30 Finish and Implement Your Action Plan

We last addressed your leadership action plan at the end of the review of lectures 11-16. If you are a diligent student you have been very busy working on the actions you defined for yourself up to that point. That is why you have not been asked to update your plan as you studied lectures 17 – 29. Now it is time to go back to your plan.

First, conduct an assessment of how well you are doing implementing your action plan. Are you making reasonable progress on every item? If so, you deserve a pat on the back. Are there planed actions that you have found difficult to implement? If there are, go back to the lecture that gave rise to the difficult actions and review the lecture to see if you are missing anything in your implementation efforts. Are there any actions you have dropped? Reevaluate your reasons for dropping these actions. It may be that you just deferred some actions to put more effort on others. It may be time to pick such actions up again. It may be that you decided you didn’t really need to work on some actions. Think again about these actions and see if you made wise decisions. After asking and answering these questions assess whether you are ready to implement more actions or if you need to continue on your current plan for a while. If you conclude you need to work on your current plan longer before adding more actions then schedule a time when you believe you will be ready to add more actions and put it on your calendar.

Now you are ready to continue to build your plan. Finish your plan now even if you aren’t going to work on new actions for some time. Finishing your plan now helps ingrain what you have recently studied. It is also easier to do when the material in the final lectures is fresh in your mind. A list of 21 questions relating to the material in lectures 17-29 follows to guide you in finishing your plan:

1.     Does your organization compete on a national or global basis?

2.     If so, have you committed to developing an organization with the skills and experience to prevail in competition at this level?

3.     Are your recruiting and training processes robust enough to build the quality of organization you need?

4.     Do you know if your worker’s strengths are well matched to their jobs and if you do, are they?

5.     Are you developing your successor?

6.     Are you managing your time effectively with time allocated for the physical, mental and spiritual aspects of your life?

7.     Are you scheduling your time by the week and following your schedules?

8.     Are you dictating instead of typing where it makes sense?

9.     Are you being effective with people and efficient with other work processes?

10.  Have you learned to listen empathically to your workers, your boss, your family?

11.  Have you structured your organization’s meetings so that you have effective communications with your workers without wasting their time?

12.  Have you organized the work in your organization so that you do not have highly paid workers doing work that could be done just as well by lower skilled and lower paid workers?

13.  Are you managing risks effectively using sound risk management methods in all your organization’s work?

14.  Have you read Goldratt’s books on Theory of Constraints and reviewed your organization’s major processes to ensure the theory isn’t being violated?

15.  Have you committed to self-study of statistical process control or to attending a training course?

16.  Have you committed to training all of your workers in process improvement techniques? (If you are already doing Six Sigma only selected employees need to be fully trained.)

17.  Have you committed to yourself to empower your workers to control and improve their own processes once they have been properly trained? (Be careful with this if your process improvement strategy is Six Sigma and you are training only part of your workers.)

18.  Have you begun continuous process improvement in your organization?

19.  Are you practicing how to think statistically?

20.  Have you stopped asking for explanations of common cause variation in processes in your organization?

21.  Have you stopped inventing explanations for common cause variation in required reporting to your superiors?

By the time you have finished reviewing these questions and adding to your leadership action plan as indicated by your answers you should have a comprehensive plan. It is likely to take several years to fully implement your plan, depending on the state of your management maturity and your organization’s maturity. This is a lot of work but it is well worth it. If you are working in a stable environment and in a culture that allows you to implement your plan you will achieve an organization that is 20 to 30% more effective than when you started. You will be better able to prevail in today’s highly competitive and stressful work environment. You and your workers will be spending less time on crisis management and more time doing high quality work. You will have the time to effectively lead your organization in achieving strategic objectives rather than having to divert time to resolve daily crises. Nearly all will be enjoying their jobs more.

Get busy on your plan and make it work.

