Tag Archives: Management

“I See You” Management

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“I See You” Management, by Walter McIntyre

Connectivity between human beings is the beginning of synergy.  It is written in our genetic code and expresses itself in our drive to connect to others and be part of a group. Since this is how we are wired, it only makes sense that the most effective management styles, as far as us humans are concerned, leverages this aspect of our specie’s corporate psyche.

I would call this “I See You” management. I did not coin this phrase, but since I cannot remember who did, I will use it for this post. The way I see things, “I See You” management is based upon three levels of recognition.

I see you. You are here and I acknowledge your presence. This is important to the individual because we all want to be a part of the group or team. Recognition is a powerful fulfillment agent when it comes to our personal emotional bank account. This is consistent with the conclusions from Elton Mayo’s Hawthorne Works experiments from the 1920’s.

I also see you as a person with hopes, dreams, joys and fears. A complete person fills my vision. You cannot effectively manage a person from the perspective of seeing them as an available asset rather than as a person. The ability to motivate someone comes from knowledge of their personal value proposition. Lou Holtz, as a football coach, would require the players on each special team to know their teammates full names, the names of their immediate family members and some special fact about them. Coach Holtz knew that a player would block more effectively for “Bobby”, who they knew, than they would for the “running back”, even though they were the same person.

I value you for who you are, not at the level of your title or your possessions, but instead, at the level of your commitment and effort. This is tricky ground because I am not speaking exclusively about commitment and effort at work. Although these are critical to acceptable performance at work, I also will also value you for your commitment and efforts on behalf of others outside of the work environment. A lot can be learned about someone by how they treat others. I was at a restaurant recently with a business acquaintance who wanted to join my business team. He was disrespectful to our waitress and others he encountered while there. Even though He was very respectful to me, I could see that he only valued people for what he wanted from them. This attitude did not fit our culture and I did not hire him.

In another instance, one f my employees had a habit of badmouthing and undermining others.  Just like the business acquaintance above, this employee only valued others as stepping stones for his personal career development.

The result of “I See You” management is trust. Trust is the interpersonal lubrication that allows successful organizations to tackle tough problems and weather the storms of uncertainty. It is also the glue that keeps a team from despair and fragmentation. It keeps an organization in alignment when other forces are trying to pull it apart.

In my daily walk through my business, I try to touch every employee with a message about their value to me and our business journey together. I expect them to do the same. It keeps us sane, focused and successful.

“I See You” Management

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Connectivity between human beings is the beginning of synergy.  It is written in our genetic code and expresses itself in our drive to connect to others and be part of a group. Since this is how we are wired, it only makes sense that the most effective management styles, as far as us humans are concerned, leverages this aspect of our specie’s corporate psyche.

I would call this “I See You” management. I did not coin this phrase, but since I cannot remember who did, I will use it for this post. The way I see thIngs, “I See You” management is based upon three levels of recognition.

I see you. You are there, or here, and I acknowledge your presence. This is important to the individual because we all want to be a part of the group or team. Recognition is a powerful fulfillment agent when it comes to our personal emotional bank account. This is consistent with the conclusions from Elton Mayo’s Hawthorne Works experiments from the 1920’s.

I see you as a person with hopes, dreams, joys and fears. A complete person fills my vision. You cannot effectively manage a person from the perspective of seeing them as an available asset rather than as a person. The ability to motivate someone comes from knowledge of their personal value proposition. Lou Holts, as a football coach, would require the players on each special team to know their teammates full names, the names of their immediate family members and some special fact about them. Coach Holts knew that a player would block more effectively for “Bobby”, who they knew, than they would for the “running back”, even though they were the same person.

I value you for who you are, not at the level of your title or your possessions, but instead at the level of your commitment and effort. This is tricky ground because I am not speaking exclusively about commitment and effort at work. Although these are critical to acceptable performance at work, I also will also value you for your commitment and efforts on behalf of others outside of the work environment. A lot can be learned about someone by how they treat others. I was at a restaurant recently with a business acquaintance who wanted to join my business team. He was disrespectful to our waitress and others he encountered while there. Even though He was very respectful to me, I could see that he only valued people for what he wanted from them. This attitude did not fit our culture and I did not hire him.

The result of “I See You” management is trust. Trust is the interpersonal lubrication that allows successful organizations to tackle tough problems and weather the storms of uncertainty. It is also the glue that keeps a team from despair and fragmentation. It keeps an organization in alignment when other forces are trying to pull it apart.

