Work Matters

Tag: bosses

  • 12 Books Every Leader Should Read:Updated

    I first posted this in 2011, but I update it now and then.  Note I have removed two from the list: Men and Women of the Corporation and Who Says that Elephants Can't Dance?  They are both great books, but I am trying to stick to 12 books and the two new ones below edge them out. Here goes:

    I was looking through the books on Amazon to find something that struck my fancy, and instead, I started thinking about the books that have taught me much about people, teams, and organizations — while at the same time — provide useful guidance (if sometimes only indirectly) about what it takes to lead well versus badly.  The 12 books below are the result. 

    Most are research based, and none are a quick read (except for Orbiting the Giant Hairball). I guess this reflects my bias.  I like books that have real substance beneath them.  This runs counter the belief in the business book world at the moment that all books have to be both short and simple.  So, if your kind of business book is The One Minute Manager (which frankly, I like too… but you can read the whole thing in 20 or 30 minutes), then you probably won't like most of these books at all.

    1. The Progress Principle by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer.  A masterpiece of evidence-based management — the strongest argument I know that "the big things are the little things." 

    2. Influence by Robert Cialdini the now classic book about how to persuade people to do things, how to defend against persuasion attempts, and the underlying evidence.  I have been using this in class at Stanford for over 20 years, and I have had dozens of students say to me years later "I don't remember much else about the class, but I still use and think about that Cialdini book."

    3.Made to Stick Chip and Dan Heath.  A modern masterpiece, the definition of an instant classic.  How to design ideas that people will remember and act on.   I still look at it a couple times a month and I buy two or three copies at a time because people are always borrowing it from me.  I often tell them to keep it because they rarely give it back anyway. 

    4. Thinking, Fast and Slow Daniel Kahneman.  Even though the guy won the Nobel Prize, this book is surprisingly readable.  A book about how we humans really think, and although it isn't designed to do this, Kahneman also shows how much of the stuff you read in the business press is crap.

    5. Collaboration by Morten Hansen.  He has that hot bestseller now with Jim Collins called Great By Choice, which I need to read. This is a book I have read three times and is — by far — the best book ever written about what it takes to build an organization where people share information, cooperate, and help each other succeed.

    6. Orbiting the Giant Hairball by Gordon MacKenzie.  It is hard to explain, sort of like trying to tell a stranger about rock and roll as the old song goes.  But it is the best creativity book ever written, possibly the business book related to business ever written.  Gordon's voice and love creativity and self-expression — and how to make it happen despite the obstacles that unwittingly heartless organizations put in the way — make this book a joy.

    7. The Pixar Touch by David Price.  After reading this book, my main conclusion was that it seems impossible that Pixar exists. Read how Ed Catmull along with other amazing characters– after amazing setbacks, weird moments, and one strange twist after another — realized Ed's dream after working on it for decades.  Ed is working on his own book right now, I can hardly wait to see that.  When I think of Ed and so many others I have met at Pixar like Brad Bird, I know it is possible to be a creative person without being an asshole.  In fact, at least if the gossip I keep hearing from Pixar people is true, Jobs was rarely rude or obnoxious in his dealings with people at Pixar because he knew they knew more than him — and even he was infected by Pixar's norm of civility.

    8. Creativity,Inc. by Ed Catmull. Price's book is fantastic, but this is one of the best business/leadership/organization design books ever written.  As I wrote in my blurb — and this is no B.S.- "“This is the best book ever written on what it takes to build a creative organization. It is the best because Catmull’s wisdom, modesty, and self-awareness fill every page. He shows how Pixar’s greatness results from connecting the specific little things they do (mostly things that anyone can do in any organization) to the big goal that drives everyone in the company: making films that make them feel proud of one another.”  Note also that Catmull has a chapter on Steve Jobs that offers a different perspective than anyone else I have seen –and they worked together for decades.

    9. The Laws of Subtraction by Matthew May.   This 2012 book has more great ideas about how to get rid of what you don't need and how to keep — and add — what you do need than any book ever written.  Matt has as engaging a writing style as I have ever encountered and he uses it to teach one great principle after another, from "what isn't there can trump what is" to "doing something isn't always better than doing nothing."  Then each principle is followed with five or six very short — and well-edited pieces — from renowned and interesting people of all kinds ranging from executives, to researchers, to artists.  It is as fun and useful as non-fiction book can be and is useful for designing every part of your life, not just workplaces.

