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Manager or Cox?

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These days I am 6ft 4″ and carry a few extra pounds.

However there was a time when I was 5ft 4″, skinny as a rake and sought after by rowing crews as a cox.  Yes the small person who sits in the back of the boat – barking a very limited range of orders and making small adjustments to direction with a tiny rudder.

Truth of the matter is that as a cox I could achieve very little.  I could urge the rowers to give more effort, or even get them to ease off a little if they are in danger of peaking too early.   I could plot the best course possible.  But that was just about it.

I couldn’t really see what was going on in the boat.  I could tell just how hard the crew was currently working (the stroke rate) and could ask for extra effort in short bursts to try to get the boat ahead of the competition.  I could make some educated guesses at what individuals were doing by watching how their oars moved through the water.

I couldn’t coach the crew.  The coach would usually be be seen on the bank, riding a bicycle and shouting instructions to the rowers.

In terms of really helping the crew to improve performance – well that was out of my hands.  I could just get the best out of them on the day.  I would do this by putting their effort into context.  Keeping them informed about whether we were catching the opposition or not.  About how far we had to go before a bend came into our favour or we reached the finish line.

All I could do was create a context in which the crew were likely to give me more effort.

And I meet a lot of managers who work just like a cox.  They tell good stories and demand more effort in return for prizes.  But they never get their bike onto the river bank to really understand what is going on in the boat.

They miss a lot of chances, that a cox never has, to develop their crew.

WOW – Watch Out for the Whelmers…

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Watch Out for the Whelmer Vampire

Chip Conley has written a great book called PEAK – How great companies get their mojo from Maslow. In it he gives grave warning of the dangers of whelmers.

According to Chip there are three types of recruit in your organisation.

There are the over-whelmers – those people that ‘over-whelm’ you with their energy, skill, passion and enthusiasm. These people are what you need. They provide the foundations on which excellent can be built. However you will need to work hard, very hard, to recruit and retain them. These people have choices about where they work – so why should they choose to stick with you?

Then there are the under-whelmers – those that leave you distinctly unimpressed. According to Chip these don’t constitute a real problem either – because they are easily recognised and managed. As a consequence they either perform or get fired. I only wish it were this simple – but I do get the point. Under performance is easily recognised and can then be managed if you have the courage and commitment to do so.

The real dangers are those people that neither over nor under whelm. These are the whelmers. Their work is OK without being great. Customers are satisfied without being thrilled. Colleagues have kind of got used to the mediocrity. And the over-whelmers will not want to be any where near them as they sap energy and enthusiasm. They are passion vampires.

And this is the pernicious culture killer – mediocrity. If the whelmers are allowed to carve out a quiet life of mediocrity they will drag the culture of your organisation down to their level.

In the words of the legendary Van Morrison:

“You gotta fight every day to keep mediocrity at bay”.

How To Be an Outstanding Manager

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This new 2 hour seminar is aimed at Managers, Senior Managers, Leaders and Human Resource Managers from any type of organisation where improving performance matters.

It will show how managers can quickly boost their managerial effectiveness.

The seminar will introduce participants to four practical management processes that are the hallmark of highly effective managers. These four processes will ensure that:

  • Communication and employee engagement is significantly improved
  • A sense of urgency is developed
  • Underperformers are managed effectively
  • High performers are recognised and retained
  • Every team member is coached, every week, to improve performance
  • Every team member is regularly given new tasks and assignments to help them and the business to develop
  • Business strategies, plans and values are put into practice
  • Will understand how mastery of 4 key management practices will unlock the key to being an exceptional manager.

“All of our managers have done NVQs in operational management – but still shied away from managing poor performers. Now they have the tools they need to manage this group effectively”

“That was an inspiring session”

“I would have liked longer”

Fiercely practical management training to make you stand out from the managerial crowd

Time Management Resource

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Time Management by the Hour

A new manifesto has just been published on time management over at the Change This site.

In essence it recommends forgetting about tips, tricks and gizmos – instead building a really solid understanding of the 7 fundamental practices of time management;

  1. Capturing – making sure that all calls on your time are captured in a system – not in your brain
  2. Emptying – making sure that whatever you use to capture calls on your time (e-mail inboxes, in-trays, calendars etc) are regularly emptied – ie the calls on your time are put into a system
  3. Tossing – getting rid of as much of the demands on your time as possible – being rigorous – but not ruthless in managing your time commitments – saying no!
  4. Storing – putting useful information in a place where you can safely retrieve it as needed – this does not mean relying on your memory (‘tickler’ files work well here!)
  5. Acting Now! – doing whatever you can right now – especially if it will only take a few minutes – avoid procrastination. (Get a supply of those little sticky dots of paper and force yourself to put one on each piece of paper you have ‘in the system’ every time you pick it up – you will be amazed at how many get several dots – before you do ANYTHING with them!)
  6. Scheduling – anything that you can’t do right now must have time scheduled for it – effective scheduling – knowing how long things should take and what contingencies might be appropriate is a fine art – well worth mastering
  7. Listing – for jobs that need doing – but don’t merit a fixed appointment in the diary then use lists.  Have a list for things to do when you are:
  • in the office
  • at home
  • in the car thing (listening to audio books for example),
  • in town
  • at a clients etc

Picking up the right list at the right time can really help your efficiency.
This manifesto looks like it has been massively influence by Dave Allen’s work on Getting Things Done and will act as a useful reminder to anyone who has been on the PMN Time Management programme.
You can read the full manifesto here.

Alien versus Predator 2; Profit taking versus social enterprise

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“For a profit maximising company, the bottom line is how much money you make. But when you run a social business, it’s about impact.”

Mohammed Younis

For a publicly listed company there is a legal obligation on the Board of Directors to act in a way that will maximise the return on investment to shareholders i.e. profit.

For any shareholders who seek a long term return on their investment – rather than quarterly profit taking – then ‘impact’ (net ‘good done’ in the community as the result of the company’s actions) will be more or less synonymous with profit.  In a perfect world, companies that do bad things in the name of profit will only derive those profits in the short term.

Every company I have ever worked in (I have not worked in any PLCs but have worked in profit and non-profit distributing businesses) there has been a real concern both for social impact and for making a sound return on investment.

The sense of dynamic balance has been vital.  It is not profit making OR social impact but profit taking AND social impact that leads to sustained progress.

We can shun the tyranny of “OR” and embrace the genius of “AND” – there is a yin/yang dynamic; a Zen type ambiguity that can be used creatively.

In my experience it was the companies that traded profitably and used those profits transparently and accountably to ensure the sustainable development of the company and is employees that were able to do their best work in the long term.  In the ‘non profits’ too often the development of the business was entirely hi-jacked by the whims of funders and policy makers.

It is possible to find profitable ways to make the world a better place.