The View from Harvard Business

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)

I’m not a WWII historian, but the story of General George S. Patton and his self-destructive leadership has always fascinated me. He was a tremendous motivator of troops, but at the same time he had a dark side that allowed him to slap a sick soldier in an infirmary because Patton thought him a coward.

The same virtues that earned him the admiration of his people, bravery and loyalty, turned into bullying and ostracizing when Patton felt challenged. So thanks to Gill Corkindale for shining a light on this common failure in many of us that turns our acknowledged strengths (enthusiasm/charm/focus) into weaknesses (volatility/manipulativeness/passive aggression). Writing on Harvard Business Publishing, Corkindale observes:

“All too often (leaders) are aware only of the positive effects of their personalities, screening out the negative impact on those surrounding them. If they remain impervious to feedback — or the organizational culture doesn’t support individual feedback — then senior leaders can be in serious danger of sabotaging their careers as well as their companies.”

How does this happen? Corkindale posits that we are so praised on these strengths throughout our career that we become blind to their “shadow side.”  If you have a reputation as diligent, you might at times slop over into perfectionist without really knowing.

Read Corkindale’s post, Don’t Let Your Strengths Become Your Weaknesses, for the best ways to check these tendencies in yourself and others. One tip: The anonymous 360-degree review provides one way your reports and peers can be honest in their observations of your performance.

Have you noticed a boss whose best traits morph into something more dark?

(Patton image by Paul Keleher,  CC 2.0)

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)

It’s a bad day when your most productive employees are the ones most likely to be unhappy about what the economy is doing to the workplace.

But according to a recent survey by Watson Wyatt and WorldatWork, “engagement levels” of high performers have dropped 25% over the last year, compared with 9% with other employees.

Just as bad, the number of people who said they would recommend that others accept jobs at their companies declined nearly 20%.

The reason top performers are disproportionately disgruntled may never have occurred to you. I think I have the answer.

It Takes a Village

Harvard Business School professor Boris Groysberg specializes in research on workplace stars. He is interested in what makes them tick, but also what makes them successful. And one of his key insights is that top performers rely on high-quality colleagues to bolster their work and deliver it effectively to clients.

So think about what is happening in your own business today. Star “A+” performers aren’t being let go, but some B players are. Business resources are being cut as well. Suddenly the star is shining less brightly without his high quality support team, and that makes him less productive, more unhappy and more anxious to move along.

If your business relies on these rainmakers, it’s time to sit down for a heart-to-heart and get at what is really eating them. It might be something as easily remedied as giving them back a budget for entertaining clients.

But you won’t find out unless you ask. And if you don’t ask, your competitors surely will.

Related Reading

The Key to Managing Stars? Think Team

(Star image by Maschinenraum, CC 2.0)

My blog post Why Are Women So Unhappy at Work?, around the research of Sylvia Ann Hewlett, hit a nerve with both men and women that even today, with 150 comments from readers, refuses to quiet down.

Clearly many women are unhappy in their organizations. That said, men are, too. Commentators observed that the recession has robbed some companies of their core values, that the focus now is all on the bottom line rather than on purpose. And that makes for a dismal workplace. “Probably far more fruitful,” observed Tony Wanless, “would be a question about how to build a workplace that is more humane, less ferociously competitive and more collaborative as required in this century.”

Granted, but I also asked you to tell me what a female-friendly company would look like from scratch. How would it act differently? How would it feel to work there? Your comments were amazing. One reader, Manabozho, even suggested this new female friendly corporation would have a much different organizational design, with “a large proliferation of titles and modifiers, and branching organization designs.”

Here are some other highlights:

• A female friendly company would most certainly be a flexible workplace that allowed for those with families (and those without) to be measured on results, not “butt in chair.” Again, having a woman leader doesn’t guarantee this. –EJEDoherty
• Female CEO? Not really a good motivation. I am doing research on Gender related aspects. From most of the literature that I have studied it boils down to one thing, balancing work and household demands. If I were to start my own company todady the first benefit would be to offer women flexible hours.–theflo1
• 1. Flexible scheduling. If I have to leave early to pick my kid up from school, let me. And trust that I can still get my job done, during the hours that work best for me and my family.
  2. Project-based assessments.  As long as I’m getting my work done, who cares how many hours I work? If I can complete a project in 20 hours, do I need to work a 40 hour week?
  3. On site daycare / nearby daycare / daycare stipends. The salary of many working mothers barely covers daycare bills. And certainly doesn’t make up for missing out on that time with the kids.
  4. Discounts on maid service / dinner service. I realize this is simply a pipe dream, but it would sure take a large burden off our backs!
  5. Understanding. Recognizing that work is work. It is not my life. And while it is a priority, it is not my top priority. So don’t think I’m crazy or think less of me when I have other, personal things to take care of. –Vickibug
• Women want to be rewarded equally as their counterparts, and any good CEO whether male or female, who recognizes talent, hard work, integrity and gives flexibility, won’t have women abandoning ship. –Sharronm
• I think there is a fundamentally different paradigm that can exist in female-oriented workplaces and it takes us away from the whole aggressive, money and progress-oriented approach to work. It is a collaborative, nurturing, fun approach which, while achieving goals and earning a living, isn’t centered or structured the same way — it’s like a circle, not a hierarchy and goes to heart of our culture like the Gaia paradigm in environmental studies. It is so foreign to our male dominated culture that we would have trouble establishing it I suspect! –Lesley Whitteker
• A woman-friendly company should have a lot of cultural commitment to acknowledging feelings and validating them — especially when a difficult decision has to be made. –Manabozho

