Teams

It’s not rocket science | Kan & Company

January 25, 2018

2 minutes

I dropped in on a CEO the other day. We talked about the lessons we had learnt about turning around non-performing companies.

We chatted about how it was so much about reinforcing values. About upholding standards of cleanliness, everyone pitching in, opening up communications between people, creating safe environments so people have the confidence to speak up, building trust, bringing discipline to operations, customer service, sales and marketing, engineering and technology development.

I noticed he had a number of Summer interns working for him. I asked him if they were paid. Before he could answer, I explained why I asked.

It reminded me of a conversation around a board table many years ago. The discussion was about whether interns should be paid as we had noticed that there was a growing trend not to pay them. Fortunately they decided that they should be paid.

All of our interns are paid, he said. You can shaft someone, and there will be a short term benefit , but in the end, it comes back and bites you. You just have to treat others the way you want to be treated yourself. It’s not rocket science.

Indeed, I replied. It isn’t rocket science, but what catches people is a lack of courage. Often when the decision has to be made, money might be tight, and the temptation to get something for free is at its height, to pad out the meager resources available and thereby buy more time.

You’re right, it’s not rocket science, but you do need courage to do the right thing.

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What’s gonna work? Team work!

October 16, 2017

7 minutes to read

When my children were young, they used to watch a TV programme called WonderPets. This was their theme song.

Linny: “The phone, the phone is ringing!”
Ming-Ming: “The phone, we’ll be right there!”

Tuck: “The phone, the phone is ringing!”
Linny: “There’s an animal in trouble…”
Ming-Ming: “There’s an animal in trouble…”
Tuck: “There’s an animal in trouble somewhere!”

Tuck: “A baby [animal]
[In the specific peril.]”
Ming-Ming: “This is se-rious!”
Tuck: “We have to help him/her”
Linny: “Let’s save the [animal]!”

Linny: “Linny,”
Tuck: “Tuck,”
Ming-Ming: “And Ming-Ming, too!”
All: “We’re Wonder Pets and we’ll help you!”
Linny: “What’s gonna work?”
Tuck and Ming-Ming or All: “Teamwork!”
Linny: “What’s gonna work?”
Tuck and Ming-Ming or All: “Teamwork!”

All: “Wonder Pets! Wonder Pets! We’re on our way
To help a baby [animal] and save the day!”
Ming-Ming: “We’re not too big,”
Tuck: “And we’re not too tough,”
All: “But when we work together we’ve got the right stuff!
Go, Wonder Pets! Yay!”

(when they come back to the classroom)
All: “Wonder Pets! Wonder Pets! We found a way
To help the baby [animal] and save the day!”
Ming-Ming: “We’re not too big,”
Tuck: “And we’re not too tough,”
All: “But when we work together we’ve got the right stuff!
Go, Wonder Pets! Yay!”

Team work was a key focus in the 1990s and these days, the idea that teamwork can promote productivity and a positive work environment is axiomatic.

Yet I came across a five-member software development team other day, where some of the members had worked together for nearly ten years.

There was a discussion about how problems had been solved more quickly when they worked together. There was a collective wish that it wasn’t such a rare event. A conversation with their manager revealed that none ever had lunch together, or had anything together with one another outside of work.

It seemed incongruous to me that five grown men could sit within an open space within ten metres of each other without any partitions between them, could work without developing some soft of espirit de corps.

Nevertheless, it seemed that this team would not develop further without some form of managerial intervention. The manager confided that he had, laudably. started stocking the refrigerator with alcohol and started ending the Friday work day a little earlier.

It’s a start.

Members of superior work teams can strongly agree with these statements:

My input is taken seriously when the team set priorities.
We make sure that members are properly acknowledged for their performance.
We treat every team member’s ideas as having potential value.

I’m quite clear about my team’s major goals.
Team members really let their personal feelings get in the way of getting the job done.
Our team members really work by the clock; they do what’s necessary to do the job right.

Our team members are typically optimistic that we can get the job done – regardless of the obstacles.
I never hear one team member criticising another team member to a third party.
When we do get into conflicts, we typically resolve the right way.

We never take credit for someone else’s work.
We pride ourselves on doing the job better than most people typically expect.
I derive a great deal of personal satisfaction from being a part of our team.

I’m very clear on how our team contributes to the total success of the organisation.
When a team member says he/she will do something you can always count on.
When team members don’t know something, it will always tell you they don’t and not act like they do.

