Management Leverage Blog

This morning I was thinking about how a vibrant network leverages a manager’s abilities, and came across recent academic article by Galvin, Balkundi, and Waldman*. What interested me most about the article was their focus on how leaders at all levels of management can even inspire those with whom they have no direct contact.

The best accomplish this through their direct reports. Offices everywhere are replete with gossip, stories, and other forms of ‘water cooler’ talk we generally view as a distraction to getting things done.

But this academic review discusses the possibility that water cooler talk may actually contribute to the positive image of the leader through employee surrogates or evangelical ambassadors. Sometimes, for instance, surrogates promote and defend their managers or even provide illustrative examples and anecdotes about their leadership skills.

Not unlike Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point or Seth Godin’s Ideavirus (not affiliate links), Galvin and his colleagues argue that the most influential surrogates have at least one of these three attributes:

• They are well-connected. They can relay information between a leader or manager and a quite distant follower or employee.

• They have prestige. Others seek their advice, mentoring, or friendship.

• They are peripherally connected. They relate well with those at the core of the group and have open channels to those on the outskirts.

Obviously, you may never venture to the outskirts of your directs’ network–you cannot be everywhere at once. But you may still need to inspire and motivate those you do not even know. Therein we find the leadership and management dilemma. This article by Galvin, Balkundi, and Waldman seems, however, to suggest a practical solution.

* Galvin, Balkundi, & Waldman (2010). Spreading the word: The role of surrogates in charismatic leadership processes. Academy of Management Review, 35(3), 477-494.

Photo credit: Thorsten Becker

In a world of passing the buck, we have so few good examples of how to admit our mistakes. So watch the video below as Tom Vilsack offers his explanation of  his decision to fire Shirley Sherrod.

Can you really think less of him now?

True to the original Jaws novel by author Peter Benchley, Steven Spielberg’s screenplay included a startling scene where the giant shark feasted on the film’s main character – a grizzled diver named Hooper.

Spielberg created the visual effect by hiring a scuba diving stunt midget. By filming the diminutive diver next to a 16-foot Great White, the shark appeared to be a 25-foot monster.

Or at least that was the filmmaker’s original plan.

After shooting the scene off the coast of Australia, the film crew phoned Spielberg. They were ecstatic about the footage they had captured when the shark became enraged after catching its gill in the cable that connected the miniature cage to the boat.

But there was just one problem. The midget was not in the cage when all that happened.

Spielberg purportedly said—at least initially—that they couldn’t use it. Without the mini-Hooper in the scene, they couldn’t kill him off. And in an era before the technology of computer generated imagery – the footage was useless.

Unless, of course, they scrapped their original script and let the main character live – which is ultimately what they decided to do. They killed a subplot in order to ensure the survival of a blockbuster movie.

This is not an example of making lemonade when life gives you lemons

There weren’t any lemons. They could have simply shot the scene again–this time with a small person in a tiny cage. Making movies requires usually requires multiple takes. They do it all the time.

But the scene would have been mediocre compared to the film they shot with the pissed-off great white. So they scrapped their specific goal of feeding Hooper to the sharks.

Science teaches us that specific goals are better than vague goals. But keep in mind that specific goals are usually not the main goal. And main goals are often vague.

If we focus too much on killing off our hero, we may lose sight of the more important goal of making a great movie. The minor goals need to consistently serve the super goal – otherwise they can undermine our ultimate success by throwing our primary objective to the sharks.

When I ran track in middle school we practiced – as many track teams do – by running down the road. But unlike most, our overweight coach would chase us from behind in his pickup truck, which had an electric cattle prod mounted to the front bumper.

Sure, we ran faster, but not to lead the pack. Instead we would often veer into the sanctuary of someone’s yard. Coach could yell and scream, but he would never jump the curb and drive across somebody’s lawn to catch us. If he did, he might risk spilling the contents of his spittoon.

The man was a donkey herder

He believed that the human donkey needs a stick across the backside to create motivation. Like most donkey herders, he believed carrots to be necessary, but not sufficient.

The stick plays a prominent role in the history of leadership. And for good reason. Penalties and punishments can be extremely effective in times of crisis, or when trying to make people do dull and repetitive tasks, such as assembly line manufacturing.

But, generally, the stick is overused. It should be viewed as the outmoded artifact that it is. In today’s world it is often worthless and self-defeating as a leadership device.

Unlike previous generations, people nowadays:

1)    Are more suspicious of authority, especially when it wields a stick.

2)    Tend to leave jobs when they are unhappy with fear-mongering bosses.

3)    Have more power via access to outside knowledge and solidarity networks.

4)    Often work less hierarchical matrix organizations. A stick is useless without authority.

But Can’t A Stick Be Effective Sometimes?

Rarely. Frederick the Great is credited with saying, “Soldiers should fear their officers more than all the dangers to which they are exposed…. Good will can never induce the common soldier to stand up to such dangers; he will only do so through fear.”

He was probably right. But as much as Type-A last-century style CEOs enjoy making dramatic comparisons between business and war, their metaphors and analogies are rather contrived. Don’t confuse the caliber of emotion necessary to encourage soldiers to run toward live fire on the battlefield to the fear of corporate downsizing or a loss of market share.

Modern corporations need innovative and talented knowledge workers who design, create, evaluate, analyze, and freely share their ideas. All of which require employees who are willing to make themselves vulnerable, because they know their leaders truly care about their well being. A stick will only scare them into the protection of the nearest yard.

Photo credit: rofanator

Memorial Day is a time for us to remember our country’s fallen soldiers. And for the last 20 years, this holiday has also symbolized a long weekend at  Schlitterbahn water park with my extended family.

Schlitterbahn isn’t about water rides. It’s not a destination on the map; it’s a time and place for relationships – for watching the young grow up or helping the old stay young.  

When I worked at bTrieve (now Pervasive Software) we shared a keg of Shiner every Friday. But the ritual had very little to do with beer, or Fridays. For us, it was a keg of teamwork and camaraderie. Shiner symbolized our workplace culture. We worked in jeans while our competitors still wore power ties. We weren’t IBM, damn it. We were cool. We drank Shiner, not Merlot. We were a new breed, with radically different values.

Symbols are a rallying cry for a culture, and for change. Symbols are metaphors that define who we are, what we are about, and how and why we spend our time. But they lose their power when they replace their meaning: when presents become Christmas/Hanukkah/Chinese New Year. When meaningful words become clichés. When the anthem for the generation becomes a soundtrack for a TV commercial.

Or when the personality of the leader becomes the soul of the organization.

Photo by tsevis