Work Matters

Category: Bosses

  • 12 Things Good Bosses Believe is Still #1 at HBR: The Attraction of Lists?

    I am pleased, and a bit surprised that my now 10 day old post at Harvard Business Review on 12 Things The Good Bosses Believe is still the most read. It is nice to see that people resonate with these topics from Good Boss, Bad Boss and my other writings, but I think something else is going on. I was talking to one of the editors from HBR last week, one experienced in the ways of the web and blogs, and she commented on something I guess I knew but had never quite thought of before: People love lists — they attract attention on blogs and just about any other place in life. 

    As I thought back to posts I have written that have generated the strongest responses, many turn out to be lists.  Certainly people had a lot to say about my updated list of 17 Things I Believe and some of my most popular posts over the years include Places That Don't Tolerate Assholes and Tips for Surviving Workplace Assholes. More recently, my list of 10 Suspect Assumptions from HR  and my short list of the Dumbest Practices Used By U.S. Companies generated dozens of additional suggestions from readers.  For example, Wally Bock had some great ones to add to the list of dumb practices:

    We
    ignore the importance of supervision. We "promote" people into
    supervisory jobs without evaluating if they have a good shot at
    succeeding. Then we give them little to no training and even less
    support. Then we wonder why they don't succeed.

    We hope for magical leadership instead of developing good systems.
    When we do develop systems we favor the engineered and the technological
    over the human and common-sensical.

    So, what is it with lists?  This is a trick you see everywhere that people want to attract attention, from David Letterman's nightly top 10 list to Bill Maher's New Rules and on and on. Why do we
    love to read them, generate them, and add to others?

  • Some Bosses Live in Fool’s Paradise: The Mum Effect

    As I wrote earlier in the week, my post over at HBR on 12 Things That Good Bosses Believe generated a lot of interest and 75 comments.  I am now going to dig into each of the 12 points in detail over there.  The first one is "I
    have a flawed and incomplete understanding of what it feels like to
    work for me.      Or as Julia Kirby retitled it, Some Bosses Live in Fool's Paradise.  I talk about a host of psychological and structural factors that lead to such delusion, including the "Mum Effect"

    Bosses are insulated from reality. As Jeff Pfeffer and I
    reported in Hard Facts, extensive research proves that people
    routinely "shoot the messenger." Bearers of bad news, even when they
    aren't responsible for it in any sense, tend to be blamed and to have
    negative feelings directed toward them. The result is the "Mum Effect":
    subordinates with good survival instincts soften bad news to make it
    sound better, or avoid passing it along to their bosses at all.
    Therefore, in a steep hierarchy it is a happier and happier story that
    reaches the top ranks. Our most disturbing example came courtesy of
    physics Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman after his
    investigation     of the 1986 explosion of the space shuttle Challenger.
    He said he'd asked a group of engineers to estimate the probability
    that the shuttle's main engine would fail, and their estimates ranged
    from 1-in-200 to 1-in-300. But when he asked the head of NASA to make
    the failure-rate estimate, the answer he got was 1-in-100,000. Feynman
    pointed to this as an illustration of managerial isolation from reality,
    a problem he believed to be rampant throughout NASA. 

    I should add, however, that not all followers keep bad news away from their bosses to the same degree.  I wonder, what can a boss do to encourage people to deliver bad news?  Yes, not shooting the messenger is a start. But is seems to me that their must be a lot more. 

    P.S. Also, I got into argument over at HBR with commentor who took me to task for using the terms superior and subordinate.  He suggested team member because I was emphasizing power differences so much.  My response was that I am not talking about the world as we might like it to be, I am talking about the world as it is, and every organization has a system of rank and hierarchy, and the resulting power differences have hue effects on what people think, feel, and do.  Perhaps I was too tough, or perhaps I am a cynic, but while I do believe that leaders that de-emphasize spower differences are more effective than leaders who emphasize and expand them at every turn, I also believe that power differences are a fact of organizational life, and denying them sets people up for failure.

