Posts Tagged ‘performance management’
‘The Great Leader’ theory of Management?
Wednesday, July 13th, 2011
When very able, driven entrepreneurs succeed in establishing businesses, a management structure develops over time that supports their strengths and covers their weaknesses. The employed individuals who succeed in these unusual management structures are, by definition, comfortable within the culture, however autocratic it may be. Employees who challenge will be eased out more or less subtly, or leave.
Given market stability, an autocratic structure often works very well – organisational success shows that it is adaptive for the particular market. Command and control has the virtue of a defined hierarchy which enables quick decisions, and the ability to apply resources quickly. However, in changing markets it is less suited. The weaknesses are that same hierarchical decision tree, the lack of internal challenge and loss of touch with reality, and the consequent stifling of innovation. Most entrepreneurial organisations reach their ‘natural’ limit when they are successful enough to require formal capital. This usually occasions the provision of more ‘professional’ management by the funders, with skill sets suited to growing a larger organisation, with the founder retained on some form of earn out.
What happens when an organisation manages to grow beyond this ‘natural’ limit with the founder and team intact? Without innovation and consequent long term competitive advantage it is difficult to see how it could avoid a crisis.
News Corps’ problems seem both significant and multiplying at an alarming rate. A management culture is being exposed where competitive advantage seems to have been based on short term (criminal?) ruthless behaviour. Was the nadir of this in the UK the exposure of Fraser Brown’s illness? Compare this with the treatment of Ivan Cameron. Or are there still more depths to plumb?
The Fourth Estate now takes delight in exposing stories long held back by fear of retribution. And as New Corps are discovering, thanks to the internet, what would in the recent past have stayed as a regional issue is impacting their global business. In the US shareholders are reacting to the evident weaknesses in management and worry about the delivery of promised benefits from the promised takeover of BSkyB. Whilst this story appears to have resonance with Maxwell and even Trollop’s Melmotte, there is little doubt that the ‘The Great Leader’ theory of management is being cruelly exposed.
Talk to us, in confidence and without obligation about helping your managers develop the competence and confidence to manage effectively. Solutions that engage, motivate and fit around, rather than disrupt the business.
Hard Wired to Fail?
Friday, May 6th, 2011
The connections between the physical form and functioning of the brain and behaviour continue to be revealed. Professor James Fallon, a true believer in genetic determinism ( i.e. that behaviour is driven by the brain’s biology), makes an interesting appearance on the BBC’s All in the Mind. He reveals his own personal journey to understanding the importance of environment and nurture, recounting his discovery that he had the brain structures of a psychopath, and comes from a long line of convicted murderers. Yet in his case he has ‘turned out well’. What made the difference was nurture and environment.
At the time of writing the interview is still available on the BBC at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b010mcl1
It was Alice Miller, back in the 1950s, who pinpointed nurture and the wider environment as key protective factors in child development. Her work was an investigation into how Hitler became such a monster. This work highlighted that most of the children she studied, who were brought up in unacceptable circumstances, went on to be useful members of society, rather than psycho or socio paths. As Fallon demonstrates by his own life– genetics and biology do not inevitably determine behaviour.
It is not necessary to scan the brains of your employees to identify and exclude the undesirable. Some of those problematic brain structures probably explain success – engineers/quantitative people with autistic tendencies for example. But the science does have useful lessons. Environment may switch certain tendencies ‘on’. We see this particularly in organisational cultures which admire strong leadership. ‘Strong’ leadership may just be sociopathic tendencies playing out – RBS and Fred Goodwin and his apparently bullying sales culture being an example.
Just as for the young, environment (culture) is protective for the organisation. Setting expectations and limits, defining and rewarding appropriate behaviour etc. All make a difference.
Good management skills are not a nice to have, they are a requirement for success.
Talk to us, in confidence and without obligation about helping your managers develop the competence and confidence to manage effectively. Solutions that engage, motivate and fit around, rather than disrupt the business.
Change Lessons from Psychopathic Toddlers?
Wednesday, March 30th, 2011
Two leading criminologists (see below) at the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in Washington have presented studies that they suggest show that violent tendencies may have a biological basis. They believe brain scans on children as young as 3 could identify the future violent and criminal.
What a marvellous idea – that through the marvels of science (rather than messy interaction and assessment), we may identify those who do not conform to our community norms and that we may do so when they are still small enough not to be really dangerous. Even better and very comfortingly, if behaviour is an inevitable result of biology (rather than nurture or environment), then surely nothing may be done to change it. The attraction of the thesis is obvious.
Of course, there is one glaringly obvious flaw. Ask any parent; small kids daily demonstrate psychopathic and anti social tendencies in their almost complete disregard for the wishes and concerns of others. Then they grow up.
Caution is always needed with these discourses – remember phrenology, eugenics and genetic predetermination? They pander to our understandable reluctance to manage difference. Perhaps relevant for a governmental department which is able to make people do things, and a prison service that acts as a final destination storage facility for those who will not or cannot conform. They are particularly damaging when it comes to creating and changing high performing organisations. Building an organisation of ‘People Like Us’ (homogeneity), is not great for success in the fast moving complex markets of the global economy.
