Obligations of management

As a rash of businesses in all sectors let go of staff and others look at closing up shop altogether I got to thinking about the obligations of management.

Then I read a research report today which linked management behaviours to productivity. The report essentially links management behaviour high performance over a variety of areas. The research also showed that of those firms surveyed around 60% had low performance in all areas. What does that say about the management behaviours in those firms?

What do we expect of our managers? I believe people managers to look out for them, to treat them with respect and dignity, as human beings and to engage them in the daily processes. I believe also they expect their managers to fight for their future. Afterall in most instances only those in a management role have access to all the information that informs a decision.

How many times have employees in general felt their management team gave up; that it was easier for management to sacrifice workers than it was to get up and fight?

A management team that gives up is morally corrupt. As a team they have abdicated their responsibilities to those they are supposed to support and nurture. Likely in the case of public companies they have also abdicated their responsibilities to stakeholders.

The research suggests those poor performing organisations are the ones most likely to go belly up. Which means we continue to recycle poor managers and impose their mediocrity upon the workforce all over again.

Is there a solution? Yes there is. Firstly recruit people into management roles based upon leadership characteristics and behaviours as much as technical knowledge. Then reduce the number of managers by having management focus upon developing others to be the best they can be; to take personal responsibility for their own outcomes.

One really effective manager will achieve a great deal more than five or six ineffective managers. It is time to get rid of all those middle managers and senior executives that lack leadership behaviours.

Those are my thoughts for the day.

Let The Journey Continue

John Coxon

Facing our fears

According to the experts our fears hold us back from achieving our full potential. I have no doubt they are right. The universal advice is to face our fears, accept they exist, that they won’t go away; so just deal with them.

I don’t have a problem with the advice. Its like all self help advice, it will likely work if you do the things you need to do. What about those that cannot get past their fear?

Firstly we have to make  a couple of choices. Is it a fear we must face or one we simply don’t want to face? Our stress is created by not making a choice.

If we decide our fear must be faced – then there is no alternative but to just do it. Face it and go full on. Better to face the fear than have it sneak up behind you and take you by surprise.

On the other hand, if it isn’t necessary to face your fear, then don’t. Make a decision to not bother with it and to not be bothered by it.

Not every fear need be faced. There are often alternatives. At another time, facing the fear might become necessary but for the moment, walk away and do something else.

A lot of our fear arises from our concern about being out of control. If we take this action we dont actually know what will happen. We become fearful of the unknown. The solution here is to accept you cannot control everything; however you are an intelligent person and you will always be able to work through whatever happens.

If you are a bit anal and need to be in control then perhaps you need to walk away and do something else. Persisting with an activity that generates fear will simply increase your stress and often result in negative behaviour.

Consider bringing someone else in to work with you. If you have to do something fearful and you can’t walk away, then ask yourself who else might help you. Having someone to walk alongside you can help reduce the stress. For example, if you are fearful of walking into a room full of strangers, consider asking a colleague to accompany you.

You can also change how you do things. Returning to our room full of strangers. Perhaps you could make an effort to be the first person there. By changing how we behave we may also reduce the level of fear and stress.

Those are my thoughts for the day.

Let The Journey Continue

John Coxon

 

 

 

Are you an ordinary manager?

The title to this blog is not meant to imply any inferiority. I was thinking about this when I woke this morning. Sure we can talk about all the things exceptional managers do but then the reality is only a handful of people ever acheive that status. The vast majority of people engaged in a management role simply aspire to be the best they can be on a day to day basis.

What is needed to get through the day in the majority of management roles? The word endurance comes to mind. For many people involved in management their day is filled with dealing with the minuete of work life – not grand decisions, more like working through issues such as who didnt enter the correct number into the security system when leaving work last night, or who didnt order a new supply of toilet paper for the staff bathroom, who why A doesnt want to work with B today.

In these environments managers need patience and persistence. It helps if you prioritise issues based upon their impact and consequences. Strange as it may appear, a lack of toilet paper may be more important than whether A and B want to work together. In this way you will attend to those issues most likely to cause ongoing grief.

Ordinary managers just do ordinary things. One of the most ordinary things you can do every day is facilitate conversations with people. Actually that would be extraordinary as a good number of managers actually fail to do this. By facilitating conversations I mean, avoid telling people what to do or what to think; instead ask questions and enable people to explore ideas and contribute their wisdom and knowledge.

A small handful of managers operate in the rarified arena of grand decision making. Most simply spend their day dealing with a myriad of common issues. At all times remember you are a human being, working with other human beings. How you treat others will guide them in how you want them to treat you.

As the saying goes, when we bend over to pull up our pants, we are all fairly much the same!

Those are my thoughts for the day.