  • Management Consulting Circa 1960: Booz Produces 125 Feet Of Reports a Year

    Allen

    One of the doctoral students that I work with at the Center for Work, Technology and Organization, the irrepressible Isaac Waisberg, is working on a fascinating dissertation on what management consultants do.  Yesterday, he successfully defended his dissertation proposal and I am looking forward to a great dissertation from him.  Being a thorough researcher, Isaac has been meticulously studying the history of management consulting. In the process, he dug up this wonderful BusinessWeek cover story from 1960.  Note the 1960 stamps from the Stanford library.  The text says, essentially, that James Allen of Booz, Allen & Hamilton leads a firm that produces 125 feet of management reports a year — and I guess the picture provides the proof.

    Of course, the consulting business has changed a lot in the past 50 years.  It has grown massively and I am sure that Booz would be quick to argue that they do a lot more than produce reports (that was probably true then as well).  I also suspect the current metric would be PowerPoint decks per year at many firms.  But in other ways, the key question remains the same and one that drove us to write The Knowing-Doing Gap and is also the subject a chapter in Good Boss, Bad Boss: Are all those reports and the advice they contain a substitute for action or an impetus to action?

  • 12 Things Good Bosses Believe is Most Read at Harvard Business Review

    As I noted here last week, I posted a list of of 12 Things that Good Bosses Believe on the Harvard Business Review site last week.  I am going to write posts about each of these themes over the coming weeks (some of which will be familiar themes if you read this blog regularly). The list generated about 40 comments and I see that it is currently number #1 of their most read on their landing page.   I will publish the complete list here after all the links are published at HBR, but for now, you need to visit there to see the full list.  And please add a comment if you would like. 

  • 12 Things Good Bosses Believe — Check It Out At Harvard Business Review

    As I wrote earlier in the week, I got motivated to update and expand my list of "17 Things I Believe" to the left because — as part of revving up for the publication of Good Boss, Bad Boss — I was putting together a list of 12 Things Good Bosses Believe, which was just posted the morning over at Harvard Business Review. Some of these themes are developed in Good Boss, Bad Boss, others are ones that I have written about here and elsewhere.   To give you a taste, here are the first four:

    1. I have a flawed and incomplete understanding of what it feels like
      to work for me.
    2. My success — and that of my people — depends largely on being the
      master of obvious and mundane things, not on magical, obscure, or
      breakthrough ideas or methods.
    3. Having ambitious and well-defined goals is important, but it is
      useless to think about them much. My job is to focus on the small wins
      that enable my people to make a little progress every day.
    4. One of the most important, and most difficult, parts of my job is
      to strike the delicate balance between being too assertive and not
      assertive enough.

    Note that none of these are linked to posts or sources that explain the nuances of what I mean and the evidence behind the beliefs.  Over the next two or three weeks, I will write a post over at HBR about each one of these beliefs and, as I do, the link will be added to the list. I will let you you know when each appears.  When the list is done, I will likely add it this blog.  Meanwhile, check out the list on HBR, and please give me some feedback either there or here.

    P.S. A big thank you to Julia Kirby for her help with the list over at HBR.

  • A Shitty View of the Pecking Order

    Assholes
    I posted another variation of this drawing a couple years back, but the text and the drawing on this one is one is much better.  And unfortunately, as I have written about multiple times (see here and here), there is plenty of evidence that people at the top of pecking order are prone to shit on those at the bottom — and to be unaware of their insensitive moves.  But the good news — as I show in Good Boss, Bad Boss — is there are plenty of people at the top of the pecking order who find ways to overcome this tendency to shit on their underlings.

    P.S. Leon, thanks for sending this!

    P.P.S.  You owe to yourself to go to Bruce Lynn's comment below and to click on the url, it is a thing of beauty.

  • BP: Why can’t they say they are sorry and trying to make sure it will never happen again?

    As I read The new York Times and Wall Street Journal every day, I ended-up reading BP's huge "Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Response" ad twice today.  I suspect it was written by their legal department, as there are things it does not contain that really bug me and will bug others and — by the way, are bad crisis management, if you believe the best studies on what leaders can do to protect the reputation and long-term financial performance of their firms when the shit hits the fan (I talk about some of this research here and in links within it).

    1. There is not a hint of human compassion, it is cold, carefully crafted language. It simply lists facts, it offers no sympathy to the people who died, none to those whose livelihoods will be affected, and none about the animals who are dying.  The language is utterly without a hint of warmth or empathy for anyone.  This gives me the creeps and I believe reinforces the perception they are a cold heartless company with executives who care about no one but themselves.

