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September 29, 2006

What Leaders Really Do – article by John Kotter - blog by Karl Janowski

“No one has figured out how to manage people effectively into battle; they must be led”

 

Leaders – coping with change

  • Set a direction and create visions – broad based thinkers willing to take risks
  • Aligning people – empowering them, getting them to believe the vision
  • Motivate and Inspire – the more change the more inspiration needed 

Management – coping with complexity

  • Plans and budgets – planning is designed to produce orderly results, not change
  • Organizing and staffing – create human system like architecture
  • Controlling and problem solving – fast and efficient solutions to problems

This was a Harvard Business Review article that I read published in Leadership Insights a collection of 15 HBR articles. Although it talked about what leaders "do" it does not talk about one of the main Peter Senge leadsership topics: a leader leads through commitment to the vision, a manager manages though compliance. I think this is a key distinction that is maybe implied but not stated in this article.

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September 14, 2006

The Manager’s Job – article by Henry Mintzberg - blog by Karl Janowski

HBR Article

Do managers just plan, organize, coordinate, and control? 

The author of this article doesn’t believe so. After conducting studies of managers in the work place the author has come to some other conclusions, classifying the managers role into three main categories:


1.)    Interpersonal Roles – a key to authority

·        Figurehead – ceremonial duties of someone with authority

·        Leader – motivate and encourage employees

·        Liason – making contacts outside the vertical chain of command

2.)    Informational Roles – comes from interpersonal relationships

·        Monitor – scanning the environment

·        Disseminator – letting subordinates in on information

·        Spokesperson – communication outside of the unit 

3.)    Decisional Roles – comes from information

·        Entrepreneur –improve the unit or group

·        Disturbance Handler –fix problems and handle pressures

·        Resource Allocator – deciding who will get what

·        Negotiator – making tradeoffs between two things 

The managers’ effectiveness is related to their insight into their own work which is an integrated job of the roles given in the list above.

“Influence is seen in the leader role, formal authority vests them with great power; leadership determines how much of it they will realize”


My Thoughts: It is interesting to see a article almost solely on management in a leadership compellation. I wish this article talked more on the differences between leadership and management. It sort of falls into the trap of thinking that all managers are leaders of their subordinates. Anyway I would summarize this as: managers’ personal contacts lead to information which leads to decision-making. Managers must do all three. I am not sold on the “leader” part without a further discussion of the difference between a manger and a leader.

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April 30, 2006

Winning – book by Jack Welch – blog by Karl Janowski

This book covers a wide variety of general management topics.
 
Your mission statement should balance the possible and impossible.
 
What are the values you work by? List them and live them.
 
Reward both performance and behavior.
 
Candor – candor works because candor unclutters, but is against human nature
 
Jack uses differentiation in ranking employees 20% top, 70% middle, 10% falling. Protecting underperformers always backfires.  Rev up the 70% middle, don’t let them get lost or down
 
 
What Leaders Do
 
Constantly upgrade the team- evaluate, coach, build self confidence
Make people live and breath the vision
Give off energy and optimism
Trust with transparency and candor
Have courage to make unpopular calls
Probe and push with curiosity
Set the example
Celebrate
 
Hiring- How do you spot a winner?
 
3 Tests- integrity, intelligence, and maturity
 
Look for: positive energy, ability to energize others, ability to make tough decisions, to execute, and have passion for your job
 
 
For hiring high level managers: authenticity, anticipate future needs, surround themselves with good people, and resilience
 
People Management
Elevate HR to a position of power.
Use a rigorous non bureaucratic evaluation
Face straight into tough relationships
Have an effective mechanism (process and money) to motivate and train,
Treat the middle 70% as heart and soul of organization
Have a flatter organization with a clearly defined structure
 
3 Types of Firings
Integrity Violations – these are no brainers
Layoffs due to economics – every employee should know how the company is doing
Non-performance – Do it this way: no surprises, minimize humiliation,
 
