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

9 Understanding Knowledge Workers

Knowledge workers require more attention to management style than manual workers. This lecture describes how Theory Z management style should be modified according to situations and to individual knowledge worker’s needs.

In the book cited in Lecture 8 Peter Drucker says knowledge workers are not subordinates, they are associates and they must know more about their specialties and specific jobs than their bosses. In the past manual workers were often constrained to be content to have their job, be paid a reasonable wage and treated fairly. In contrast knowledge workers are less constrained and seek those benefits plus:

•           Challenge

•           Opportunity for achievement

•           Responsibility for their work

•           Rewarding mission

Knowledge workers can set their own goals in support of the organization’s goals and participate in organizational planning and decision making. Knowledge workers make decisions affecting the organization’s results just like managers; they plan, execute and measure. They desire accountability for themselves and want poor performers removed from the organization. They desire clear career ladders in spite of today’s environment of limited opportunities for promotions. (This is true for managers, technical workers, & volunteers.)

Knowledge workers are individuals and must be managed as individuals to maximize organizational effectiveness. The effective leader of knowledge workers must recognize that knowledge workers have different strengths, weaknesses, training needs, learning styles, and values. They perform best in certain environments:

•           Big team, small team, no team

•           Highly structured environment, little structure

•           Decision maker, adviser

•           Leader, follower

They can be at different levels of Maslow’s hierarchy at different times due to both the job environment and environments outside their job. This again calls for treating them as individuals rather than as a homogeneous group of workers.

Here are some ways an effective leader can help knowledge workers manage themselves:

•     Help them know their strengths

•        Don’t focus on their weaknesses until you know and recognize their strengths. As an objective observer you are be able to better assess their strengths and weaknesses than they are. If they know you understand and value their strengths then they can accept or try to improve their weaknesses without being in fear of their weaknesses.

•        Ensure each is in the best environment for his or her strengths and personality

•        Some are best when working by themselves, some in a team and some are best at guiding the work of others.

•        Get to know them and then guide them into the proper role: Leader/follower, decision maker/advisor, etc.

•        Help them keep up with their specialties and develop their career

•        Fight for the budgets necessary to help specialists update their skills from time to time.

•        Take time to have honest discussions of their career paths and, if you can, help them realize their goals. Don’t make promises you can’t keep. It will undermine your credibility and authority.

•        Help them understand how to best communicate with their bosses and coworkers learning     styles (oral, visual, or doing)

•        For example, even though you might know that the big boss is an oral learner your workers may not. Make sure you give them guidance if they are going to be briefing people they are unfamiliar with.

•        Help them manage their time

•        Don’t involve them in unnecessary meetings. Take time to ensure that they understand your instructions and guidelines for any new assignments. Facilitate interactions with other skilled workers whose knowledge or experience they need to utilize. Don’t ask for unnecessary reports. (More on time management later in the course.)

•        Help them improve their processes using modern methods (These are defined in later       lectures)

•        This means ensuring that they have the proper training, then are empowered to change their processes,  have access to all data (such as financial data) necessary to assess changes to their processes and access to any specialists, such as those skilled in statistics or other special methods of process improvement.

You may be getting the impression that being an effective leader of knowledge workers takes more time than traditional management styles. Actually it’s the reverse. The recommendations described above do take time but they enable workers to manage themselves and thereby save the manager from the constant firefighting of crises that consume most traditional managers. If you’re not convinced reread the next to the last paragraph in Lecture 2.

You should not get the impression that having trained, motivated and empowered workers free the manager from the responsibility of providing leadership. The organization’s leader must have active and intimate involvement in the main activities of the organization. The studies of Gary Lynn and Richard Reilly reported in their book Blockbusters- The Five Keys to Developing Great New Products, reveal that highly successful new products, which they call “blockbusters”, were three and one-half times more likely to have senior managers intensely involved in their development than failed product developments. Empowered workers should handle routine work without management involvement but difficult and important work needs leadership by senior managers. Moreover knowledge workers require more than one type of leadership.