    2. There is not a hint of an apology or admission of mistake.  The language is very indirect and legalistic. They say: "BP has taken full responsibility for dealing with the spill.  We are determined to do everything we can to minimize impact.  We will honor all legitimate claims."  Perhaps they can't apologize or admit error, but look at research on executives and firms that weather crises more effectively (a great example is Maple Leaf Foods, see the CEOs apology). Researchers who study errors or setbacks have shown that the problem with this strategy of pointing fingers at others and not accepting blame is that when you talk as if you are a hapless victim of a problem caused by others or by forces that no one can control (as BP seems to be doing), you also are seen as lacking the power to fix it…. it amplifies the perception that you are out of control and don't know what you are doing.

    3. Finally, and this is also consistent with research on how to deal with a crisis or failure, I see not even a hint in this statement that BP is doing everything (or anything) within its power to learn from this horrible spill so that it is unlikely to ever happen again, and if it does, so they will be able to respond more quickly and effectively next time. This kind of language and attitude is crucial for both perceptual and objective reasons.   From a perceptual standpoint, it conveys more compassion and also that all those people and animals will not have suffered in vain.   From an objective standpoint, clearly, there are many lessons from this fiasco, and any competently ran company learns from mistakes — indeed, I think all of us wonder what they might already be doing differently in their many other drilling platforms.  I think that talking about that would help them.

    There is plenty of blame to go around here, and I am sure that BP does not deserve all of it.  But I think they could handle both the optics and objective elements of this crisis far more effectively (And I wonder if in the end the lawyers' advice will cost them more money, as so many politicians and prosecutors will be motivated by their heartless response to go after them with special vehemence).

    No doubt, there are many facts I don't know about what is really happening.  But these omissions disturb me and, if you are a leader, you might want to use this as an opportunity to think about how you would handle such a PR nightmare if it hit your organization.  It is a lot cheaper and easier to learn from BP's errors than it your own.

  • The Dangers of a Harried Boss

    The always insightful Wally Bock made a great comment in response to my last post, where I asked about the conditions under which performance evaluations actually seemed to work.  Wally, drawing on his research on effective versus ineffective supervisors, reported (in part):

    The result
    was that when time came for the official, on-the-company-form,
    performance review, their sessions were very different from their
    less-effective peers. Top performing supervisors took more than three
    times as long for the session.

    Wally's comment got me thinking because, as I thought about the difference between good and bad bosses, it made me realize that — although good bosses are concerned about using their time well, and especially, making sure not to waste their people's time — that they tend to think and act as if it is more important to do things as well as possible than to do things as quickly as possible.  Indeed, some of the work bosses I can think of always seemed to be focused on finishing whatever they are doing at the moment so they can get on to the next thing.  The result, unfortunately, is that they spend their days rushing around, doing one thing after another badly. 

  • When Do Performance Evaluations Actually Work?

    A couple years back, I wondered aloud here if performance evaluations ought to be eliminated.   This theme has been taken-up with a vengeance by Sam Culbert in his Wall Street Journal article and now his book Get Rid of the Performance Review.  I was thinking about this topic again because Tara Parker-Pope raised the question in her New York Times health blog called "Well" in a post called Time to Review Workplace Reviews?  

    Tara mentions Sam's book and suggests that bad performance reviews may be so distressing that they can damage physical and mental health, as well as productivity.   I am only person mentioned in the article who comes close to defending reviews, but am quoted as saying:  “In the typical case, it’s done so badly it’s better not to do it at
    all.”  I guess I still agree with my quote, but while I think that most performance reviews suck, there are a least a couple companies out there that do them effectively, so perhaps it is going too far to say they should all be eliminated.

    One company  that I know pretty well (the NDA I signed forbids me from mentioning their name) does such a good job of using reviews for both developmental and evaluation purposes, that most people I know who work there report the system is remarkably fair and that it has helped them improve their weak spots (the main complaint is how much effort it takes, but most employees report it is worth the trouble).  And perhaps the ultimate test is that even the people who get negative reviews there and are encouraged to leave the place generally report that it is an excellent and well-managed process.  Now, this company might be as rare as hen's teeth (this is the first time I have ever used this phrase in writing or speaking in my life).  And even in this exemplary company, I have met a few people who complain about the system.

