All Posts in Policies and Procedures

|In: Leadership|Last Updated:

Leading IT: The Toughest Job in the World identifies the “eight tasks of leadership” — envisioning the future, delegation, staffing, decision-making, motivation, team-building, culture, and communication. Add to these process management, organizational design, provisioning, and general administration — the four tasks of management (or at least the four that have made my list thus far) — and you have your job description.

Of all your responsibilities, staffing is the most important. The proof: (1) If you have the right people in the right roles they will find ways to succeed no matter how poorly you handle the other eleven tasks; and (2) if you have the wrong people, they’ll mess up even the clearest vision, best-designed processes, and other advantages you provide.

Putting the right people in the right roles sounds simple. But if it’s so simple, why do many organizations hash it up so badly? Here are some of the factors that lead organizations astray:

  • Management egotism: Many managers figure they are what make the organization tick — that employees are fungible commodities. You don’t spend much time and effort selecting cinder blocks or lentils; why would you spend any more time choosing employees?
  • Management overload: Companies operate lean and mean these days (or “famished and feeble,” in Janet Jonas’ prize-winning translation). One consequence is that many managers have just barely enough time to handle process management, provisioning and general administration. Staffing takes time, effort, thought and care, and these managers have none to spare.
  • The Sack o’skills theory: Too many HR organizations have bought into the we-can-make-recruiting-a-science claim. They use computerized screening tools to correlate position skill requirements to resume skill lists.Sadly, this “scientific” approach ignores the importance of attitude, temperament, a willingness to take responsibility and the habit of succeeding. It also fails to factor in the likelihood that anyone who has all of the listed skills and experience and still wants the job will be coasting instead of driving.Worst of all, it turns the whole process into a stupid game of Fool the Screening Software.
  • Mistaking comfort for performance: When recruiting, some managers hire those unlikely to challenge them. When assessing existing staff, it means getting along with you is more important than getting the job done.
  • Mistaking retention for compassion: If an employee isn’t succeeding, many managers live with the problem, mistakenly thinking they’re “doing the right thing.” They aren’t. Their other employees have to work harder than they otherwise would and someone you haven’t yet met — but could — doesn’t get a deserved opportunity.You aren’t being kind to the employee, either: You communicate the lie that what is really poor performance is just fine; and the employee knows, deep down, that what is called salary is really charity. In the end, your compassion discourages the employee from finding a different role that’s a better fit. Everybody loses.
  • Neutron Jacking: Jack Welch popularized cutting the bottom ten percent of the workforce every year. Because it was Jack Welch, too many business leaders decided it must be a great idea. If you inherit a complacent, flabby organization this might be just the ticket … for a year or two. Beyond that limit, forget it — it’s both statistically and socially invalid.Statistically: If you trim the worst performers, and choose strong replacements, then after two years your average performers must be well ahead of the industry average. And if you give other managers credit for brains, those they’ve terminated were the ones who didn’t do their jobs well, dragging down the average among the currently unemployed. If you can continue to strengthen your workforce by churning those rated lowest among your employees, you’ve been doing a poor job of recruiting and retaining great employees. You won’t fix this by continuing to cut.

    Socially: How do you think your best employees will respond to the annual ritual? My guess — they’ll find companies that take a more surgical approach to dealing with problem performers. So in the effort to cut your worst employees you also lose your best.

    Even worse: The more you churn your workforce, the less employees will trust each other, or you, because trust takes time to develop. Without trust there is no teamwork; without teamwork few organizations can achieve anything important.

Contrast the above with this: Every manager I’ve ever known who has turned around a poorly performing organization has said the exact same thing: Two or three key hires make all the difference.

Comments

|In: Industry Commentary|Last Updated:

Female managers are more nurturing and less political than their male counterparts — a fact that’s well-accepted by just about everyone.

Computer geeks see the world in very different terms than the rest of the population. They get stuck in the details, communicate poorly, and are social disasters. Everyone knows this.

Members of Generation X, Y and Z have no work ethic, can’t do math in their heads, and are socially isolated because they spend too much time attached to their iPods. And don’t get me started about blacks, Jews and Asians.

Oh, by the way, what’s your Myers-Briggs profile?

People are complicated, but, as the National Lampoon pointed out long ago, a walk through the ocean of most souls would scarcely get your feet damp. Perhaps that’s why the search for simplifying generalizations is so popular. It’s part industry, part hobby, and mostly nonsense, with big chunks of pseudoscience thrown in. The dusting of genuine research is barely discernable. It’s worth discerning.

For example: Janey Shibley Hyde of the University of Wisconsin should write a book titled Men are from Earth. So are women. Reviewing twenty years of research on the subject in a paper published last September in American Psychologist, she found that men and women are far more similar than different.

That computer geeks can’t interact socially with others in the business is an article of faith; that’s why we need business analysts to translate. This leaves unexplained a remarkable fact: Many technical professionals marry people who aren’t technical professionals, raise children who aren’t born speaking Java, and invite non-geek neighbors to back-yard barbecues. They must have a switch that’s thrown into the On position when they reach their cubicles that makes them unable to interact with business managers and users while they go about their work.

Or else they have a hard time communicating with their business counterparts because we tell both parties that this is so, so often and so emphatically that the repetition causes acceptance of this absurd generalization.

There’s really no doubt that Generations X, Y and Z are lazy, ignorant, and generally worthless, since every new generation has, from the perspective of their elders, been hopeless. Nothing new there. If you’re a member of one of these generations, I’m your elder and you are hopeless. Live with it.

What’s the point of this tirade? It’s that every time a manager generalizes about a group, that manager leads less effectively. Even the best generalizations describe the median of a bell-shaped curve — a poor predictor of any particular person.

When you deal with direct reports, group generalizations result in presuppositions, and these serve as barriers to understanding the human beings who report to you. When Sally is responsible for leading Harry, dealing with him as a general-purpose male is entirely pointless when Harry the person is right there in front of her. He very well might be a single Dad raising three teen-age daughters; might play the cello in his spare time; and might consider Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood to be the pinnacle of cinema.

Or he might use chaw, smear deer musk on his face, and drink beer in the woods each weekend. Thinking of him as “this is how males are” wouldn’t help Sally understand what makes Harry tick. It would mask it.

When you deal with those who report to those who report to your direct reports, you might figure you’re more justified in making use of the generalizations. After all, getting to know hundreds of employees as individuals simply isn’t practical. And it isn’t. But if you lead an IT group and figure you can read Paul Glen’s Leading Geeks, apply its principles, and you’re done … think again.

Just because you see a faceless collection of generic geeks doesn’t mean the geeks see themselves that way. Words have power: Use “blond,” or “ENTJ,” or “Generation X’er” or “soccer mom” and you persuade yourself that everyone to whom the label applies shares certain personality traits. They don’t … not reliably. Beyond that, your decision to generalize robs those who work for you of their individuality. That’s hard to hide, especially because they already know, “managers” are like that.

You might not be able to get to know each and every employee in your organization. That’s no excuse for failing to recognize that each of the men and women who work there is the hero of his or her own movie, and not an extra in yours.

Comments