If you have been a diligent
student you have spent two or more weeks on the first nine lectures and
associated exercises. By now you may have encountered many things that you need
to change in your management practices. Therefore it’s a good time to stop,
review the material covered so far and begin to develop a plan to put into
practice those changes in your behavior that you now know are necessary. If you
wait until the end of your study to start implementing changes either you will
be overwhelmed or you will have forgotten many essential items. This review is
brief, but you should spend several hours or even several days working on the
planning called for in the exercise.
Two claims were central to the
first nine lectures:
–
Managers must increase worker motivation and apply
process improvement to achieve high organizational effectiveness
–
An effective leadership approach is to integrate Theory
Z (participative management in a MBO environment) with a proven process
improvement approach
The bulk of the material
presented so far dealt with motivating your workers. Key points included:
–
People are at different stages on Maslow’s hierarchy of
needs
–
Managers must deal with people according to their needs
–
People are happy when moving up the hierarchy and most
productive at the self-actualization level
–
Theory X,Y,L & Z managers address people’s needs
differently and their styles influence an organization’s effectiveness
–
Most of today’s workers are knowledge workers
–
Understanding and managing knowledge workers requires
that they be treated as individuals.
–
Theory Z management style is best for knowledge workers
but should be modified according to situations and individual worker’s needs.
–
Theory Z managers should deal with workers with a
directing, coaching, supporting or delegating approach depending on the
situation and the type of worker.
If any of these points are
foggy you need to review the lectures until these points are engrained in your
consciousness.
Exercise
Now is the time to retrieve the
draft plan you made at the end of Lecture 6 for improving the motivation of
workers in your organization, along with any additions or modifications you
made after Lecture 7. Review this plan; add any steps you think are needed from
what you learned in Lectures 8 and 9. The result is the first phase of your
leadership action plan. It’s time to begin implementing your plan but first
let’s review your plan to see if it’s an effective plan. I’ll outline a process
that leads to an effective plan. Check your plan against this outline.
Developing an Effective Plan
Use what I call the Super Bowl
Metaphor for developing an effective plan that has three levels: a goal,
measures of effectiveness, and actions. If a coach’s goal is to win the Super
Bowl then first he must define the seven or eight measures that if fulfilled
will likely result in a win. These measures are such things as turnover ratio,
pass completion percentage, yards gained per rush, yards yielded by the defense
per rush, etc. Then he examines his team’s recent performance and his
organization to identify which of the measures must be improved if the team is
going to be a Super Bowl contender. Then he defines the actions that must be
taken in order to improve the measures selected. For example, if pass
completion percentage needs to be improved then there are many possible actions
that might be called for; such as recruit a new quarterback, develop new
passing plays, train the offensive line in pass protection, trade for new
receivers, recruit a new receiver coach, etc. It is from this third level of
actions that the right plan is developed for his team and his organization.
Step 1 Define your goal
Now, examine your plan. Your
goal at this point in the course should be to improve the motivation of your
organization’s workers. You can modify your goal as you progress in this course
and progress in motivating your workers.
Step 2 Develop metrics
Next you should define metrics
that you can track to determine if your plan is working. (The term metric is
often used for the quantitative or qualitative measure of progress toward a
goal.) The most relevant metric is the percent of your workers that have
achieved self-actualization. If you are
very good at assessing people you might estimate where each employee is on the
Maslow hierarchy and track improvements as your plan is implemented. If you are
not naturally good at directly assessing where people are on Maslow’s hierarchy
then develop other measures that are representative of the motivational health
of your organization. Think about other measures that indicate whether people’s
needs are being satisfied; e.g. the number of complaints you hear or hear about
each week, the number of positive or negative remarks you hear each week, the
amount of questionable sick time or personal time being taken, or the number of
persons resigning or requesting transfers each month, or some similar measure.
The metrics should be something you can easily record on a 3 x 5 card in your
pocket or in a checklist on your computer or smartphone. Strive for two or
three simple metrics that are meaningful for your organization and for you.
These metrics are used to track your progress, just as a coach uses the
measures defined in the Super Bowl metaphor to track a team’s progress.
Step 3 Identify Root Causes
Next assess the reasons for
your organization’s motivation level not being as high as it could be. You must
look for “causes” that can be fixed. Think of parallels to the actions
described in the Super Bowl metaphor, except in your case recruiting new
workers or trading workers shouldn’t be high on your list. Reread Lecture 6 if
you have trouble identifying the causes of low motivation. When you have a list
of causes analyze them by treating each to a series of “Whys”. This means
taking each cause in turn and asking why this cause exists. Write down your
best estimate of any underlying causes for the observed cause and continue this
analysis until you satisfy two criteria. The final causes should be root
causes, i.e. there are no more underlying causes that result from asking why
and the root cause must be a cause you can address. Root causes that are due to
organizational culture or the business environment that are outside your
control should be deferred to a later time after you have addressed the root
causes you can control.
Step 4 Develop Solutions
Now ask what you can do to fix
each root cause. It may be to change your management style, e.g. to adapt your
style to the needs of each of your knowledge workers, or it may be to make
changes in business processes in your organization. For now concentrate on the
ones that involve your management style, job assignments, career development
and similar personnel or philosophy related actions. You can add business
process changes later after we have discussed effective ways to improve
processes.
Step 5 Define Actions
The final step in your planning
before you begin implementing your action plan is to define the top seven or
eight most important actions necessary for you to take. Trying to implement a
dozen actions all at once is too hard to do in parallel with the other
responsibilities you have. It’s alright to have less than seven or eight but
don’t take on more. You have to think about how you will take action and you
must make sure you are consistent. Finally, you must be patient. Don’t expect
your organization’s motivation to jump the first month or even first quarter
after you have begun your plan. People are cautious when they see different
behavior in a manager. They wait and watch to see if the behavior is
consistent.
Step 6 Execute the Actions
Now you have an effective plan
and have thought through how you are going to implement it and measure
progress. Put your plan in action.
If you find that the pace of blog posts
isn’t compatible with the pace you would
like to maintain in studying this material you can buy the book “The Manager’s Guide for Effective
Leadership” at:
or hard copy or for nook at:
or hard copy or E-book at:
