Name: Woody
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Bio: Dr. Woody Sears has been training managers and leaders since 1967. Tested in more than 200 organizations and presented in more than 100 public seminars, his techniques for resolving organizational conflicts have helped thousands of managers just like you to solve problems, develop employees, and enhance their personal effectiveness. Early in his career, Woody was lucky to have been accepted as a resource person by Leadership Resources, Inc., one of the early behaviorally-oriented consulting firms. That provided opportunities to work with and learn from many of the scholars and consultants who were developing the framework for what subsequently became Human Resource Development. Chief among those mentors was Leonard Nadler, Woody’s major professor in the doctoral program at The George Washington University. Professor Nadler coined the term HRD and is the creator of that academic and professional discipline. Those experiences followed a Master’s program in change management at North Carolina State, and a tour as a U.S. Marine officer. Beyond consulting and presenting public seminars (mostly on project management), Woody has designed customized project management systems for a number of companies and government agencies. Throughout his career, he has worked to simplify essential management information so it’s accessible to everyone. Contact Information: Email: woodysears@gmail.com
Posts by :
- Ask for help.
- Tell your people what must be done differently.
- Tell them why.
- Ask for their input.
- Determine a course of action and do the deed.
- Celebrate the success that came from their participation.
- Decision makers strengthen the status quo to protect prerogatives.
- Doing more of the same stuff minimizes risks and expenditures.
- Bold visions can’t survive bureaucratic review.
- Imagination is constrained by rewards and punishments.
- Why is the #1-selling car in America a Japanese product?
- How did the American automotive industry lose its way?
- How will Americans respond to European fuel prices?
- How did development of alternative fuels and more efficient engines get sidetracked?
- Is it done to cover failures rather than to revise procedures?
- Is it oriented to assessing blame, rather than examining processes?
- Is it used to justify what we did, not to identify optional outcomes?
- Does it protect individuals and systems, or highlight potential?
- How are performance-improvement suggestions perceived?
- I might attract attention to myself, which will put me at risk.
- I like change. It excites me. It makes me think.
- My boss frequently frustrates my efforts to try new things.
- When things go wrong, I get my team together to brainstorm the diagnostic process.
- Being right in my decisions is more important than getting the best, the quickest, the cheapest results.
- I really enjoy the analytic process, rooting around to find cause-and-effect relationships.
- I don’t want to know why it didn’t work. I just want things to work the first time.
- I am not impressed by people who want to change things just to be doing the same work in a different way.
The Ultimate Team-Building Truth Machine
November 12th, 2012While some statisticians disavow its value, I find the Bell Curve of Standard Deviations (or Distribution) a useful tool for looking at behavior of people in groups, and particularly in so-called teams. While the bell curve is commonly used t
o plot differences in intelligence, I find it a useful device for forcing people to confront the differences and distinctions among themselves that “team training” cannot hide.
A recent example involved a request to spend 90 minutes on a Friday morning with a group of project managers who are employed in a prestigious multinational firm. They meet every second Friday to consider the work they do and their effectiveness as a team. These “tune-up” sessions follow fairly extensive team training that includes getting all team members certified as project managers.
I was told by their manager that everyone was more or less competent, but despite the training time invested in them, they really didn’t seem to perform as a team. As I watched them come into the meeting room, mostly singly and without a lot of obvious camaraderie, I saw an attractive group of “twenty-somethings”—men and women with a politically correct mixture of skin tones. You know, the kind of people you expect to have been selected by the HR machine in a high-profile company.
What I also saw was that there appeared to be no “best friends” among them, nor any who volunteered to follow-up questions or comments by the few who were outspoken. They were polite, attentive and exuded an air of comfort and self-confidence. And why not? They had been described as all pretty good to excellent in performing assigned tasks. But I saw no signs that they cared much for each other. Instead, I saw the cool reserve of low-key competitors.
After the introductory formalities (which did not include what I’d been told by their manager), I told them I wanted to introduce them to an amazing truth machine. I sketched a bell curve with standard-deviation vertical lines and proceeded to tell them the following:
Probably one of you is over here (+3 sigma).
Probably one of you is over here (-3 sigma).
Two or three of you are here (+2 sigma).
Two or three others are over here (-2 sigma).
Four or five or you are on either side of the median line (+ and -1 sigma).
Then I told them something startling. I could feel the tension in the room. “I could take any three of you out of the room, and in 15 minutes, you could have the names of everyone here placed accurately around the bell curve!”
Silence!
I asked if there were volunteers to go out with me to do the ranking. No one responded.
I let them simmer for half a minute, then said, “The truth is, you all know who’s humping and pumping, and who’s going at half-throttle or less. But you don’t talk about it, so the information just lies there like something that stinks and everyone can smell it and nobody says anything.”
Finally, one guy asked, “Isn’t it possible that we are all on the right side of the median, that the curve is skewed to the plus side?”
That would be nice, I replied, but you know that hasn’t happened. And if you think about it, you will know that gravity or habit or some other kind of force is at work to pull everyone into their correct places. The only way to change that reality is for
all of you to be involved in contributing to the success of all the others in this so-called team!
Silence again!
So, I asked: Why don’t you help one another? Why don’t you use the information you have to make sure that everyone is uniformly successful? What keeps you from reaching out to people who are supposed to be your teammates, your colleagues? Are you afraid? Don’t you have the interpersonal skills? Or is it something else?
More silence!
Running out of G-A-S
Let me tell you what I think. I think you’ve run out of gas. That’s G-A-S, an acronym. It stands for “give a shit!” And what I suspect is that you don’t care enough about each other to be mutually supportive. You don’t give a shit if someone is having problems with a project, with a sick parent or a sick child or a death in the family or a divorce or other break-up. Your commitment is to yourselves, and you are concerned about your success and promotability, and why help someone who may become a competitor for a role you want?
What makes an effective work group, I continued, is the ability and willingness to act on those kinds of caring. In short, a commitment to contribute to the success
of the people around them. I quoted my mentor, the late Kenneth Sowers, retired Army colonel, Episcopal priest and PhD behavioral scientist: “If you aren’t contributing to the success of the people around you, you are wasting your life!”
As you know, 90 minutes is not a lot of time, and my time with the team was quickly over. Did they get the message? Did they change their behaviors? Did they improve their collective performance through mutual support and team spirit?
I have no idea. Theirs is a work in progress, and there are many variables to consider. For sure, not all of them will buy in to a new collective ethos, and some of them will ask for other assignments. But seeds have been planted, and who can tell where they will take root and blossom?
Team Building Is BS
June 13th, 2012By Dr. Woody Sears
My most recent article for Expert Access closed by referring to an effective wor
k group as “… a team without all of the power and authority issues that contaminate most so-called teams!” I know that’s contrary to prevailing notions about how to get the most out of people at work, but my years of experience have convinced me that team building is BS!
While the children’s game of “blind man’s bluff” might be fun, what does leading someone blindfolded around rocks, trees and bushes have to do with performance improvement? Or standing on a table with your arms crossed and falling backward into the waiting arms of “teammates?” Or even strapping on harnesses and playing on a climbing wall or up in a tree with a “slide of life?”
My experience says very money-wasting little!
Enough of the American Football Maxims
At the heart of the matter is the (mostly) male fascination with American football and the heroic statements of famous coaches. Maybe you recall hearing that “winning’s not the most important thing. It’s the only thing!” And here’s another jewel from a punishing father figure: “It would be better that you had not been born than to fumble that football!” But perhaps the quote that takes us to the goal line is this, from the immortal Vince Lombardi: Football is like life—it requires perseverance, self-denial, hard work, sacrifice, dedication and respect for authority.
As a former Marine officer, I appreciate the value of authority and the discipline that it’s supposed to create. But that was in the good old days. That stuff (authority) doesn’t even work for the Pope, at least with the legions of women whose choices are driving down birth rates in some famously Catholic countries—such as Mexico, Italy and Spain!
The trouble with the football-coach analogies is that those guys are working with volunteers. Players could be doing something else, and professional athletes could be earning their wages and supporting families in less strenuous ways. But you and I, economic conscripts all, aren’t really volunteers. We’ve got to be trading time and talent for money and other goodies to pay the rent and put food on the table.
Recently, I did some copyediting on a voice-over full of references to killing and “enemy troops” to go along with a film clip to be shown to people whose wages come from selling coffee! How infantile is that? Could the adult men and women on whom that “training” was imposed have had anything but contempt for their “commanding officer?”
The assumptions about people at work made by executives often seem to be rooted in other times, on emotional or visual impressions rather than numbers. A case in point can be made from a consulting assignment.
Assess on Numbers, Not Impressions
A small oil refinery in California had been organized around seven teams of 17 men each. The teams worked four weeks on days, and three weeks on second or third shifts. Of course, one team was thought to be superior, and the not-too-subtle suggestions I received identified the likely winner. The “Red Jackets’” team leader was a former Marine drill instructor. All team members wore matching red jackets, with their names stitched in gold script—the same red and gold favored in the Corps. They had an active after-work party schedule, and even their wives were organized for activities. Legendary parties and outings had turned them into a team with noticeable “esprit des corps,” or so it was said.
It would have been politically correct to have identified the Red Jackets as the outstanding team—but they weren’t! Actually, they were sixth out of the seven teams when we assessed their accomplishments.
The team with the best performance was comprised of a nondescript collection of workmen, led by a slightly overweight Mormon. He hosted no parties for this team, nor did they seem to socialize together after work. How is it that they—with no team spirit or obvious camaraderie—outperformed the other six teams? What was their “competitive secret?”
It was simple. The Mormon never left at the end of a shift until the next day’s work was planned and all necessary tools, equipment and parts were pre-staged in a wire enclosure, waiting for his guys to pick up. That meant that shortly after their shift started, they were on the job, turning wrenches and executing a plan.