Some excellent advice on managing knowledge workers is found in the popular book The One Minute Manager by Kenneth H. Blanchard and Spencer Johnson. The authors recommend that managers match their management approach to the situation and to the needs of the worker. I’ll only summarize their comments on four management approaches to be used with four different types of workers as you can benefit from reading the book.

•           Directing- Specific Instruction & Close Supervision- For Crises and Workers that are Enthusiastic Beginners

•           Coaching- Directing + Explanations, Solicitation of Suggestions & Support- For Disillusioned Learners

•           Supporting-Facilitates Subordinate’s Efforts & Shares Responsibility for Decision Making- For Reluctant Contributors

•           Delegating-Decision Making and Problem Solving Turned Over to Subordinates-For Enthusiastic Contributors that are Highly Competent & Highly Committed

Note that these authors support Drucker’s view that effective leaders must treat knowledge workers as individuals to the point of changing their management style according to the individual worker’s needs. Also the four approaches defined by Blanchard and Johnson can be viewed as variations of the basic Theory Z management style.

Exercise:

1.         Think about the last crisis in your organization. Did you adopt a “directing” style by accepting the leadership role, giving specific instructions and providing close supervision until the crisis was resolved? Or did you seek to delegate this tough task to someone else?

2.         If this crisis were to reappear rehearse how you will handle it next time.

3.         Pick six of your workers or peers and see if you can classify them as:

a.         Enthusiastic beginners

b.         Disillusioned learners

c.         Reluctant contributors

d.         Highly competent and highly committed enthusiastic contributors

4.         Think about your recent involvements with workers in each of the four categories. Did you adopt your style to the worker’s needs?  Rehearse how you will interact with these workers in your next interactions.

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

8 Evolution of the Manager’s Job

In this lecture we address the following questions:

•           How has the complexity of products and services trended over the last 50 years in the following fields?

–          Consumer product design, production and marketing?

–          Health care?

–          Banking?

–          Government?

•           Will this trend continue?

•           How has the change in complexity changed jobs and workers?

•           How has this changed the role of managers?

Management developed to serve the assembly line for relatively simple products. It was adopted from the command structure of the military, the only existing model for management at the time, other than religious organizations, which typically have management structures similar to that of the military. This was a reasonable approach since workers of that time were primarily “manual” workers so that “good” workers needed to follow instructions and be efficient. A manager could measure worker performance by the quality and quantity of work performed. The work environment was not unlike the military so that the military based management approach was effective at that time; when it wasn’t used to oppress workers.

Products and services (public and private) have become more complex over the years and tend to change more frequently. Much of this new complexity is enabled by the rapid development of low cost electronics, computers and software. This increased complexity leads to creation of more and more job specialties and we can expect the trend to continue. These new specialty workers are knowledge workers rather than manual workers; they make decisions and they plan, organize, integrate, motivate and measure, just like executives.

Managers pre-WW II usually were experienced in several different jobs and often skilled in most of the jobs they managed because they had worked these jobs as they progressed up the organizational ladder. Modern managers cannot be experienced or skilled in most of the jobs they manage because the jobs change as fast as their careers evolve. As discussed in the introduction to this course, the flatter organizations popular today mean less opportunity for promotions and therefore less opportunity for new experience that prepares a manager for more senior positions. Therefore today’s managers must lead and motivate specialists without having the skills of the specialists they are leading. This is a key reason Theory Z management style is more effective than X or Y in today’s work environment.

To summarize this lecture: Modern workers are “Knowledge” workers. “Good” workers are effective; they must get the right things done as well as doing things right. Therefore the old performance measures don’t apply. Today managers must measure results that are typically not traceable to the quality and quantity of work completed by the knowledge workers. Today managers shouldn’t “manage” knowledge workers in the traditional sense. Peter Drucker says you must know the strengths and knowledge of knowledge workers and lead them so that their specific characteristics make each of them productive. (See p. 81, The Essential Drucker by Peter Drucker)

Exercise

1.         Compare the goods and/or services produced by your organization today with those produced five and ten years ago. Do today’s goods or services offer more features? Are they more complex as a result? Is the quality the same or changed?

2.         Compare the business processes used to produce your goods or services. How have they changed compared to the processes of five and ten years ago?