If you have completed the study of each posted lecture you may wish to have a hard or electronic copy of this material close at hand. You can buy the book “The Manager’s Guide for Effective Leadership” in hard copy or for Kindle at:

http://www.amazon.com/Managers-Guide-Effective-Leadership-Organizations/dp/1449000673/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1346946310&sr=8-2&keywords=Joe+Jenney

or hard copy or for nook at:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/Joe-Jenney?keyword=Joe+Jenney&store=book

or hard copy or E-book at:

http://bookstore.authorhouse.com/Products/SKU-000269270/The-Managers-Guide-for-Effective-Leadership.aspx

24 B The Risk Register

The risk register ranks risks by the dollar value of each risk according to the operational definition of risk given earlier. Constructing the risk register on a spreadsheet allows risks to be sorted by dollar value so that the highest risks are always on top of the list. The risk register also facilitates keeping all risks in the same data base even though management actions may be active on only the top five or ten at any time. When a high risk is mitigated the expected dollar value of the risk is reduced and it falls out of the top five or ten but is still on the list. This enables reviewing mitigated risks to ensure they remain mitigated or to readdress a risk at a later time when all the higher risks have been mitigated to even lower values. An example of a simple risk register constructed on a spread sheet is shown in figure 9.

Figure 9.  An example template of a risk register constructed in columns on a spread sheet.

The risk type and impact if risk occurs are usually described as “if”, “then” statements. This helps the management team remember specifically what each risk entails as they conduct reviews over the life of the activity. Expected values are expressed in dollars, which facilitates both ranking and decisions about how much resources should be assigned to mitigation activities. I am assuming of course that in managing activities in your organization it is the practice to hold some fraction of the budget in reserve to handle unforeseen events. It is this reserve budget that is assigned to risk mitigation activities. Risk mitigation actions should be budgeted and scheduled as part on on-going work. A failure many inexperienced managers make is handling risks outside of the mainline budget and schedule. This undisciplined approach often leads to risk management degenerating into an action item list and finally to a reactive approach to unexpected events rather that a proactive approach to reduce the risks systematically.

A more complete risk register template than the example shown in figure 9 might contain columns for the risk number, title, description (if), impact (then), types (three columns: cost, schedule, quality or technical), probability of occurrence, cost impact, schedule impact, mitigation plan and mitigation schedule. The form of the risk register template is not critical so the team managing the risks should construct a template that contains the information they feel they need to effectively manage risks.

The risk register, if properly maintained and managed, is a sufficient tool for risk management on small and short duration projects. Setting aside an arbitrary management reserve budget to manage risks is ok for small projects. Portions of the reserve are allocated to mitigation of risks and the budgets and expenses for risk mitigation can be folded into the overall cost management system. Large, long duration projects or high value projects warrant a more focused approach to budgeting for risk management.

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” in hard copy or for Kindle at:

http://www.amazon.com/Managers-Guide-Effective-Leadership-Organizations/dp/1449000673/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1346946310&sr=8-2&keywords=Joe+Jenney

or hard copy or for nook at:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/Joe-Jenney?keyword=Joe+Jenney&store=book

or hard copy or E-book at:

http://bookstore.authorhouse.com/Products/SKU-000269270/The-Managers-Guide-for-Effective-Leadership.aspx

Review of Lectures 11-16

We observed three lessons from the discussion of the “lost on the moon” exercise in lecture 11:

·       Teamwork in more effective than individual efforts in solving complex problems.

·       Effective teamwork doesn't just happen by assigning people to a team. It’s important that they are trained or mentored in how to work together in a way that utilizes the best knowledge and skills of each team member.

·       People must be in job assignments that match their styles. Not every worker does well on a team; some are best as individual contributors.

There were two messages in our brief review of Stephan Covey’s teachings on habit 5 from the The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People in lecture 12. We learned that if we expect people to listen to our logical arguments we must first establish our credibility with them, and second, we must listen empathically to them until they are convinced we understand their concerns and problems. Only if they are provided evidence that we are someone they should listen to and only if they believe we understand their situation will they listen effectively to us. The hardest part for most people is listening empathically. Effective managers must learn this habit and use it with their workers, their bosses and the customers for their work.

Lectures 13-16 addressed fear in the workplace. Key points included:

•        Fear of perceived consequences (real or not) causes workers to avoid proper actions and substitute inappropriate or ineffective actions.

•        Managers induce fear by negativity, disloyalty to their boss or to the enterprise and excessive emphasis on numerical goals.

•        Oppressive policies and procedures written in attempts to control the behavior of the 5% of workers that cause problems are counterproductive. They cause fear and distrust in the many good workers and don’t deter the few problem workers.

•        A poor business environment can induce fear; counter this fear with openness and honesty.

•        Blaming people for problems caused by the system induces fear

–       Remember the 85/15 rule. Problems are caused by the system 85% of the time and by people only 15% of the time.

•        Managers that focus on fixing the system and seeking help from workers without expressing negativity build trust and reduce fear.