3 Big Mistakes of Firing
Moving too fast
Not using enough candor
Taking too long
 
Change
Attach every change to a clear purpose
Hire and promote only true believers
Get rid of resisters
Seize every opportunity, even those from someone else’s misfortune
 
Crisis Management
Assume the problem is worse than it appears
There are no secrets in the world – be honest
You and your organizations handling will be portrayed in the worst light
There will be changes in process and people at the conclusion
You will get stronger from the crisis
 
 
Strategy
Come up with the big aha for your business – a sustainable competitive advantage
Put the right people in the right jobs
Seek out best practices to achieve your aha
 
Look at: current playing field, what you competition has been up to, what you’ve been up to
 
Budgeting
Do not use “Negotiated settlement or phony smile methods”
Need an operating plan first,
Bonuses should be about beating last years performance and competition
 
Start Up
Spend plenty upfront and put the most passionate people in the lead
Make a grand promotion of the importance of the startup
Err on the side of freedom, get of the venture’s back
 
Acquiring a Company Pitfalls
Thinking it will be a merger of equals
Not worrying about culture fit
A “reverse hostage situation” where you gave up too much power in negotiations
Integrating too timidly
The conqueror syndrome
Paying too much
Resistance in their employees
 
A part of making your customers sticky is meeting or exceeding their expectations, which is what Six Sigma helps you do.
 
Getting Promoted: Do deliver great performance far beyond expectations, don’t make your boss use political capital to champion you.
 
Your Boss
Top priority is competitiveness
Most are willing to accommodate work-life changes if you earned it
Bosses know that work-life issues are negotiated one on one over policy
Don’t turn for help too much, your life is your problem to solve

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April 29, 2006

Monday Morning Leadership – book by David Cottrell - blog by Karl Janowski

Here are some of the main ideas I picked up from the book:

People quit people before they quit companies.
 
Accept full responsibility for the team
Leadership requires different decisions than management
 
Keep the main thing, the main thing…. What is the main purpose of the team?
A leader's main purpose is to eliminate confusion.
 
Never depend on someone’s perception to match your expectation.
 
Employees
Employees fall into 3 categories: superstar, middle star, and falling star.
 
The minimal level of acceptable performance should be at the bottom of the falling stars because you still have to accept their work. Reward superstars, coach middle, and work with falling stars.
 
Don’t lump them all together.
 
Do right rule – Do right even when no one is watching.
“To know what is right and not do it is the worst cowardice” Confucius
 
Greatest asset to a team – having the right people
Greatest liability – having the wrong people
 
Hire easy and manage tough, or hire tough and manage easy
 
Time Management
Pareto Principle – 80% of your results come from 20% of your activities
 
Touch a paper only once.  Do something with it.
 
Plan time to plan.
 
Leadership
The scorecard of leadership is the results of the team, not what you do.
 
You need your team more than your team needs you. 
 
Everyone has a bucket of motivation and dipper to remove motivation from other buckets.  As a leader you need to keep the buckets full. The more you fill the more your bucket is filled.
 
Your comfort zone is a forceful enemy. Defeat it. 
3 Ways to learn: read, listen, teach

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April 28, 2006

Characteristics of Socio-technical Systems - article by Fred Emery - blog by Karl Janowski

The article can be found online here: http://moderntimesworkplace.com/archives/ericbio/ericbio.html

Here are some ideas discussed in this article:

Systems Topics

A system is a group of elements, that through their mutual interaction, achieve something unique. von Bertalanffy’s definition of a system
 
Emergence – the unique characteristic created through mutual interaction in a system
 
Closed System – a system that does not interact with its environment
 
Open System – a system that does interact with its environment
 
Any open system can become a closed system by defining the environment as part of the system.
 
Many people define a system as a physical group of elements, but many times that definition is wrong because there is more than one unique emergence. So it help to find the emergence first then defined the system as just the elements that through their interaction create that emergence.  Otherwise you’ll have defined a group of systems as one whole system.

Socio-technical Systems

“Systems where man interacts with man, man interacts with machines, and machines interact with machines" What demands does the technical system place on the social system?
 