The comfort in sameness is understandable. Managing people from very different backgrounds is difficult as it requires the manager to stay adult. It usually challenges the manager’s assumptions about behaviour which will have been built up since childhood – be it how stress (emotion) should be expressed, how women should behave, or the place of people of different sexuality. For high IQ managers, who have often had the personal advantage of a relatively stable upbringing and education, it may be particularly onerous.
With change destroying networks, fracturing teams and making new demands upon existing staff, (never mind the incomers), even once apparently staid ‘people like us’ can suddenly become fractious and difficult. With the pressures of revenue and profit delivery, it is easier to not even try – just buy the myth, the software that promises automated work processes and oust those who complain. Yet the rewards for just a little effort are immense; re-invigorated individuals, engaged and high performing teams, continuity of knowledge and external relationships.
The challenge for senior teams and CEOs is to find of way of helping their managers improve their skills without it feeling too personally risky and distracting from business.
Talk to us, in confidence and without obligation about helping your managers develop the competence and confidence to manage effectively. Solutions that engage, motivate and fit around the business
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/8339772/Child-brain-scans-to-pick-out-future-criminals.html
Supernova – when your Star explodes
Friday, March 4th, 2011
The Pain of Performance
After much professional struggle and personal pain, you are a Star in your industry. But life is not going so well, using alcohol and maybe some other substances to dull the pain, you lose control in public and are arrested for racist and anti-Semitic defamation. The instantly recognisable face of a global retail brand, the outburst filmed by a bystander goes viral on youtube.com. Then you are fired as your employer attempts to avoid brand contamination. Sober, and publicly shamed, you apologise profusely. But the damage is done.
John Galliano’s very public meltdown caught our attention as managing staff performance – however senior or much of a Star they are – is a key indicator of organisational success. UK organisations have a duty of care towards employees that includes the stress from their employment. Failure will, as Dior are finding out, damage your market and employer reputation, may further damage (and thus increase the risk of your being sued) your failing employee and will certainly waste the monies that you have spent developing and hiring him or her. For Dior to un-mesh their corporate identity with that of the Galliano ‘brand’ is a further cost.
High value services and products require teams to deliver into globalised market places. Leading teams of different generational, functional and cultural backgrounds is a daily reality for most managers. You are part of the team you lead and work alongside them every day, and you may even like them. With current market turmoil, the possibility of reducing stress by average scoring and giving the standard pay rise has gone. No wonder it is difficult to persuade managers to engage with this personal and interpersonal challenge.
No surprise then that the banks and IT developers are talking about developing software that will de-risk the 1:1 of leadership – Cyber or Android Manager to take the pain away?
We beg to differ. The solution starts with the senior team acknowledging the significant risks and costs involved with poor execution of these skills. Performance management belongs to line management rather than HR, as it is in those thousands of ‘moments of truth’ as teams interact that performance is managed. Giving managers the competence that leads to expert and confident delivery requires an accessible, engaging, individually low risk programme that fits around demands of running a business.
Talk to us today, in confidence and without obligation, to ensure your managers produce stellar performance from the whole team
NB: Dig a little deeper into the Galliano story and it transpires that the individual who managed the interface between Galliano and his employer, (Steven Robinson), died four years ago. Perhaps this exposed the designer to the stresses of managing his own relations with a corporate culture, and removed an important reality check. Whilst Galliano will no doubt recover from the shock, it is a shame for both the organisation and the individual concerned that the realisation that there was a problem came only after such public and shaming exposure.
What a show! Avoidable Risk – Management Error?
Friday, November 12th, 2010
It really is quite a show! We are being treated to a very public airing of accusations of sexism, ‘lookism’, ageism, personal vindictiveness and opaque process. To the delight of the press it includes elements of ‘cat fight’, as personal accusations are exchanged between professionals. This is all from such an avowedly high IQ and intelligent organisation, the BBC.
The corporation is paying the financial and distraction costs of a tribunal as a result of comments allegedly made by managers when discussing an employee’s performance and future. As gender, age and looks are not characteristics that an individual may (easily) change, and are shared by large proportions of the population especially theBBC’s audience and tax paying pay masters, the market and political damage is reasonably significant.
High IQ individuals often find the soft skills required to manage performance a challenge to perfect. Performance feedback is an important and constant part of a manager’s job. Staying adult is part of the competency. However, the BBC team appear to have resorted to personally vindictive behaviour. This may be bullying and harassment, and whether deliberate or accidental, is certainly unnecessary and avoidable.
As more than one manager within the team appears to have demonstrated shortcomings, was it an isolated management failure with the senior manager failing to correct errors? Or was this a case of tick box compliance to policy?
Are your managers to exposing your organisation to unnecessary risks?
Talk to us, in confidence and without obligation about helping your managers develop the competence and confidence to manage effectively. Solutions that engage, motivate and fit around, rather than disrupt the business.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/8117730/Countryfile-presenter-forced-out-as-payback.html