The rest of the teams?
Many spent the first hour of their shifts milling about the equipment room getting organized. I figured they were wasting at least a man week of work every day, and that’s what I reported. And that ended my assignment!
So much for teams! All of the energy, time and money spent on team building probably detracts from actual, profitable performance (if anyone is paying close attention). And of course, none of this refers to the fact that in so many workplaces today, employees could be classified as knowledge workers who are competent to be self-directing and self-correcting, without the heavy hand of authority over their heads.
Who needs or will accept that kind of authoritarian management? Maybe not even janitors or gardeners, and surely not your professional staff. If there’s a need for that kind of smother-vision, it probably resides in the manager’s insecurity. What a perfect demotivator!
What Do People at Work Need?
A clear picture of their responsibilities, some freedom to make decisions about how to do their work, the opportunity to proceed with their work without a lot of authorizations and to be recognized and appreciated for their successes over schedules, budgets and technical requirements.
If people get that, individually and collectively, and if their interdependence is acknowledged and rewarded, they will become an effective, results-producing work group without any training in how to be a team. Why gild a lily?
5 Things You Shouldn’t Do to Motivate Your Employees, but Probably Are
May 10th, 2012By Dr. Woody Sears
How do you motivate employees? That old question again! It sends consultants to their shelves of snake oil and foo-foo dust, or maybe the latest book by a learned professor who has conjured a nifty mix of magic tricks. Of course
, that too will be found empty of meaning and results.
Here’s the answer you never get: You don’t have to motivate people who want to do what you want them to do! Do you have to motivate a friend to share a cold beer on a hot afternoon? Do you have to bribe a kid to eat an ice cream cone? Don’t you remember what Douglas McGregor wrote, that work is as natural as rest or play? (Remember? McGregor, the Theory Y guy?)
Alas, Douglas McGregor left the scene long ago, another dead white man, but one whose work merits being remembered and saluted―but not here. Let’s cut to the chase and consider some ideas about getting people to perform, and in a way that is better, faster and cheaper. So, some propositions:
Proposition #1: Motivation is always about coercion, manipulation, power and probably some kind of dishonesty.
As it is used in most instances, motivation is about getting people to do more or less of something, but in every instance, somehow differently from what they presently do. Clever people put their heads together to outsmart “them”―those resistant and unappreciative folks who are holding up productivity and profit. Maybe they will respond to a contest to win a trip, a new set of golf clubs, a weekend at a resort or a bonus on commissions?
Of course, in this economy, maybe they would respond to a rumor about staff cutbacks or maybe a new program to weed out the bottom quartile of performers. Or maybe a steely eyed pep talk from someone in the executive suite would do the trick.
As a last resort, perhaps someone could suggest something honest, like leveling with people about what’s needed and why, and asking for their help and cooperation. Didn’t that work famously well for Jack Stack at Springfield Remanufacturing?
Proposition # 2: Motivation is probably unethical, regardless of your intentions.
The question is, do you ever try to motivate a peer, an equal―someone who’s on the same intellectual or ability level? That would be condescending and not the sort of thing you would do to a friend or colleague. Actually, they’re too smart to fall for something like that, and they’d laugh at you.
But in this new universe of knowledge workers, in which everyone handles complex electronic gear with ease, and even green kids know how to hack into your computer, who’s not a peer? In his long-ago books, longshoreman/philosopher, Eric Hoffer, argued for workplace parity; and another relic of another age, Studs Turkel, campaigned for the integrity of the working man.
Maybe working people at all levels today are too savvy to buy into the emotional blackmail that so much of the so-called motivation involves. Maybe they’re all laughing instead of taking the bait!
Proposition #3: People confuse motives with motivation and motivation with drive, and forget that the only motivation that sticks comes from within.
In truth, all behavior is motivated. That is, there’s a reason for everything we do. You scratch because you itch. Anyone who watches you will see the pattern of your itching and scratching, and the pattern provides cues and clues for predicting your behavior. Negotiators and used-car salesmen know this, and so do wives and other women.
Nothing builds performance like people working together, succeeding together and being rewarded for succeeding. But rewards must be timely and equitable, and that means someone has to be paying attention and appreciating the results that others are creating. (In my experience, the toughest thing to teach managers is to say “please” and “thank you!”)
Is it true, as was mentioned recently on BBC Radio, that half the working people inAmericawould like to change jobs? If that’s true, many people must be living with soul-killing jobs and in distressing workplaces. It’s going to be really tough to motivate them.
Proposition #4: People with high self-esteem need less KITA than those without.
Another departed guru, Frederic Herzberg, talked about KITA back in the days before it was acceptable to say “kick in the ass.” That was a reference to the lowest common denominator of motivational theories. But in opposition to that, he offered one of the best deals an entire generation of managers ever got. Unfortunately, most couldn’t take advantage of it.
He said―and I was there and heard it because I was a speaker on the same program―“If you don’t piss people off, they will give you another 10 or 15 percent of productivity for nothing.” He understood that KITA was a misuse of power; an abuse of people who were not volunteers, who had to be somewhere, trading time and talent for dollars, and who were not free to fight back. And every time they got a dose of KITA, their self-esteem dropped a bit more―along with their productivity.
Conversely, people with relatively high levels of self-esteem find it easy to join up, to support programs and colleagues and employers. Therefore, the smart money says performance improvement is rooted in building self-esteem throughout your workforce.
Proposition #5: If you are not contributing to the success of those around you, you’re wasting your life!
Those words have appeared in these pages before, quoting one of my most important mentors, an Episcopal priest. He was honored with the Croix de Guerre, presented by General Charles de Gaulle in 1945 to the only priest in the European Theatre with his own Thompson sub-machine gun―a true warrior priest. After 24 years in the army, Col. Ken Sowers earned a Ph.D. and was my boss in a consulting firm from 1967 to 1970. He worked part time as a parish priest, helping a group of true believers get their Church of the Apostles off the ground and into a building of their own. And four or five nights a week, he was meeting in his office with our firm’s clients, pro bono, helping them solve personal or professional problems and contributing to their success.
So finally, how DO you motivate people?
There are six steps, again not original with me. They came from another priest, a former Jesuit who was a business partner years later (and years ago).
Simply stated, it goes this way:
Celebrate? That’s saying “thank you,” backed up by some communal sharing of food and drink (even if it’s just coffee and a cake from the supermarket). That’s how you get people motivated and get them do what you want them to do. And, along the way, turn them into a really effective work group. (That’s a team without all of the power and authority issues that contaminate most so-called teams!)
Ouch! Ethics Hurt
March 23rd, 2011
You know about Intel’s Andy Grove – but do you know Andy Graves? Probably not. This Andy is a retired USAF master sergeant, a natural leader, and a born (intuitive) manager who currently works for the U.S. Department of State. This is a record of a recent conversation.
Ouch! Ethics!
Woody: Ethics is a fun subject to teach, but it’s tough to have to drop the hammer on someone you know who’s screwed you or your employer.
Andy: That’s never a fun part of the boss job, but sometimes the rules are so clear you don’t have any decision to make. The guy who’s screwed up has already made the decision. If you do the crime, you’ve got to do the time!
Woody: But what about in some of these cultures where everyone is used to working black, paying bribes, getting gratuities?
Andy: That’s something you have to make clear in your first staff meeting! You will have heard about sloppy work and shady practices, so you need to make sure everyone understands that all of you live by the same set of rules. If you screw up, I will do what I’m required to do, because we all are held accountable. By law. No bull feathers!
Woody: Do you run into much of that?
Andy: Not really. If you’re supervising your people, paying attention to how they work and what they work on, and maybe what you’re heard coming onto the job, you can head them in the right direction before they screw up on your watch. And you explain the rules, and most of the time, that’s’ enough.
Woody: But what about the other times?
Andy: Mostly it’s about misuse of government vehicles. I had to send a guy home for two weeks because he was on a task in a government car, and decided to stop to pick up some groceries for his dinner, which seems harmless enough. But someone bumped into the car in the parking lot, the police were called, and a really good employee got a suspension for doing something stupid.
Woody: Probably he saw somebody in the past doing some personal errands….
Andy: Maybe so, but people have to understand that there’s no latitude, that there’s no such thing as a little bit wrong, like there’s no such thing as a little bit pregnant.
Woody: People do have to get it, but it’s in the culture of every organization, I guess, to know which rules to follow and which you can ignore. That’s why I like to use the Ken Blanchard and Norman Vincent Peale book in ethics classes. The Power of Ethical Management is a small book, simply written, and it’s basic message is that there’s no right way to do a wrong thing, and that you can’t fudge on the line between okay and not-okay behavior.
Andy: The nice thing about that definition is that it covers hurtful gossip and bad-mouthing people you don’t have the guts to confront.
Woody: Sure, those are ethical issues, too. So are taking office supplies home, using office phones for personal calls, abusing sick leave, excessive coffee breaks, coming to work late, leaving early, careless filing, poor customer service, and on and on.
Andy: There’s a lot of stuff there most people wouldn’t consider to be ethical issues.
Woody: But they are, because they fall on the wrong side of the line between okay and not okay, and between intentional and accidental. I used to run into that a lot teaching ethics to cops. They would argue that’s what they saw their field training officer do, like accepting a bottle from the whiskey store owner who appreciated having a patrol car in front of the store while he locked up and got into his car.
Andy: So what he saw his trainer do was accepted practice, okay no matter what the rule book said.
Woody: Absolutely. For those young guys, there was less conflict following street rules, common practice, than the bull feathers taught in the academy. On the street, it was free meals, free movies, free dry cleaning….
Andy: Because everyone wants to be friends with the cops.
Woody: And the priests and the nuns and the parking-meter ladies so customers don’t get tagged in front of your store.
Andy: So everybody’s in on the act.