3.         Are workers with advanced degrees or special skills required in the production of your goods or services?

4.         Would you classify workers in your organization as “manual” workers or “knowledge” workers?

5.         Do you understand fully how to do every job that you manage or hope to manage?

6.         Given your answers to questions 1-5 would you say that a traditional manager is best for your organization or is a manager that knows the strengths and knowledge of each worked needed to make them productive, as described by Drucker?

7.         Which management style (Theory X, Y, or Z) best fits the task of managers of knowledge workers as described by Drucker?

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

7 The Theory Z Manager

The concept of management style was introduced in Lecture 3 where Theory X, Theory Y and Theory Z styles were mentioned but not defined. Now we define and contrast them in hopes that the advantages of the Theory Z style are made clear. This lecture is short but the concepts are fundamental so do the exercise carefully. Much of the material in this brief lecture is shamelessly borrowed from Management in Action by William Hitt, See page 12.

Management styles can be grouped by the two parameters that measure a manager’s concern for productivity and for people. A convenient way to examine Theory X, Y, L and Z managers is to compare their concerns for people and productivity as shown in figure 3.

 Figure 3 Two Measures of Managers’ Style are Their Concerns for Productivity and for People

Few managers fit in the same box all the time and for all situations but examining managers with this simple approach is instructive. The Theory L manager doesn’t need discussion as it should be obvious that a manager that has little concern for either people or productivity isn’t an effective manager. A simple view of Theory X managers is that they believe workers:

•           Are lazy

•           Must be controlled and punished when things go wrong

•           Prefer to be directed

In contrast Theory Y managers believe workers:

•           Accept and seek responsibility

•           Will exercise self-direction and self-control

•           Have intellectual potentialities only partially utilized

Is either of these theories all right or all wrong? No, in fact a few workers do fit the Theory X manger’s views. However, ~95% of workers closer fit theory Y manager’s view and if saddled with a Theory X manager are likely to respond with low effectiveness (even though their productivity may appear acceptable) because their needs for safety, belongingness and self-esteem aren’t being addressed. They may even change jobs, if that option is available. This leaves the Theory X manager with more and more workers that fit the 5% description, thereby making this manager’s organization less and less effective over time.

A problem with Theory Y managers is that most workers, while fitting the Theory Y expectations in general, need leadership to perform at the level of their capability. The Theory Y manager’s lack of focus on objectives allows his people to underperform.

According to Hitt Theory Z managers have as much focus on productivity as Theory X managers but Theory Z managers believe teamwork is essential to productivity and therefore their beliefs are:

•           People are basically good

•           Treat people as persons, not objects

•           People are “works in process”, not static

•           Value individual differences

•           Value the individual as a whole person

•           Prize openness and honesty

 These beliefs lead Theory Z managers to:

•           Foster trust

•           Deal with differences of viewpoints

•           Take planned risks with people

•           Emphasize cooperation

Thinking back to the previous lecture we see that the behavior of a Theory Z manager helps workers move from left to right on Maslow’s hierarchy because their needs for safety, belongingness and self-esteem are being addressed. In time a Theory Z manager’s trust in people results in a returned trust in the manager. When mutual trust is achieved the workers are ready for being empowered by the manager to have more and more control over their work processes. If the workers are properly trained for their jobs and in process improvements techniques they can handle empowerment properly. Empowerment facilitates self-actualization and results in the highly motivated workforce needed for a highly productive organization.

Exercise

If you are familiar with well know business leaders of the past 25 years answer the following questions. If not, Google the managers mentioned below to see if you can learn their styles (X, Y, L, or Z) before answering the questions.

1.         Where would you classify Jack Welch in the ‘70’s & 80’s? in the ‘90’s?

2.       What personnel practice of Jack Welch resulted in high organizational effectiveness but introduced     competition between employees that limited the effectiveness from being as high as it could have been?

3.         Where would you classify the infamous Al “Chainsaw” Dunlap?

4.         Where is your boss?

5.         Where are you?

6.         Where would you like to be?

7.         What actions should you take to get to where you would like to be?

8.         Compare these steps to the draft plan you prepared in the previous exercise and modify your plan as you believe necessary.