    10. Leading Teams by J. Richard Hackman.  When it comes to the topic of groups or teams, there is Hackman and there is everyone else.   If you want a light feel good romp that isn't very evidence-based, read The Wisdom of Teams.  If want to know how teams really work and what it really takes to build, sustain, and lead them from a man who has been immersed in the problem as a researcher, coach, consultant, and designer for over 40 years, this is the book for you.

    11. Give and Take by Adam Grant. Adam is the hottest organizational researcher of his generation.  When I read the pre-publication version, I was so blown away by how useful, important, and interesting that Give and Take was that I gave it the most enthusiastic blurb of my life: “Give and Take just might be the most important book of this young century. As insightful and entertaining as Malcolm Gladwell at his best, this book has profound implications for how we manage our careers, deal with our friends and relatives, raise our children, and design our institutions. This gem is a joy to read, and it shatters the myth that greed is the path to success."  In other words, Adam shows how and why you don't need to be a selfish asshole to succeed in this life. America — and the world — would be a better place if all of memorized and applied Adam's worldview.

    12. The Path Between the Seas by historian David McCullough. On building the Panama Canal.  This is a great story of how creativity happens at a really big scale. It is messy. Things go wrong. People get hurt. But they also triumph and do astounding things.  I also like this book because it is the antidote to those who believe that great innovations all come from start-ups and little companies (although there are some wild examples of entrepreneurship in the story — especially the French guy who designs Panama's revolution — including a new flag and declaration of independence as I recall — from his suite in the Waldorf Astoria in New York, and successfully sells the idea to Teddy Roosevelt ).  As my Stanford colleague Jim Adams points out, the Panama Canal, the Pyramids, and putting a man on moon are just a few examples of great human innovations that were led by governments.  

    I would love to know of your favorites — and if want a systematic approach to this question, don't forget The 100 Best Business Books of All Time.

    P.S. Also, for self-defense, I recommend that we all read Isaacson's Steve Jobs — I still keep going places — cocktail parties, family gatherings, talks I give and attend, and even the grocery store where people start talking about Jobs and especially arguing about him.  As I explained in Wired and Good Boss, Bad Boss I have come to believe that whatever Jobs was in life, in death he has become a Rorschach test — we all just project our beliefs and values on him.

  • Malicious Compliance

    I appreciate the interesting comments and suggestions in response to my last post on different levels of felt accountability.  Readers may recall that I proposed — from best to worst – that a team or organization can be characterized as having people who feel everything from authorship. mutual obligation, indifference, and mutual contempt.  I have especially been thinking about this comment from Justdriven, which builds on a prior comments by AnnieL:

    "Regarding
    your first question, I think AnneL may have identified a fifth category
    between mutual obligation and indifference which would be fear driven
    box checking. This would be the case where individuals follow procedures
    out of a fear of retribution rather than an endorsement of said
    procedures. This would seem to be what the pilot experienced. This stage
    would be a slippery slope that takes you from mutual obligation to
    indifference and then contempt."

    I am taken with "fear driven box-checking" as it seems to be both a symptom and a cause, where people who feel powerless have no ability — and thus no obligation — to help make things go well because the system makes it impossible regardless of how good their intentions might be.  This comment also got me thinking about how, in some systems, people can zoom past indifference and move to mutual contempt by following the rules exactly as a way to fight back against a bad system or boss — especially when there are bad standing rules or orders for a given challenge.   "Working to rule" is a classic labor slow down tactic, and there is some sweet revenge and irony when you get back at company or person  that you don't like by following their instructions to the letter. 

    More broadly, I have been interested in the notion of "malicious compliance" for a long time.  In Chapter 6 of Good Boss, Bad Boss I wrote about how it is sometimes used to get back at a bad or incompetent boss, or in the example below, by bosses to shield their people from a lousy boss up the chain of command:

    I know bosses who employ the opposite strategy to undermine and drive out incompetent superiors. One called it “malicious compliance,” following idiotic orders from on high exactly to the letter, thereby assuring the work would suck. This is a risky strategy, of course, but I once had a detailed conversation with a manager at an electronics firm whose team built an ugly and cumbersome product prototype. After it was savaged by the CEO, the manager carefully explained (and documented) that his team had done exactly as the VP of Engineering ordered, and although he voiced early and adamant objections to the VP, he gave up because “it was like talking to a brick wall.”
    So this manager and his team decided ‘Let’s give him exactly what he wants, so we just said “yes sir” and followed his lousy orders precisely.’ The VP of engineering lost his job as a result. Again, this is a dangerous and destructive strategy, and I would advise any boss to only use it as a last resort.

