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Progressive Managers and the Credit Crunch

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How best to respond in uncertain times?

Images in the media of managers clearing their desks and heading for home with their possessions in cardboard boxes makes us all think about our own job security.  So what should you do to maximise your chances of thriving through the credit crunch.

  1. Keep developing your staff – build their skills, knowledge and ability to add value on a weekly basis through coaching – being the leader of  a high performing team is perhaps your ultimate protection.
  2. Continue to invest in your relationships with your team members – in a tightening labour market your best staff will be looking for an employer that allows them to really create value and maximise their potential.  Poorer performers are likely to be keeping their heads down.  IF it comes to having to make redundancies you need to know who you to retain and who you can afford to let go.  Often it is the most able performers that take redundancy offers – confident in their ability to find new ways of making a living.
  3. Provide positive leadership messages.  Yes times are hard but the fundamentals of good business remain the same.  If we can increase quality and productivity and reduce costs then we will have an excellent opportunity to navigate through turbulent waters.  This could be just the right time to ask team members of that little bit more effort – however if you have left it until now to start providing positive, robust management….
  4. Manage under performers robustly.  You need to be rigorous but NEVER ruthless.  Reinforce what you expect from them in terms of quality and performance at work.  You really cannot afford to carry any passengers at this time and good people will be coming onto the labour market.  Work as diligently and as professionally as you can to get people up to the standards you demand.
  5. Delegate more – and use coaching and feedback to make sure that delegation works.  Use delegation to make sure that you have the time to focus on doing the things that matter most. Delegation enables you to create significantly more value for the business without increasing overheads.
  6. Keep your CV up to date and make sure that all of your  professional accomplishments are recorded.  Sometimes even the best managers are made redundant, so make sure to keep all of your networks well maintained.
  7. Invest more time in relationships with peers and your seniors.  Use your networks to the max to get a clear picture of what is happening.  Also use your networks to make sure that your team is getting a fair press and all of its achievements are recognised.

It is an unfortunate truth that tough times are sometimes when people are at their most responsive to the performance improvement message – and you will get recognition for making tough decisions.   Get rid of the dead wood and watch the remaining talent flourish.

Delegation and Flow – Csikszentmihalyi for Managers

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Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has spent much of his life researching ‘flow’ –  that state of being when you become fully immersed in a task and time flies by.  This flow state can only occur when  the level of challenge is carefully matched to your level of skills and confidence.  Flow is most likely to occur when you are faced by a demanding but achieveable task.  Flow matters for managers because it a state that is associated with optimal performance.  It is also closely associated with learning and self improvement.

It strikes me that delegation used in conjunction with feedback (another pre-requisite for the flow state) and coaching provides managers with the perfect tools to ensure that team members get a balance of skill and challenge that will enable them to enter the optimum state of flow at work.

Employees who are operating outside of the flow channel – either bored or overly anxious are likely to be performing well below their potential.

The thing about the flow channel is that you cannot remain stationery.  Unless you are confronted with new challenges it is likely that boredom will become an issue and performance will dip.

Conscripts, mercenaries, and volunteers

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Willing volunteers outperform conscripts and mercenaries every time. They are more innovative and creative as well more diligent and disciplined.

Volunteers have bought into a mission and a purpose rather then been bought into it.

Much of the private sector is struggling with how to turn salaried staff from conscripts and mercenaries into volunteers. Finding ways to engage them in the work of the organisation. To provide them with fulfilling and rewarding work.

Much of the public and third sector seems to be taking almost exactly the opposite path. It finds ways to turn passionate and caring volunteers (people who have bought into the mission) into conscripts and mercenaries. This is achieved by:

  • making them servants of the system rather than servants of their customers
  • imposing performance management systems that often fail to recognise quality service delivery
  • entering into inflexible and output related contracts for service delivery that shrink opportunities for innovation and improvement
  • managing them as if they are units of production rather than as caring and compassionate people full of insights into how to improve performance.

It is a strange paradox that many private sector clients are making genuine efforts at developing employee engagement in pursuit of profits while so many third sector and public sector organisations are developing processes and systems that alienate employees and volunteers in pursuit of efficiency.

Get rid of managers and we’ll all be happier

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This is the title of a provocative post over at Management Issues.

Rather than adding value to their organisations, two thirds of British managers actually create negative working climates that leave employees feeling resentful and frustrated.

Research by Hay Consultancy has shown that a fifth of UK workers are frustrated in their jobs, with rigid bureaucracy and poor management structures and systems hampering innovation and productivity.

Half of workers believed they did not have the authority to make decisions crucial to their jobs, with the same proportion complaining of being discouraged from participating in decisions that directly affected their work.

Managers were failing to design jobs in such a way as to capitalise on the talents of their workers, Hay also argued.

More than a third of the workers polled believed their job did not make best use of their skills and abilities.

The study of more than 3,100 leaders across 12 industries found that close to half of the managers were creating demotivating climates for employees, while a further 15 per cent generated only a neutral environment.

Good managers who really add value (in the eyes of their employers and their team members) are few and far between.  Just a quarter of managers were able to create a high-performance climate, according to employees, and only an additional fifth managed to generate a ‘moderately energising’ working atmosphere.

But while the findings do not surprise me the headline (Get rid of managers and we’ll all be happier) does.

Getting rid of managers is not the answer.  Managing their failure to perform is.  In my experience if we manage managers well – tackle management under performance – and make sure that they manage effectively using feedback, coaching and delegation it is possible to quickly build a management culture that promotes high performance.

Wally on Leadership

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I regularly read Wally Bock’s blog.  He is always coming up with great insights and ideas.

In a recent post he reminded us that:

  1. Leadership is behaviour.
  2. Theory doesn’t count unless it turns into behaviour.
  3. Principles don’t matter until you incarnate them.
  4. If it doesn’t find its way into what you say or what you do, it can’t be leadership.
  5. Leadership is situational.
  6. One size doesn’t fit all.
  7. What works in one situation may not work in another.
  8. Your choices of what you say and do depend on the situation.
  9. If you aspire to leadership, understand that leadership is about actions measured by results in a specific situation.

Much the same can be said of management. I even agree with the situational nature of leadership – although I also believe that a single, simple management system can provide the basics of good organisational practice in the vast majority of situations.  A system where you:

Thanks Wally.  You can read the full post here.