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

6 B Maslow’s Theory of Needs Continued

Self-actualization- Achieving an organization with 80 percent or more of the workers need for self-actualization fulfilled is the objective effective leaders strive for. The result is hard working and happy workers. The manager has to spend very little time on discipline problems, suppressing false rumors and similar non value added work. One key to satisfying the self-actualization need is, first, ensure that all subordinate needs are satisfied (Maslow’s first argument) and then empower workers to have control over the processes involved in their job. This is not as simple as it sounds. If a manager just says to workers that they are empowered they have far different definitions of what this means than the manager intends.

Effective empowerment required that workers be trained in process improvement techniques because otherwise empowered workers make changes in their work processes that are likely to be counterproductive, as is discussed in later lectures on process improvement. Effective empowerment also requires careful definition and effective communication of the boundaries of the empowerment. These boundaries are likely to be process and perhaps even worker dependent. It takes some experience to get them right and it is better to start with tighter than necessary boundaries and loosen them as time and results indicate that looser boundaries are warranted. The objective is to provide sufficient empowerment that the workers feel they have adequate control to implement changes that make their jobs easier, improve the quality of their work products, reduce costs or otherwise improve the processes they control. The later lectures on process improvement will help students understand more of the issues involved in defining boundaries for empowerment.

Assuming workers are empowered and functioning as intended they make significant improvements in their job processes over time. They naturally expect to be rewarded for this good work. Ataboy’s are necessary and sufficient up to a point but eventually workers expect and deserve more. In today’s flat and lean organizations there are not many promotions available to reward good work. The effective leader must be creative in developing career paths that are rewarding for workers and beneficial for the organization. Expanding job scope and lateral moves are positive for both the organization and worker as long as proper training is provided to prepare the worker for new responsibilities.

Empowerment, effective career planning and fair pay increases are necessary for self-actualization but not quite sufficient. Workers need to feel that their work is important and that their organization’s mission is worthy of their efforts. Workers understand that most organizations have a goal of making profits but they expect broader and more meaningful missions. Defining an organization’s mission is a strategic issue and therefore typically not within the job description of the people studying this course. Low and mid-level managers can make sure they understand the organization’s mission and communicate it to their workers.

There are a variety of worthy missions that inspire most workers. For example, it’s easy for space and defense organizations or health care because most people are inspired by being part of a major space project, supporting the defense of their country or improving health care. Consumer goods and service organizations need to provide their workers with the opportunity to participate in a meaningful way in worthy missions such as environmental improvements, social issues or community services. This is becoming easier as awareness grows that business organizations can contribute in ways that are win-win, i.e. win for the organization and win for society. An article by Tim Simmons of the Raleigh News & Observer quotes Rich Leimsides, director of the Center for Business Education in New York. Leimsides says that there is a noticeable increase in the number of executives who see a link between environmental practices, social issues and bigger profits. Obvious examples include saving energy and thereby reducing costs while helping with global warming; reducing wastes saves money and helps the environment. Major manufactures like Ford and GM are now investing in buildings that meet green standards and save money.

If you are unfortunate enough to work for an organization that does not have a mission that is inspiring then you need to define objectives for your group that are compatible with the overall organization’s mission and offer inspiration to your group. Remember that you need to involve the group in defining new objectives. Otherwise they are not likely to feel the inspiration you expect. You need your management’s approval for any budget or company time that is to be invested for environmental, community or social issues. You should be ready to defend why you think it is important to have your organization involved in a broader mission and why it makes sense to the overall enterprise. Make sure you introduce your plan in a way that the workers feel you are giving them an opportunity not an obligation. Single working parents are likely fully committed and may lose their feeling of belongingness if they feel they are being coerced to join in some volunteer activity that they don’t have time for.

An important thing for managers is to “walk their talk” with respect to missions. It is demotivating to employees to listen to their boss say great things about the organization’s commitment to the environment or to a social issue and then watch the boss ignore obvious opportunities to act on the commitment.