When a team member doesn’t agree with another team member, he/she will let the other member know – regardless of the other member’s position or rank.
Our team members always get sensitive team business within the team.
When a team member gives the team bad news, we never “shoot the messenger.”
You can get a straight answer from anyone about anything you want to know.

How many of these statements can you agree with about your team or organisation? Few teams become superior teams without intention. Leaders have to plan for it and nurture their teams.

Leadership styles: Which is best? | Kan & Company

August 28, 2017

One day, a budget was put forward to a board for approval by the CEO. The sales forecast was discussed and the board asked for the Sales and Marketing Manager to give a presentation on how it was developed and to discuss the assumptions he used.

During the discussion, the manager was unable to answer the board’s questions and in the end he admitted that he had had no hand in developing the forecast. The CEO was embarrassed and angry with his manager. Wow, awkward.

I believe that no one leadership style fits every situation.

Different styles are often categorized in many ways but ultimately they are variations of just two: the Autocratic and Participative styles.

The Autocratic Style of Leadership

In my experience, the Autocratic style works best in situations where there is little time for consultation and the leader is of unusual ability.

The greater the ability of autocratic leaders, the more inclined those leaders are to rely on their own judgement.

The downsides are numerous: often those leaders over-estimate their own abilities; or they often do not nurture new leadership underneath them and so when they move on, they leave a significant succession problem for those who are left behind.

Autocrats can and often are, successful

An unusually charismatic autocratic leader can be exceptional in their ability to make an organisation perform. They may be able to achieve it for several years, even decades.

Nonetheless they create significant risks for their organisations. They can’t avoid the succession problem. No one can avoid the risk of departing for a bigger better appointment or even death.

Nor can they avoid the leadership vacuum they create underneath them. Anyone of ability will not stand for being repressed for too long. Their spirit is either snuffed out or they leave.

The Participative Style of Leadership

A participative style of leadership is difficult to achieve. It requires individuals of not just unusual ability but also unusual maturity.

Participative leaders need to have unusual maturity because they are comfortable with the idea that not all good ideas must come from them.

They are willing to hire staff that have greater ability than them, yet they are directive and forthright enough to sense when discussion has run its course and its time to synthesise a plan.

The participative style recognizes a long game

Yet the participative style recognizes that there is a long game. A long game that involves nurturing staff to become leaders of their respective areas of responsibility. The style involves giving team members the confidence to exercise initiative, express their opinions and to become leaders that nurture another layer of leadership under them.

The long game is often overlooked because so many people subscribe to the view that broad experience is what must be sought, so up and coming executives are unwisely advised to move on every 2-3 years.

Such thinking promotes short term thinking. It creates acute pressure to get quick results, so that another proverbial notch can be quickly added to one’s belt, strengthening a CV or resume for the next job application.

Participation creates engagement

The participative style of leadership encourages engagement, rewards creating a safe environment where team members can not only perform but thrive. It isn’t for everyone. It takes time to learn how to nurture rather than just pull rank.

It takes time to learn how to give people confidence that their opinions matter and will be respected, even if those opinions are mistaken.

It takes patience to tolerate mistakes while yet being committed to effective performance management. It takes time to learn to be patient and to really listen.

Participation and indecision

Sometimes detractors of the participative style mistake consultation with indecision and weakness. Some team members can’t handle being given the opportunity to speak because they are too used to being told what to do.

Being given the opportunity to offer their opinions makes them feel pressured, they may even think the opportunity to speak is a trap to embarrass them in case they don’t come up with the “right answer.”

Attempting a participative style of leadership will therefore require some perseverence and specific actions to nurture confidence amongst such team members.

The Participative Style is not Democracy

Don’t mistake the participative style with democracy. You could try it that way, but business shouldn’t be politics. Decisions should be based on the merits of each business case.

Democracy leads to popularity contests. I can’t imagine a more nightmarish scenario.

Respect comes not from enlisting support but from respecting individual input from team members, efficiently forming a way forward and being decisive.

However, poor leaders sometimes do hide behind a participative style because they lack the courage to make a decision. If you can see that in yourself, start working on overcoming this weakness straight away.

Indecision has to be one of the most prominent reasons for business failure. The cost of indecision is high. If you don’t make decisions, someone else, probably a competitor, will make them for you.

The Autocratic Style or the Participative Style?

The difference between the Autocratic Style and the Participative Style is in how you get to that decision. But both must result in a decision.

I used to play field hockey. I once played in a test between Australian Universities and New Zealand Universities. The Australian side was loaded with players from their national side. Our wiley coach realized that, and even though we aspired to play a style that required high skill levels, he knew this side was of a standard few of us will have encountered before.