•        Energy spent on issues you can influence is positive and grows your circle of influence. Energy spent on issues you can’t influence is negative and shrinks your circle of influence.

•        Fear of change and of knowledge are inherent fears. Managers have to deal with both and must learn to help workers overcome fear of change.

•        Cultural change requires patience, persistence and typically training time of about 10% of the total annual hours worked by the organization.

Exercise

You last reviewed and modified your action plan at the end of Lecture 13. Review your plan after studying the review of lectures 13- 16. Are there changes or additions you should make based on what you have learned in lectures 14 - 16? If so, make the changes now.

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:

http://www.amazon.com/Managers-Guide-Effective-Leadership-Organizations/dp/1449000673/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1346946310&sr=8-2&keywords=Joe+Jenney

or hard copy or for nook at:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/Joe-Jenney?keyword=Joe+Jenney&store=book

or hard copy or E-book at:

http://bookstore.authorhouse.com/Products/SKU-000269270/The-Managers-Guide-for-Effective-Leadership.aspx

15 Effective Organizational Polices

Just like numerical goals there are good and bad policies and policies affect the motivation of workers. Bad policies are demotivating just like bad goals. Good and bad policies are described and examples of each are presented in this lecture.

Organizational polices are unfortunately one of those necessary things for which doing everything right only gets you to a neutral position with respect to motivating people but bad organizational policies can destroy trust and induce fear. This means that fixing bad policies can improve the organizations effectiveness by removing the source of some of the mistrust and fear that cause ineffectiveness. However, creating the world’s best policy won’t do any more for effectiveness that an adequate policy that workers trust and believe is fair. Therefore we want to concentrate on identifying and fixing bad policies because they are a form of negativity.

How do we identify bad policies? There are a couple of easy clues. Policies written for the 5% of employees that cause problems are rarely effective with the 5% and usually alienate the 95% of employees that are excellent workers, with the result that the productivity of the 95% is reduced.  This is because the 5% that cause problems are almost professional problem causers. They ignore polices, either good ones or bad ones. They typically don’t even consider policies or treat them as if they are for others but not them. Some of these problem people treat bad policies as a challenge to be overcome.

Managers have to deal directly with the 5% that are problem causers, typically this means getting them out of the organization as they don’t usually respond well to direct oversight or corrective action. Remember the other 95% expects you, as the manager, to deal with these problem causers and they expect you to change or get rid of problem people as long as you are fair about it. This means giving them the chance to change, but firing them if they don’t. If a manager doesn’t deal directly with problem people then the manager loses the respect of the 95% and effectiveness is reduced.

Policies written for the 5% reduce effectiveness of the 95% because the 95% see such policies as written for them as well as the 5% and they reason that management has such policies because management doesn’t trust them. They resent not being trusted and question whether they should trust management. This resentment takes energy that should be directed toward productive work.

The second tip off to bad policies is that bad policies are typically long, complex and often punishing. Why? Because they are intended to thwart people that abuse simple policies, i.e. the 5%. It takes time away from more important job functions for good employees to learn and comply with long, complex and punishing policies. Such policies convey that the organization does not trust the employee. For good reason because usually such policies are written by managers who don’t trust employees. Recall that good employees feel that if the organization does not trust them then probably they should not trust the organization. If there is not an environment of trust then there is not an environment of high effectiveness.

Managers can’t fix this perception of mistrust caused by bad policies by telling the “good” workers that the policies don’t apply to them but only to “bad” workers. Policies are necessary in any organization to provide guidelines fair to all so this approach requires two sets of policies, either two formal sets or a formal set and a set applied at the managers discretion. It is far better to have a set of policies written for the 95%. The fact that policies written for the 95% won’t work for the 5% is immaterial, no policies will work for 5% except those that enable managers to remove people.

Some will argue that the bad policies are necessary; otherwise it would be impossible to control the bad employees and fire them without data in their personnel records. This is a misconception. Data in personnel files is almost never of any aid in dealing with problem employees. In my personal experience I have had to deal with numerous bad employees, typically left in place by previous ineffective managers. I don’t recall ever finding anything useful in any of these people’s personnel files. It was always necessary to build the case for dismissal from scratch and good policies were just as effective in eliminating such employees as bad policies.