Woody: Sometimes it seems that way. Who doesn’t want that free bottle or that complimentary dinner?
Andy: If you look at things that way, even a bad attitude is an ethical issue, because it might mean your own work isn’t being done properly, and you’re probably infecting others so their performance suffers, too.
Woody: Right on! That’s why guys like you, managers and leaders, have to be behavior-shapers, coaching people to understand that there’s a higher level of okayness than what local standards and past practice say is okay. If people and organizations can’t ramp-up their performance, there are people east and south of here who want those jobs.
Andy: Yeah, it’s a contest between the correct and the convenient and between past practice and what’s not okay anymore. That’s tough for some people to get! Especially in this part of the world.
Woody: One of my first surprises over here was learning that you were supposed to bribe doctors to get appointments in a reasonable time or to get on a surgical schedule. And once I was at the well-above-average summer home of a city employee. I wondered how he could be so rich. Then I discovered he was the guy who assessed traffic fines in the court, and I understood. Those hold-over values from Soviet times are deeply rooted.
Andy: And it will probably take another two generations for Western ethics to take hold. In the meantime, my locally-engaged staffs will march to a different drummer, and wait for the others to catch up!
___
Andy Graves has worked in three embassies and a consulate in Eastern Europe and Russia, and is still at work out there, taking raw talent and turning it into professional precision, just as he did on A-10 “Warthog” flight lines.
Dr. Woody Sears is an author/teacher/consultant working in Vilnius, Lithuania. Reach him at woodysears@gmail.com or http://DrWoodySears.com/ or http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/DrWoody
Managing Change–An Everyday Requirement Now!
March 7th, 2011
You Know About Intel’s Andy Grove … But Do You Know Andy Graves?
Probably not. This Andy is a retired USAF master sergeant—a natural leader, and a born (intuitive) manager who currently works for the U.S. Department of State. This is a record of a recent conversation.
Andy: What do you like best about being a consultant?
Woody: That it’s almost always something different—different organization, different culture, different people, different locale. I really love the change and the challenge of getting up to speed to identify issues and problems.
Andy: Some people would probably go crazy handling all of that change.
Woody: Until they discover that it’s fun.
Andy: Some of our people are so stuck, so resistant to change …
Woody: Because here, at work, is the really stable place in their lives. Outside, kids grow up and leave or have problems, people die, friends move away, even their favorite TV show goes off the air. But when Monday morning comes, they come back to you, ready to do the same old stuff in the same old way and feel safe!
Andy: And you can watch the pace of work slow down as they get comfortable.
Woody: That’s when you need to bring some change down on them, to bump them gently out of their ruts.
Andy: Like how?
Woody: Meet with those in a chain of activities to ask how to accelerate their work. Set some targets with them, create an opportunity for you to check with them daily, to encourage them, praise them. Really, they will respond, because you become a change agent. You upset established routines and make them think about the work they do instead of just numbly following routines. Maybe you never thought of it that way, but that’s the reason the military has major inspections, with days or weeks to allow people to prepare. It creates some tension and gets everyone to sharpen-up their performance.
Andy: I remember those, and we always thought they were total bull feathers.
Woody: But that’s the way people always respond to inconvenience. They have to think, shift gears, break the existing pattern of their days. They have to be alert instead of relaxed, and what’s wrong with that?
Andy: I guess nothing. But can you keep people in a constant state of being alert when they’re doing routine work?
Woody: Probably not, and you don’t need to. What you need is for your people to have the ability to kick into another gear when there’s a reason. One of the best examples of this I know about is presented in Jack Stack’s book, The Great Game of Business. I heard Jack speak, had a chance to chat with him, and after a dozen years, I still count that as one of the great conversations in my life.
Andy: What did he do that was so impressive?
Woody: Jack Stack figured out how to get his employees focused on solving performance problems. He said his mostly high-school-graduate workforce can solve technical problems that would baffle college-trained engineers. They don’t do that every day, because it’s not needed. But when they need to shave time and costs to be competitive on large engine re-build contracts, they can deliver the numbers.
Andy: So it’s about being able to change the pace, get people deeply engaged for short periods and after the event, they feel good about what they did! Like when you pass the inspection, everyone goes out for a beer!
Woody: Yeah! They survived the storm, they passed the test, they proved they were professionals, and they feel good about themselves! That’s when morale is at its best!
Andy: And that’s the basic step in building strong work groups and great teams—they feel good about doing things together, about winning the contest, the contract, acing the inspection.
Woody: Precisely! It’s amazing how many people go to work and never experience that kind of shared excitement. Instead, they get birthdays and engagements and retirements, the kind of make-believe-we-care-about-you bull feathers that pass for achievement in most offices. That’s such a shame, because there are always things you can celebrate, even in unlikely places.
Andy: What kinds of unlikely places?
Woody: Like a call center, where the boss lady complained about low morale and I proposed Friday afternoon staff meetings with wine and cheese to compare the worst-caller-of-the-week tapes. It could be a hilarious event—experiences common to everyone. “Oh, no!” she replied. “We could never do anything like that!” But she couldn’t tell me who would criticize her or what she could do to engage with her staff.
Andy: We get some people like that—no sense that work has to be fun some of the time and that people have to have a chance to feel good about themselves and each other. If you don’t give them that, they will go flat and sour. They have to have some change of pace.
Woody: Back to change—creating it and managing it—self-imposed, system-imposed or from “out there” as in the current economic crisis and related downsizings. It’s not that people resist change, as they used to say, but that change has a stranglehold on us, all of us, and we’re going to cope or crumble. Maybe learning to deal with change at work is going to prove to be a gift for some people—something to hold onto in case their job’s abolished.
Andy: It’s a better, faster, cheaper, take-no-prisoners work world we’re in. Maybe it’s sad, but people need to wake up to that fact.
In the Company of Heroes
March 4th, 2011
Project Management is Easy – It’s the Clerical Discipline That’s Difficult
January 28th, 2011The Bull Feather Chronicles
You know about Intel’s Andy Grove – but do you know Andy Graves?
Probably not. This Andy is a retired USAF master sergeant, a natural leader, and a born (intuitive) manager who currently works for the U.S. Department of State. This is a record of a recent conversation.
Woody: Of all the managerial skills, project management may be the most important. It seems to involve all the qualities you want to find in a new manager – you know, knowledge of planning and scheduling, being familiar with the technologies involved, able to negotiate with functional managers and customers or clients and ability to collect and maintain information.
Really, it’s a full range of interpersonal, coaching, and meeting-management skills.
Andy: When you say it like that, it sounds like too much for anyone. I’d rather keep it simple and say it’s about getting stuff done on time and not causing any problems.
Woody: Sure, it’s that, but when you take what that individual does and look at the component parts, it’s an impressive array of skills. I tell my students that the only two skill sets they absolutely must get are project management skills and interpersonal skills. Those are the abilities that will get them hired and promoted, no matter where they end up working.
Andy: That’s probably true. I know that’s what I look for when I go into a new job – the people you can count on to take a project and run with it and not create a lot of backwash that I have to clean up. Some people – it’s like the bull in the china shop, pissing-off everybody they deal with, and the clean-up takes so much time and energy you might as well have done the job yourself.
Woody: So where do the good ones get the know- how to be effective?
Andy: I don‘t know. Maybe from their mothers…
Woody: I’ve been telling you, women are better at project management than guys.
Andy: Bullfeathers! What I mean is that it’s about being polite, minding your manners, and paying attention to what you’re doing. I think mothers teach that stuff more than fathers.
Woody: I agree! And as you‘ve heard me say, the reason participative management isn’t practiced more is that if you had to identify it as male or female, it would come up feminine more than masculine, and that scares the hell out of guys. That’s not the John Wayne/Dirty Harry way of dealing with people.
Andy: Okay, but how is it that project management is a female business?
Woody: I’ve made a lot of engineers unhappy by saying that women tend to make better project managers for two reasons. The first is that they want to see problems solved, not to solve the problems themselves, which is very much a guy thing. Something breaks and guys have to jump in to fix it, and losing sight of their role as managers, not repairmen! The second is that project management is a lot about tracking performance data, and no matter how you do it, data tracking is a pretty clerical business. Can you see John Wayne or Dirty Harry walking around with clipboards, recording performance data, writing down names and numbers?
Andy: Bullfeathers! I track data all the time!
Woody: But you aren’t insecure! You don’t have to act tough because you know you can be as tough as you need to be! You’re not worried about getting out of control, about losing face.
Andy: I guess that’s true. Maybe it’s age and experience….
Woody: That’s part of it, but another part is what you said about what we learn from our mothers, that there are ways to get things done without being tough, that being an authoritarian is a Neanderthal way to manage.
Andy: And you can’t go across the organization, asking for cooperation, by making demands and giving orders to people who don’t work for you.
Woody: Precisely! And when you see somebody who can do that, you know you’ve found pure gold. Somebody you can develop. Promote into leadership roles. Send off for training and know you’re going to get your money’s worth.
Andy: Yeah, I’ve got a couple of those now, and another couple who can’t quite get there. Maybe I should give them clipboards and order them to carry them with them at all times. What do you think?
Woody: You’ll know you’ve got it right when you ask for project updates, and they look at their clipboards to answer your question.
###
Andy Graves has worked in three embassies and a consulate in Eastern Europe and Russia, and is still at work out there, taking raw talent and turning it into
Planning is Easy, but Scheduling is an Art Form
January 11th, 2011The Bull Feather Chronicles # 9
You know about Intel’s Andy Grove – but do you know Andy Graves?
Probably not. This Andy is a retired USAF master sergeant, a natural leader, and a born (intuitive) manager who currently works for the U.S. Department of State. This is a record of a recent conversation.
Woody: Anyone can learn to plan in a half-day, but when organizing tasks and scheduling resources to get the most out of them, people begin to see that scheduling is practically an art form.