Let the journey continue

John Coxon

Doing nothing is a bad option

Today I was working with a group of middle managers in a mid-sized nonprofit organisation. The discussion went like this, ‘we have some ideas, some stuff we believe could be helpful, but we don’t know where to start.’

A challenge for many working in the funded nonprofit sector can be that they fail to utilise entrepreneurial thinking. It’s not that people lack creativity. They lack the ability to shift their mindset from being told what to do – this often comes with the funded environment, where others set the agenda on how services will be delivered.

The world is full of people in need. There are about 8 different ways a nonprofit organisation may generate revenue. Fee for service is one of those ways and it is often overlooked when people look to diversify revenue sources. Why is this? Partly it is because people involved in social service delivery consider it anethema to make a buck from their knowledge. This type of thinking holds back organisations.

What was my advice to the people I met with this morning? To follow the Nike advt and ‘just do it.’ Do something, get the ball rolling. Doing nothing is a bad option. It is better for your headstone to read, ‘s(he) died trying’ rather than to read, ‘s(he) waited to die.’

Think of the personal satisfaction involved in doing something positive and constructive. Think of the leadership skills you will develop as you gather a group of supporters around you. Think of the collective wisdom and knowledge you will tap into from those supporters. Think about what might be.

There is no right or wrong time to do something. Yes, it involves taking a risk. Yes, you might get it wrong and become the object of ridicule and criticism. There is no guarantee of failure; just as there is no gaurantee of success. The only thing you can be sure off is this. If you do nothing you will have nothing.

So what if it results in you moving to another employer. I know that I was hiring I would look for the resume that says, I tried and failed, rather than the resume that says I failed to try!

Those are my thoughts for the day.

Let the journey continue.

John Coxon

Having and using power in management

I thought that for my first blog of 2012 I would commence at the top with ‘power’. Perhaps by the end of the year I will write something about having a mid afternoon siesta, who knows.

The world is changing. Where did you hear that before? The environment we work in is changing. This is getting very profound! While many of us continue to work in hierarchial environments (even when we’re told that is not so), the nature of power is also changing.

Gone are the days when your title ensures others would listen and do as you told them. Gone are the days when those below you would cower and simply follow instructions. In the modern, emerging workplace it is not what you know, but who you know that helps you to build and exercise power.

Now some of you might be thinking, it’s always been about who you know. I’m not talking about the arse-kissing type of relationship of the past, I’m talking about the ‘what’s in it for both of us’ type of relationship that is emerging. All around the world levels of management are being dismantled. There are fewer management roles and there are less opportunities for climbing a corporate ladder based upon titles.

Workplace effectiveness and management success is now measured in what you achieve and to maximise your effectiveness you need to build relationships that help you achieve something and in turn be prepared to help others achieve what it is they need to be seen to be effective.

There are numerous stakeholders with an interest in your effectiveness and success. You must have an understanding of who these stakeholders are, what is their interest and what factors push their buttons. Build your relationship with each stakeholder over time – before you will ever need their help. Build your relationship by being prepared to give before you need to take. Build your relationship by attending to the other person’s needs rather than your own.

Power is about influencing other people. Power is having the ability to marshall support and resources without having to resort to coercion. At the centre of building powerful relationships is ensuring you give other people credit for their contribution and for their part in helping you achieve your success. You cannot be effective or successful on your own. You must know have the knowledge to know what to do and the relationships that enable you to get it done.

Building your power base is not about being nice to people; yet it’s not about being horrible either. By all means be true to yourself, be guided by your values, while at the same time understanding that having power to exercise means sometimes you will be required to make hard decisions, you will have to adapt constantly to changing circumstances and you may need to build relationships with people you dislike or even despise.

Power is not something to be avoided if you want to be seen as being effective. Seeking to be effective means taking a risk. It means confronting the possibility of being wrong or making an ineffective decision. Avoiding risk means you avoid building the relationships you need to be effective.

Being effective involves you in building relationships on multiple fronts. You may not be working on all those relationships at the same time. Work on those where you can make progress. Use that progress to create a reason for those less productive relationships to engage with you. Look for ways to make those that oppose you a part of your team or ways they can gather a stake in the outcomes. If all else fails, look for ways to remove an opponent. This could involve working around them, going above them, building a relationship with someone able to influence them, or even moving them someplace else.

Effective people learn which battles are worth fighting. The learn to live to fight another day. They are persistent and they never give up, not matter how long it takes. They understand that often the most important person to build a relationship with is not the person with the title but those that surround that person and influence decisions.

Those are my thoughts for the day

John Coxon

www.johncoxon.com.au

 

Sensing Those External Events

Over the past week or so I’ve been thinking a lot about this topic. It is something we introduce in all of our leadership and management programs. That is the ability to turn and look outside while maintaining a conversation on the inside.