In my daily walk through my business, I try to touch every employee with a message about their value to me and our business journey together. I expect them to do the same.  It keeps us sane, focused and successful.

Measuring things? Here’s a way to scare yourself.

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Most people agree that measuring things is key for improvement. Most organizations have a basket of key measures on which they base their decision making. Pick a measure that’s regarded as important and spend a bit of time with one of the team that uses the measure (one-on-one, this isn’t about embarrassing people) and ask how they think that measure is calculated. Make sure you find out what they think is and isn’t included in the measure.

I’ve done this lots of times and have never once had two people come up with identical definitions (more often than not, they are nowhere near)

What’s surprising is that most people seem pretty confident that the definitions are nailed down, until you go through this exercise. They will sit in meetings, debating what certain measures are showing, without realising they have completely different perspectives on what the measure is actually showing.

The solution is pretty simple. Create a KPI database (even on a spreadsheet) that nails down a measure in as much detail as possible. Keep one master-copy that is accessible and use that as the ultimate reference for all calculations. Here’s a link to a free template

To read about all things KPI, have a look at Bernie’s website www.madetomeasureKPIs.com

The 5 Deadly Sins of Management

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The Know It All

The “Know It All” supervisor routinely challenges and overturns subordinate’s decisions. This approach to management will de-motivate others in the group, making them not want to make decisions or to make them behind the supervisor’s back. Supervisors that work this way will willingly take over decision making and, as a result, sub-optimize the work group.
I have had a supervisor that would always decide opposite my own decisions. It got so ridiculous that I began to present my own opinions opposite of what I really wanted in order to get him to decide the way I wanted him to. This creates a toxic work environment.

The Critic

This supervisor does not know what they want, but are quick criticize other people’s work. The work place culture, in this case, takes on an unsafe feel. Employees are not willing to act on their own initiative, thereby avoiding criticism. In the end the subordinates begin to avoid work that can wind up in the supervisor’s hands or go behind the supervisor’s back. Communication is compromised and the work group is sub-optimized.
A good example is when a supervisor asks a subordinate to write a memo and then precedes to wordsmith it. The memo, which should only take a few minutes to write, winds up taking hours. The memo gets bounced between the supervisor and the subordinate multiple times and becomes something written by committee. I once experienced a situation where, after I incorporated my supervisor’s comments, he began to edit and criticize his own work. When I pointed this out, he denied asking for the edits. After a few of these experiences, I made him give me bullet points or write the first draft himself. This worked pretty well.

Introduction of Politics or Religion

In our current political environment there are many employees voicing their political and religious opinions. As long as this is kept “off line” and separate from the work effort there are few problems. When a supervisor introduces these opinions in an “on line” fashion, the work place is made to feel unsafe or maybe even hostile to persons who disagree. The result is employee withdraw from interaction, resentment or arguments.
Managers cannot allow the mass distribution of political or religious email, signage, or dialog in forced attendance venues. The work place will become politically or religiously charged and use up emotional and intellectual bandwidth that is better used in completing work.
When explaining this to my staff I simply tell them that this type of communication is based upon two or more idiots talking about other idiots they know nothing about. A total waste of time when on the job.

Manipulation

Quid pro quo, lying, withholding information (also lying) are forms of manipulation. Supervisors who manage this way have moved the focus of the work effort away from the customer. The work group begins to work to support these side agreements or misinformation instead of producing a quality product or service.
An example would be using quotas to pay bonuses. I consulted with a steel mill that had a product quality issue. What I found was that the production, inspection, and shipping work groups all had the same quota based bonus system. Everything was tied to volume. In order to get a bonus, the production group would tell the inspection group what product to not inspect. The inspection group complied because their bonus was tied with the same criteria (volume) that rewarded the production group. The shipping group would see bad product and ship it anyway for the same reason. This is a great example of teamwork gone bad.

Serial Entrepreneur

This supervisor has a new idea every five minutes and is trying to implement them just as fast. This creates a reactive work space where the focus is on implementing change without analysis. This usually happens when the line between a business’s owners (or senior management) and its operations management become blurred.
The result is operational processes that are not in control. No one knows what change created what result or what impact. Changes or experiments get piggy backed upon each other creating a confusion.
The fix is to document the ideas and plan experiments to test their usefulness. This way, everyone knows what is going on, and the baseline process flow is predictable and the customer is protected.