At this point I must remind the student to not be hasty in judging whether an employee is a “bad” employee. Don’t make judgments on the basis of one assignment or one mistake. Be patient, if behavior is repeated over and over then the manager can be sure of making the right decision. Note that the manager must not act too hastily but must not let problem people continue to cause problems. It is better to wait a little too long than to act too hastily. People are forgiving if you take a little too long but they are not forgiving if they think you have removed a “good” person by mistake.

Now let’s examine examples of bad and good policies:

Bad Policy

If an employee is absent, arrives late or leaves early without permission of the employee’s manager more than twice then the manager must file a form 13 with the personnel department. If three form 13s are filed then the employee must be referred to the personnel department for counseling.

If an employee needs time off for personal business then the employee must notify the manager a full day ahead. The equivalent of two days per year is allowed with pay if the manager is notified at least a full day ahead. Violation of this policy will result in no pay for time away from the job.

Better Policy

Notify your manager as far in advance as you can if you need time off for personal business or know you are going to be late or absent so that the manager can plan work a rounds for your work.

Bad Policy

Employees may take off the funeral day and up to two other consecutive days off for deaths in the immediate family. An employee’s immediate family is considered, spouse, children, parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters, step-parents, son-in-laws, daughter-in-laws and parents, grandparents and siblings of the spouse. The personnel department may require verification of death if the employee takes time off for more than two funerals in one year.

Better Policy

Make arrangements with your manager as early as possible if you require time off to attend the funeral of a family member or close friend.

I have read that organizations that have changed from “Bad Policies” to “Better Policies” have found that time away from the job decreases. Why do you think this happens? The reason is that the better policies foster trust and trust leads to commitment so that the employees take off no more time than they need. Bad policies build distrust and undermine commitment so that employees are likely to take the maximum time off permitted.

Exercise

Review your organization’s policies on bereavement, personal time off and absences from the job.

If your organization has good policies then you are fortunate because this will help you build an effective organization. If the polices are bad and you have the power to make changes then make changing the bad policies part of your personal process improvement efforts. If the policies are bad and you have no influence on them you are almost stuck. You cannot disown the bad polices as that is a form of back stabbing and disloyalty to your organization, which is a form of negativism that you must avoid. However, if your style enables people to bring their problems to you then when one of the bad policies causes one of your workers severe problems they are likely to tell you. You can work with the worker and the human relations people to see if in such a case there is a solution that helps the employee and is still fair to all. If you make a sincere attempt to understand the worker’s situation and if you make a sincere attempt to find a fair solution without badmouthing the bad policy, or the human relations people if no solution can be found, then you are building trust and your time spent is worthwhile.

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:

http://www.amazon.com/Managers-Guide-Effective-Leadership-Organizations/dp/1449000673/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1346946310&sr=8-2&keywords=Joe+Jenney

or hard copy or for nook at:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/Joe-Jenney?keyword=Joe+Jenney&store=book

or hard copy or E-book at:

http://bookstore.authorhouse.com/Products/SKU-000269270/The-Managers-Guide-for-Effective-Leadership.aspx

14 Managing without Inducing Fear

This lecture introduces a better way to manage than blaming people for the manager’s problems.

Every manager has problems and there is a right and wrong way to react to them. The wrong way is to see people as the cause of the problems and expressing negativity. The right way is to treat problems as the food for improvements; cost reductions and productivity increases. If you are reacting the wrong way then the corrective actions are first, practice and reinforce for others “not expressing negativity”, and second, involve your people in process improvement. If your organization is already involved in a quality improvement program, such as Six Sigma, then you should know how to involve your people in process improvement. If not then work on the first step for now and we will get to process improvement training later.

To understand why blaming people is wrong and improving processes is right we need to review what is called the “85/15 rule”. This is one of those rules that have resulted from the experience of many managers over a long time and is a fundamental basis for process improvement efforts. This rule says that 85% of problems are due to the system, not the people in the system. Therefore managers that blame people for problems are wrong 85% of the time. This induces fear and lowers the organization’s effectiveness. Managers that blame the system and attempt to improve the system are right 85% of the time; an excellent “batting average” in problem solving for managers. Remember that the system is the manager’s responsibility even though workers may own the process involved. Only after there is a fully trained, empowered and experienced workforce can the manager relinquish some responsibility for improving the system.

A way to test how well you are progressing in handling problems is to evaluate your degree of enlightenment as a manager when problems arise. The higher you are on the following list the higher your enlightenment is in reacting to problems.