Eric Trist and Fred Emery (Tavistock Institute) developed the concept of socio-technical systems from their work as social scientists right after World War II. Their main body of work dealt with being open system theory to organizational development.
 
Their famous paper “Participative Design for Participative Democracy”.
 
In ”Characteristics of Socio-technical Systems”, Fred Emery talked about an enterprise being a STS with three main analysis points: analysis of component parts to revel contribution and interaction (work relationship structure), analysis of these parts with reference to problems of internal coordination and control thus created, and analysis of relevant external environment and the way the enterprise manages it.
 
Aspects of technical systems that place demand on the social system
  • Nature of material being worked on
  • Level of mechanization (or automation)
  • Units of operation and grouping of these units into production phases
  • Degree of centrality of different operations
  • Maintenance operations
  • Supply operations
  • Spatial layout of process over time
  • Physical work setting


Task breakdown (simplest terms)

  • Dependent tasks
  • Independent tasks


Two types of dependent tasks

  • Simultaneous interdependence (two tasks must happen at same time for outcome to be valid)
  • Successional dependence (two tasks must be performed either serial or parallel to achieve outcome) 
Formal symbiotic ties between people– sanctioned by management
Informal symbiotic ties between people – “friendships” and other non-sanctioned ties
 
This makes it hard for management to map roles and tasks to a formal structure. Many jobs success is based on informal relationships (“social networking”).
 
Suggestions

“Large groups of people inhibit stable interactive patterns” With groups over 12 people the multiple relationships become too great for every individual to maintain so sub groups are formed.
 
Increase likelihood of friendship via sociometric self-selection.
 
Do not assume “job satisfaction and output are positively related”
 
Manager's job is not to manage the role/task relationship of the worker but the external boundary conditions that relate the worker to the larger organization. 

Individual Psychology of the Worker 

Explore these ideas:
  • “satisfaction” with work/role and alienation
  • “recalcitrance”, control through coercion and manipulation
  • non-sanctioned purposes inside the enterprise
To perform a task one of these conditions must exist:
  • Performance satisfies some psychological need
  • Performance is not satisfying but a prerequisite to achieving other psychological satisfaction
  • Performance is induced by demands perceived to arise from the task itself (“task orientation” the task itself induces strong forces that lead to completion, or task gives individual control that is satisfying)
“dull contentment” sort of satisfaction gained from habitual work

Consider, “The child’s relationship to the learning material is given little opportunity to develop into an interest relationship because it is overshadowed by the teacher-child relationship”

Discretionary content of a task – parts of tasks where worker has choice and authority Time span of responsibility – time free from managers looking over the workers shoulders
 
Alienation – the individual may be alienated from his or her workers, or from the product itself

 

 

 

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April 27, 2006

Execution - book by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan- blog by Karl Janowski

Book Overview

The “Execution book” discusses how to get things done as a leader and as a manager. You can set goals and plan all you want but a great strategy and great plan can easily be undone by poor execution. What does it mean to execute? How do you create a culture of execution at the work place?  

Set the Goal        = Strategy
Develop the Plan  = Operations
then Execute the plan

Execution cuts the gap between what you’ve promised and what you will deliver.

Building Block 1: Leaders Behaviors

Know your people and business
Insist on Realism and Candor
Set Clear Goals
Follow Through
Reward doers
Expand People’s Capabilities
Know Yourself

Ask the tough, real, questions!!!!

Building Block 2: Creating Cultural Framework 

Values and Behaviors
Linking rewards to behaviors and values as well as performance
Social Interactions within company
Robust Dialogue
Leaders get the behavior they exhibit and tolerate

Building Block 3: Having the right people in the right place (No leader should delegate)

The “right” people:

  • Energize others
  • Are decisive
  • Get things done through others
  • Follow Through

Core Processes of Execution  

People Process – link to strategy, Develop leadership pipeline, Deal with nonperformers, transform HR

Strategy Process – need realism, great goal but how? Review the plan,

Operations Process – budget and plan., are they realistic??? debate assumptions, scenario planning (this reminds me of the work of Peter Senge), “social software”  

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