Pay as it relates to Maslow

Pay increases impact several needs ranging from safety to self-actualization and therefore require significant management attention. Few low and mid-level managers have control over the budgets available for pay increases. However, these managers do influence the relative increases given to their subordinates. This task is one that can have negative or neutral results. It isn’t likely to result in all workers being happier no matter how hard the manager works on achieving fairness. The best way to avoid negative motivation and achieve at least neutral results is to be as fair as possible. This isn’t easy because the manager simply doesn’t have enough information to be absolutely fair. This is because work performance is the convolution of the workers’ efforts and skills with the quality of the work processes, which can be good or bad independent of the skills or efforts of the workers.

I’ll discuss three approaches but I can’t claim any of these are completely fair or provide sound arguments for one over the other. A good source of further study is chapter 14 of Brian Joiner’s book Fourth Generation Management.

Two principles to follow in planning pay increases for workers are avoid de-motivators and avoid judgments based on only one year’s work or one job assignment. Brian Joiner calls rankings, ratings and forced distributions great demoralizers. People don’t believe these actions, which always have winners and losers, are fair, especially if their personal ranking, rating or distribution results in their receiving a smaller pay increase than coworkers they know.

If you work in a large enterprise your human resources department likely has curves of pay vs. time (years of experience or time in grade) for the enterprise’s various salary grades. An approach I have used in such cases is to give pay increases that keep people on the appropriate curve as best you can with the budget you are allocated. This approach avoids ratings, rankings and forced distributions and it keeps pay close to the prevailing market assuming the enterprise’s curves are based on the market. The primary flaw in this approach is that each person receives an arbitrary increase, which the manager perceives as fair but the fairness is not always apparent to workers that receive smaller increases than their coworkers. If your enterprise does not have such curves you can develop them yourself, a difficult task, or use an alternate approach to allocating pay increases.

An approach recommended by some management experts is to divide the workers into three groups. Admittedly this is a forced distribution but minimally arbitrary. One group contains the few workers who have consistently demonstrated outstanding work in their last three or four assignments, typically over more than one year. Another group contains the few who have consistently demonstrated unsatisfactory work in their last three or four assignments. The idea is that over sufficient time the quality of the work of an individual can be separated from the effects of the system influencing the worker. One assignment or even one year is usually not enough for a manager to be able to make a fair assessment of a workers performance independent of the system.

The remaining workers, which should be most of the workers in the organization being evaluated, are in a middle group. The group consistently demonstrating outstanding work receive promotions, increases in pay grade and/or a larger than average share of the available budget for increases in pay. The group consistently demonstrating less than satisfactory performance receives no or less than an average share of the available budget for increases in pay. The middle group shares the remaining budget equally by percentage increases with the objective being to keep workers’ pay competitive with the market for their education and experience. The belief is that those consistently demonstrating unsatisfactory work know their performance is less than desired and understand why they receive little or no pay increases.

The three group method is reasonably fair but has flaws in addition to being a forced distribution. First it does not address pay discrepancies that exist from history. It is not unusual to be managing an organization made up of individuals of different ages, different education, different years of experience and different job experience as well as different job performance. These collective differences often lead to people with similar backgrounds and capabilities receiving quite different pay. This obviously isn’t fair and eventually people learn of such unfair situations and are demotivated. The effective leader does the analysis to reveal such situations and works with the personnel department to eliminate them. Sometimes this can take a few years but it is necessary to prevent workers being demotivated due to unfair pay discrepancies.

A second flaw is it does not address the senior person who has been in the same job for a long time and has reached the maximum market rate for that position. If the person does not warrant a promotion or desire a transfer to a higher paying position then that person should receive less pay than most others in order to keep within the bounds of competitive pay for the position. These cases must be dealt with on an individual basis.

A third flaw is that the few individuals receiving less pay due to unsatisfactory work over several assignments are demotivated, which is likely to lead to even less satisfactory performance. Some would argue that it is better to give the same increases to the unsatisfactory workers as to most other workers to avoid demotivating the unsatisfactory workers. This is the third approach and it isn’t a perfect solution either as workers that are performing satisfactorily are likely to see it as unfair to them. I do not have the data or experience to argue which approach is best

Exercise 1

1.     How is need fulfillment correlated with effectiveness?

2.     Which needs are satisfied with money?

3.     What are the effects of individual rewards? Team rewards?

4.     What is the effect of excessive job stress?

5.     Define the likely problems experienced by a worker that is not moving forward in Maslow’s hierarchy for each stage of the hierarchy.