    I would be curious to hear of other examples of malicious compliance — and if you have any ideas of how to create conditions so it won't happen. Its is one of this sick but fascinating elements of organizational life.

  • Boring = Good? Inspirational = Bad?

    LeadershipINCSutton20012

    That is the title of weird interview that just came out in INC this month, which I did with Leigh Buchanan.  And the above drawing is by Graham Roumieu. 

    Here is the story on the INC website. The title is different online than in the print version, they call it "Thoroughly Counterintuitive Approach to Leading."  

    Leigh is always fun to talk to, and after having done interviews on both The No Asshole Rule and Good Boss, Bad Boss, she has emerged as one of my favorite journalists.  For starters, she has such a sense of fun — most of us involved in doing and working with management are entirely too serious — I certainly plead guilty.  Leigh has the rare ability to talk about real ideas while at the same time conveying the absurdity of so much of organizational life .  She is also a great editor. In every interview I have done with her, I've rambled incoherently on for an hour or so, and she somehow put it in a form that made sense.

    This new interview a conglomeration of some of the stranger ideas from the various books I have written, especially Weird Ideas That Work along with some new twists.  As with weird ideas , I offer these ideas to challenge your assumptions (and my own) and to prompt us all to think.  I don't expect you to agree with them (I am not even sure I agree with all of them), but there is actually a fair amount of evidence and theory to support each of these sometimes uncomfortable ideas.

    To give you a taste,here is how the interview kicks-off:

    Leigh: You and I have been e-mailing about leadership traits, and at one point you suggested, “Good leaders know when to be boring, vague, emotionally detached, and authoritarian.” Under what circumstances might such traits be desirable? Start with boring.

    Me: There are two situations in which it’s a good idea to be boring. One is when you’re working on something but, so far, all you’ve got is bad news. Under those circumstances, any outside attention is bad.

    Don Petersen was the CEO of Ford after the Iaccoca era, and he was responsible for turning the company around. He told me a story about being invited to speak at the National Press Club. He didn’t want to do it. At the time, Ford had no good cars at all. But he and his PR chief decided he would go and give a speech about the most boring subject they could think of. At the time, that was safety. He practiced speaking in the most boring way possible, using the passive voice and long sentences. He put up charts that were hard to read, and then turned his back to the audience to talk about the charts. After that, the press lost interest in him for a while, so he could concentrate on doing the work.

    The other situation is when you’re dealing with controversy. Stanford used to have this brilliant provost, James Rosse. When Jim talked about something like the school’s Nobel Prize winners, he would be animated and exciting and charismatic. But when he had to talk about something like the lack of diversity on campus, he would ramble on for 20 minutes while looking at his feet. I thought it was brilliant

    And so it goes.  I hope you enjoy and I think Leigh for being such a delight to work with and for reminding me not to take myself so seriously.

  • “I believe in my heart, I would have worked for an asshole”

    The No Asshole Rule emphasizes that one of the best ways to avoid the negative effects of workplaces that will leave you feeling demeaned and de-energized is to carefully assess your boss and colleagues during the interview and recruitment process.   Guy Kawasaki and I had fun with this challenge a few years back when we developed a list of 10 signs that your future boss is likely to be a bosshole.  In this spirit, I got a remarkable note the other day from a fellow who used his job interview to determine that his future boss was likely to be an asshole. Note the often subtle signs he observed.  This are his exact words, I just removed a couple key sentences (with his permission) to protect his identity:

    Dr. Sutton,

    Just wanted to thank you.  I read your "no Asshole rule" book on the plane my way to an interview.  I suspected from our initial phone interview that he could be a jerk.  I decided to take a new approach to the interview…to see how he interacted with shop floor employees and people that worked directly for him, to see how he spoke to me, and his verbal and visual actions, to see if I wanted this position instead of trying to impress them so they want to hire me.  I watched people that worked for him stand away from him when talking to him.  I saw he never smiled, and no one smiled at him.  He passed people on the line without so much as a nod to them.  And to top it off, he cut me off TWICE when I was talking like I wasn't even speaking, and then once even rudely didn't even PRETEND to listen to me as I talked about my background. In fact, I believe he started looking around and saying "uh huh, uh huh, uh huh" rudely "rushing me along" about 15 seconds into my background discussion.  To top it off, I remember you saying "assholes hire assholes", so I asked him if he had recommended the hiring of the people on his current team, and he boldly bragged "I hire EVERYONE on my team, it is all MY decision"…so I turned down the offer.  I believe in my heart, I would have worked for an asshole. .  And life is too short to do that again.

