Career Impact

A Season for Letting Go

     It's early December. As I write this, a blustery northwest wind is blowing through Maine. Each gust shakes a few more of the  remaining leaves off of the trees surrounding our home. The oak leaves, it seems, always stay on the longest. Even they are finally letting go today.

    It's a good thing, really. Forecasters are predicting our first snow of the seasaon on Monday, a storm that will birng as much as a foot of snow. That's a lot for a first snow around here. We're going to have an abrupt transition from one season to the next.

    As I watch all this going on outside the window of my study, I realize that we humans have a lesson to learn from the oak trees. Their "letting go"  of this year's leaves is part of nature's preparation for the trees' growth next spring. So it ought to be for us, too.

    Ask yourself, what are the things that you ought to let go of in order to prepare for your next stage of growth?  What does your company need to let go of? What products, processes, or practices should your organization discontinue? What should you, personally, let go of to make room to grow?

    I let go of a cherished sailboat this year to make room in my calendar and in my pocketbook to continue my graduate studies. I let go of a professional relationship to develop and advocate a new model of quality monitoring in the call center industry. And, in developing this new model, I have had to let go of several lof my own long-held views about the best way to do business in call centers.

    Let me warn you that it can feel pretty naked to let go like this. But I know, thanks to our oak trees, that this is but one phase in continual growth. The onset of winter is but a harbinger of the coming spring. 

Control Processes; Grow People

I believe this is how we ought to manage... by controlling processes and growing people. In practice, managers too often get this rather backwards... they strive to control people and ignore processes.

Where does this strong, and apparently universal, desire by managers to seek to control people come from? I am not sure. But I believe it is largely a habit of mind. it is certainly not a fact. As the academics would say, it is a "socially constructed" view of reality, not reality itself. I have labored, myself, under a false construction of the primary role of management for quite a while.

Today I see things differently. Here's how I've gradually come to a change of mind:

In my workshops with managers, I often begin by asking, "What is the biggest management challenge you face in your work today?" The most frequent answer I hear is usually expressed in the form of another question. That question is: "How do we hold people accountable for results?" I've come to call this the universal managers' lament.

In fact, I used to like hearing that lament because I had many good ideas about how to instill accountability in people. You see, the lens through which I was comprehending that question disguised from me the deeper meaning of it.  Upon hearing, "How do we hold people accountable for results?" I used to think that the operative word in that question was "accountable". Now I see it otherwise.

Today, I believe that the most revealing words in that question are "hold people".  How can we expect people to accept responsibility when our view is that we have to "hold" them to do it? It reveals an unspoken, and most likely unexamined, habit of mind that says, in effect, that a manager's job is to control people.

Today, I advocate that a manager's role is entirely different. If anything needs to be controlled, it is work processes, but not people. In order to accept accountability, people need the freedom to grow. This requires freedom from excessive controls. It requires what systems theorists call the concept of minimum specifications.  In order to assume accountability, people need some wiggle room to bring their own uniqueness to the task at hand, to try new things, to make mistakes, to experiment, to put their best foot forward. Too many controls drain the life force out of people's work, eroding their willingness to assume accountability.

Next time you ask yourself, "How can I hold my people accountable for results?" question your own question and the thinking that lies behind it. You may be amazed at the difference re-framing the question can make. As Virginia Satir once wrote, "The hardest thing is to see that we do not see."

Cliff

Notes from the Incongruity Department

Ever wonder why employee engagement is so difficult to achieve and to maintain? One of the reasons, I was just vividly reminded, is that managers sure do tend to give mixed messages. Here's an example that just came across my desk that may well be the king of all incongruities.

One of several email newsletters that I subscribe to is called Managing HR Today. It offers a lot of timely, succinct essays, opinion pieces, and news related to HR. Check it out at www.managinghrtoday.com

The current issue contained two articles that were so incongruous with each other that I feel compelled to comment on them.

One of them is a decent article about how to build ethics into a company's culture "one decency at a time." Nothing earth shattering in it, but an effective reminder to treat people with respect, to get to know them as individuals, and to act kindly.

In the same issue, though, is a second article about the mother of all "big brother" management techniques. The article hawks a product known as the Spector 360. That is "spector"  as in Inspector, or more likely, as in "spectre." This handy snooping device records employees' emails, chats and instant messages, web sites visited, keystrokes typed, files transferred and printed, and network activity. It includes a screen scrape function "so that there is a visual record of what the employee is doing on the computer, much like a surveillance tape." This article, which I will suppose was taken from a press release, goes on to brag that "The level of detail is so precise that an employer can see what an employee does each and every second."

Wow! Where do you think that falls on the decency scale? How would you like to be monitored every second of your workday? Would you be engaged?

How could any manager possibly embrace such a totalitarian workplace? How could any employee stand to work there? I'll vote for decency over this sort of ultra-control any day, thank you very much.

Cliff

The More I Learn the Less I Know

I believe it was William Blake who once said, "The larger grows the island of my knowledge, the longer stretch the shores of my ignorance." I know how he felt.

Five years ago, I would have told you that I knew all that I needed to know about performance measurement, performance management, and performance feedback at work. The past six months, I've been delving more deeply into those topics as part of my grad studies. And the more I learn, the more I realize how little I know. I am beginning to grasp, though, some important issues around these subjects. I spoke about my new learning at an industry conference for the first time just last week. This is going to be important. Stay tuned! I'll make posts here from time to time about new developments.

Workshop Location

Over the past 18 years, I have delivered workshops in every imaginable sort of hotel, conference center, and corporate training facility. Never before have I been in a facility that is situated in as beautiful of surroundings as the one I just left. This was my second visit to the Stillpoint at Halibut Cove, Alaska.  It is an extraordinary place for small group workshops, retreats, or that special getaway-from-it-all. Dayna and I first visited there in August on vacation. The Stillpoint is now a client of ours. You could say therefore, that we are biased. But don't take our word for it. Check this place out for yourself. http://www.centerforcreativerenewal.com/. And, if you are looking for a special place to hold a small group workshop, retreat, or off-site meeting in a place surrounded by natural beauty , check the Stillpoint out. Its beauty grabs you and doesn't let go.

Hartman Institute

Next week, from Oct 5th thru 7th, I will be attending the annual conference of the Robert S. Hartman Institute in Knoxville, TN. I've been an avid, although amateur, student of Hartman's philosophy, known as "formal axiology" for four years now. In fact, I've just enrolled in a doctoral program in Human and Organization Development and will be studying axiology more intently during the coming four years or more. Although Hartman was best known as an academician, he also consulted to some of the largest and best-run companies in America during the 1960s and early 1970s.

He gave a presentation once to senior executives of a major insurance company. He challenged those executives to ask themselves four questions. These four questions have had a major influence on my thinking during the past several years. They have changed the way I run my business, the way I consult to companies, and the way that I coach executives. In fact, I have them posted above my desk to keep them continually in the front of my mind. Here are the questions he posed. Ask yourself:

1. What am I here for in the world?

2. Why do I work for this organization?

3. What can this organization do to help me fulfill my meaning in the world?

4. How can I help this organization help me fulfill my meaning in the world?

Thought-provoking, questions, aren't they? If you want to learn more about the Hartman Institute, you can visit their web site at: RS Hartman Institute . Hartman's autobiography, Freedom to Live, is a good place to start learning more about his ideas. You can purchase it thru the Institute.