6.     Define a management strategy or action that is likely to help a worker move from each stage to the stage on its right.

Exercise 2

1.   Pick at random four of your direct reports or peers that are typical of your organization. Assess each one against Maslow’s hierarchy of needs by determining the highest need that you believe is fulfilled for that individual. This gives you another measure of the health of your organization. If three or four have achieved self-actualization then your organization is most likely nearly as productive as it can be except for improving work processes. If two or more have safety or belongingness needs unfulfilled then your organization is not healthy and is most likely not nearly as productive as it could be.

2.   If your results show less than three out of four with self-actualization needs fulfilled then write down a draft plan on what you need to do to improve the motivation of your organization. Reread the lecture if you don’t have ideas on what to do. You don’t need to start working on your plan yet but keep the plan handy so that you can review it later as part of developing a more comprehensive action plan.

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

6 A Maslow’s Theory of Needs

Now let’s examine how management philosophy can motivate employees. To do that we examine Maslow’s famous “Hierarchy” of needs. Maslow defines motivation as feeling desire, want, yearning or that something is lacking. (see p.22 of Toward a Psychology of Being by Abraham Maslow) Maslow defined five levels of needs in his hierarchy.

Physiological (air, water, etc.) >Safety>Belongingness>Self-Esteem>Self Actualization

Maslow argues that:

1.   To realize a need on the right all the needs to the left of it must be satisfied first.

2.   Workers that are moving to the right are happier and more productive compared to workers that are not moving, or moving to the left.

For each of the needs there can be organizational or management problems that the effective leader can often solve. A few examples illustrate this point.

Need                                         Problem                                  A Solution

Physiological needs                Job stress                          Stress management

Safety                                  Not knowing what’s              MBO, fix unsafe

                                        expected, fear, anxiety              conditions

Belongingness                     Anxiety, cynicism,                  Participative

                                             despair, stress                         management

Self-esteem                         Meaningless work                Change job assigned,

                                                                                           job enrichment

Self-actualization                 Boredom, lack of                      Empowerment,

                                            opportunity                          career development

Maslow’s second contention shows us that our objective as managers is to enable our workers to satisfy their need for self-actualization. If we achieve this they are happier and motivated to be the most productive that they can be. This would be relatively easy if all we had to do was to empower them or show them that their careers are important to the organization and being managed fairly. Maslow’s first contention shows why it isn’t that easy. Managers have to satisfy workers other four needs before they are enabled to realize self-actualization. Let’s briefly examine some things managers can do to satisfy the needs of their staff.

Physiological needs- Most basic physiological needs like air, water, food are satisfied outside of the manager’s influence but there are others that managers must address to achieve motivated workers. Today many workers are multitasked, worked long hours and constantly pushed to do more with less. These working conditions can lead to stress or just plain overwork. To minimize such effects it is necessary for the manager to put extra emphasis on demonstrating fairness to all staff members, communicating clearly why the job environment is the way it is and what management is doing to improve the environment. Ignoring workers concerns leads to stressed workers, disgruntled workers and the best employees seeking other job opportunities. All of these effects result in lower organizational effectiveness due to under productive workers.

Most workers are willing to work extra time or extra hard if they understand the management is being fair, that there is good reason for the need to work extra hard or long and that management is doing what is necessary to correct the problems leading to the need for such working conditions. Corrections may mean adding new equipment, improving work processes, adding temporary or permanent staff, subcontracting work or a similar means of reducing workload. Managers that accept that such working conditions are just part of today’s work environment and believe they don’t have to do anything about it will find that their best employees eventually leave so that they are left with a less productive staff. Effective leaders search for creative ways to improve working conditions and keep their staff fully informed.