    I find this guy to be very astute.  What do you think of his analysis?

    What are other signs that you look for that a future boss — or colleague –is likely to be a certified asshole?

  • An Asshole Infested Workplace — And How One Guy Survived It

    Even though it has been five years since The No Asshole Rule was published in hardback, I still get 15 or 20 emails a week about issues pertinent to the book — descriptions of workplace tyrants and creeps, on how to avoid breeding them, and on what to do about them when you work with one — or a lot of them.  

    This blog would contain nothing but "asshole stories" and I would be posting a couple times a day if I reported them all. Clearly, that would be both boring and depressing.  And I am interested in other things. But every now and and then, I get one that is so well-crafted that I feel compelled to post it. I got a great one yesterday. 

    I don't want to put the whole email here both because it is so detailed and because I don't want to reveal any names. But the fellow who wrote this had quite an experience and did a great job of describing how he fought back. Here are some key excerpts (with some deletions to obscure identities):

    His note starts:

    I just finished reading The No A$$hole rule for a second time (I use $ instead of "s" just in case your email filters emails with the word "A$$hole," though I'd bet it does not. I'm just airing on the side of caution). Here is my reaction. Feel free to use my full name and any contents of this email in any of your published works. Back in 2005, I began my second job out of college working as a project manager at a marketing company. It was, and still is, a family business consisting of about 100 total employees.   Here is a snippet what I endured, for nearly 7 years, from the A$$hole Family.

    This is a partial list of behaviors in the cesspool where he worked:

    • If I was eating something, a bag of potato chips for example, the President would walk into my cubicle, stick his hands in the bag, then look at me and say, "Can I have some?"
    • Someone would walk into my cubicle and have a conversation with the person in the cube across from me…while I was on the phone!
    • A coworker of mine made a mistake on a project, so the VP of Sales sent the client an email, copying my boss, which said something to the effect of, "I just fired ____. This mistake was completely unacceptable, and please accept my apology. We don't tolerate people like that here…" Ironically enough, it was a lie; ____ was never fired, but just moved off the account.
    • The family members would routinely yell across the entire office to one another
    • I was having a meeting with a vendor in a conference room. The door was shut. The Sales Consultant walked in, sans knocking, and proceeded to say, "I need this room" and set her things on the conference table. And no, she had not reserved the conference room; reserving a conference room in this company was far-too-advanced of an idea.
    •  [A married couple] who also worked at the A$$hole company were going through a divorce. They routinely had shouting and yelling matches, followed by slamming drawers, desks, and just about anything else that could make a loud noise and disrupt everyone in the office.
    • [One family member] often spoke to me like I was a 5-year old child (she did the same to most underlings, especially the men), and always loudly enough so everyone in the surrounding area could hear that I was being thrown under the bus. She liked to make an example of her victims. Oddly enough, she apparently has a Psychology degree (No offense to you at all, Dr. Sutton).
    • [Another executive] was famous for bullying vendors, yelling at them on the phone, slamming desks and drawers, etc.. He would also do this by using his blue-tooth ear-piece and his cell phone as he walked around the office, yelling on the phone.
    • They hired another A$$hole (You wrote that A$$holes tend to hire other A$$holes). He was most lethal behind a computer, where he would send scathing emails to co-workers. However, he would not limit his exchanges to emails, as my colleague would often complain that he said things—NOT in private—like, "If you think you need a raise, then maybe you should quit and get another job."
    •  I literally witnessed my manager turn into an A$$hole overtime due to over-exposure to the A$$hole Family. In the beginning, he was an optimistic, friendly, driven, trustworthy manager. 6+ years later, he scowled and glared at co-workers; he became two-faced; I lost trust in him.

