The View from Harvard Business

Despite what they are called, best practices are not always so. Many managers have encountered occasions when their organization’s prescribed rules would cause more harm than good.

Example. Your personnel department spells out a procedure for resolving a personal dispute between two co-workers. Great, except the process takes two meetings and four hours of administrivia, while you know from your own experience with these people that what will really work is an off-the-record airing of grievances over a couple of beers down at Duck’s Tavern. (The Beer Gambit was used to famous effect by President Obama to cool a dispute between a Harvard professor and a local police officer.)

Your personnel department may not agree, but I say trust your gut and head down to Duck’s and see what happens.

How can you tell when its OK not to follow the ‘best’ path?

Harvard Business blogger Susan Cramm offers this three-step filter.

1. Consider the context. Best practices work for a particular organization in a particular market at a particular time. Always adapt best practices to fit your company’s unique culture and situation.
2. Assess feasibility. The “best” may be expensive and time-consuming. Determine whether being the best is worth it. Will the customer pay for it? Will you have the time or energy to achieve it?
3. Use common sense. Sometimes best practices just don’t make sense. Just because someone labeled it “best” doesn’t mean it is. Think critically and strategically before using any best practice.

For more excellent insight, read Cramm’s full post, How Are Your Defying “Best Practice”.

If you do choose to alter, modify or ignore a best practice, I think it’s important to share that information with the organization. Best practices remain best only if they are useful.

How do you employ (or not) best practices at work?

I never would have believed the bold statement in the headline above — that is, until I read John Baldoni’s provocative blog post, What It Takes to Lead Now.

Now I’m convinced, as is Baldoni, that coming through the economic meltdown most managers saw their job much too narrowly. Instead of leading their people and organizations through a time of great change, managers put more emphasis on simply getting things done. If true, that’s a sad commentary about where our companies and “leaders” are heading.

According to a McKinsey and Company survey of executives, only 48% believed that they need to inspire and only 46% believed it was their responsibility to provide direction during this crisis. (BTW, McKinsey doesn’t put the same spin on these results.)

The problem, says Baldoni, is that execution without adequate leadership is short-sighted.

“It will carry a company through a quarter or a year, but it will not provide a foundation for what organizations really need to do, and that is to grow. Leadership requires foresight as well as the ability to execute. Foresight points you in the right direction so that your execution can serve customer needs now and lay the foundation for continued service.”

As a manager, do you consider inspiration and direction as key components of your job?

(Leader image by lumaxart, CC 2.0)

U.S. pay czar Kenneth Feinberg believes CEOs should not serve as board chairman, which is now the situation in 63 percent of American companies. The idea behind this seems sound, and UK and Canadian companies are moving in this direction. An independent chair, it is reasoned, is better able to monitor performance of company execs.

Not so fast, argues Harvard Business School professor Robert Pozen, who is also the Chairman of MFS Investment Management. In Should CEOs Be Allowed to Be Chairmen?, he points to numerous studies that show there is no difference in a company’s share price or net income if there is a unified CEO/Chairman.

In addition, according to a recent report on board activities during the fiscal crisis by HBS professor Jay Lorsch, many firms have adopted the practice of employing an independent “lead director” whose duties include presiding over executive sessions when management is out of the room. Pozen agrees with this idea:

“Choosing a lead director is a less dramatic way of fulfilling this listing standard than appointing an independent board chair,” Pozen writes.

One point in favor of combining the two roles is that, ironically, many boards are increasingly packed with independent directors. The problem, and it’s a real one: These directors often lack the necessary in-depth knowledge of the company and industry for which they they are making key decisions.

Lorsch’s report suggest boards spend less time thinking about the split chairman question and more about achieving clarity about their role “in relation to that of management: the extent and nature of the board’s involvement in strategy, management succession, risk oversight, and compliance.”

All companies are different, of course. Some certainly benefit by having a CEO as chairman of the board; for others this is too cozy a relationship. What do you think?

Here is a really, really scary factoid from Harvard Business Review.

“A majority of U.S. managers surveyed by the Business Literacy Institute were unable to distinguish profit from cash, and many didn’t know the difference between an income statement and a balance sheet.”

Admittedly, not all managers run P&L shops (That’s “profit and loss” for you same folks identified in the paragraph above.) But still. Can you call yourself a manager without understanding the basic financial metric upon which your company’s success is based?

This suggests, as does the related HBR article, that we need to do a much better job of training our employees in basic financial principles.

Take our poll. How would you describe your own financial literacy?

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One of the under-appreciated side effects of the financial crisis has been the promotion of employees into management roles for the first time. It’s hard enough for a rookie to assume command when times are good. These days it must seem like being thrown head first into a spinning clothes dryer.

I recently ran across two great pieces of advice for new managers. The crux of it: Slow down.