•        Changes system (high enlightenment)

•        Blames no one

•        Blames himself or herself

•        Blames other(s) (low enlightenment)

The flow chart in figure 5 below shows that if a manager reacts properly the reaction creates a positive feedback, making it easier to handle future problems.

 Figure 5. A process for managing problems without inducing fear in individual contributors.

An effective manager follows the process outlined in Figure 5 when problems occur. First the manager avoids blaming people, i.e. expressing negativity, and instead questions whether the system needs to be changed. Even if the problem arose due to a mistake of a worker the manager should question whether the system can be changed so that the same mistake won’t happen again or so that the workers job is easier and less prone to result in mistakes. Typically, the problem is associated with a process owned by a subordinate so the manager should seek help and information from the subordinate. The details and tools associated with process improvement are covered later but it is always better to have the process owner involved in changing the process than having a manager do the work. Effective process improvement focuses on the process, not the people, and bases decisions on data rather than gut feel or intuition if at all possible.

The process described in Figure 5 results in happier workers because they don’t get blamed for problems and managers demonstrate that they care enough to get involved and help fix the system. This builds respect for managers, commitment to organizations and improves motivation of workers.

Exercise

1.     Review problems faced in your organization over the past few months

2.     Try to recall if you expressed any form of negativity. Think of specific incidents where:

a.      You blamed people for a problem that may have been a system problem

b.     You blamed the boss

c.      You blamed yourself

3.     Write down a better way you could have handled each incident

4.     Now review the corrections to your action plan that you made after Lecture 13. Does your plan include changing your approach to problem solving in a way that raises your problem solving batting average and does not induce fear in your organization. If so proceed with implementing the changes you have added to your plan.

If your analysis says you have habits that may be inducing fear you should change your behavior. This is about the most difficult thing for anyone to do (change behavior). Changing what we do is easy in comparison to changing how we behave. First, we must be honest with ourselves and want to change. Then we must know how to change. The key at this point is to avoid inducing fear, which undermines the organizations effectiveness and our effectiveness as a manager.

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:

http://www.amazon.com/Managers-Guide-Effective-Leadership-Organizations/dp/1449000673/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1346946310&sr=8-2&keywords=Joe+Jenney

or hard copy or for nook at:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/Joe-Jenney?keyword=Joe+Jenney&store=book

or hard copy or E-book at:

http://bookstore.authorhouse.com/Products/SKU-000269270/The-Managers-Guide-for-Effective-Leadership.aspx

11 Teamwork

Working in teams is the most effective approach for complex work. However effective teamwork doesn't just happen. This lecture examines some of the issues a manager encounters in facilitating teamwork and describes tools that help launch teams.

If this course was being offered in a group training environment this lecture would be a group exercise that is a classic in management training. Since it is a self-study course you cannot have the benefit of experiencing the impact of this exercise. I am constrained to describe the exercise and what happens to participants. Unfortunately you are constrained to read and visualize it rather than experience it firsthand. You are getting visual learning (reading) rather than learning by doing (the exercise) and for most people learning by doing is much more effective. We encounter this deficiency several times in this course so you need to use your imagination to visualize the experience I have observed others get from these exercises.

The team work or consensus seeking exercise is called Lost on the Moon. It is almost always a powerful demonstration that teams perform better than individuals in problem solving. The participants are told that they are members of a space crew that is forced to land on the lighted surface of the moon about 200 miles from their mother ship. They are given a list of 15 items that have survived undamaged with them. The objective is to prioritize the list in importance to their survival until they reach the mother ship. The items on the list include things that are very useful for their survival and items that are less useful or even useless in the moon environment. After the individual students complete the exercise they are instructed to form teams of four to five individuals and repeat the exercise as a team. When the teams have completed the exercise the results are scored for the individuals and for the teams by comparing their prioritized lists to the correct list.

I suspect you don’t find it surprising that typically the team scores are higher than any individual scores of the team members. Usually there is a question period where the team members are asked to discuss why their team score was higher than the individual scores. They often describe how ideas from different team members were helpful in reaching the best prioritization. The instructor then nods knowingly to accent the benefits of teamwork and consensus seeking in problem solving, whether it’s for an exercise or a real job problem.