This process of ‘sensing’ the external environment is critical to the sustainability of any organisation. The challenge for many nonprofits can be that due to their funding model, they become complacent. At both the governance and executive level they fail to look outside the window – or they leave off doing so till it is almost too late.

The Tipu Ake model highlights this sensing component when it draws an analogy between organisations and a forest. In the forest trees sense the external environment, their leaves and in some instances the bark adapt to accommodate the elements, they sense where the sources of energy, water, sunlight are and how best to take advantage of the emerging environment. It is those trees that best sense and adapt to external factors that grow to become tall and old.

Clearly not every tree survives to become a towering giant, just as very few organisations grow and become truely sustainable. Only those able to sense both internal and external factors and plan accordingly are likely to become a force to be reckoned with.

In our organisations there is a further benefit from sensing – it encourages sharing and discourages silo’s from forming. It creates an environment of learning and continuous improvement. Only a handful of trees survive to become monsters of forest however they didnt get there on their own, their survival was assured by the way in which they formed a symbiotic part of the forest. Look around the bottom of a giant tree. You will see other plants that have been able to thrive because of the protection provided by the taller tree.

The downside of not sensing the emerging environment is that things sneak up on us – we don’t see them coming and even when we do our senses are not sufficiently developed to recognise any inherent threat – which then prevents us from putting place proactive strategies or defences. When this happens our first instance is to point to the ‘emerging factor’ and say, it’s all their fault.

It is nobody elses fault, other than our own. We have choices and we have options. We choose to be insular and look inside, to take notice only of our own ‘press releases’, to fail to sense and spot incoming threats, or the opportunities these emerging events invariably present.

Can we change the way we do things? Of course we can. It is a cultural change, a movement towards sensing and becoming proactive. This is a change that must be lead from the top, by the board and by the executive team. When that takes place, miracles can occur.

Those are my thoughts for the day
John Coxon
www.johncoxon.com.au

Community Connections faces uncertain future

I have thought long and hard before setting out to write this entry. It would be easier for me not to do so, and some might even suggest better for my reputation as a consultant if I were to refrain from comment. However we all have a set of values we live by and one of my values is a sense of equity and fairness.
Community Connections is the largest funded nonprofit service provider in south west Victoria in the city of Warrnambool. This is also where I live for part of each year and where my consultancy is based. Community Connections has been a long standing client of mine, and I will be involved in helping them move into a new future.
In the past I have written about other nonprofit organisations who have exhibited management failure and it is only equitable that I comment also on Community Connections.
In the past week Community Connections has been stripped of a significant amount of current funding. The impact of these decisions by the Victorian State Government Departments of Justice and Human Services will have significant impact upon a large group of people, both clients and employees. It is possible these decisions could impact upon the ongoing viability of Community Connections.
This is not the place to question the validity of State Government decisions and it would be pointless to do so, as the past is the past and the focus of management in Community Connections has to shift firmly to the future. There is no doubt there will be some very difficult decisions to be made by the executive at Community Connections over coming weeks and months.
Many people will question how this situation could have occurred? There is only one response, and that is the management team at Community Connections have stuffed up! It doesn’t matter what spin you put upon this outcome or the events that have contributed, it is a responsibility of any management team to make sure this sort of thing doesn’t happen. That’s the bad news out of the way. The good news is that it is fixable, there is a future for Community Connections in Victoria and I have no doubt whatever emerges from the ashes will grow to once again become a significant employer and provider of social services.
It is likely there will be reductions in staffing as a result of the funding cuts, that is inevitable. Alternative providers have already been named and it is hoped many of those people will find positions with these providers. Some will, some may not. On the other hand, a large number of existing staff will continue to operate a vastly different organisation to the one they came to work at earlier this week. These people will be seeking leadership and a vision of the future from those on the executive. This is an organisation that is built around a solid set of values and principles. The executive team understand their reason for being. Now is the time for them to stand up and provide leadership.
It is not a time for recriminations. There is more at stake than the welfare of clients. There are reputations, careers and credibility on the line. There are almost 150 employees reliant upon salaries to make their next mortgage payment. Never has the saying been more true than at this moment. When the going gets tough, the tough get going.
The future of Community Connections rests in the hands of those that work there and those that volunteer to be a part of this organisation. Good leadership will see everyone engaged in the process of restructuring. Good leadership will provide everyone with a vision going forward and a plan for survival and sustainability.
There may be some that wish to judge the executive group at Community Connections for their actions to date. My suggestion is this, don’t. They have made mistakes, there have been errors of judgment. Now it is time to address the root cause of issues and move forward. Hold off making judgements and judge the executive team upon their success in rebuilding Community Connections.

Those are my thoughts for the day
John Coxon