Management Leverage Blog

Involving others in the decision making process is generally a good idea.

People tend to be more satisfied with the outcome when the process used to arrive at that outcome is fair. And, who knows?  You might come up with a better idea when others are involved.

But be careful…

Involving others in the decision making process takes time. Often managers have to make immediate decisions. If the production line stops, you might not have time to consult everyone on the floor as to the best course of action.

You could also look weak in times of crisis. If your building burns down, it may be much more effective to climb on top of the rubble with a megaphone and shout, “We will rebuild!” than, “Please be patient while we consult with each of you before we determine our best course of action.”

Finally, others may not be privy to the info needed to make an effective decision. Let’s face it, as manager you are privy to information  that those a few rungs down are not. You are much less likely to generate effective solutions when you supply decision makers with partial information and half-truths.

And what happens when you make a decision that runs counter to what the group comes up with (because you understand the problem better than they do)? By ignoring their suggestions, you generate more dissatisfaction than you would have if you never asked for them for their input in the first place.

There are many reasons to involve others in the decision making process. But it’s not a prescription for success. Ineffective managers and leaders use the same decision making process regardless of the circumstances.

Is your career growing along with your manager’s?
Why you should never trust a silent boss

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“What? You dream in four languages? You must be fluent! “

Not necessarily. If I don’t know the words in my dream, I make them up. I know what I am talking about.

Unfortunately, many of us approach management the same way. We make it up as we go along.

But scientists and practitioners have been studying management for many, many years now. We really know a lot about what works and what doesn’t.

The trick is to sort the facts from opinions. And then try on those that fit your personality and your company culture.

Of course very little will work if you haven’t learned to leverage your time, influence, and power.

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Don’t tell anyone, but a senior level manager recently told me that she heard from a very reliable source that one of her direct reports wanted her job.

I told her that it was her responsibility to help him get it.

Isn’t that career suicide?

Think about it. If you developed the reputation as a manager who effectively develops employees to reach their own potential and career goals, people would flock from everywhere to work for you.

And what kinds of people do you think you would attract?

But I don’t want to end up on the street

Of course, this is only a good strategy if you have developed your own career. If you haven’t, then maybe you want to surround yourself with unmotivated, passive people whose single career goal is to leave work on time. You won’t accomplish much, but hunker down and maybe no one will notice for a while.

If you haven’t done so already, a great first step is to ask your directs where they see their career in five years. Help them get there and you will notice an immediate difference in their enthusiasm, motivation, and quality of work.

And when you develop the luxury of delegating your work to your team, you free up your own time to take on your manager’s responsibilities.

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When we want to persuade, we often rely on facts and figures and ‘offers they can’t refuse’. Such techniques appeal to our minds. We like them, because they are logical. And the truth is, building a logical case is an important skill in a manager’s repertoire.

But it’s not enough.

Logical persuasion persuasion packs an even greater punch when combined with techniques that appeal to the heart, such as metaphors.

Metaphors connect two concepts that really have no business being together…”time is money” or ”business is war”. And when accepted and adopted by your team, metaphors will help guide their everyday actions.

Sean D’Souza of psychotactics.com has a great technique for coming up with metaphors. He uses Google.

Let’s say you want to inspire your team to cognizant of how they balance their responsibilities at work. If you simply search Google for ”balance”, you’ll have a difficult time weeding through all the information that is dumped back at you.

Instead, try using Google to search for images of ‘balance’ at http://images.google.com. Now you’ll find images of a balance sheet, a balance beam, yoga… all things you can use to paint a vivid metaphor of balance.

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I often receive invitations to connect with some of my LinkedIn contacts on a network other than LinkedIn. My immediate inclination is to drop these people from my network.

These people seem to have a different understanding of a network than I do.

Or am I missing something? Does asking a Linkedin contact to join a different social networking site reveal an underlying attitude about the purpose of networking?

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As a management educator, it pains me to tell you this. But an MBA won’t ensure you an enviable career. Neither will memorizing all the latest business books. At least that is what I told some of our incoming MBA students this week.

Careers are built on performance, which is made up of technical skills, management leverage (time, influence, power), social capital, and political capital. Period.

If you want to get an MBA, or memorize the latest business books, make sure you understand this formula

MBA (or books) =Enviable career IF

MBA (or books)=Education=Performance

The sad truth of the matter is that you can get a degree without getting an education. And just because you have letters behind your name (or an enviable library) and an education, does not mean you will perform better than someone without letters behind their name and whose library consists of the complete set of Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books.

So how can you, or your direct reports, make sure an MBA, or a business library, leads to the career of your dreams?

Instead of thinking about what won’t work, think about how each pearl could help your career .  For example, imagine you are a finance person sitting through a marketing class, or reading a marketing book. Rather than ruling out everything as useless, think about what aspects you could alter and use in your career.

If you spend your time trying to figure out what the professor wants you to know for the test, your education is in ‘test taking’, not in business.