Andy: It’s also a way to see who’s able to think and who’s got their brains scrambled. Even simple things like getting someone picked up at the airport can become confused and I have to give someone a direct order to get their butt in the car and go.
Woody: And it’s not always so-called dumb people. I remember a case when a group of college-graduate engineers with project management training couldn’t organize getting parts produced, plastic packaging for the parts, and people to put the parts and the packaging together to meet a special opportunity.
Andy: What’s the old saying? A day late and a dollar short?
Woody: Yeah, and it happens every day somewhere in most organizations – people standing around with nothing to do while they wait for parts, pieces, vehicles, or whatever should have been there. Part of it’s about not looking behind plans to see what has to be done so that planned work can be performed….
Andy: …And part of it’s because people don’t own the work and aren’t committed to getting it done on time. But if you’re five minutes late cutting their paychecks, they’re right on top of you.
Woody: That’s why timelines, deadlines, and due-dates are so important, along with consequences for missing them. Then, people begin to think about resource constraints, about not having everything they need and having to negotiate, to arrange to get everything they need to complete an assignment.
Andy: That’s right! It’s the asking others for support that’s the hang-up. Remember back before printers were cheap and we used expensive copy machines and every office wanted their own – so they wouldn’t have to share?
Woody: When what they really wanted was not to be held up when they were running late and needed to get a report turned in on time.
Andy: So a lot of this scheduling bull feathers is about having everything you need all the time so you aren’t dependent on others because you don’t have the interpersonal skills to be able to share stuff without conflict! And if you don’t have it all, then you can’t be held accountable when things go south!
Woody: Bingo! I think you just had a Eureka! moment, connecting failure to schedule resources with difficult interpersonal relations. That’s really interesting! I wonder how often that’s the reason?
Andy: Probably more often than we think, because once you don’t want to do something because of the people involved, procrastination takes over and all of a sudden you’ve got a delivery emergency and that makes the interpersonal bull feathers even more difficult.
Woody: Wow! I like that. This isn’t about scheduling three shifts 24/7 on an outage in a nuclear plant. It’s about stumbles and fumbles and delays on routine work in everyone’s organization everyday!
I usually talk about identifying where there aren’t enough skilled people, materials, or special equipment to perform tasks as planned, and that’s when clever manipulation of variables can make a profitable difference. But here, what you’ve done, is to show that the major constraint in a lot of places is lack of trust among workers and a basic inability to communicate, to cooperate.
Andy: Glad you like it! Usually, we think schedules get blown by late deliveries, flu epidemics, or other stuff, but as I think about it, delays are simpler than that.
Woody: Maybe what we need to do instead of training people in natural work groups to work together better is to extend that training to people outside that group, to involve those who have resources that have to be shared, and that means they have to be scheduled….
Andy: …And that means the training follows the work in real time.
Woody: Sure, because even the most complex work is based on stuff that’s been done before, so there’s always someone who knows where work went off schedule in the past, along with how long each activity takes, how much it costs, what kinds of people, equipment, and materials are required. If we know all that, why don’t we get the people who will be involved to solve the sharing problems in advance? Or permanently?
Andy: That makes sense to me!
Woody: Sure, because keeping work on schedule is so often a matter of improvisation, and that’s easier when you have great working relationships with people outside your immediate work group.
Andy: I’ll drink to that!
Woody: What a great idea. Let’s do!
——-
Andy Graves has worked in three embassies and a consulate in Eastern Europe and Russia, and is still at work out there, taking raw talent and turning it into professional precision, just as he did on A-10 “Warthog” flight lines.
If You Want to Hear God Laugh…. Make a Plan
December 14th, 2010The Bullfeather Chronicles – Part 6
You know about Intel’s Andy Grove – but do you know Andy Graves?
Probably not. This Andy is a retired USAF master sergeant, a natural leader, and a born (intuitive) manager who currently works for the U.S. Department of State. This is a record of a recent conversation.
Woody: That’s what I learned in Slovakia a decade ago – if you want to hear God laugh, make a plan! God, local people, and bosses always change their minds, change the specs….
Andy: Yeah, and I spend a lot of my time cleaning up behind people who don’t plan. It’s like they can only do one thing at a time, and that time itself doesn’t matter.
Woody: You see a lot of that in everyone’s organization. What is it? Priorities, and confusion about them? Or the repetitive nature of the work? Or that there’s no penalty for not working smart? Or just indifference?
Andy: It’s for sure the reason why some people aren’t promotable. You tell them, show them, check on them, offering them more responsibility if they’ll just get themselves organized, and you might as well be shouting down a well, beating your head against a wall. Thank God there aren’t too many of them.
Woody: Most people, you think, really want more responsibility?
Andy: Sure they do, and it’s good for me when they make the decision to stretch themselves. They give me more things to thank them for doing, and the more strokes you give them, the harder they work.
Woody: Are you saying that receiving praise makes people plan their days and their work?
Andy: Not exactly. Hell, I don’t know what it is, other than that people start to think about their jobs in different ways and maybe they see relationships between thinking ahead, finishing work on time, and getting appreciated for it. Then, maybe they remember the stuff they’ve heard about planning. I don’t know. What do you think?
Woody: I’ve never heard it explained that way, Andy. Maybe you’ve come up with a new theory about teaching planning and getting people to take more responsibility.
Andy: Bullfeathers! I don’t do theories. I just want people to grow out of the boxes they’re in when I show up. People can always do more, if they want to, and I keep finding that too many people have never been asked to do more than the narrow definitions of their jobs.
Woody: So they don’t learn, they don’t grow, they don’t get promoted, and they get bored and do less and less work?
Andy: Yeah, that’s a good picture of the cycle, and I love breaking it. I can get demotivated by my bosses or bureaucratic bullfeathers, but not about the people I work with. That’s the part of the job I love – getting my people involved in solving problems and seeing them surprising themselves by how good they are.
Woody: I’ve met some of your people, and I see how they look at you. I can imagine how much energy you’ve invested to get that kind of response.
Andy: Nah, I’m just doing my job. But you know they’re really getting it when they start seeing improvements in the time it takes to get things done and can relate that to the plans they developed.
Woody: How much do they improve as individuals and as a group?
Andy: Some of them, quite a lot. Some not so much. But as a group, they work better together and get to the point I don’t have to worry about them covering my back. My current crew has been recognized by the Department for their performance and their contributions, so I guess it’s time for me to move to another challenge, and that’s going to happen in the next six months.
Woody: Will you miss them?
Andy: A few of them have become really good friends, and we may run into each other at meetings. But it’s the nature of the job – and the strength of the system, I guess. And moving means making new friends and helping a new group of people to see how good they can be.
____
Andy Graves has worked in three embassies and a consulate in Eastern Europe and Russia, and is still at work out there, taking raw talent and turning it into professional precision, just as he did on A-10 “Warthog” flight lines.
DON’T MONKEY WITH MORALE!
November 30th, 2010BULLFEATHER CHRONICLES #7
You know about Intel’s Andy Grove – but do you know Andy Graves?
Probably not. This Andy is a retired USAF master sergeant, a natural leader, and a born (intuitive) manager who currently works for the U.S. Department of State. This is a record of a recent conversation.
Woody: When I got started in the consulting business, morale was a stock element in supervisory and management training programs. Is it my imagination, or has morale disappeared as a significant issue?
Andy: It hasn’t disappeared, exactly, but the big drumbeat today is cost containment, and organizing people into cost-reduction teams. You know, like it’s the employees who have driven up the cost of operations, so we’d better let them tell us how to cut expenses.
Woody: That sounds like my mother sending me into the yard to choose the switch she was going to beat me with. So do these committees find cost-containment idea, and do they get excited about that? Is it a plus or a minus, morale-wise?
Andy: I think a lot of them see it as pure bullfeathers. In these big organizations, finding wasted expense is like shaving mold off a chunk of cheese – easy to see, but just skimming the surface. And nobody wants to cut costs in the programs that create their jobs.
Woody: So participation is being used to keep morale high while the system is sending signals that the “good old days” are over? Clever! So what does have a negative impact on morale.
Andy: RIFs. Reductions in force. Laying off popular people. One cost-saving policy allows us to hire temporary employees for a fixed term, so someone with the skills we need gets to have a good job for a short time. But unless some other position opens they can apply for, there’s no way we can keep them on beyond the terms of the contract. One such temp was really competent and everyone loved her. I thought we were going to have a rebellion when we had to let her go.
Woody: I guess that means there won’t be any recommendations for economies that result in job losses.
Andy: You got that right! And a lot of times, job losses mean the loss of great people and their experience, and that kicks morale and loyalty right in the ass. It’s usually a stupid decision by people with limited vision and who need to feel powerful. Wasting people usually is a bad move that will cost an Embassy more than it will save.
Woody: But if you get an order to cut costs…?
Andy: There are lots of ways to cut costs. We got such an order a couple of years ago, and the recommendation that we RIF a dozen people. I went to the ambassador and the deputy chief of mission for approval to cut other costs instead of laying off our people. They agreed, and we cut out some planned travel, some training, a little bit here and there, even reduced the electric bill with the help of our staff. We were all pulling together, and morale was high!
Woody: Because they knew you were protecting them?
Andy: Yeah, and we were all in it together. Then, a new budget cycle finally came and their jobs had been saved.
Woody: And they all knew that if they worked for another management officer, they could have been fired?
Andy: Something like that, but the ambassador and the DCM really made it possible. But staff knew they did something important, even powerful, and in a way, they beat the system….
Woody: And that drove morale sky high!
Andy: Absolutely, and not because of me, but because we – the embassy management – cared about our staff enough to do the unexpected, to make exceptional efforts, and that told our men and women that they are important, valuable, necessary, needed, and that’s the message that drives morale.
Woody: But that’s not all of it, is it?