What you may not find obvious is that sometimes the benefits of teamwork are brought out in a more dramatic way. Let me describe the results of one such training session that I conducted. The trainees were engineers and scientists. Many of the engineers already worked together daily in a team environment. Most of the scientists tended to be more individual contributors although they were working on similar projects as the engineers. When it came time to form teams those that worked together daily quickly grouped into teams leaving the individual contributors left over so that they formed a team. Two teams stood out. One contained the smartest and most productive scientists in the organization, all excellent and productive employees that worked mostly as individual contributors. The other was a group of young engineers with many years less experience than the scientists. They had been assigned to the lowest priority project in the organization where they worked closely together every day. There were no prima donas in this group and they demonstrated true teamwork.

As you might expect the individual scores of the scientists were considerably higher than the individual scores of the young engineers. What was more interesting was that the team score of the young engineers was considerably higher than the team score of the scientists and the team score of the scientists was lower than many of their individual scores.

I was able to observe how each of the teams addressed the exercise. The young engineers wasted no time in getting to the heart of the exercise. They also used every minute available in intense discussion and debated every item on the list as they made their decisions. Every member contributed just as they were used to doing in their daily work. In contrast the team used to working as individual contributors was not as intense and didn't interact as smoothly. They worked very hard on getting the top five items correct and then gave only minimal attention to the remaining items on the list. If I remember correctly they didn't even use all the allotted time to finish the exercise.

The results of the two teams’ performance are very instructive. The higher individual scores of the experienced scientists showed that they had the potential for a much better team score than the team score of the young engineers. However, the scientists were not used to working together as a team and didn’t handle the team dynamics as well. As a result they did not capitalize on their advantage and didn’t score as well working as a team as some of them scored individually. The young engineers were experienced in working as a team. They demonstrated very effective team dynamics and thereby raised their team score well above any of their individual scores.

Several lessons can be derived from the results of the two teams in the exercise.

First, teamwork is more effective than individual efforts in solving complex problems. Second, effective teamwork doesn't just happen by assigning people to a team. It’s important that they are trained or mentored in how to work together in ways that utilizes the best knowledge and skills of each team member. Finally, note how the exercise demonstrated the value of having people in job assignments that match their styles. The scientists performed very well as individual contributors, which was their normal assignment. The young engineers were a dynamite team. If one of the young engineers had been given an individual contributor assignment he would have likely performed under expectations. Similarly if one of the scientists had been given a team assignment he would likely have been unhappy and not been as valuable a contributor to the team as he would have been as an individual contributor to the teams efforts.

Typically work doesn't automatically divide itself into stuff for teams and stuff for individual contributors. Therefore how should a manager assign people to projects when the people are a mix of individual performers and people that work best in teams? It depends on the availability of skills for assignment to the project. If there is an abundance of available skills and if the project manager knows which are individual contributors and which are team workers then the project tasks can be staffed by selecting from the available skill pool so that team workers aren't mixed with individual contributors on tasks that require close coordination.

If there are a minimum number of required skills then there isn't any choice at the beginning. The project manager should hold regular project team coordinating meetings where progress on tasks is reviewed, resources are assigned or reassigned and key information that the whole team needs to hear is exchanged. At the first sign of trouble on a task check the staffing on that task to see if the team dynamics is working. Poor team dynamics is the number one cause of poor performance on projects so it is the natural cause to be investigated first anyway. If the team dynamics does seem to be a contributing cause of problems on the task then see if it is possible to exchange people with other projects so that the dynamics are improved. This causes a temporary disruption to both projects but that is preferable to leaving in place a team structure that isn't working and won’t improve on its own.

If the team dynamics can’t be improved by changing assignments then it is up to the project leader to work with the team members to set up working relationships that are sufficiently acceptable to all members that the work gets done. One possibility to explore is setting up a mentoring relationship between an experienced individual contributor and an inexperienced person that works better in a team. The primary thing to remember is to never let a team dynamics problem go unaddressed.

Tools for launching new teams

Even if the manager has selected a team with high potential for working together well that alone isn't sufficient to avoid team problems. There are two tools that help launch teams so that many problems are avoided. The first tool is a roles and responsibilities meeting. This meeting should be held as soon as possible after forming the team. The manager facilitates the meeting and introduces each person along with his or her assigned role on the team. Then the team members in turn discuss how they understand the other team member’s roles and how they understand their role. By the time each member has had a turn there is usually consensus on roles and responsibilities of every team member. Even though a manager believes the role of each member is clear from the manager’s introduction the discussion often reveals that the team members have a different interpretation and the meeting resolves these differences.