    I love this summary, it is sad but funny at the same time:

    There is such an infestation of A$$holes at this company that someone should tent the building and spray it with A$$hole insecticide. I could go on for pages about these stories. I wish I had documented more of them, because some of them were really funny.

     Then, he tells us how he too started catching the sickness — as I have written here many times, bad behavior is contagious. Thank goodness, he and his colleagues hatched exit plans:

    After working there for a year, I realized that I was turning into an A$$hole: I was losing my temper with vendors on the phone; my stress-level was getting too high to manage; and I started to send more scathing emails. It also started to affect my personal life, as I would come home from work and lose my temper with my partner for no reason. I then realized that I needed to get out. Nothing I could do would help me manage this job long-term. So, 3 of my colleagues and I all made a pact to get new jobs as quickly as possible.

    Finally, I was especially taken with his description of the things he did to cope with the infestation of assholes around him, many are consistent with my survival tips, others are new twists and turns. Here is most of his list:

    •  I confronted [a boss] about him throwing me under the bus. I explained to him that after throwing me under the bus, I become anxious, nervous, embarrassed, and I cannot concentrate, which greater increases my chances for making mistakes. My solution was to instead speak to me in private about a way that we can work together to reduce any mistakes and increase productivity for our whole department. He never threw me under the bus again (to my face, anyway), but he never took me up on the offer to speak with me about how to help improve my job performance, as well as my co-workers. 
    • Wrote in my daily journal (this was a tremendous small win; I could vent my frustrations and focus on my strategy to get out of the A$$hole Factory. I still write in my journal)
    • Using any downtime at work to apply for other jobs
    • Using the "I have a doctor's appointment" excuse to go on job interviews
    • The President/CEO ran for a political post. I voted for the other guy.
    • Working as hard as possible at my job, so that when I left, it would be difficult to replace me
    • Wear headphones to drown out the A$$holes yelling across the office at one another
    • Piled things like my briefcase and books near the entrance to my cubicle so A$$holes could not enter un-invited
    • Deleted scathing emails and never responding to them instead of responding and escalating into email World War III
    • Gave 2 weeks notice: No more, no less

    Again, I don't usually provide so much detail, but this fellow did such a brilliant job of showing what an asshole infested workplace looks and feels like, the negative effects it has on everyone in its grips, and of listing the little and big things he did to cope with it.  And, thank goodness, he realized he needed to escape and eventually got out — while protecting himself along the way. 

    I won't name him (even though he said it was OK, I think a bit of discretion is in order). But I do want to thank this anonymous reader for taking the time to write me such a long note and for doing it so well.

  • A Method For Determining If A Boss Is Self-Aware (And Listens Well)

    I was talking with a journalist from Men's Health today about how bosses can become more aware of how they act and are seen by the people they lead, and how so many bosses (like most human-beings) can be clueless of how they come across to others.  This reminded of a method I used some years back with one boss that proved pretty effective for helping him come to grips with his overbearing and "all transmission, no reception" style; here is how it is described in Good Boss, Bad Boss:

    A few years ago, I did a workshop with a management team that was suffering from “group dynamics problems.” In particular, team members felt their boss, a senior vice-president, was overbearing, listened poorly, and routinely “ran over” others.  The VP denied all this and called his people “thin-skinned wimps.”

    I asked the team – the boss and five direct reports — to do a variation of an exercise I’ve used in the classroom for years.  They spent about 20 minutes brainstorming ideas about products their business might bring to market; they then spent 10 minutes narrowing their choices to just three:  The most feasible, wildest, and most likely to fail.   But as the group brainstormed and made these decisions, I didn’t pay attention to the content of their ideas.  Instead, I worked with a couple others from the company to make rough counts of the number of comments made by each member, the number of times each interrupted other members, and the number of times each was interrupted.  During this short exercise, the VP made about 65% of the comments, interrupted others at least 20 times, and was never interrupted once.  I then had the VP leave the room after the exercise and asked his five underlings to estimate the results; their recollections were quite accurate, especially about their boss’s stifling actions.  When we brought the VP back in, he recalled making about 25% of the comments, interrupting others two or three times, and being interrupted three or four times.  When we gave the boss the results, and told him that his direct reports made far more accurate estimates, he was flabbergasted and a bit pissed-off at everyone in the room.