So even if you are not getting an MBA, go out and get a leading book in another field. Don’t just read about what you already know. Branch out. What aspects can you embrace? For example, how does Good to Great apply to marketing?

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I had a manager who ruled by metaphors. And it was extremely effective way of getting me to do things.. First of all, his metaphors often made me laugh. “I can feel for you but I can’t reach you,” was his way of telling me to leave him alone and figure out the solution myself.

Metaphors appeal to our emotions. But because they also leak our perceptions of the way the world works, they provide openings to persuade. If you hear a colleague say “business is war,” for example, you have not only discovered something about the way he or she may perceive the world of business, but also what behaviors are acceptable in that world.

Suppose I notice that ‘business is war’ describes the world as you see it. If I want to influence you to do something consistent with this metaphor, I would just use words you already identify with, such as ‘compete’ or ‘attrition’.
But that’s the easy part. What if I want to delegate some of my CRM duties to you. I can’t just say, “Business is about building relationships with our customers”, because you will say “No it’s not. It’s war.” Then we will go back and forth like my 3 and 5 year-old sons—“No it’s not.” “Yes it is.” “No it’s not”. But in a much more refined fashion, of course.

But if I first use your metaphor, I can guide you where I want you to go, because I have unconsciously tapped into what you already believe. I could say something like “We spend more time fighting with our suppliers than we do building relationships with our customers.”

Now, I have gotten your attention. And freed up some of my time.

The key is to simply listen.

What metaphors describe your boss’s view of the world? Your colleagues’? Your direct reports?

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As a kid, when it came to picking members for a kickball team, I learned to either be the one doing the picking, or be picked last. So I got to be a pretty good picker. Or so I thought. I picked those people who could kick the ball the furthest. It was all about offense.

We do the same when putting together a project team. If I am building a widget, I want the best widget minds in the room.

While the best widgeters may be critical for the success of the project, so too are people with organizational knowledge. Every organization has people who know how to get things done within their specific organization. And no matter how important your project team, it’s not self-sufficient. It depends on the rest of the organization for funding, time, supplies, etc.

Don’t forget about defense! Make sure you include at least one person with know-who. If your team lacks the know-who factor, it will eventually starve.

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No matter where you find yourself on the organizational chart, the ability to influence people you can’t fire counts as one of the most important skills in a manager’s repertoire.

The ability to influence up, laterally and down, draws from several different bags of tricks. If you want to do this well, here’s what you need to learn.

1. Authentic networking skills—you’re not looking for targets, but for people you truly like, and whom you want to help succeed.
2. Negotiation skills—you’re not trying to win, but to look for ways where both can benefit. Think long-term here, not short term manipulation.
3. Advocacy skills—although door-to-door selling may play a part, effective advocates know how to build coalitions to do their selling for them.

These skills are even important for your boss’s boss’s boss. He or she must influence their peers, their boards, and even you to do things they have no formal authority to ask you to do. No one is born knowing how to do this. It has to be learned. And lucky for you, it can be. And the earlier in your career you begin the better.

I didn’t invent this stuff. Lucky for you we know quite a bit about influencing without authority. I suggest you look at Jay Conger’s work to start, and then take formal training in networking, negotiations, and advocacy. And then practice, practice, practice.

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Reut published the following Dr. Seuss quote in her most recent blog entry:

“You will come to a place where the streets are not marked.
Some widows are lighted. But mostly they’re darked.
A place you could sprain both your elbow and chin!
Do you dare to stay out? Do you dare to go in?
How much can you lose? How much can you win?
And IF you go in, should you turn left or right…

…Simple it’s not, I’m afraid you will find, for a mind-maker-upper to make up his mind.”

When you look at creative masterpieces, the same painting, or sculpture, will look different from different parts of the room. I’m experience the same with this clip from Dr. Seuss. So let’s just focus on one angle—the windows that are lit and the ones that are dark.

As managers, it’s the lighted windows that get us into trouble. The lighted windows, heuristics, are the simple rules of thumb that we use to make decisions. We use them to find our way. If it were completely dark we would treat obstacles with a little more respect. We would overcautiously fumble through the workday. If all the windows were lit, we would be bombarded with so much information it would render us paralyzed.

So heuristics serve a valuable purpose, without decision making rules of thumb, managers couldn’t manage. But, although heuristics serve a very useful purpose, by relying on heuristics, managers also make mistakes in very predictable ways. And the busier we are, the more likely we are to rely on heuristics. So idle managers are less likely to ‘sprain an ankle’, than busy ones.

So if you can just manage to free up your day….

In today’s hectic work environment, that advice won’t help much. Instead, research shows that managers, who are simply aware of the heuristics they use, are much less likely to confuse the “light” with the “dark”. Or as Dr. Seuss says,

“Just never forget to be dexterous and deft
And never mix up your right foot with your left.”

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