Managers that don’t take care of obvious job problems create unsatisfied physiological needs in all workers, not just the workers with the problems. Sometimes a worker needs to be disciplined or even fired. Managers that do not take prompt and fair action when disciplinary action is called for lose the respect of all workers and cause lower productivity due to the unsatisfied need for an environment that treats workers fairly. Putting up with bad workers isn’t fair to the good workers.

An organization’s policies can cause unsatisfied physiological needs if the policies are aimed at the 5 percent of employees that abuse rules rather than at the 95 percent that follow rules. Effective policies are covered in more depth in a later lecture.

Safety- Safety is an often overlooked need. There are at least two dimensions to the need for safety. There is physical and psychological safety and both are important in organizations. There are legal, ethical and sound business reasons to ensure the physical safety of all workers. About the worst thing that can happen to a manager is having to tell the family of a worker that the worker was injured, disabled or killed at work. If your reaction to the previous statement is “that’s not me job, other people take care of those things” then you need to think more deeply about it. Even if your organization has a health, safety or health and safety department it is still the manager’s responsibility to make sure that his or her workers are informed, are encouraged to report any safety or health concerns and follow the safety guidelines of the organization. Health and safety personnel cannot eliminate hazards and reduce injuries without the active cooperation of managers and workers. If your reaction is that physical safety issues relate to factories or mines but not to an office environment you need to rethink again. Office environments are the source of many repetitive stress injuries, back problems, exposure to electrical hazards and fingers caught in copier machines. It’s your responsibility to make sure your workers are not at risk of such injuries. Again, this is done by ensuring that the environment is safe, that workers are informed, are properly trained and feel comfortable reporting any safety or health concerns.

Psychological safety is more complex. It is easier to understand if you think of it as fear. Workers that have fear are not at their most productive because they spend time and energy thinking about the sources of their fear rather than their work. Fear is so important there is an entire lecture on fear later. Here I address fear resulting from insecurity about job loss, promotion, annual reviews, acquisitions and mergers, layoffs, new assignments, new managers etc. Almost anything that causes or might cause instability can result in insecurity. Lack of knowledge about an organization’s goals and plans also leads to insecurity. The effective leader satisfies this need with open, frequent and factual communication with the workers. If the leader practices good communications and has an “open door” policy so that workers can come to the leader with their concerns than the leader minimizes workers’ insecurities. It is often impossible to eliminate insecurities but effective communications and an open door policy can reduce insecurity so that it has minimum effect on job performance.

Belongingness- Humans are social. They need to be part of a group. Therefore workers need to feel that they are a valued member of their organization. This means that they have some input into the organization’s activities and are treated fairly by the organization. The cliché “no input, no buy in” is critical to effective leadership. Leaders should make the decisions but effective leaders seek the opinions of their workers and consider the workers’ opinions before making decisions. If workers are convinced their views were heard and considered then most buy in to decisions even if the decisions aren't what they wanted.

There are lots of positive “team building” actions that contribute to satisfying the belongingness need. Group lunches, after work drinks, weekend golf outings and similar activities can be positive if they are inclusive of the entire group. If not then they lead to hurt feeling on the part of those left out. It takes few positive actions to satisfy the belongingness need but one negative takes many positives to correct. The effective leader thinks through team building actions carefully to ensure they are inclusive and positive.

Rewarding workers is a dangerous activity. Group awards are usually positive. Individual rewards, especially money based awards, risk alienating more people than they motivate. Workers evaluate rewards with a sensitive scale and if they perceive there is any unfairness they are offended and demotivated. In general personal recognition is more effective than money awards as long as it is inclusive of all who contributed to whatever is being rewarded.

Some managers believe they can improve productivity by encouraging competition between workers. The highest productivity results from cooperation and teamwork among workers. Competition often inhibits cooperation and can lead to workers undermining each other and thereby limiting the effectiveness of the organization.

Competition and monetary rewards are not always counterproductive. An example from my experience of effective competition and monetary reward involved training workers in health and safety requirements for their jobs. The manager of Health and Safety gave worker teams a list of health and safety questions relating to their job. Teams that were able to answer every question correctly were eligible for a drawing. The drawing was held at monthly all hands meetings and the winning team received about $5 per worker. Teams would go to great lengths to get answers to complex questions, including contacting state health officials. It wasn’t the $5 reward that motivated these workers. Rather it was the pride in their team being eligible for the public drawing. Note that in this example there was cooperation and teamwork within the teams and the teams believed the competition was fair.