    Yet this and other exceptions raise interesting questions about lessons that we might learn from such "positive outliers," as they call them in medical research and elsewhere:

    1.  Have you been part of a performance evaluation system that actually works?

    2. If so, why did it work? 

    I would be most curious to hear some success stories, given all the failure stories I hear (just look at the 150 or so comments following Tara's post… most are pretty negative…although I am intrigued by the person who reports that being in a place with no performance reviews is even more stressful because people never know where they stand).

    P.S. I also wanted to thank Tara for raising the additional issue of how distressing a bad boss can be and giving a nice plug to Good Boss, Bad Boss at the end of the post.  I am delighted to have a book that The New York Times will actually mention by name, unlike The No Asshole Rule (even though they accepted this advertisement, they called it The No ******* Rule on their bestseller list, and in most stories, they simply say that I wrote a book on bullying and don't list any name).  Although I confess that this (apparently) new found respectability at The Times makes me a bit uncomfortable, as I am always weirdly happy when people from established institutions are offended by my actions. I know it is not a very mature reaction for a 56 year-old professor, but such vestiges of my youth persist.

  • Bosses, Empathy, and Teaching: Thoughts from an Anonymous CEO

    One of the bad and good things about spending a couple years writing a book is the process requires writing and then deleting a huge amount of text.  This morning, I was reading through some of the scraps from Good Boss, Bad Boss and I ran into an inspired argument from a local CEO (I am not using his name because I didn't ask him if I could use it here, and so I think that is the civil thing to do). This CEO argued that he is most effective at his job when thinks and acts a lot like a teacher.

    I wish we could have found a place for this section in the book.  But I've learned (in line with this post quoting Steve Jobs) that if you are an author (or do any other kind of creative work) you not only have to discard a lot of bad ideas, you also have to get rid of a lot of good ideas — otherwise there is too much complexity in the final product and you can't focus your full energy on what matters most.  So every author ends up deleting things he or she loves, and this is one of my favorite "discarded darlings" from Good Boss, Bad Boss.

    For this post, I've changed the CEO's name to "Sam," but the rest is just as it would have appeared in the book and reflects multiple emails where this very sharp CEO and I exchanged revisions to reach a point where the text reflected both of our beliefs on the subject.  Here is the excerpt:

    Sam reports that to be an empathetic
    boss, he has learned to devote close attention to his little facial expressions,
    off-hand comments in emails and conversations, and seemingly trivial things like
    whether he acknowledges people when passing them in halls.  Sam went on to explain that this becomes
    easier when he adopts what might be called a follower-centered mindset:

     
    “Life is a lot better when think about my job as one of helping everyone be good,
    helping everyone learn whatever they need, and teaching where I've got
    experience and expertise. When I think in terms of helping people learn to be
    even better, it automatically puts me into an empathetic mode (because
    teaching, fundamentally, is about understanding where the learner is coming
    from), and that sets up the interaction really well.  I can't always stay in this teaching mode.
    Sometimes there are real pressures and things I need to deliver on.  Sometimes external stressors in my life cause
    me to forget to be empathetic. But usually now I can notice when it's happening
    and correct it.”

    As Sam and I talked, we realized that
    – whether it is a big important meeting or the most trivial conversation,
    email, or blog post – the best bosses seem to keep asking themselves:     “Why am I doing this? Is it because I am on
    an ego trip and trying to get more goodies and glory for myself?  Or is it really the best thing for enhancing
    my people’s collective performance and humanity?”

    When bosses can honestly answer the
    question with a “yes” (and peers, bosses, and followers concur with their
    assessment), good things happen.  People
    do good work. They experience dignity and pride in each other. 

     I am so struck by this comment from Sam that I want to repeat it:  "When I think in terms of helping people learn to be
    even better, it automatically puts me into an empathetic mode (because
    teaching, fundamentally, is about understanding where the learner is
    coming
    from    )."  I believe he is talking about a hallmark of the most admired and effective bosses.

    What
    do you think of this view of
    leadership?  Does it strike you as
    right?  Or is it too idealistic? 

    P.S. If you read the comments below, you will see that the "anonymous" CEO quoted here has read it and is comfortable with having his name attached.  It is John Lilly, CEO of Mozilla, which is most famous for the Firefox browser.   So "Sam" is really "John."  John, thanks for wisdom and great exchanges.  Also, John writes a great blog, which among other things, contains great stuff on all the book's he reads.