Andy: No, you’ve got to allow employees to feel good about themselves for the quality and quantity of work they do against targets and objectives they helped to set and believe in. Most of our guys don’t expect to be entertained. They want to be treated as responsible adults with contributions to make.
Woody: You mentioned loyalty earlier.
Andy: Yeah, that’s one of the things you lose when management does something stupid to kill morale. It’s not that most of the people can leave the Embassy to go to a better job, because they can’t. But if they feel management is screwing them, there’s a hell of a lot they can do as pay-back – like stuff they don’t have to see or hear or volunteer. Like, ‘Manager, you’re so smart, you go find it and figure it out!’
Woody: I’ve heard that song before.
Andy: I’m sure you have, and you know that if there’s bad morale, look at the managers, not at the working people. Poor morale is a symptom of bad management.
###
Andy Graves has worked in three embassies and a consulate in Eastern Europe and Russia, and is still at work out there, taking raw talent and turning it into professional precision, just as he did on A-10 “Warthog” flight lines.
Outstanding Customer Service Begins With Intelligent Delegation
November 5th, 2010
The Bullfeather Chronicles
You know about Intel’s Andy Grove – but do you know Andy Graves?
Probably not. This Andy is a retired USAF master sergeant, a natural leader, and a born (intuitive) manager who currently works for the U.S. Department of State. This is a record of a recent conversation.
Woody: Managers think and plan, workers work. In between is delegation, by which authority to perform tasks, consume corporate resources, is granted. That’s how it was taught for the last four decades. Is that still how it happens?
Andy: No! Big changes! That old model was about doling out work one task at a time to workers who were viewed as dull and uninspired, and who need specific guidance for each task. Today, there’s too much work and too few people, so you have to empower them in advance to pick up tasks as they come in and handle them.
Woody: As you’re using the words, delegate and empower mean the same thing.
Andy: Sure, because missing in that old equation was workers’ competence, intelligence, and willingness to assume responsibility.
Woody: That makes delegation, as it used to be taught, sort of a ritual for giving employees the opportunity to think at work instead of following mindless routines.
Andy: And that was because everyone was into authority. Most people don’t realize how far ahead of the civilian world the military is in breaking down authority and giving young people responsibilities. Consider a kid, a young man or woman, working on the flight line in the Air Force. They make decisions everyday that have life or death consequences. As civilians, they probably couldn’t order a box of ballpoint pens without a couple of authorizations.
Woody: That must be where customer service breaks down – when people who have no permission to make decisions are supposed to help customers make decisions.
Andy: Or to obtain services promptly and at a competitive cost. That’s my basic job, by the way. An Embassy is a service center for a lot of federal agencies, and my staff has to provide them with everything from housing and offices to pencils and note pads on their desks, not to mention record-keeping, transportation, and maintaining all facilities. Literally, thousands of details tp be handled promptly and courteously.
Woody: How about the locally-engaged staff? I know that in Lithuania, customer service is still a largely-undiscovered business concept.
Andy: For many of them, I’ve been the first person ever to ask – no, to demand – that they make decisions and do what needs to be done without being told. If nobody’s ever asked you to be responsible, the learning curve can be steep and scary. You have to be quick with praise and encouragement, and most of them will get used to thinking and doing on their own and turn into world-class performers.
Woody: So you have to wean them away from waiting for marching orders?
Andy: More than that, you have to teach them to anticipate what needs to be done, to plan their work, and to operate independently. These are really smart people, once you get them past the fear of acting without being told what to do.
Woody: I was invited into a Lithuanian workplace where morale problems had been reported. It took about five minutes to sort that out. I heard a lot of noise as the boss showed up – a short guy wearing elevator shoes and shouting orders. I asked the plant manager why he tolerated that abusive behavior, but I don’t think he understood the question.
Andy: Some of these guys are amazing in their insensitivity.
Woody: And a lot of these people have been terribly abused at work.
Andy: That’s why it’s so important to build-up the people I work with. It’s really an extension of our foreign policy – to demonstrate the American way of treating employees. When they tell their families and friends….
Woody: Is there really an American way of treating people?
Andy: It might not be every manager’s style, but the way I look at it is that: (1) you don’t hire people unless there’s work for them to do; (2) because they’re needed, they’re important; and (3) because they’re important, what they see and think about how the work gets done and could be improved is important , too, and valuable. When you appreciate people for the contributions they make, they become valuable contributors.
Woody: Where does empowerment fit in?
Andy: It’s built in! When you take people on as partners, everyone has a role and responsibilities. When you ask people to own their jobs and do them thoroughly and with pride, there’s really no need for giving orders or negotiating on every task. If you allow people to be proud of what they do, they will do it well. Every time!
###
Andy Graves has worked in three embassies and a consulate in Eastern Europe and Russia, and is still at work out there, taking raw talent and turning it into professional precision, just as he did on A-10 “Warthog” flight lines.
Team Building Is a Waste of Time and Money
September 25th, 2010
You know about Intel’s Andy Grove – but do you know Andy Graves?
Probably not. This Andy is a retired USAF master sergeant, a natural leader and a born (intuitive) manager who currently works for the U.S. Department of State. This is a record of a recent conversation.
Woody: Some years ago, while riding my motorcycle along the Loch Ness, a definition of leadership came through to me so strongly I stopped to write it down: Leadership is the creation of structures and processes through which people can contribute to the achievement of worthwhile goals. I still like it because it includes real things like structures and processes, not a lot of airy-fairy hoopla.
Andy: I can go with that. It ties up the confusion about leaders and managers, you know, where leaders decide the right things to do and then managers do the things right. Real life hasn’t worked that way for me.
Woody: How’s that?
Andy: Because among workers, someone is always taking the lead. And who’s that? It’s the man or woman who knows the most about the task and technology. This is a lesson a lot of managers miss. It doesn’t matter who has the rank! What’s important is who has the most recent and relevant experience. When I was an enlisted man teaching officer/pilots survival skills, I was the one with the most recent and relevant experience, and those officers knew that my job was to teach them how to survive disaster situations. I was outranked, but that didn’t matter. What I knew made them listen to me.
Woody: And did none of them resent being lectured to by an enlisted man?
Andy: Only a few, but they created another lesson. Competence is so important that the other officers would tell the few to shut up! So I didn’t have to worry about that stuff. The real leaders in any group will keep you covered.
Woody: I got a similar lesson. Once as a lieutenant, I was on a project with a bird colonel and working with a bunch of majors and light colonels. My boss told me, “Woody, if any of these people give you any trouble, refer them to me.” That taught me a lot about delegation, and that if I did my job competently, I was fireproof!
Andy: Isn’t that a great feeling? And when you’re in that zone, do you need to be motivated? Do you need anything more than knowing at the end of the day that you had a great day, doing your job for someone who appreciated you? That’s the thing a lot of people don’t get. I’ve seen a lot of senior people cripple programs because they let their need to be the boss get in the way of getting the job done.
Woody: I once asked a guy who was just standing around doing nothing what he was waiting for. He said, “I’m waiting for my boss to tell me what to do!” I thought he was joking, so I asked if he was going to do something different than the day before. “Of course not,” he said, “but my boss likes to tell me what to do, and I like to make him happy!”
Andy: Sure! If he made that decision, he would be taking his boss’ job. That’s why the “structure and processes” part of your definition is so important. You can’t have 15 or 20 people waiting to be told what to do. They have to know, and they do know—if you involve them in planning work and laying out schedules.
Woody: Do many managers do that in your experience?
Andy: Only the good ones. Leadership is about taking people to new levels of performance, so they surprise themselves when they see how competent they are, and how much fun it is to hook up with others to win against the clock and the budget. Good leaders stretch their people, push them and make them stronger performers.
Woody: How hard can you push them?
Andy: Right up to the edge of what employment laws allow. Sometimes it’s giving them more work or tighter schedules, or making them solve problems and implement solutions by themselves. And when they win, you praise them and talk about what they learned.
Woody: But what if they don’t win? If they fail?
Andy: Bullfeathers!!! If you pay attention to them, they don’t fail. You see them struggling and you stop by to offer a suggestion or two. If they’re afraid to fail, they work too slowly. If you let them fail, you tell them that succeeding—being on schedule—isn’t important! I don’t care what people write about the freedom to fail, but real leaders don’t let that happen to their people. Not if there are any real chips on the table!
Woody: Real leaders, then, make sure people are successful at their work?
Andy: Nothing else is more important!
—-
Andy Graves has worked in three embassies and a consulate in Eastern Europe and Russia, and is still at work out there, taking raw talent and turning it into professional precision, just as he did on A-10 “Warthog” flight lines.
Dr. Woody Sears is an author/teacher/consultant working in Vilnius, Lithuania. Reach him at woodysears@gmail.com or check him out on Google.
I’m Waiting for My Boss to Tell Me What To Do
August 23rd, 2010The Bullfeather Chronicles – Part 4
You know about Intel’s Andy Grove – but do you know Andy Graves?
Probably not. This Andy is a retired USAF master sergeant, a natural leader, and a born (intuitive) manager who currently works for the U.S. Department of State. This is a record of a recent conversation.
Woody: Some years ago, while riding my motorcycle along the Loch Ness, a definition of leadership came though to me so strongly I stopped to write it down: Leadership is the creation of structures and processes through which people can contribute to the achievement of worthwhile goals. I still like it because it includes real things like structures and processes, not a lot of airy-fairy hoopla.
Andy: I can go with that. It ties up the confusion about leaders and managers, you know, where leaders decide the right things to do and then managers do the things right. Real life hasn’t worked that way for me.
Woody: How’s that?
Andy: Because among workers, someone is always taking the lead. And who’s that? It’s the man or woman who knows the most about the task and technology. This is a lesson a lot of managers miss. It doesn’t matter who has the rank! What’s important is who has the most recent and relevant experience. When I was an enlisted man teaching officer/pilots survival skills, I was the one with the most recent and relevant experience, and those officers knew that my job was to teach them how to survive disaster situations. I was outranked, but that didn’t matter. What I knew made them listen to me.
