by Gerard M Blair
FLEXIBILITY
One of the main challenges in management is in avoiding pat answers to everyday questions. There is nothing so dull, for you and your team, as you pulling out the same answer to every situation. It is also wrong. Each situation, and each person, is unique and no text-book answer will be able to embrace that uniqueness - except one: you are the manager, you have to judge each situation with a fresh eye, and you have to create the response. Your common sense and experience are your best guide in analysing the problem and in evolving your response.
Even if the established response seems suitable, you might still try something different. This is simple Darwinism. By trying variations upon standard models, you evolve new and potentially fitter models. If they do not work, you do not repeat them (although they might be tried in other circumstances); if they work better, then you have adapted and evolved.
This deliberate flexibility is not just an academic exercise to find the best answer. The point is that the situation and the environment are continually changing; and the rate of change is generally increasing with advancing technology. If you do not continually adapt (through experimentation) to accommodate these changes, then the solution which used to work (and which you still habitually apply) will no longer be appropriate. You will become the dodo. A lack of flexibility will cause stagnation and inertia. Not only do you not adapt, but the whole excitement of your work and your team diminish as fresh ideas are lacking or lost.
Without detracting from the main work, you can stimulate your team with
changes of focus. This includes drives for specific quality improvements, mission statements, team building activities, delegated authority, and so on. You have to decide how often to "raise excitement" about new issues. On the one hand, too many focuses may distract or prevent the attainment of any one; on the other hand, changes in focus keep them fresh and maintain the excitement.
By practising this philosophy yourself, you also stimulate fresh ideas from your team because they see that it is a normal part of the team practice to adopt and experiment with innovation. Thus not only are you relieved of the task of generating the new ideas, but also your team acquire ownership in the whole creative process.
The really good news is that even a lousy choice of focus can have a beneficial effect. The most famous experiments in management studies were conducted between 1927 and 1932 by E Mayo and others at the Hawthorne works of the Western Electric Company in Chicago. The study was originally motivated by a failed experiment to determine the effect of lighting conditions on the production rates of factory workers. This experiment "failed" because when the lighting conditions were changed for the experimental group, production
also increased in the control group where no changes had been made. Essentially, Mayo took a small group of workers and varied different conditions (number and duration of breaks, shorter hours, refreshments, etc) to see how these actually affected production. The problem was not that production was uneffected but rather that whatever Mayo did, production increased; even when conditions were returned to the original ones, production increased.
After many one-to-one interviews, Mayo deduced that the principal effect of his investigations had been to establish a team spirit amongst the group of workers. The girls (sic) who had formally worked with large numbers of others were now a small team, they were consulted on the experiments, and the researchers displayed a keen interest in the way the girls were working and feeling about their work. Thus their own involvement and the interest shown in them were the reasons for the girl's increased productivity.
By providing changes of focus you build and motivate your team. For if you show in these changes that you are actively working to help them work, then they will feel that their efforts are recognized. If you also include their ideas in the changes, then they will feel themselves to be a valued part of the team. If you pace these changes correctly, you can stimulate "multiple Hawthorne effects" and continually increase productivity. And notice, this is not slave driving. The increased productivity of a Hawthorne effect comes from the enthusiasm of the workforce; they actually want to work better.
A GENERAL APPROACH
In management there is always a distant tune playing in the background. Once you hear this tune, you will start humming it to yourself: in the shower, in the boardroom, on the way to work, when watching the sunrise. It is a simple tune which repeats again and again in every aspect of your managerial life; if goes:
Before you start any activity you must STOP and THINK about it: what is the objective, how can it be achieved, what are the alternatives, who needs to be involved, what will it cost, is it worth doing? When you have a plan you should STOP and THINK about how to ensure that your plan is working. You must find ways of monitoring your progress, even if it is just setting deadlines for intermediate stages, or counting customer replies, or tracking the number of soggy biscuits which have to be thrown away, whatever: choose something which displays progress and establish a procedure to ensure that happens. But before you start, set a date on which you will STOP again and reTHINK your plan in the light of the evidence gathered from the monitoring.
Whenever you have something to do, consider not only the task but first the method. Thus if there is a meeting to decide the marketing slogan for the new product you should initially ignore anything to do with marketing slogans and decide: 1) how should the meeting be held, 2) who can usefully contribute, 3) how will ideas be best generated, 4) what criteria are involved in the decision, 5) is there a better way of achieving the same end, 6) etc. If you resolve these points first, all will be achieved far more smoothly. Many of these decisions do not have a single "right" answer, the point is that they need to have "an" answer so that the task is accomplished efficiently. It is the posing of the questions in the first place which will mark you out as a really
great manager - the solutions are available to you through common sense.
Once the questions are posed, you can be creative. For instance, "is there a better way of producing a new slogan?" could be answered by a quick internal competition within the company (answers on a postcard by tomorrow at noon) asking everybody in the company to contribute an idea first. This takes three minutes and a secretary to organise, it provides a quick buzz of excitement throughout the whole company, it refocuses everyone's mind on the new product and so celebrates its success, all staff feel some ownership of the project, and you start the meeting with several ideas either from which to select a winner or to use as triggers for further brainstorming. Thus with a simple -- pause -- from the helter-skelter of getting the next job done, and a
moment's reflection, you can expedite the task and build team spirit throughout the entire company.
It is worth stressing the relative importance of the REVIEW. In an ideal world where managers are wise, information is unambiguous and always available, and the changes in life are never abrupt or large; it would be possible for you to sit down and to
plan the strategy for your group. Unfortunately, managers are mortals, information is seldom complete and always inaccurate (or too much to assimilate), and the unexpected always arrives inconveniently. The situation is never seen in black and white but merely in a fog of various shades of grey. Your planning thus represents no more than the best guess you can make in the current situation; the review is when you interpret the results to deduce the emerging, successful strategy (which might not be the one you had expected). The review is not merely to fine-tune your plan, it is to evaluate the experiment and to incorporate the new, practical information which you have gathered into the creation of the next step forward; you should be prepared for radical changes.
LEADERSHIP
There is a basic problem with the style of leadership advocated in this article in that nearly every historic "Leader" one can name has had a completely different approach; Machiavelli did not advocate being a caring Protector as a means of becoming a great leader but rather that a Prince ought to be happy with "a reputation for being cruel in order to keep his subjects unified and loyal". Your situation, however, is a little different. You do not have the power to execute, nor even to banish. The workforce is rapidly gaining in sophistication as the world grows more complex. You cannot effectively control through fear, so you must try another route. You could possibly gain compliance and rule your team through edict; but you would lose their input and experience, and gain only the burdens of greater decision making. You do not have the right environment to be a despot; you gain advantage by being a team leader.
A common mistake about the image of a manager is that they must be loud, flamboyant, and a great drinker or golfer or racket player or a great something social to draw people to them. This is wrong. In any company, if you look hard enough, you will find quiet modest people who manager teams with great personal success. If you are quiet and modest, fear not; all you need is to talk clearly to the people who matter (your team) and they will hear you.
The great managers are the ones who challenge the existing complacency and who are prepared to lead their teams forward towards a personal vision. They are the ones who recognise problems, seize opportunities, and create their own future. Ultimately, they are the ones who stop to think where they want to go and then have the shameless audacity to set out.
Gerard M Blair is a Senior Lecturer in VLSI Design at the Department of Electrical Engineering, The University of Edinburgh. His book Starting to Manage: the essential skills is published by Chartwell-Bratt (UK) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (USA). He welcomes feedback either by email (gerard@ee.ed.ac.uk) or by any other method found here
http://www.see.ed.ac.uk
What Makes A Great Manager II
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