    As this VP discovered, being a boss is much like being a high status primate in any group:  The creatures beneath you in the pecking order watch every move you make – and so they know a lot more about you than you know about them. 

    My colleague Huggy Rao has a related test he uses to determine if a boss is leading in ways that enables him or her to stay in tune with others.  In addition to how much the boss talks, Huggy counts the proportion of statements the boss makes versus the number of questions asked.  "Transmit only bosses" make lots of statements and assertions and ask few questions. 

    What do you think of these assessment methods?  What other methods have you used to determine how self-aware and sensitive you are other bosses are — and to makes things better?

  • Hollow Visions, Bullshit, Lies and Leadership Vs. Management

    Fast Company has been reprinting excerpts from the new chapter in the Good Boss, Bad Boss paperback.  The fifth  and current piece 'Why "Big Picture Only" Bosses Are The Worst' deals with a theme I have raised both here and at HBR before: My argument is that, although the distinction between "management" and  "leadership" is probably accurate, the implicit or explicit status differences attached to these terms are destructive. 

    One of the worst effects is that too many "leaders" fancy themselves as grand strategists and visionaries and who are above the "little people" that are charged with refining and implementing those big and bold ideas.  These exalted captains of industry develop the grand vision for the product, the film, the merger, or whatever — and leave the implementation to others.  This was one of Carly Fiorina's fatal flaws at HP: she loved speeches and grand gestures like the Compaq merger, but didn't have much patience for doing what was required for making things work.  By contrast, this is the strength of Pixar leaders like Ed Catmull, John Lasseter, and Brad Bird.  Yes, they have grand visions about the story and market for every film, but they sweat every detail of every frame and worry constantly about linking their big ideas to every little detail of their films.

    As Teresa Amabile and Steve Kramer show in their masterpiece The Progress Principle, the best creative work depends on getting the little things right.  James March, perhaps the most prestigious living organizational theorist, frames all this in an interesting way, arguing that the effectiveness of organizations depends at least as much on the competent performance of ordinary bureaucrats and technicians who do their jobs well (or badly) day in and day out as on the bold moves and grand rhetoric of people at the top of the pecking order.  To paraphrase March, organizations need both poets and plumbers, and the plumbing is always crucial to organizational performance.  (See this long interview for a nice summary of March's views).

    To be clear, I am not rejecting the value of leadership, grand visions, and superstars.  But just as our country and the rest of the world is suffering from the huge gaps between the haves and have nots, too many organizations are doing damage by giving excessive credit, stature, and dollars to people with the big ideas and giving insufficient kudos, prestige, and pay to people who put their heads down and make sure that all the little things get done right.

    Our exaggerated faith in heroes and the instant cures they so often promise has done a lot of damage to our society too — not just to organizations.  In this vein, I wrote a piece in BusinessWeek a few years back after re-reading The Peter Principle.  I argued that the emphasis on dramatic and bold moves and superstars, and our loss of respect for the crucial role of ordinary competence, was likely an underlying cause of the 2008-2009 financial meltdown:

    If Dr. Peter were alive today, he'd find that a new lust for superhuman accomplishments has helped create an almost unprecedented level of incompetence. The message has been this: Perform extraordinary feats, or consider yourself a loser.

    We are now struggling to stay afloat in a river of snake oil created by this way of thinking. Many of us didn't want to see the lies, exaggerations, and arrogance that pumped up our portfolios. Instead we showered huge rewards on the false financial heroes who fed our delusions. This is the Bernie Madoff story, too. People may have suspected that something wasn't quite right about the huge returns on their investments with Madoff. But few wanted to look closely enough to see the Ponzi scheme.

    I am not saying that we don't need heroes and visionaries.  Rather, we need leaders who help us link big ideas to the little day to day accomplishments that turn dreams into realities.   To paraphrase my friend Peter Sims, author of Little Bets, we need leaders who can weave together the "birds eye view," the big picture, with "the worm's eye view," the nuances and tiny little actions required to make bold ideas come to life.

  • The Hallmarks of Great Leaders — and the Needs of Younger Workers — are Timeless

    Fast Company has another excerpt from the new chapter in Good Boss, Bad Boss out today — one that goes against things that many so-called management gurus often say. My main point i those who argue management needs to be re-invented are misguided — they massively overstate the case and have incentives for doing so, but it doesn't stand up to the evidence.  Here is opening of the piece and you can read the rest here:

    A lot of people write business books: about eleven thousand are published each year. There are armies of consultants, gurus, and wannabe thought leaders, and thousands of management magazines, radio and TV shows, websites, and blogs. 

