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Archives for June 2008

Why Managers Fail

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This is the title of an interesting blog post by Lisa Haneberg – author of High Impact Middle Management – which has much to recommend it.

She offers a top 5 list of reasons why managers lose their jobs:

  1. Fail to build positive and trusting relationships.
  2. People don’t like working for him or her (micromanagement the #1 complaint).
  3. He or she does not get things – the right things – done.
  4. Is uncoachable. They don’t take help.
  5. Is full of bull – does not have the courage to be honest about what was going well and where things were not going well.

So if we invert this list would we have a compelling recipe for management success?

  1. Succeeds in building positive and trusting relationships
  2. People like working for him or her
  3. He or she regularly gets the right things done
  4. He or she is very coachable.  Always open  to learning.
  5. Has the courage to be honest about what is going well and what is not going so well.

Minding the Assets

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It is deeply ingrained in most enterprise professionals to try to fix things. Business plans, cash flows, products and people.

We listen to our clients for signs of weakness or difficulty and then we try and fix the problem, usually by referring them to a course or another expert.

Much of our work is biased towards exposing and managing deficiencies rather than uncovering and celebrating strengths. This has become a deeply embedded part of our work – an almost medical approach to helping.

Think ‘Inform, Diagnose, Broker’. Think ‘Best Practice Business Diagnostic’.

We become just another part of the system that has for years highlighted and exposed weaknesses.

How would our work be changed if instead of this focus on the weaknesses we spent our time helping our clients to recognise what they have done, what they can do and what they can do to use these strengths to make progress?

The Development Trust Association exists to help communities to take control of the physical assets in their community and use them for public good.

Is there a similar service that helps individuals to uncover their assets (skills, passion, energy, talent, anger) and reclaim them in pursuit of progress?

So why not spend some time trying to avoid highlighting the problems – and instead accentuate the positive.

Developing a healthy pre-occupation with what is right, rather than re-emphasising all of the things that are wrong is likely to hold the key to building really constructive relationships in support of more enterprising individuals and communities.

121s, Covey, and Priority Management

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Time and Priority Management Quadrants - Covey

Another reason why 121s are so powerful dawned on me this morning.  And it relates to the Stephen Covey Priority and Time Management Quadrants shown above.

121s almost compel you to focus on quadrant 2 type activities.

Quadrant 1 stuff has to be done almost immediately- it can’t wait for a 121.  And who is going to continually bring quadrant 3 and 4 items into play with their manager?

So the existence of 121s more or less forces attention onto the important but not urgent quadrant which is the one where the greatest value tends to be created.

So pay attention to the content of your 121s and see what you can do to bring the focus onto quadrant 2.

Affirming Feedback and Praise

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I meet a lot of managers who confuse praise with affirming feedback.

Affirming feedback is a tool used to:

  • make someone aware of a specific behaviour or action that they have taken,
  • understand specifically the positive nature of the impacts of that behaviour or action,
  • increase the chances of further examples of that behaviour or action in the future.

Affirming feedback is a powerful tool primarily for influencing future behaviour.

Praise on the other hand is about the past.  It is about ensuring that someone feels recognised and valued for something that they have done.  It is usually MUCH less specific than feedback and sometimes given with much less clear intent.  It is just as powerful as affirming feedback and effective praise should be encouraged.

However, praise is not without its risks.  If praise is:

  • ill timed
  • embarrassing
  • diluted or over-inflated
  • undeserved

It can certainly do more harm than good.  For more on the problems of praise read this post.

Triple bottom lines, social enteprise, localism and sustainability

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  1. Triple bottom lines
  2. Social enterprise
  3. Localism and
  4. Sustainability

Four hot topics.

Four inter-related topics

Four topics that get a lot of people very fired up to make change happen (definition of enterprise?).

Yet when I surveyed over 100 enterprise professionals recently this was one of their lowest priorities for personal and professional development?

Are missing a trick in really understanding what motivates many contemporary entrepreneurs – because in many cases money is only seen as a by product of success, a way of keeping score, and not as an end in itself.

A few relevant websites:

http://www.greenbiz.com/

http://www.triplepundit.com/pages/social-entrepreneurship/

and Leeds very own: http://www.ppp-online.co.uk/