You Stopped Doing WHAT?

Sounds familiar!  During difficult times, the leaders of companies are working frantically to come up with turnaround strategies.  It is during such times, that one receives directives upon directives to execute.  Some of these directives may not even make sense, but as a senior manager you had your orders to execute.

For some, your company may be doing better.  The vision is clear and well communicated.  The video playing in your mind is similar to that of your leadership.  In this situation, enjoy your journey.

For others, the journey is challenging.  I remember a game I played at a carnival, when I was young.  You may have played it too.  It’s the Whack-A-Mole game.  A mole pops up, and you are to whack it down.  As you progress, they pop up at increased frequency.  Soon you will miss whacking some.  The initiatives and directives coming from the leaders of your company sometimes feel like the mole popping up.  You whack and you whack but they keep popping up.  It never ends!

So how do you end it?  You can get more people to help you whack the moles.  But that is against the rule.  The rule is “do more with less.”  In fact, they may tighten the rule by tying up one hand or blind-folding you.  You can of course walk away from the game and end the frustration.  You risk being labeled with all kinds of names for walking out.  That may not be an option either.  You have your pride.

As manager in your organization, you have your role cut out.  You cannot be piling initiatives upon initiatives; strategies upon strategies; and actions upon actions on yourself and your team.  Something has to give.  So, before you make a decision or take an action, ask yourself or your team this question.

What have you stopped doing in the last couple of months to create capacity so your team can focus on new strategies, actions, and behaviors?

When I was working on the strategic planning for my unit, I asked myself this question.  I asked my team this same question.  I can feel a sense of relief when the question was asked.  Of course, I asked many other questions but for this posting I wanted to focus on just this one.  I was surprised at the responses.  There were so many activities that we were doing that are questionable.  On further investigation, I found that the actions were taken appropriately to address certain problems.  Over time the problems have been resolved or the conditions had changed.  We continue the activities because no manager stopped them.  The action did not have an expiration date.  We all have selective memory, so a good documentation of why we took an action is important.  It helped me when we reviewed the action.

Reflect on these concepts! 

1.      To do more, we have to stop doing some.

2.      Every action or activity introduced must have an expiration date.

"You stopped doing what," may be a great strategy to improve your output and productivity.  It is time to ask this simple question. Be mindful that the answers may be difficult and complex.  In the end, they can only help strengthen your unit’s strategy and execution and move your organization forward in the right direction.

Not How Many But How

Subtitle: Getting viewpoints.

I remembered a colleague who had an interesting approach to getting various views on the issue at hand.  Let’s call him James.   When he had a topic or pressing issue that needed a variety of opinions, he would seek out three different sets of views.  These views are at times opposing.  He said that this helped him developed a better solution and in a shorter time.

Getting in line to share idea?

James would stage the conversations.  I am his exploration person.  He came to me for building ideas.  He said, jokingly, that I am so “full” of it.  He would present his idea; my brain glows with excitement and I start building and adding to the original.

James will also find a person who will oppose and debate the idea with him.   He will pick a side for the debate.  He enjoys the debate.  The intensity of the debate can be quite daunting at times.  However, he said that the debate generated addition ideas, concerns, obstacles and other useful information that he may not have thought of otherwise.  He will also find a third person.  This person would be indifferent to the idea.  James will try to win this person over.  It is not a sales skill practice but really trying to understand the person’s need and determine if the idea will help this person out.

Now what was it that you disagreed?

James really has a wonderful process for what he calls rapid prototyping.  With each conversation, he modifies his idea.  In the end, the idea becomes more complete and robust.  When he prepares for his presentation later, he can position his pitch so the solution addresses a need.

It takes skill and courage to engage people to these types of conversations.  Even the exploration conversation has to be skillfully handles or it becomes unruly.  For me, the difficult conversation is the one that entails a debate.  I have to learn to distill the facts from the emotions.  So to build an idea it is not a matter of getting lots of views from people but the types of views.  You get them from people who are FOR, AGAINST and NEUTRAL to the idea.  I wish you a pleasant conversation.

Who Should I Be?

The articles I have posted appeared to be a random selection of my life stories.  I hope that each story has helped you with some ideas or another option on how you can deal with your situation.  I know our situations are never identical but as long as the stories help being a catalyst to an action, I am delighted.

You may have noticed that each article has labels.  There is a structure to these labels.  The website arranges the labels in alphabetical order, but upon rearranging them, the labels look like this

• Knowing Yourself
• Aspiration
• Career Planning
• Managing Yourself
• Career Conversations
• Managing Others

When I started working, I had not figured these out.  I now have the hindsight and hopefully others can benefit from it.  Throughout my journey and until now, I have had the blessing and fortune of meeting people whom I could reach out to for help.  To these people I am thankful.  Many of them are written or will be written in my stories.  With this knowledge I have helped my coachees and those who seek my help with this process.

There are two areas that I have not touched on yet.  These are:

• Career Execution
• Constant Review

You may have your own algorithm for a successful career planning and execution.  If you do, congratulation! You are ahead of many that I have spoken to. 

For me, my career journey starts with knowing myself well.  Who am I really?  What am I capable of?  What are my strengths, my weaknesses?  How do I find out?  Knowing myself better will help me articulate my aspiration.  Sometimes a person should have more than one aspiration.  In fact I think everyone should have a plan B.  This will help make the career planning more robust.  Just like a game of chess, you may plan many moves and execute some of them.  The aim is the same – being successful.