Where Women Go

What about those who do choose to leave: Do they find fullfillment — and if so, where? In an email to BNET, CSDunford told us she took a demotion in order to improve her work environment — and she couldn’t be happier.

“The reason I left was lack of challenge and a lack of recognition. I moved to a new job where I had to take a downgrade to get in the door, but my options for upward mobility are much better — in fact, I’m already earning several times what I did before at the old job. I have more responsibility and I get to exercise the gray matter. It’s a very rewarding position and I wouldn’t go back to the old job even if they offered me double what I’m earning now.”

For many, the perfect company is the one they create for themselves. “Leaving to form my own freelance design company helped me put the balance into my life that I’d been trying to achieve…” wrote Maura Mather in an email to BNET:

“I was always late to work when I was punching the clock for someone else.  But I discovered that the only way to do all that I had to do during the day for my family and myself was to literally make my own schedule. I still work just as hard, and in fact I work much harder. But I don’t have the guilt of disappointing my boss every day by showing up late, I don’t get the angry silences from co-workers that result from childcare emergencies, and I can take care of my daughter and husband at the standards i set for myself. In addition, my business is booming.”

And Vicki F. echoed the thoughts of more than a few women on the thread that putting up her own shingle was the ultimate answer to the question, “Why are women unhappy at work?”

“When my company downsized I volunteered to take a severance package — I intended to work with my husband in his consulting business. But as it happened I ended up finding consulting work in my same field — in fact my first project was working on the same product my former company sells and implements.  It’s only been a few months but so far it’s worked out very well. I really can’t see going back to being an employee again, certainly not any time soon.”

Are we done with this fascinating conversation? I hope not. I’d love to hear more of your thoughts on building a female-friendly company. And tune in next week, when we’ll have a follow-up guest post from Hewlett herself.

Among the first casualties of an economic downturn are great ideas. That is, employees who in better times willingly speak up with change proposals or offer contrasting opinions instead hold their tongue.

With unemployment reaching 10 percent, who wants to risk it? Better to fly under the radar.

Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson, a world authority on organizational communication, calls it the “doom loop.”

As she explains to Mike Hendricks of the Kansas City Star:

“Fear of rocking the boat inhibits them from voicing concerns about workplace problems and, alarmingly, even from making performance-improving suggestions,” Edmondson tells the newspaper.

Just when you need the wisdom of your workers most, the quiet is deafening.

How can you change this picture?

I have three ideas:

1. Top Down. Climate change in the office has to flow from the top. The CEO needs to encourage workers, with passion, to speak up. Employees need to believe the words they are hearing. This goes way beyond putting up more suggestion boxes.
2. Feel Safe. Managers need to reinforce these messages to direct reports. Consider holding regular “what would you do?” sessions, getting everyone involved in the conversations. Managers are also key in identifying to the powers that be the employees speaking up with great ideas.
3. Public Rewards. Those who offer constructive suggestions should be rewarded in a manner for all the company to see. The reward is almost inconsequential — time off, an iTunes gift card or a cash bonus all make the point equally well.

If the doom loop is not broken, the cultural damage to your company could last well beyond the time when economic recovery takes hold.

A while back, Edmondson discussed with HBS Working Knowledge the importance of “speaking up” at work and how employers might go about encouraging their people to do so. Read the interview, Do I Dare Say Something?

How open to new ideas is your workplace these days? Are good ideas flowing uphill? How is this encouraged?

The announcement earlier today that President Obama won the Nobel Peace Price shocked even his biggest admirers for the simple reason that, based on accomplishment, the president does not have a high batting average.

So then how to read the Noble Committee’s actions? One wag called it a Noble Prize for not being George Bush, and a slap at the former U.S. president may have been part of the decision. But the committee was clearly rewarding the current president’s words and world philosophy.

“Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future,” the committee wrote. “His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.”

Whether you agree or not — and even Obama said he didn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same company of past winners — let this be a reminder to managers that sometimes it pays to reward effort as much as results.