    These purveyors of management knowledge have incentives for claiming their ideas are “new and improved” rather than the same old thing. One twist, which I’ve seen a lot lately, is the claim that management or leadership needs to be reinvented. Many reasons given for this need seem sensible: Gen X and Gen Y require different management techniques; outsourcing, globalization, and information technology means working with people we rarely if ever meet in person; the pressure to think and move ever faster is unprecedented; so many employees are disengaged that they need to be managed so they feel appreciated.

    Yet, no matter how hard I look at studies by academics and consulting firms, or at contrasts between successful and unsuccessful leaders, I can’t find persuasive evidence of substantial change in the kinds of bosses people want to become or work for, or that enable human groups and organizations to thrive. Changes such as the computer revolution, globalization, and distributed teams mean that if you are a boss, staying in tune with followers is more challenging than ever. And, certainly, bosses need to be more culturally aware because many workplaces are composed of more diverse people.

    But every new generation of bosses faces hurdles that seem to make the job tougher than it ever was. The introduction of the telephone and air travel created many of the same challenges as the computer revolution–as did the introduction of the telegraph and trains. Just as every new generation of teenagers believes they have discovered sex and their parents can’t possibly understand what it feels like to be them, believing that that no prior generation of bosses ever faced anything like this and these crazy times require entirely new ways of thinking and acting are likely soothing to modern managers. These beliefs also help so called experts like me sell our wares. Yet there is little evidence to support the claim that organizations—let alone the humans in them—have changed so drastically that we need to invent a whole new kind of boss.

    I'd love your reactions!

    P.S. Note that Gen Y and Gen X really aren't much different than any other new generation of employees in terms of what they want — even though there is a small industry around dealing with these so-called new kinds of workers.  Certainly, younger workers want different things than older workers — but this has always been the case and what they want has always been pretty similar — be they baby boomers, Gen X, Gen Y, or whatever.  See this piece by Wharton's Peter Cappelli, perhaps the most prestigious talent researcher in academia, where he discusses the evidence, which show a few differences, but nothing dramatic.  

     

  • Are Incompetent and Nice Bosses Even Worse The Competent Assholes? An Excerpt from My New Chapter

    Tomorrow is the official publication day for the Good Boss, Bad Boss paperback.  It contains a new chapter called "What Great Bosses Do," which digs into some of the lessons I learned about leadership since publishing the hardback in September 2010.  I have already published excerpts from the new chapter  on power poisoning,  bad apples, and embracing the mess at Fast Company.

    As I am teaching all day tomorrow, I am publishing another here today excerpt here to mark the occasion.  It considers one of the most personally troubling lessons I've learned (or at least am on the verge of believing).  I am starting to wonder, as the headline says, if nice but incompetent bosses are even worse (at least in some ways and at certain times) than competent assholes. 

    Now, to be clear, they both suck and having to choose between the two is sort of like deciding whether to be kicked in the stomach or kicked in the head.  And I have even suggested here that there might be certain advantages to having a lousy boss (and readers came up with numerous other great reasons).  But I have seen so much damage done by lousy bosses who are really nice people in recent years that I am starting to wonder…

    Here is the excerpt from the new chapter (the 4th of 9 lessons):

    4. Bosses who are civilized and caring, but incompetent, can be really horrible.

    Perhaps because I am the author of The No Asshole Rule, I kept running into people—journalists, employees,project managers, even a few CEOs—who picked a fight with me. They would argue that good bosses are more than caring human beings; they make sure the job gets done. I responded by expressing agreement and pointing out this book defines a good boss as one who drives performance and treats people humanely. Yet, as I started digging into the experiences that drove my critics to raise this point— and thought about some lousy bosses—I realized I hadn’t placed enough emphasis on the damage done, as one put it, by “a really incompetent, but really nice, boss.”

    As The No Asshole Rule shows, if you are a boss who is a certified jerk, you may be able to maintain your position so long as your charges keep performing at impressive levels. I warned, however, that your enemies are lying in wait, and once you slip up you are likely to be pushed aside with stunning speed. In contrast, one reason that baseball coach Leo Durocher’s famous saying “Nice guys finish last” is sometimes right is that when a boss is adored by followers (and peers and superiors, too) they often can’t bring themselves to bad-mouth, let alone fire or demote, that lovely person.

