will change is critical. 

The need for the project should be self-evident to everyone, but the steps needed to execute, the timing issues, and complexities of operating the business before during and after the go-live are the area of expertise of those that actually do the physical work.  Get this information early on and you have more than buy-in from the troops … you have engaged the workforce and made them stakeholders in the process.  Fail to do so and the opposite can be true … lack of accountability for success at low levels, or worse yet, an erosion of trust in management.

5.   The “Front-Loaded Budget” Error:  This mistake is so common that it seems to be endemic of projects in general.  The budgeting for a project tends to be event-driven.  Planning and consulting takes time and money, plus prior to implementation processes change and are tested, and there is money and time allotted for that.  At various points, capital expenditures occur of the acquisition of new software or equipment, and the appropriate installation time is allowed and budgeted for.  Finally, the go-live has costs associated with it that is predicted and added to the plan.  So often, this where the planning stops … in the days after implementation.  

The error here is that if major changes were made, there then there is a period of trouble shooting, adjustment and human learning curves that has cost implications.  This is the back-end of project budgeting that is nearly always missed.  This period of adjustment can last as long as 18 months before new methods and systems are part of the fabric of the organization.  If the combination of the planning and post-implementation learning curves is more time than is acceptable, this has to be considered up front, not after the change goes into effect.  The best source of information on how long this may take is the people actually doing the work, the users of the new systems.  Again, getting user input is one of the keys to success.

 6.   The “No Finish Line” Error:  It should go without saying that goals and expectations have to be set as part of the planning process.  Even when they are, projects can take months to complete, and in that time the business itself can change.  Mergers and acquisitions, new items, lost product lines, projects in other departments … these are all examples of changes to the business itself that can alter the results of a project.  Each of these occurrences, and events like them, are times when the projected results of the project may need to be re-evaluated.  Getting agreement from all stakeholders and users is important when something changes in the organization during the time of project planning and post implementation.  Without agreement on the goals of a project after a change to the business occurs, it is easy for those involved to be aiming at the wrong goal, or worse yet, different goals.  Agreement on the new target allows for new consensus, an update on the project status, and a re-focusing effort on the results that are sought.  Failure to do so can lead to the “No Finish Line” error in which there is not agreement on what the goal now should be, and therefore the project never ends.

Real career project managers undoubtedly have even better advice on how to avoid problems when implementing change.  These ideas came from the experience of living through them, so hopefully sharing will help others who are just now tackling their own initiatives. 

You live, you learn.

The Revenge of “How”

So, you meet a stranger.  In order to get to know each other, your new acquaintance asks, “What do you do?”   You answer, “I’m a consultant”, or “a homemaker”, or maybe “a sales manager”.  Happens all the time.

Was your answer and indication of who you are?  No, because who we are is much more than what we do.  Most professionals these days have long ago figured this out…that what we do for a living is not the definition of who we are.  If your definition of yourself is your job title, what happens if you lose your job?  In today’s climate of lack of permanence in job roles, and even the companies we work for, defining ourselves by what we do has become extinct.  We are husbands, mothers, friends, and volunteers … we stand for patience, and perseverance, and trust, and countless other personal values that we cherish.  What we do is simply not who we are.  What we do is how we make a living, but how we do it, is who we are.

The relationship between “what we do” and “how we do it” is easy to distinguish in our personal lives.  So why is it so hard for businesses to understand?

Businesses that survive by definition are good at making money.  This is the “what” part of what an organization does.  The “how” is the culture of the company that creates the differentiation between the business entity and the all the other companies doing what appears to customers to be exactly the same thing.

With all the emphasis on corporate culture that has been emphasized by the business gurus in the past decade, it is amazing that so many organizations today are focused back on just making money, the “what”, and virtually ignoring the things that made the business what it is, the “how”.

Take for example the almost universal neglect of customer service during the current recession.  Every business that has an awareness of the importance of company culture had, at least at one time, a focus on customer service en-grained in the fiber of what it meant to work there.  Now that business is down, the focus shifts in these same firms towards cost cutting and simple survival of the entity.  The obvious short term loser is the customers of the business itself.

These customers will tolerate a lack of service so long as there is no alternative.  Once a competitor who has remained true to their company value and focus on service is discovered, the emphasis on cost cutting will cost the first business the forgotten fundamental element of their past success … the customers themselves.

This is why I am enthusiastic about opportunities in this “down” economy.  Never in most of our lifetimes have we seen such a void in customer service, and the simple avenue through which to gain market share has never been clearer…take care of your customers needs right now, and do so at the expense of those who are not.

Back to the point of this post, the reason these opportunities exist is that businesses today have lost sight of the difference between what they do and how they do it.  If the focus of a company or and individual is on simply making money, then be prepared to lose who you are to others who know the reality of “how” we make money is the real key to success in this economy, and all economic conditions.