Says Michael Watkins, writing on Harvard Business Publishing:

“Managers should reward people who exhibit the right attitudes (and supporting actions, of course) whenever (1) it’s difficult to make a direct connection between actions and measurable accomplishments (for example, because of a significant time lag) and (2) it’s important to encourage people to continue thinking and acting in the right ways, to motivate them to pursue desired goals (for example, when we are trying to change a company culture).”

And that’s a great takeaway. Too often we get hung up as managers rewarding great results rather than great effort. Doing more of the latter should ultimately result in more of the former.

Read the entire Watkins post and then return here with your take on the right time to reward.

Related Reading:

Rosabeth Moss Kanter, In Picking Obama, Nobel Places a Bet on Hope.

Some startling research, at least to this male, reports that women are twice as likely as men to be considering leaving their jobs. According to Sylvia Ann Hewlett, founding president of the Center for Work-Life Policy:

“We found that in the wake of last year’s financial crash, high-powered women were more than twice as likely as men — 84 percent compared with 40 percent — to be seriously thinking jumping ship. And when the head and heart are out the door, the rest of the body is sure to follow.”

So smart companies such as Intel are aggressively acting to retain their female employees by offering career workshops, skill-building classes and courses on managing in a diverse workplace.

Read Hewlett’s post on Harvard Business Review, Are Your Best Female Employees a Flight Risk?

Unfortunately, Hewlett doesn’t answer my burning question? Why are women more likely than men to consider jumping ship? Certainly there are career opportunity questions. If women believe they don’t have as good a chance as their male colleagues of advancing, of course they should be considering options.

But a 2x factor suggests something much more deep seeded. Something about the nature of work in the modern company. What’s your take?

If you were creating a company from the ground up with an explicit goal of attracting, rewarding and best utilizing the talents of female employees, how would that company look different than today’s traditional firm? Yes, having a female CEO would be a nice start. What else?

Debbie Downer was a Saturday Night Live character that saw the worst in everything. A cure for cancer would just increase world overcorwding.

The-glass-is-half-empty people are in every workplace. They are poison to morale, momentum and productivity. So how should managers deal with dourness?

Amy Gallo, writing on Harvard Business Publishing, says the first step is to determine the root cause of this person’s pessimism. There could be a logical reason for the behavior, such as a promotion passover.  Other people might just have a natural disposition toward the negative, just as others are always cheery.

Here’s what you can do to turn them around:

Create Awareness of the Problem After explaing why this person is a valued team member make clear the impact of his behavior, Gallo writes.

Don’t Let Negative Statements Slide Ask the person to further clarify the negative comment and also ask how they would solve the problem.

Involve the Whole Team Example: Create team norms that encourage positive, solutions-driven thinking and let team members enforce them.

Disciplinary action should be a last resort.

Look, pessimism has its place — warnings and cautions are valuable information for managers to recognize. But too much of a bad thing is, well, a bad thing.

Read the entire post, How to Handle the Pessimist on Your Team, then return here with your own experiences with Debbie Downer and how you turned things around.

(Unhappy image by Robbie Howell, CC 2.0)

I had quite the interesting interview with Harvard Business School’s Rosabeth Moss Kanter earlier this month, talking about her latest book SuperCorp: How Vanguard Companies Create Innovation, Profits, Growth, and Social Good.

Kanter is a recognized leader on the subjects of innovation, strategy and leadership. So near the end of the session I popped a question about the most famous leader in the world, who is suffering from a drop in public opinion polls and experiencing strong headwinds even from his own party in getting programs passed.  I asked, “Is President Obama the the type of 21st century leader you portray in the book, a ‘vanguard’ leader? What do you think of the job he is doing?”

Here is what she said.

“President Obama is subject to Kanter’s Law, which says everything can look like a failure in the middle. He has been in office less than a year, has tackled big problems -– big problems are always controversial — and yet he is strong and steady and focused on purpose. Therefore I bet that despite the controversy, he will get a health care bill passed and make progress on these issues.”

She continued with an observation that should give heart to every manager who experiences a depressing time or controversy at work, as we all do. In essence, she says, be true to yourself.

“President Obama keeps reminding Americans of our higher moral purpose and he doesn’t get dragged down into the mud from people attacking him on all sides. That kind of leadership is necessary to deal with volatility, controversy. If you don’t keep centered in a set of moral principles, a sense of purpose, then it is very difficult to see beyond today’s controversy. CEOs of vanguard companies know that this sense of purpose helps them even when the stock price is down or when they know they have to announce a bad quarter. They have a longer-term vision that keeps them focused and helps them weather storms. A leader who has a strong sense of purpose and is willing to seek collaboration is likely to solve problems.”

Management gurus all have different words for this sense of purpose she talks about. Some call it a moral compass. Others term it the “vision thing.” But whatever you call it remember to trust your guiding principles when you hit Kanter’s Law.