Self-esteem- Workers with high self-esteem are more productive than workers with low self-esteem because they do not waste their energies worrying about their perceived inadequacies. Workers with high self-esteem tend to direct more of their energies toward their work thus they can be more creative and more productive than low self-esteem workers. Achieving high self-esteem in individuals is the result of recruiting people whose education, experience and interest match the job requirements, providing them any special training necessary to do the job properly, explaining clearly what is expected of the worker and interacting with them frequently so that both the worker and manager have a good understanding of how well the work is getting done.

If a worker is performing at or above expectations the manager should let the worker know with encouraging comments. If there are problems with the quality or quantity of work the manager should focus on the work process and discuss with the worker what can be done to make the job easier or to eliminate process problems. Eighty percent of the time the problems are with the work process rather than with the worker. This means that if the worker is criticized for poor performance four times out of five the manager is wrong and the worker’s self-esteem is lowered as well as possibly reducing the workers feelings of belongingness and safety.

If the manager and the worker interact frequently then the manager can eventually correctly determine those situations where the work processes are ok but the worker isn’t right for the job. In this event the manager should take responsibility for putting the worker in the wrong job and set out to find a better job fit for the worker. Effective leaders know that if a job isn’t being done right the fault is theirs. They have picked the wrong worker, not adequately trained the worker, not adequately explained the job or the job process is defective. Other workers know this and lose confidence in managers that blame workers for poor job performance.

Managers that wait for the annual review to discuss job performance with workers are ineffective managers. Effective managers interact informally with workers on a daily or at least weekly basis and make it a point to have more formal discussions on a monthly or at least quarterly basis. It is wise to have the more formal discussions over lunch or breakfast so that the confrontational aspect of the dreaded annual review is removed. If you are lucky enough to have control over the annual review process then eliminate it and replace it with less formal monthly or quarterly discussions. In my forty years of experience I have found no value in annual reviews. Both managers and employees hate them and there is no value in the documentation collected in the personnel files. Every time I have had to fire a worker I have found it necessary to build and document the case after the decision to fire has been made because there has never been anything useful in the worker’s personnel file.

Do not conclude from my experience with worker’s personnel files that the answer is to make sure files contain documentation of any disciplinary actions and other negative stuff that can be used against workers if necessary. Such actions destroy psychological safety and ensure demotivated workers. If it is within your authority make sure workers files contain only information required to comply with labor laws and make sure your workers know there will never be negative stuff in their files. Discipline up to and including firing can be handled effectively without such files.

You are likely familiar with the phase “management by walking around”. Effective managers use this technique to interact informally with workers. Five or ten minutes with a worker two or three times a week is usually enough to keep up with what the worker is doing and to identify any problems that require additional management attention. To be effective these brief interactions must focus on the worker’s tasks, i.e. what the worker is doing and how well the task’s processes are working (the quality and timeliness of the task output). It’s ok to briefly ask about social issues but don’t let this time be spent discussing the previous night’s sporting event or some other social activity.

The work of up to 20 subordinates can be monitored in this manner and still leave 20 hours per week to work on fixing problems and executing the other tasks that are the manager’s job. Most managers have only five to ten direct reports and can usually keep up with their direct reports’ work by spending only an hour or two each day. If the manager finds there isn’t enough time to spend five or ten minutes two or three times per week with each employee then enough of the managers other tasks should be delegated in order to free up adequate time for this critical activity.

I know that in today’s flat and lean organizations there are managers with far more than 20 direct reports who are also expected to be workers as well as managers. If you are one of those managers you are forced into a triage approach. Limit the time spent with each of the 80% of workers that are doing fine to weekly checks so that you still have time to check with each of the other 20% two or three times per week.

If you are in an environment where you are required to conduct formal annual reviews you must still interact informally enough with your workers that you and they know before the review what the results are. If the review has any surprises for an employee then you have not been doing your job and the employee’s self-esteem need is less fulfilled than it could be.

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