The second tool helps a team that has been assigned to a new project gain common understanding of the work they have before them. This tool is called a Quality Table 1 (also called a House of Quality) and is from the methodology called Quality Function Deployment (QFD). I have found that if a team assigned to a new project develops a Quality Table 1 together the team members reach a common understanding of the requirements for the project and the approaches needed to satisfy these requirements. In addition they develop criteria for evaluating their work during the project.

If you are not familiar with QFD look it up in Wikipedia or at the QFD Institute web site, www.qfdi.org. Although QFD is typically described in terms associated with engineering and manufacturing it is much more generally useful. I don’t discuss QFD in this course because a manager does not need to be an expert in QFD. It is advisable to be sufficiently familiar with the methodology to facilitate a team in developing a Quality Table 1. It is very beneficial to have access to an expert; either within the manager’s organization, within the enterprise or available as a consultant. Software is available that is useful for implementing a Quality Table 1. For example, free templates for implementing Quality Tables in Excel or OpenOffice calc are available at www.qfdonline.com.

Exercise

1.   Even if it is not in your action plan, now is a good time to evaluate if any of your workers are in job assignments that do not fit their style. Consider those workers that are not as productive as you think they should be. Think about their personalities and how they have performed in different assignments. Are any of them perhaps in an assignment that isn’t suitable? If so, consider how you might change the assignment. If you think a change might be helpful but it isn’t required for any obvious business reason you should discuss the change with the worker before making any changes. You may find that your assessment is correct and the worker welcomes the change or you may find that the worker is happy in the current assignment in spite of your assessment. If you have subordinate managers you might discuss any workers that they have that are considered problem performers to see if a change in assignment might be in order. In this case be careful not to trample on your subordinate manager’s turf. You can make suggestions or observations but the subordinate manger should make the decision. Remember the first rule of a manager. Attend to your own processes. A critical failure of some managers is that they continue to work on the job they had before their current assignment with the result that they interfere with their subordinate’s jobs and their own job is neglected. This is usually because they are more comfortable doing the previous job and may not know how to execute the processes associated with the new job. Don’t fall into this trap.

2.   Review how your organization is organized for its work. Is the work done by teams, by individual contributors or a mix? Are there opportunities for more teamwork? How would changing to more teamwork affect the organization? Can beneficial changes be made without significant disruption? Do the styles of the workers fit having additional teams or closer teamwork? Depending on this assessment you should consider making the changes so that the organization can benefit from the advantages of team problem solving? Don’t forget that any new teams need training or mentoring in how to work effectively as a team.

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:

http://www.amazon.com/Managers-Guide-Effective-Leadership-Organizations/dp/1449000673/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1346946310&sr=8-2&keywords=Joe+Jenney

or hard copy or for nook at:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/Joe-Jenney?keyword=Joe+Jenney&store=book

or hard copy or E-book at:

http://bookstore.authorhouse.com/Products/SKU-000269270/The-Managers-Guide-for-Effective-Leadership.aspx

10 Review and Effective Action Planning

Review of Lectures 2-9

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:

http://www.amazon.com/Managers-Guide-Effective-Leadership-Organizations/dp/1449000673/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1346946310&sr=8-2&keywords=Joe+Jenney

or hard copy or for nook at:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/Joe-Jenney?keyword=Joe+Jenney&store=book

or hard copy or E-book at:

http://bookstore.authorhouse.com/Products/SKU-000269270/The-Managers-Guide-for-Effective-Leadership.aspx

Lecture 2 B What is Effective Leadership?

Why so much training as defined in Lecture 2A?
 • In my experience it takes 40 to 60 hours of training in the materials covered in this course before managers experience an “aha” moment; i.e. sees that they need to change their management methods and/or their behavior.
 • Until this “paradigm shift” happens the manager is not able to fully motive employees and therefore cannot get the potential best productivity for the manager’s organization.
 • Additional self-study is necessary to expand the managers understanding of these method
 – It is assumed the student knows basic Management by Objective (MBO) or Value Based Management (VBM) techniques, if not then additional self-study is needed
 – This course is only an introduction to process improvement techniques. Self-study or additional courses are needed to understand and apply these techniques properly
 • Finally, it is necessary for each member of your organization to learn new problem solving and process improvement skills if such skills are not part of your organization’s current capabilities.