1. Check Your Progress. Harvard Business School’s Linda Hill, who literally wrote the book for first-time managers, says rookies try to do too much, which causes them to lose sight of their goals. Every two weeks they should step off the treadmill and assess what they have been doing and where they are headed within the context of the goals of the organization.
2. Three Tasks a Day. New managers face a million things to do, so pick out the most important three things each day and get them done. That’s the advice of Susan Ashford, a professor of management at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business.

Both these insights are explored in an excellent article written by the business staff at the Associated Press, Surprise! You’ve become a manager. Now what?

These are important lessons not only for new managers but for also for the seasoned vets who manage them. Make sure your newbies aren’t overstretching themselves. If they are, help them focus on what is important and on achieving results, even if it’s just a few accomplishments a day.

Are you a new manager? How are you prioritizing your work? Any advice from our veteran managers?

BTW, Jessica Stillman over at Entry-Level Rebel has a nice conversation going about shortcomings in training for new managers. Take a look at Readers Diagnose “New Management Syndrome,” Offer Cures.

(Dryer image by rocknroll guitar, CC 2.0)

Great thinkers often are clairvoyants, too. With their deep understanding of the past and present, they can spot future trend lines as they converge toward the horizon.

Peter Drucker, one of the great minds of business management, who died in 2005, was one of these savants. So Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter was asked by Harvard Business Review to look at today’s business environment and consider what Drucker would say.

Here are several of her conclusions:

• Executive Bonuses. “He held that the role of executives was to coordinate the actions of others whose motivation (and thus compensation) was necessary to get the job done. But he also held that pay should be associated with performance; that was a major point of management by objectives, perhaps his best-known practical management contribution.”
• American Auto Industry. “Years ago, he warned of troubles ahead if GM executives remained stuck in memories of previous successes and failed to ask his famous ‘what to stop doing’ question. GM was an iconic example of failure to see the need for significant innovation; its structure had become ossified, and its top management couldn’t consider a change.”
• U.S. as Global Competitor.  “Drucker sounded early warnings that competition from emerging markets would eventually challenge the United States’ global economic dominance. He observed that newer economic powers were adopting American management lessons that Americans were forgetting, as his own ideas spread widely and were consumed eagerly in countries with aspirations to grow their economies.”

Drucker had blind spots as well, she continues. He believed in the manager as logical being, so was not attuned to how factors such as emotion, personal bias and events in the world cloud our decision making.

It’s an interesting read. Check out  What Would Peter Say?

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce got hoaxed in Washington D.C. Monday after an environmental action group faked a press release, and even a press conference at the National Press Club, to which media were invited.

The phony “news” was that the Chamber was turning course and now supporting strong climate change legislation.  Several media outlets including Reuters and Fox Business News bit hard, writing stories about the sudden about face.

Until, that is, a real Chamber representative interrupted the press conference being held by a Chamber impostor.

OK, so the trick was pretty funny, especially when the impostor demanded the legitimate Chamber rep produce ID. But the Chamber wasn’t laughing (they are asking for an investigation), nor were the duped news outlets.

And you shouldn’t be either. In today’s “insta-news” culture you can expect more of these events to occur in the future. Can you say Bubble Boy? Some will prove very damaging to the stock price and brand image of the victim, even if short term. Just ask McDonalds. And that victim could be your very own company.

Fighting Back

So let’s figure out the proper response here. You are in charge of external relations for a major restaurant chain that has just been hoaxed by an angry animal-rights activist. He scammed the media into carrying an announcement that your chain is recalling tainted meat “that has severely sickened and, in 14 cases killed, customers.” The unverified news has been on the wires and airwaves for seven minutes, and calls are starting to flood into your HQ.

What do you do to discredit the story and restore faith with consumers? What’s your action plan?

I’ll report back with the best solutions offered by readers.

Have you been hoaxed?

It was bound to happen. Companies are starting to use Twitter to advertise open jobs. But that’s not all. At least one company is requiring applicants to have a certain number of Twitter followers to qualify for a position.

According to employment experts Jeanne C Meister and Karie Willyerd, Twitter is becoming a major tool for job recruiters. They blog on Harvard Business Publishing that:

• Companies find Twitter useful for  attracting people who are not reading job boards.
• Small companies use Twitter to level the playing field to recruit against the big boys.
• Best Buy used Twitter to crowdsource a better job definition and qualifications for an emerging media marketing position.

Oh, by the way, the requirements for the Best Buy job as defined by the crowd included 250-plus followers on Twitter. “Yes that’s right: the number of followers you have on Twitter is now finding its way into a job description,” according to Meister and Willyerd.

Read their intriguing post, How Twitter and Crowdsourcing Are Reshaping Recruiting.

Tweeting All Job Seekers

But what about people seeking jobs. Can a Twitter account give you an advantage?

Certainly.  If you are following the right companies, you might receive news of job openings as soon as they are made public, giving you a first-mover advantage.

What do you think? Would you use Twitter (or other social networking technology) to help your job hunt?