    People may love that crummy boss so much they constantly excuse, or don’t even notice, clear signs of incompetence. For example, there is one senior executive I know who is utterly lacking in the necessary skills or thirst for excellence his job requires. He communicates poorly (he rarely returns even important e-mails and devotes little attention to developing the network of partners his organization needs), lacks the courage to confront—let alone fire—destructive employees, and there are multiple signs his organization’s reputation is slipping. But he is such a lovely person, so caring and so empathetic, that his superiors can’t bring themselves to fire him.

    There are two lessons here. The first is for bosses. If you are well-liked, civilized, and caring, your charms provide
    protective armor when things go wrong. Your superiors are likely to give you the benefit of the doubt as well
    as second and third chances—sometimes even if you are incompetent. I would add, however, that if you are a truly crummy boss—but care as much for others as they do for you—stepping aside is the noble thing to do. The second lesson is for those who oversee lovable losers. Doing the dirty work with such bosses is distasteful. But if rehabilitation has failed—or things are falling apart too fast to risk it—the time has come to hit the delete button.

    Thoughts?

  • FUBAR, SNAFU, Fast Company, and Good Bosses

    My late father, Lewis Sutton, was a World II veteran.  Like many of his generation, the things he learned and experiences he had — from the terrors of the Battle of the Bulge to the joys of chasing French women — profoundly shaped the course of his life.  Part of what he learned was the language, funny and accurate expressions that — although now falling out of use — still provide lovely compact summaries of life's complexities. 

    I was reminded of two of my favorite sayings today by this excerpt from the  new chapter in the Good Boss, Bad Boss paperback posted today at Fast Company: "When There Is No Simple Solution at Work, Learn to Embrace the Mess."

    Here is part of the piece:

    Good Boss, Bad Boss shows the value of checklists, of instilling predictability during scary times, and offers A.G. Lafley’s philosophy that the best managers make things “Sesame Street simple.” These and other examples demonstrate that simplicity, clarity, and repeatable steps can reduce the burdens on people, promote performance, and save money. We human beings especially love simple stories that communicate clear solutions and actions; when Conrad Hilton was on the Johnny Carson show, he pleaded with millions of Americans, “Please remember to put the shower curtain inside the tub.”

    Yet there is there is a hazard to this quest: People start believing that every challenge has a clear and simple solution. Stories about past triumphs fuel this predilection. They can make life sound orderly and predictable, even though when the events unfolded, people were probably bewildered and overwhelmed much of the time. As singer Jimmy Buffett put it in his song Migration: “Some things are still a mystery to me/While others are much too clear.”

    Bosses have to be prepared to deal with both circumstances. They need to search for clear solutions and simplify things when possible. But it is impossible to be a leader without facing stretches where you and your followers are overwhelmed with the complexity and uncertainty of it all. When this happens, to maintain everyone’s spirits keep them moving forward, and to sustain collective stamina, sometimes it is best to embrace the mess–at least for a while.

    This challenge reminded me of two of the most famous and fun World War II expressions:

    Snafu — situation normal, all fucked-up

    fubar — fucked-up beyond all recognition

    One CEO I know, also the son of a World War II veteran, uses the distinction between the two to help decide whether a "mess" requires intervention, or it is best to leave people alone for awhile to let them work through it. 

    He asks his team, or the group  muddling through mess: "Is it a snafu or fubar situation? " He finds this to be a useful diagnostic question because, if it is just usual normal level confusion, error, and angst that is endemic to uncertain and creative work, then it is best to leave people alone and let hem muddle forward.  But if it is fubar, so fucked-up that real incompetence is doing real damage, the group is completely frozen by fear, good people are leaving or suffering deeply, customers are fleeing, or enduring damage is being done to a company or brand — then it is time to intervene. 

    Its not a bad diagnostic, and dovetails well with another theme from Good Boss, Bad Boss — that the best bosses are "perfectly assertive," they know how to diagnose situations to determine when to watch, evaluate, coach or criticize their followers — versus when it is best to just get out of the way.  

    I would love to hear other ideas about how a boss knows when it is time to intervene versus time to "manage by getting out of the way."