Woody: And did none of them resent being lectured to by an enlisted man?
Andy: Only a few, but they created another lesson – competence is so important that the other officers would tell the few to shut-up! So I didn’t have to worry about that stuff. The real leaders in any group will keep you covered.
Woody: I got a similar lesson. Once as a lieutenant, I was on a project with a bird colonel and working with a bunch of majors and light colonels. My boss told me, “Woody, if any of these people give you any trouble, refer them to me.” That taught me a lot about delegation, and that if I did my job competently, I was fireproof!
Andy: Isn’t that a great feeling? And when you’re in that zone, do you need to be motivated? Do you need anything more than knowing at the end of the day that you had a great day, doing your job for someone who appreciated you? That’s the thing a lot of people don’t get. I’ve seen a lot of senior people cripple programs because they let their need to be the boss get in the way of getting the job done.
Woody: I once asked a guy who was just standing around, doing nothing., what he was waiting for. He said, “I’m waiting for my boss to tell me what to do!” I thought he was joking, so I asked if he was going to do something different than the day before. “Of course not,” he said, “but my boss likes to tell me what to do, and I like to make him happy!”
Andy: Sure! If he made that decision, he would be taking his boss’ job. That’s why the “structure and processes” part of your definition is so important. You can’t have 15 or 20 people waiting to be told what to do. They have to know, and they do know — if you involve them in planning work and laying out schedules.
Woody: Do many managers do that, in your experience?
Andy: Only the good ones. Leadership is about taking people to new levels of performance, so they surprise themselves when they see how competent they are, and how much fun it is to hook up with others to win against the clock and the budget. Good leaders stretch their people, push them, and make them stronger performers.
Woody: How hard can you push them?
Andy: Right up the edge of what employment laws allow. Sometimes it’s giving them more work, or tighter schedules, or making them solve problems and implement solutions by themselves. And when they win, you praise them and talk about what they learned.
Woody: But what if they don’t win? If they fail?
Andy: Bullfeathers!!! If you pay attention to them, they don’t fail. You see them struggling and you stop by to offer a suggestion or two. If they’re afraid to fail, they work too slow. If you let them fail, you tell them that succeeding, being on schedule isn’t important! I don’t care what people write about the freedom to fail, but real leaders don’t let that happen to their people. Not if there are any real chips on the table!
Woody: Real leaders, then, make sure people are successful at their work?
Andy: Nothing else is more important!
###
Andy Graves has worked in three embassies and a consulate in Eastern Europe and Russia, and is still at work out there, taking raw talent and turning it into professional precision, just as he did on A-10 “Warthog” flight lines.
Here’s a Thought
July 12th, 2010The Bullfeather Chronicles, Part 3
You know about Intel’s Andy Grove – but do you know Andy Graves?
Probably not. This Andy is a retired USAF master sergeant, a natural leader, and a born (intuitive) manager who currently works for the U.S. Department of State. This is a record of a conversation after he spent 10 days working at an Embassy in the region.
Andy: The strangest thing I found was a woman, sitting maybe 10 feet from her boss, and they’ve been communicating by e-mail because they don’t like each other.
Woody: That’s bizarre! Are they locally-engaged staff?
Andy: Yeah, but what makes it so bad is that her boss is the local HR guy! So naturally I said we’ve got to talk, and I sat down with the two of them. She thinks he’s unfair, he wants to fire her, and this has been going on for more than a year! And they don’t talk to each other!
Woody: That can happen in these cultures. Some of these folks are not great at confronting problems or each other.
Andy: Well, apparently there had been a lot of confrontations, but this guy had no records, no documentation covering what she failed to do, what he advised her to do, and what follow-up actions he took, so of course he can’t fire her. He’s been sent to training, he knows how to do that stuff, he just doesn’t like to do it. So I reminded him of the requirement to document malfeasance and hammered on him about having to keep a record of what he did to help her succeed on the job. It was like he never heard it before!
Woody: And what about her?
Andy: She said she didn’t know what she didn’t do well, because he never told her. All she could say was that he didn’t like her! And since I don’t know the background, I have to think maybe she doesn’t perform adequately. But she says she doesn’t know what she does wrong, and there’s no evidence that he ever told her!
Woody: That doesn’t leave you a lot of maneuver room, especially given the short trip.
Andy: No it didn’t. I even told the Deputy Chief of Mission that they might have to end up firing her. But then something kind of magic happened.
Woody: She resigned?
Andy: No! That would have been too easy. What happened was I sat down with her on Friday, and all she could talk about was how badly she had been treated three months ago, six months ago, nine months ago. And as I listened and looked at her, it was clear that she was a total mess – hair, dress, complexion, emotionally. In fact, she looked like s**t! (soot … this is a family friendly pub)
Woody: This isn’t sounding very politically correct.
Andy: Don’t worry! I’m not going there! What I said was that as long as she was focused on things that happened months ago, all that could happen was that she would create the same situations again. And that instead, she should look at today, tomorrow, and start thinking forward instead of backward.
Woody: And about her appearance?
Andy: I just told her the truth, namely that I’m not big on dressing up and avoid wearing suits and ties and usually show up with an open neck shirt and a sweater, as I was dressed then. And I said that compared to the other women in the building, it didn’t look to me like she as paying much attention to her appearance, and maybe that was somehow connected to how she was looking at her job and maybe….
Woody: Then what happened?
Andy: She admitted that was something to think about and thanked me! But then, on Monday, she shows up looking like a different person! She had a new haircut and style, some make-up, and was wearing a really sharp outfit. I damn near didn’t recognize her!
Woody: How did her boss respond?
Andy: I think he was as blown away as I was.
Woody: Will she still get fired?
Andy: That could happen. But the signal she sent loud and clear on Monday morning was that she wanted to keep her job and get out of the rut she’d been in for so long. For certain, she came to work with a different attitude, and that in itself might be enough to turn things around.
Woody: That’s beautiful, Andy. But why did no one else talk to her, at least the other women?
Andy: You know that women don’t always help each other, and guys are so afraid of getting hit with a charge of sexual harassment or some other bullfeather reason for not getting involved …. Seems like most people are just afraid to be human anymore, to reach out to tell each other the kinds of truth that will bump them off bottom-dead-center, that will help them succeed. That’s what bosses and managers and leaders are supposed to do! Isn’t it?
Woody: I thought so. I hope so. If it isn’t, we’re really lost!
###
Andy Graves has worked in three embassies and a consulate in Eastern Europe and Russia, and is still at work out there, taking raw talent and turning it into professional precision, just as he did on A-10 “Warthog” flight lines.
Motivation? Not for People Who Are Appreciated
June 16th, 2010The Bullfeather Chronicles – Part 2
You know about Intel’s Andy Grove – but do you know Andy Graves?
Probably not. This Andy is a retired USAF master sergeant, a natural leader, and a born (intuitive) manager who currently works for the U.S. Department of State. This is a record of a recent conversation.
Woody: Some of us see the work place as a combat zone in which managers use the emotional technology and bribery of motivational theory, trying to get more productivity out of unwilling workers. For their part, workers are likely to cut through the chatter to say, “Do they think we’re stupid?”
Andy: I agree 100 percent! If people love the work they do and admire and respect their co-workers, you don’t need to add more grease. In fact, if you try to “motivate” them, it makes them suspicious.
Woody: The problem I see is that if you want highly-effective groups, it has to start during recruiting and screening – like at Southwest Airlines where they put more weight on the attitudes candidates display at the interview than their degrees and other work experience.
Andy: Where I work, there’s so much emphasis on academics that it lets people slip through the Human Resource screen who are long on smarts but short on common sense. When they’ve got 10 years in the system and have been promoted several times, you’re still having to give them heads-up recommendations on how to work with people, especially with the locally-engaged staff.
Woody: That’s not pretty. Are these people just insensitive or insecure and need to throw their weight around?
Andy: It doesn’t matter. The fact is, those order-givers don’t really understand teamwork and don’t realize that they can’t be effective without the support of the locals. And that lack of understanding makes those at the bottom of the ladder feel bad about themselves and their jobs.
Woody: Probably most people at work don’t love their jobs, but they have to work somewhere. Can you turn them into effective, committed workers?
Andy: Absolutely! Usually, it’s not only that they don’t like their jobs, they don’t like their bosses or the people they have to support. Organizations can’t control the expectations of the people they hire, but they can definitely influence the quality of the supervision and success-support they get. When people do their work well, that needs to be celebrated, appreciated, and they need to be recognized among their co-workers.
Woody: But what happens when the same people keep getting the rewards?
Andy: Then you look for the lazy supervisors who spend time in their offices instead of getting out on the work floor and seeing their people in action. There’s always someone or something to praise, and when people know that their work is being observed, they tend to work better and earn some praise for themselves.
Woody: Still, isn’t there a problem of just a few people being recognized as star performers, and demotivating the others?
Andy: No, no, no! That’s the bullfeather excuse managers use when they’re too lazy to work the system to get rewards for their people! If you want to know who the star performers are, just ask the workers themselves. They know! And most of them aren’t jealous. They know some people work better than others, and that some are just natural performers. And usually, they are the informal leaders in the group. At least that’s my experience. The people who get the rewards and recognition usually are leaders who sort of pull the others to perform in an outstanding manner. Besides, there are so many ways for a manager to show appreciation that there’s no reason to leave anyone out of the winner’s circle.
Woody: Is it really that simple – just paying attention to performance and rewarding it?