Last week we received more than 150 comments on our post about Sylvia Ann Hewlett’s research, which shows that women are twice as likely as men to consider leaving their jobs. Our post on how to fix the problem shared advice and insight from BNET readers. This week, Hewlett follows up with a guest post.

The reader response to “Why Are Women So Unhappy at Work” is both heartening and disturbing. It’s great that so many of BNET’s female members are engaged and looking to improve the workplace. But, I’m sad that so many of you are unhappy — and some at the hands of other women. Tough times, as we have seen, bring out the worst in people. Between waves of layoffs and evaporating job opportunities, we’re in a climate that naturally breeds competition. So how much of this destructive behavior is from men — and how much is from other women?

My conversations with women in preparation for my new book Top Talent: Keeping Performance Up When Business Is Down revealed that many felt they needed to protect themselves against a sisterhood of back-stabbers who, instead of helping build one another’s careers, deliberately derail them by withholding information, limiting access to important committees, sabotaging promotions or blocking the way to higher-ups. A recent study by the Workplace Bullying Institute found that female bullies are alive and kicking — and more than 70 percent of the time they’re aiming their pointy-toed shoes at other women.

I’ve certainly seen some bad behavior in these bad times — from both sexes. But recently, I’ve seen women helping women in ways that are more than just heartening: I’m convinced these women are part of a new way of networking. Today’s professional Gen X and Y women think the previous generation didn’t ask for help often enough: As pioneers, they couldn’t afford to appear weak; as outliers, they weren’t part of the “Old Boys” network; and even though “Old Girls” networks existed, they tended to be exclusive, growing out of sororities, college alumnae associations, Junior Leagues and similar groups limited by socio-economic barriers.

One way today’s women are correcting this problem is by building unexpected alliances. Rather than hire a career coach, many women who are looking for more from their careers are creating a personal board of directors: a diverse group of professional women from any sector who many not be your best friends but who can provide a fresh perspective on your strengths, values, goals, options, and next steps.

I’d be curious to hear more from female readers about their experiences, both good and bad, with other women in the workplace. Have you experienced bullying by another female in the workplace? What are some examples? And what are some positive ways you have seen women helping one another?

Image courtesy sylviaannhewlett.com

The death of Lazard Ltd. Chief Executive Bruce Wasserstein this week caused much reflection on a career that combined genius smarts with on-target gut feel about people and what makes them tick.

For some, he was the best dealmaker of his age. And the company he directed, Lazard, was likewise one of the smartest around. So you’d likely pay a lot of money to sit down with Wasserstein and get advice on the art of the deal.

Luckily, Harvard Business Review did the work for you, in an interview last year. Here are some of his tips.

See the Big Picture. “We’re careful to preserve the broad perspective, to prevent thinking that’s too compartmentalized. Our pharma people, for instance, were inspired by the advantages of scale that became apparent in the oil industry and drove its consolidation. Or if we’re looking at, say, the roll-up of the cable television business, we’re going to ask, ‘Is there an analogy with another industry, where the dynamics are similar?’ If so, that industry is probably going to roll up as well. In that case, we should analyze what went right, what went wrong, and who did it well in cable, and figure out how to transport those lessons and advise firms in the other industry.”

Dissect the Premises. “Law school taught me to focus on dissecting premises. Anyone who’s a good logician can build an argument on just about any premises. The argument may be taut, but the premises may be faulty. When we do deals, I always ask, ‘Are the premises sound? Is the risk exposure worth it for this particular company, and have I protected my client’s back?’ We proceed by identifying and evaluating qualitatively and quantitatively the key elements of risk in the transaction — overall economy risk, strategic risk, operating business risk, financing risk, people risk. Similarly, you need to fully understand the upsides. What are the opportunities in cost cuts, synergies, internal development, additional investments, or revenue enhancement? It’s useful to apply all the paraphernalia of mathematical science in an analysis, but focusing on the sense of things is a much better use of time.”

Connect Black Boxes. “We think of each deal in terms of a flow chart with a series of black boxes. Each box represents a facet of the deal — for example, valuation, financing structure, approach to the other party, negotiating tactics and deal process, taxes, legal structure, contracts, market reaction, and regulatory hurdles. Then we try to optimize within the boxes and weave the results into a cohesive recommendation. But each box affects the others: Soft language in a supposedly no-outs contract, for instance, will live to haunt a deal. So you have to keep going back to make adjustments.”

Attract Top Talent. “You attract the people your system invites. If you create a bureaucratic system and have meetings every day at 8:00 am and send a report card in at the end of the day, you may think, intuitively, that’s good management. That works for some companies. But if I did that, I’d lose my best people—the people I want. We sacrifice some degree of efficiency by deliberately having a somewhat less centrally managed culture… Our culture retains people who like the atmosphere—it’s fun here. There’s a lot of trust. Individuality and creativity are valued. People have a great deal of independence. And they get satisfaction from the visibility of their work.”

It’s a great interview with an extraordinary man. Read Giving Great Advice.