Now that you know more about yourself, where you want to go and have made your plans to get there; the next action is to take the first step to begin the journey.  You need to manage yourself so that each step taken is aligned to your competencies and aspirations. Some steps may include gaining additional skills and knowledge. From time to time, during your journey, someone may present you with an opportunity.  How do you evaluate these opportunities?  Will the opportunity move you closer to your aspirations?  Will it help you gain additional competencies?  Opportunities may not always be presented to you.  Sometimes you need to seek them out.  How do you seek them? A good network and great career conversations will help you find out.

There will also be obstacles and derailments in your career paths.  How does you minimize these?  How do you get out of it?  Managing yourself and others well will help.  I think of others as those I come into contact with – my boss, my staff, my peers, my friends, my family members and my network.  The way you interact with them will determine your success in managing yourself and others.

Finally, one needs to get feedback constantly.  You need to know if where you are going have changed and if you have deviated from the planned path.  You must to know if you need additional tools, skills and knowledge to continue.  There are many things you need to know.  To find out, you will need to seek constant feedback and reviews to move forward.

As you read my stories, reflect on the labels (or steps) too.  I hope that both the stories and the steps can help you as you create your own exciting career journey.

A Great End To 2010

My year ended with the wedding reception of my youngest daughter in the beautiful island of Penang, Malaysia.  What a wonderful way to complete the year.  The build up to the wedding was exciting and filled with planning and execution.  I had to rely on all the experiences that I gained from work.  The evening had to be a memorable one for her.  I am happy that the reception went well and all the events went like clockwork.  Most importantly, the reception began on time and ended it on time.  I thank my guests for their timeliness and kind attendance.

I have heard horror stories of reception starting as late as an hour.  I didn’t want this to ruin the festive mood of my daughter's wedding.  From the tea ceremony to the bride’s and groom’s grand entrance, the activities occurred as I had planned them.  My guests were a beautiful mosaic of different nationalities, ethnicities and religions.  It is only appropriate to honor them with fun, good food and timeliness.  They started arriving at 6:30 pm.  Cocktails were served.  Family and friends gathered to chat and reminisce.  It was really a sight to enjoy.  There were laughter and surprises from those who haven’t seen each other for some time. 

 

The wedding guests were seated by 7:30 pm.  Dinner started at 7:50 pm after my wife’s and my welcome speech.  The atmosphere was party-like.  The tables were arranged to provide enough space for dancing.  The bride and groom choreographed their couple dance to cover the dance floor and all my guests had a clear view of the dance.  The Food and Beverage manager at the hotel was impressed that the activities were no more than 5 minutes off the schedule.

 

For those who were expecting a posting around Friday of last week, I apologize and seek your forgiveness.  I hope you can appreciate the number of things my wife and I had to do.  Life is returning back to normal and so will be my posting.  Be on the lookout for my next posting “Who Should I Be?”

They Needed Your Permission

While coaching a senior executive from a large corporation, she talked about managing her time better.  She said that she should delegate more effectively.  Her role had been recently expanded.  With that came, not only additional accountability and responsibility but also additional staff.  She complained that she is swamped with an exponential increase in emails and actions required of her.  In addition, the number of decisions she had to make increased too. She was busy, busy and busy.  What bothered her was that some of the decisions were rather trivial and she felt that her staff could make them.

It reminded me of a similar situation I was in.  I had just been assigned to lead a larger operation in the Asia Pacific.  Most of the staff had heard of me before my arrival.  But, they really did not know me as a as a person.   I was excited and eager to impress my new team and my management.

A senior manager from my Asia Pacific operation came to me to discuss an issue and to get a decision.  I listened, asked a few questions and without hesitation told him of my decision.  I felt good about my decision and the senior manager executed it flawlessly.  The manager came back some time later with another issue and looked for another decision.  Again, I listened, ask some questions and made my decision.  This time, I felt a little uneasy with the whole episode.  I thought that it wasn’t a difficult decision and that the senior manager could have made it.

The manager came to me for another decision.  Again I listened and asked some questions.  This time, I asked him what decision would he have made if he were me.  He looked surprised and hesitated.  At the end he told me what he would do.  I listened attentively and said, “That is wonderful! I would have taken the same decision.” So off he went and executed the decision.

He came back again for another decision.  I listened, asked some questions and asked him what he would have done.  He told me and I acknowledged it as a good decision.  This time I didn’t stop there.  We talked a bit more about decision making and what style he is used to.  It was then that I learned that he could have made all those decisions but feared making them as he was previously “burned” for empowering himself.  We ended the conversation with a limit of authority where he was empowered to make decisions.  He NEEDED MY PERMISSION to make those decisions and he got it.

After listening to the story, my coachee decided to try it out.  The next day I received an email that titled, “It Worked” from her.  She spoke to her staff about not requiring her approval for routine work and her staff said, “Oh! I didn’t know that I could do that.  I am just used to checking with the powers to be.”  In this circumstance, the staff is the power.  The staff was pleased and so was my coachee.  She received fewer emails, fewer routine things to review and can dedicate more time to envisioning and enjoying her other activities.