Andy: Yes and no. Rewards are necessary. But they are the icing on the cake. The manager’s real work is in knowing his or her people, talking to them individually, encouraging and appreciating them one-on-one. That’s how you get to know who your people are, what kinds of skill-building they need, and what kinds of off-the-job burdens they’re carrying. See, they work for you, not for the company or the organization, and managers have to create that connection with individuals.
Woody: What you’re saying is that if the manager doesn’t create those interpersonal connections, the workers will create their own! Those connections don’t always include the manager and can compromise the performance of the entire group.
Andy: Oh yeah! One of the most useful things I’ve heard you say, quoting Frederick Herzberg, is that if you don’t piss-off your people, they’ll probably give you 10- or 15-percent more performance, for free! That makes sense, because the worst thing that can happen to a worker is to have a selfish, me-first boss who ignores the people who do the work.
Woody: If we could burn that thought into the brains of all managers, we could change the world!
Andy Graves has worked in three embassies and a consulate in Eastern Europe and Russia, and is still at work out there, taking raw talent and turning it into professional precision, just as he did on A-10 “Warthog” flight lines.
Good Planning Can’t Overcome Bad Headwork
May 10th, 2010
Thinking Clearly – and Analytically — May Be the Key to Your Professional Future
Thinking clearly often translates as thinking analytically – taking things apart to find their constituent elements and how they hook up. For managers, most analysis involves determining why things didn’t work or happen as planned, or what bosses want when they say, “Take care of this.” Therefore, analytical thinking means looking back (How did this happen?), and looking ahead for likely outcomes and the second- and third-order consequences. Sometimes, follow-on consequences aren’t significant, but ….
Here’s an example: To reduce greenhouse gases, we’re being encouraged to use public transportation. But train and bus services were ignored by governments in favor of air travel and private cars. So bus and train facilities and equipment were allowed to deteriorate while “serving” no-clout travelers with minimal levels of security and hygiene. “Bus station” still conjures up unsavory images, and most of us stick to our cars despite fuel costs and global warming.
While public transportation services were decaying, Texaco was building customer loyalty by pledging clean restrooms, back when those amenities weren’t usual. How much could it have cost to provide that simple, human courtesy? But that courtesy still is a rare commodity in too many work places. My consulting visits to more than 200 work places led to my employee-toilet test. Few things express management’s real view of employees more clearly, and offer better insight into the follow-on consequences that drive up costs.
Analysis is limited by how one thinks about/values the people or issues involved. If you can’t “see” certain things (such as clean restrooms and their impact on employees), it’s unlikely they will be incorporated in the analyses you perform. The quest for boss-pleasing, cost-reducing outcomes contaminates thinking and causes a de facto blindness. Probably, managers are honest when they admit, “I never even thought about that!”
All data can be “bent” in boss-pleasing ways if there’s pressure to do so; that’s when thinking clearly becomes a conflict of interest. Analysis is more straightforward when standards define performance, but flexible standards allow analyses to support one’s biases. This dynamic, plus another four thinking constraints, effectively block “future vision.” Specifically:
Consider:
As intelligent consumers, we know “They” didn’t want it. Institutions don’t lose their way, but decision makers lead them off-course to get short-term profits. Maybe there’s a cultural bias against paying attention to world events and thinking clearly in response to them, but if the pay-off is for quick wins and short-term profits, that’s addictive.
Thinking about analysis where you work,
What about your thinking habits? Here’s a small quiz:
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What’s your thinking style? In your next job interview, what stories will you tell to demonstrate your ability to analyze, think clearly, and take effective action?
Plan Your Work and Work Your Plan
That “golden oldie” of management lore has its counterpoint (and some Eastern European cynicism): If you want to hear God laugh, make a plan! That can’t be a call for laissez faire, hands-off management. Maybe it means that when things change, plans must be changed, too. Otherwise, post-task analysis is meaningless and nothing is ever learned.
A plan that can be inspected while work is in process is a pretty authoritarian, top-down control tool. But how else do you ensure success of the work, those doing it, and confirm the accuracy of your headwork? Well, you can let the workers make the plans, chart progress, and prove their competence as thinkers and planners. Often, they can do it better than their managers!
Thinking clearly about planning must include participative management, and providing operational freedom to others who understand and accept their individual and collective responsibilities. When everyone has the same information and participates in planning, what can go wrong?
Such understandings of role and function don’t rise spontaneously; they are based on conversations that include the entire work group. Co-workers, too, must be thinking clearly about tasks and outcomes and responding to the same imperatives. That’s how strong relationships (teams?) are built.
The most effective control that thinking clearly can provide is a fast feedback system with reporting points negotiated with workers, modified as necessary to provide timely information at appropriate levels of detail. When managers ask, “How’s it going?” the answer needs to be more substantial than “Okay!” What the manager wants is a response with some analyzable metrics, such as, “So far, we’re on schedule and ahead of budget.”
Who would think that the ability to get that answer begins with clean toilets?
###
Management Theory is Completely Useless
May 7th, 2010
The Bullfeathers Chronicles
You know about Intel’s Andy Grove – but do you know Andy Graves?
Probably not.
This Andy is a retired USAF master sergeant, a natural leader, and a born (intuitive) manager who currently works for the U.S. Department of State. Andy Graves has worked in three embassies and a consulate in Eastern Europe and Russia, and is still at work out there, taking raw talent and turning it into professional precision, just as he did on A-10 “Warthog” flight lines. This is a record of a recent conversation.
Woody: What do you mean? You can’t say categorically that management theory is useless. For the last 100 years….
Andy Graves
Andy: No, that’s exactly what I mean! For the last 100 years, we’ve been capturing people and putting them in work groups they didn’t choose. As often as not with people they don’t like and wouldn’t choose to be with. What managers and wanna-be managers need to know is how to mix with those people and help them find the common points of interest that will let them work together effectively. And hanging onto their salaries is a good place to start getting their attention.
Woody: I thought goals, objectives, and targets and team building did that kind of thing.
Andy: I love that story about Frederick Taylor designing a new coal scoop 100 years ago – you know, when scientific management was born? As far as working people think, management’s been redesigning the coal scoop ever since, trying to find new ways to make them work harder, faster, cheaper. Most people believe in program goals like they believe in bull feathers.
Woody: So how would you train managers?
Andy: That woman you quoted in your book said it – but no guy ever would – that you have to love your people enough to listen to them. People who can’t do that can’t be managers – just people pushers. When managers don’t listen, they send a clear signal that they don’t care about their people. Even so, they think their people are dumb enough to do extra work for them, to make them look good in front of their bosses. Man, I don’t think so!
Woody: People pushers? I like that term. Never heard it before.
Andy: That’s the alternative to having your people working with you. If a manager can’t get in with his or her staff and lead them to see the points of common interest among them, then the only choice is to threaten, push, and behave in ways that are basically abusive and push people further away. Those are the nasty guys everyone knows and hates.
Woody: Yeah, I’ve known a lot of those guys, and some women, too. But back to the question – what do you recommend for manager training? Or, better, the great theorist Douglas McGregor– the Theories X and Y guy – said that every managerial act begins with a theory. What’s your theory of management, the ideas that guide you?
Andy: Empowerment! Responsibility! Collaboration! These words don’t have meaning outside the context of a specific group doing specific tasks in a specific place and time. Otherwise, those words are just more bull feathers. I guess I push too hard sometimes, but I want people to make decisions, to act as if the work was their own, to make sure it gets done to support the mission. But for that to work, everyone has to be held accountable and be responsible for doing professional work that meets the expectations of others whose work must be integrated into a service or product.
Woody: Does everyone “get it”? Do they appreciate your approach?
Andy: I wish it, but no. There are always some hardheads who’ve got their egos and heads up their a—s. But the majority get used to me and find that they are doing more work independently, slipping into leadership roles, and taking initiatives they never imagined before. You have to remember that most of the people I work with are locally-employed staff, and in this part of the world (Eastern Europe), their culture tells them not to stand out, not to be noticed, not to outperform their colleagues. But this tends to chill down when the rewards and recognition starts coming – not only from me, but from the Ambassador, the Deputy Chief of Mission, and from Washington and regional bureaus. As for the hardheads, they are a benchmark for how far we’ve come.
Woody: So there really is a theory behind management success?
Andy: If it’s a personal theory. But real people at work don’t want theory. They want to know in specific terms how to be successful. They want to perform well, they want to please their managers, and they want to be appreciated when they make extra effort. Anything else is just pure bull feathers. I’ve been sent to a lot of so-called management training, and it’s at least 50 percent bull feathers and has no connection to working with untrained staff on tight deadlines and inadequate budgets That’s where the “can do spirit” kicks in, and I think you have to live it, at least once, to know it..
Woody: I wish I knew how to bottle what you know. We could change the world.
###
How to Package Yourself for Success
March 25th, 2010
Have you or a family member or friend become a statistic in the current meltdown, there may be no better source of rescue than the annual update of What Color Is Your Parachute? A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers. Author Richard Nelson Bowles has created a framework that practically everyone in the career-counseling/job-finding business uses. But few realize that the concept on which the book is written is now more than 60 years old.
After World War II, millions of veterans returned from years of military service, some never having had a civilian job. How do you translate war-time roles like being a tail-gunner in a B-24 Liberator into civilian job skills? Bernard Haldane found the way.
“Tell me about your best achievements,” he asked, and discovered how to unlock the relationship between success in aiming and firing twin .50-caliber machine guns in aerial combat and the hand-eye coordination required by a civilian employer. He appears to have been the first person to capitalize on the fact that most of us have a set of proven traits, abilities, and predispositions that existed before we were educated and before we refined the interpersonal skills that support our social lives. We rely on them to succeed in personal and professional ventures, but paradoxically, most of us are unaware of those success factors. Too often, we don’t identify, develop, and strengthen them, and can’t use them to provide the competitive edge we need to win the job interview.
