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Getting the Message Across

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McKinsey’s have just published a great interview (free registration required) with a guy called Chip Heath.  Chip has spent much time, effort and money researching what makes ideas ‘stick’ in a business.  So his interest is in sticky ideas.  His research suggests that sticky ideas share six basic traits.

  1. Simplicity. Messages are most memorable if they are short and deep. (Good feedback fits this description)
  2. Unexpectedness. Something that sounds like common sense won’t stick. Look for the parts of your message that are uncommon sense.
  3. Concreteness. Abstract language and ideas don’t leave sensory impressions; concrete images do. Compare “get an American on the moon in this decade” with “seize leadership in the space race through targeted technology initiatives and enhanced team-based routines.”
  4. Credibility. Will the audience buy the message? Can a case be made for the message?
  5. Emotions. Case studies that involve people also move them. “We are wired,” Heath writes, “to feel things for people, not abstractions.”  (Again the feedback model provides us with the opportunity to talk to people about emotional impacts of their behaviour as well.)
  6. Stories. We all tell stories every day. Why? “Research shows that mentally rehearsing a situation helps us perform better when we encounter that situation,” Heath writes. “Stories act as a kind of mental flight simulator, preparing us to respond more quickly and effectively.”

This is all sound advice.  However sometimes the message that the managers needs to get across is not especially sticky.  In this case I think Chip underestimates the importance of repeating the message frequently and clearly.  This is one of the reasons why weekly 121s are so effective in building relationships.  The non-sticky message can be given repeatedly until behaviour starts to change.

The Power of Praise

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Research evidence shows that employees consider personal, immediate recognition by their managers to be one of the most powerful workplace motivators.

However, close to 60% percent of employees report that their manager rarely, if ever, offers praise.

The techniques that have the greatest motivational impact (affirming feedback and praise) are practiced less than more expensive but less effective techniques such as performance bonus schemes.

Charles M. Schwab (1862-1939), founder of the Bethlehem Steel Company, said, “I have yet to find the person, however great or exalted his station, who did not do better work and put forth greater effort under a spirit of approval than he would ever do under a spirit of criticism.”

You can read more here.

From Good to Great Manager – Part 4 – The Power of Delegation

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Good bosses delegate.

Great bosses set up sensible monitoring routines so that they know how that delegation is going.

Good bosses engage employees in helping them with major projects.

Great bosses give their team members the major projects and are available to support them as required. They give the team members room to operate – without cutting them off.

Good bosses walk around the office talking to people – what Tom Peters calls Managing by Wandering Around or MBWA.

Great ones do that too, but they are careful not to ‘intrude’. They use MBWA as a way of getting information that helps them to give accurate feedback, to coach effectively and to delegate.

What Could a Management Makeover Do for You?

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Here is a ‘Management Makeover’ recipe to improve organisational culture and performance – fast.

  • Significantly increase the quality, quantity and frequency of communication throughout the organisation. Do this through effective 121s, team meetings, project meetings and ‘skip level’ meetings. Train people to make these meetings REALLY work. Make sure that the communication regime works both ways – that managers listen as well as they talk.
  • Significantly increase the quality, quantity and frequency of feedback in the organisation. Train everyone how to give, receive and act on feedback. Train managers how to escalate feedback if it is not acted on effectively. Once everyone knows how their performance is perceived, what is working well and what needs further development, they will start to develop – fast. Make feedback a part of every day work – not a quarterly event!
  • Train every manager to coach every member of their team, every week, to improve their performance. Use coaching to establish learning firmly in the workplace and focus it on providing a better service. A weekly coaching routine provides a great tempo to learning and performance improvement. Train managers to use coaching for performance improvement – helping good people to become great. However also equip them to coach under-performers – if necessary as part of a formal performance process.
  • Train managers to delegate prodigiously. Train them to use delegation as a tool to provide opportunities for those who are hungry to learn and develop their contribution to the organisation. Use delegation, supported by coaching, feedback and great communication to significantly increase the capacity of your organisation.

Communication, Feedback, Coaching and Delegation. Managers who do these four things consistently well stand head and shoulders above their peers. Their teams perform better and keep improving.

All four are relatively easy to learn – requiring more commitment, courage and discipline than skill. For most people a three hour training session on each gives them the basics. They then just need to practice and learn perhaps with some additional advice and support along the way. The challenge in implementing this ‘Management Make’ over is in developing a new set of management habits. And this takes, time, courage and discipline.

But don’t rush it. If this recipe is going to work managers need time to develop and put into practice what they have learned.

Start with better communication through 121s. As soon as 121s have bedded down, after 4-6 weeks introduce training on feedback. Let this have a month to bed in before developing coaching, and a further month before training in delegation.

Within 6 months you will have transformed the culture and performance of your organisation. And this Management Makeover will be much more than skin deep.

In Support of 121s

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Carmine Coyotes Slow Leadership blog is one of my favourites. In this post she describes with great eloquence the importance of ‘Right Relationships’ to effective leadership. Carmine writes:

Dealing with people takes time. You need time to get to know them, time to establish trust and respect, time to recognize their strengths and weaknesses, and time to help them develop and grow. Perhaps the worst aspect of the frenetic management pace that’s becoming the norm is the way it deprives leaders of the time to spend with the people they’re charged with leading.

How do your colleagues, friends, and subordinates know that you’re interested in them? I mean truly interested in their welfare and progress, not just focused on them as useful to you in some way: shoulders to cry on or “worker bees” with a tough budget to meet in honey output.

 

The answer is simple: it’s the amount of quality time you spend with each one.

Absolutley!

For most managers it is not about spending more time with their team members. It is about focusing the time on them – the team member – rather than on the manager or the organsiation. It is about scheduling the time in advance rather than relying on impromptu meetings. It is about preparation and follow through.

Weekly, 30 minute, documented 121s.