You might think that there is no way you can justify providing 40 hours or more training to every worker in your organization. I know the feeling. I was faced with the same problem when I embarked on the journey I am recommending for you. I didn’t see how my organization could spend the money required to train everyone. It took some hard arguing by key members of my staff to convince me there was no other way to achieve the objectives my boss and I expected. It turned out they were right and not only could we afford it but, in hindsight, we couldn’t afford not to do the training. It took the entire available training budget for two years and stopped all other training but the results were an estimated return of $5 to $8 for each dollar of training money spent and the return was realized within 3 to 18 months. No other investment we could have made would have been as effective.

If at this point you are still skeptical please take the time to read the following description of what happened in an organization I managed when we followed the methods of this course. If you are ready to start studying you can skip this story and go to Lecture 3.

 My Experience with These Methods
 I became a general manager of a manufacturing company with a mandate to improve profitability. The company had a good record with its customers for delivering high quality products on time. However, this was achieved at considerable cost. The company was barely cost competitive with its competitor and was not making the return on investment the parent company desired. The managers were a mix of good and not so good. The workers had excellent work ethics but there had been labor union problems and unrest remained a significant undercurrent. I had two things in my favor. First, my predecessor had instilled a culture of being winners. Whether it was quality, health and safety or some community activity the employees had a strong desire to be the best and most were willing to work to achieve that goal. Second, my boss was supportive and gave me the freedom to do what was necessary to improve the profitability of the company.

My staff and I followed the methods taught in this course and achieved spectacular results. It took several years but we gained a 20 percent cost advantage on our competitor and it was eventually forced out of the business segment we addressed. We were able to consolidate two manufacturing plants into one of the original plants and drop leased properties while maintaining the same sales level. Our labor problems disappeared and workers that had desired to become union managers instead asked to become company managers. Empowered worker teams made major cost savings by improving their processes and they were excited to have the opportunity. It was easy to see that once they were trained and empowered they became self-motivated. Instead of thinking about what they didn’t like about their jobs they thought about how they could make their jobs easier and how they could save the company money. It may seem strange but the workers actually were energized when they could make changes that saved money. When I walked through the plant they would come to me to tell me about savings they had achieved. There were smiles on their faces and enthusiasm in their voices. When my boss made his quarterly visits I had one or two teams make a presentation to him on their cost saving projects. They and my boss loved these sessions.

I left the company at that point but visited my successor several years later to ask him if our methods had proven effective over the long term or were just a short term response to our management attention. His answer was that the methods were effective over the long term. Effectiveness had improved to the point that he was no longer involved in day to day operations. He said the workers took care of normal work and any problems that came up. They only came to him for his signature for new capital equipment. This enabled him up to spend his time addressing the long term objectives of the company.

 Few of the things we did were specific to manufacturing businesses. Most apply to any organization. We applied quality improvement techniques and empowerment of workers across the company. We also added theory of constraints and just-in-time methods to manufacturing and Taguchi design of experiment methods to both engineering and manufacturing. We not only trained managers to empower their employees we removed any managers that were unable to adjust to what they perceived as loss of control of their workers. A couple of these managers were considered essential to the business due to their long experience and knowledge. However, when they were replaced with managers more amenable to empowering workers the productivity in their departments improved substantially. Many of our successes came in the finance and human resources departments and had no relation to the specifics of manufacturing.

 There were four lessons that we learned; some the hard way of doing things wrong at first, failing and having to make changes in our approach before we achieved the desired results. The four are:
1. The methods we used were so effective that there was no other way we could have received as large a return on the investment of our time and money. We concluded early on that our competitor would become uncompetitive with us and be forced out of our business segment if he did not adopt similar methods. He did not as far as I know and later did drop out.
 2. An organization can only achieve dramatic improvements if the top manager is personally and deeply involved in every new activity.
 3. Training must be doubled or even quadrupled at every level from top manager to lowest level pay grade.
 4. It is cost effective to hire outside expert consultants to guide process improvement methods until internal experts are developed.

  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: http://www.amazon.com/Managers-Guide-Effective-Leadership-Organizations/dp/1449000673/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1346946310&sr=8-2&keywords=Joe+Jenney or hard copy or for nook at: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/Joe-Jenney?keyword=Joe+Jenney&store=book or hard copy or E-book at: http://bookstore.authorhouse.com/Products/SKU-000269270/The-Managers-Guide-for-Effective-Leadership.aspx