The mechanics of the Haldane/Bowles process work equally well for teenagers, teachers, physicians, cowboys and high school dropouts. The critical variable is discipline to invest the time in working the process. There is no substitute for the time required to dig into your own success stories, whether you pay a counselor to direct you or follow the instructions provided in the Parachute book.
The basic discovery process is straightforward, but commitment to homework and headwork is the true heart of the process. Your experiences have to be mined, researched and revisited until you discover the transferable skills that have operated in several or many successes. That information is what you want to sell. It is the can-do code that says to potential employers, “This person will make money for me, quickly!” Buy the book, read it, then do the work it structures. If your career is worth a 100-hour investment, it will be the best 20 bucks you’ve ever spent!
(By the way, does “Haldane” sound familiar? Bernard Haldane formed a consulting group, opened several offices, franchised his process and finally sold the company and the use of his name. Some franchisees promised more than they could deliver, were sued and the Haldane name was tainted. That was painful to Bernie, whom I met through a mutual friend, an Episcopal priest. Few people have ever contributed more to the career successes of many than this honest educator who, late in life, shifted his interests from working with adults to creating success assurance for young people. Bad things do happen to good people!)
I taught a one-day version of Bernie’s program in the federal community many years ago, and worked through it in meticulous detail two decades later when my job was abolished a month after my wife was diagnosed with terminal cancer. It worked for me in making an unplanned, mid-life career change, and I believe it will work for you—if you have the courage to do the work and package yourself for success.
Laughing, Learning, Leadership & Leprechauns
February 8th, 2010
Photo courtesy of Disney Dad
If you’re reading this, you owe someone back there a debt of gratitude for the advice, counsel, and concern-for-your-future invested in you. If someone cared enough about you to celebrate your successes but to be brutally honest when you screwed up, to refocus you when you lost your bearings or to kick you in the ass when you allowed a sour impulse to override your common sense, you were lucky You are living well today because someone, maybe several, became your mentor for a moment, a month, or for years.
I am remembering my mentors with the hope that it will prompt you to remember yours — and your obligation to pass along to others those gifts that can only be repaid in kind.
Robert L. (Bob) Stockment was as close to a leprechaun as anyone I’ve ever known. It wasn’t that he was short, because he wasn’t. It was more his smile, his laughter, his ability to be kind and gentle even in the midst of the most inconvenient muddles. He was the one, more than any other person, who taught me how to be a presenter, a public speaker, a lecturer. His message was simple: “People want to laugh, to be entertained, more than they want to learn. But if you can allow them to have fun, you will be amazed at how much they will learn.”
A number of times, participants have asked if I was a boxer, and when I can be scrupulously honest, I have to confess that I never was – but my mentor was! And like a duckling imprinting on the first thing it sees, I imprinted on Bob, his easy, expressive style, and his self-deprecating humor, and his way of moving among participants rather than standing behind or hanging onto a podium. I watched him lecture, I watched him sitting in circles with groups of executives, and the way he would reach out to include them in discussions and to support them when they participated. He was the instant friend, the good listener who made everyone feel comfortable.
When I met Bob, he was working for the Agricultural Research Service, recently returned from a stint in New York as an executive with a major organization for managers. He had liked the job, most of his associates, and the majority of the executives he met. But not his boss, who assigned to Bob the disagreeable collateral duty of finding women to be escorts and sleep-over companions for some of the visiting executives. So he returned to Washington and government employment.
One of his first assignments as training director for Agricultural Research Service involved enhancing the managerial performance of the Service’s director. It was an assignment organized by someone very senior in the Department of Agriculture who saw a need, an opportunity for a solution, and made it happen.
The director, an MD/PhD scientist, came to their first meeting, wearing his white lab coat and carrying a clipboard. He was almost sarcastic when he threw down his gauntlet, the world-renowned scientist confronting a man with no academic credentials. “Okay, Bob, how are you going to make me into a better manager?”
In that beautiful way he had, of smiling and dropping one shoulder as though he was ready to fire a right hand to the body, Bob said, “Well, sir, the first thing you need to do is take off that lab coat. It identifies you as a scientist. It locks you into the safe role as a researcher, as an expert, as an authority. It causes the people who work for you to respond to you as a technical advisor. That keeps them from seeing you as an executive and it keeps you in the dance of pleasing them instead of providing direction for the growth and future of the Agricultural Research Service.”
The director looked at Bob, without moving, for nearly a minute. Then he shrugged, took off the lab coat, tossed it onto a chair. He sat down and asked, “Okay, Bob, what else do I need to know?” They did not need many such conversations, and as far as anyone could tell, the director never again wore the lab coat.
Early in his life, after an undistinguished stint in the Navy as an enlisted man, Bob worked on a lathe in South Bend, Indiana. He remembered “a nice kid” with a new degree in industrial engineering. One day, Bob saw the engineer coming through the plant with his boss. Bob pushed his stock bench several feet away so he would have to step away from the lathe to get new stock. Sure enough, the engineer spotted the extra steps. “Bob, wouldn’t it be easier if you rolled the stock bench closer to the lathe? Then you could save those extra steps.” Bob expressed his appreciation for the suggestion and said, “Why didn’t I think of that?” The engineer looked content as he and his smiling boss continued their tour.
Bob’s lesson in these stories was that no manager wants to fail, and no one wants to work for a manager who is failing.
Employees in even the most menial jobs will help their managers look good and succeed – if only the manager will give them the opportunity and appreciate their integrity. Adversarial relationships at work are caused by managers who cannot allow workers to express their integrity and will not recognize the dignity of those whose tasks are menial and whose prospects are limited.
Bob’s widow sent me his pocket watch, as he had directed, but he left me with so much more. With three academic degrees more than he had, I still struggle to be his peer.
How Mentoring Really Happens – In the Company of Heroes
January 25th, 2010Mentoring can happen in an instant, in a few well-chosen words, and initiate lasting and life-changing insights.
Flickr photo courtesy of H.Kopp Delaney
If you’re reading this, you owe someone back there a debt of gratitude for the advice, counsel, and concern-for-your-future invested in you. If someone cared enough about you to celebrate your successes but to be brutally honest when you screwed up, to refocus you when you lost your bearings or to kick you in the ass when you allowed a sour impulse to override your common sense, you were lucky You are living well today because someone, maybe several, became your mentor for a moment, a month, or for years. I am remembering my mentors with the hope that it will prompt you to remember yours — and your obligation to pass along to others those gifts that can only be repaid in kind.
Two people who became my heroes are celebrated here. Who knows? Maybe you will hear what I heard, and the impact of their words will continue to ripple across time and space.
Lori Eisenberg was my first marriage counselor. It was our second meeting alone. Between the first and second, she had met with my wife and then with both of us. She opened the meeting with stunning directness: “What have you got against getting a divorce?”
I was shocked into speechlessness. Finally, I stammered, lamely, “Well, it would cost a lot of money.”
And here is her world-class, life-changing response: “So, go make some more!”
Talk about cutting to the chase, knocking off the nonsense, and getting down to making decisions! That’s been more than thirty years ago, and the imperative to act, to decide, to quit equivocating, is still as powerful. I’ve remembered it at least weekly, and it has pushed me into maybe a thousand decisions. “So, go make some more!”
Her direct advice has been included in more than 200 lectures, and it’s always a surprise to people who want to wallow in the clouds of high-level abstractions instead deciding to get out OR to stay-in-and-make-it-better. With all due respect to the semanticists, sometimes either/or is the only honest, courageous decision.
What a gift! I pass it along to you.
Fr. Joe Frazier, an Episcopal (Anglican) priest, was my second short-statement mentor. He had been nearly-famous as a member of the Chad Mitchell Trio. Their anti-establishment songs delighted Libertarians and those of the political left about the same time The Beach Boys and The Kingston Trio were enchanting the politically asleep.
He was making a pastoral call to my wife, who had terminal cancer. After suffering through three abdominal surgeries and three rounds of aggressive chemotherapy with attendant hair loss, she was angry and often lashed out. She looked at me, then at Joe, and like a verbal arsonist said, “I don’t think Woody is a Christian!”
Fr. Joe put out the fire in a six-word, world-class, life-changing response: “Is he taking care of you?”
I’ve spent at least a hundred hours thinking about that situation and the lessons implicit in it. His gentle way of cutting to the bottom line while bringing the single, most important issue to the surface, was a powerful intervention, worth studying, worth thinking about.
In another instance, Fr. Joe and I were discussing capital punishment. I was rolling out the usual pro-death-penalty arguments. Again, without heat, Fr. Joe changed my attitude, my values, and maybe my life with a few well-chosen words.
“I guess the death penalty would be okay if I could imagine Jesus pulling the switch. But I can’t!”
Of course, he was employing the rhetorical strategy of identifying an acknowledged standard to neutralize an argument, and it worked! I had to confront the duplicity in my values, and my trust in the man who had asked, in my behalf, “Is he taking care of you?”
Flickr photo courtesy of the great H. Kopp Delaney
These three interventions have been transformative. Each was weeks or months of tutorials distilled into less than a minute. They were clear, concise, and authentic; pointed, straight shots to the heart of the issue and to the heart of the recipient. They were as finely crafted as any piece of art, models of efficiency and effectiveness.
Where does the ability to speak in such succinct, truth-telling terms originate? My guess it’s from integrating three separate skills: listening and attending acutely, reading the situational dynamics, and suspending judgment. Individually, these may be the most challenging of the interpersonal skills, and integrating them in a single moment is a great feat of personal discipline. But when it happens, magic moments are possible.
I’ve seen the magic, and I’ve struggled for the discipline to replicate it. When I’ve been able to make it happen for others, I feel that I’m at my best – and repaying a debt to two remarkable mentors.
Author’s note: This is the last of 13 recollections of some of the Heroes in my life. Thanks for sharing them with me, and I hope you will take a few minutes to visit with the Heroes in your life .
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