We usually played a 5-3-2 formation; 5 forwards, 3 mid-fielders and 2-full backs. In the changing rooms before the game, our coach knelt on the floor, pulled out a set of checkers and explained a new formation to us.

The forwards would become mid-fielders and would spend the entire game man-on-man marking their Australian counterparts. The three conventional mid-fielders would become our forwards. The full backs would remain in their usual positions.

The Australian forwards immediately began trying lose their markers. They ran all over the field and it was frenetic chaos. I could hear people trying to figure out what formation each team was using because the only sense was that we followed our mark no matter what.

It totally disrupted the Australians as they focused on losing their markers rather than playing hockey. And despite the odds we won 4-3.

Our coach was wise enough to change his game based on the abilities of his team. In choosing between the Participative or Autocratic leadership styles, realistically assess the abilities of your team.

You may have inherited it from an Autocrat and so your team’s communication skills and the mindsets of your team aren’t up to performing within a participative style of leadership.

You may have to work out a plan on how to get them into the shape you need to work within a participative leadership style. Some may never be able to change and you will have to decide whether to keep them.

It’s not easy to change styles. It’s probably easier to move from a participative style to an autocratic one. Each has their strengths but whatever style you adopt, be aware of its weaknesses.

The participative style relies on an inherent belief: That all organisations are greater than the sum of their individual parts.

Autocratic Style

Participative Style

Strength

Prominent figurehead
Allows leaders with exceptional ability to shine unhindered
Great where decisions must be made in haste
Doesn’t require a leader with exceptional people skills or maturity
Can be effective in a crisis
Useful where the leader has more knowledge and expertise about the problem in hand

Strength

Nurtures new leaders, reducing the severity of a succession problem
Creates a greater sense of inclusion, trust and loyalty
Establishes buy-in as part of the decision making process
Brings out more rounded solutions as diverse perspectives are taken into consideration
Develops, over time, better communication skills across the team

Weakness

Creates succession problems
Less likely to result in well-rounded solutions
Relies heavily on the judgement of one person to succeed
Advancement through the organisation might reward obsequious managers

Weakness

May take longer to reach a decision
Managers that lack leadership qualities may hide behind a participative process and use it to avoid responsibility
Not all team members respond to a participative style, they prefer “being told what to do”, they might find discussion threatening
Requires leaders with well developed communication skills and unusual maturity

The lost art of good chairing: 16 ways to do it better | Kan & Company

August 9, 2017

2 minutes to read

Whether its a board meeting, a team meeting or a bible study group, a good chair is going to make a lot of difference as to whether the group will be effective.

But chairing is becoming a lost art. Too often a chair is there because they are the alpha personality.

Too often such meetings are really an opportunity for the chair to do all the talking, identifying the issues, generating the solutions and then dealing out the tasks.

I’ve even seen Chairs disrespect team members behind their backs because they were so quiet, not realising that their own strong personalities were quashing participation.

Safety, discussion, participation and collaboration is not intentionally nurtured.

In so doing, everyone misses out on the richness that a diversity of personalities, giftings, experiences and operational expertise can bring.

I believe the purpose of a Chair is to get the best out of the team around the table; that doesn’t matter whether the team members are company directors, employees or volunteers.

People won’t speak up if they don’t feel safe. A significant role of the Chair is to therefore create a safe environment.

A Chair can make a safe environment by:

Decide whether he or she has the right personality to be a Chair. If not, be brave enough to delegate it to someone else in the meeting.
Not allowing multiple conversations to continue at once.
Not allowing one person to “hog” the floor.
Setting ground rules at the beginning.
Stopping the meeting whenever someone shows disrespect
Watching for the quiet members and asking them for their opinions
Respecting their response even if it is to say they need more time to think
Setting ground rules can mean letting people know that
- The meetings are not for people to show off how clever they are
- That though members might have more than one idea, they present one idea and then pass the conversation on to someone else; they can present their second idea after it becomes clear no one else has something to add
- Showing respect for other ideas by acknowledging the truth of a point before pointing out its weaknesses
- Keeping their comments positive, clear and short
Complimenting someone whenever they are showing the right behaviour: showing respect, acknowledging someone else’s idea, presenting ideas clearly and succinctly
Ensure that the right people are at the meeting
Trusting the process
Ensure there is an agenda and that everyone has had time to consider the issues listed
Minimizing the chance for distraction, no phones, no internet surfing on tablets
Encouraging people and yourself to trust that the process will bring out the best answers

An organisation done right can be more than the sum of its individuals.

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