Management Leverage Blog

File this one under learning from my mistakes.

A skip* of mine confided in me that she was unhappy with her job and ready to move on to greener pastures. But she was considerate enough to add that she thinks I am an amazing manager. And that the decision to leave had nothing to do with my management style.

But I’m not so sure I agree with her on that.

First of all, it’s my job to know if one of my employees is dissatisfied on the job, and management leverage is only successfully built through mutually beneficial relationships and open, 2-way communication.

If she was so discontented that she had already decided to leave before I became aware of it, then that probably means  I’m not doing my job as a manager.

Attrition is costly, even in an economy characterized by high unemployment. And to find and train someone to replace her will not be easy. But even if she is replaced that won’t remedy the problem unless I get to the bottom of why I didn’t see this situation coming in time to intervene and give her the support and encouragement she needed and deserved.

Right now I meet with my direct reports weekly, but I only meet with my skips during our weekly team meeting. That needs to change.

From here on out I will make sure that I meet with each of my skips, face-to-face and one-on-one, at least once a month.

* A skip is someone who is the direct report of one of my direct reports.

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

My favorite manager of all time had a simple philosophy I now call Lydia’s Rule. As much as I would like to write a book about it, I don’t think I could find a publisher interested in a book consisting of a single sentence.

Lydia’s rule is as follows:

You make me look good, and I’ll make you look good.

That was it. Her rule was as brilliant as it was simple.

She repeated it often, and I bent over backwards to make Lydia look good. And she kept her end of the bargain as well—even inviting me to attend regular meetings with the top brass at the time, Michael Dell and Tom Meredith.

I have lost touch with Lydia over the years (please put her in touch with me if you know her), but her simple, but powerful philosophy lives on in my classroom and benefits those I currently manage.

You will never find Lydia’s Rule on Amazon or the pages of the Harvard Business Review. But if you want others to enthusiastically leverage your time and effort, I recommend it highly. It works.

Photo credit–despair.com

The news that many of the schools in the Big XII are being courted to join other conferences is big news in these parts of Texas. What I find most surprising about all of this, is that people are actually surprised.

And even if you aren’t a fan of college sports, you can learn a lot from others’ mistakes.

With the demise of the Southwest conference, the Texas schools were looking for a home, and the Big 8 schools were looking for a larger television audience. Voila, the Big XII Conference was born.

And so the Big XII was a marriage of convenience. And convenient relationships last until they are either no longer convenient, or a better offer comes along.

The same fate is waiting for the relationships in your network, or even alliances and joint ventures between organizations. Unless you work on developing relationships on a personal level, built on trust, they will be just as fragile as the Big XII.

Look into the future at your own relationships. Which relationships would not surprise you if they were to dissolve? What can you do about it?