The Regenerate Web

"I'm worried," Lydia explained. "It's like the tv show 'Survivor.' I used to think, how contrived. A group of people get together and vote to throw someone off the island. Who does that?"

I was quiet. Lydia looked up and continued.

"The tv show had to throw someone off the island, because it was a rule of the game. I always thought, if it were me, I would refuse to vote.

"But, here we are. I have to vote someone off the island. Only it's not a vote. I have to decide. And I have to decide before Friday. This is a tough decision."

From the Ask Tom mailbag:

Question:
I was recently hired as a supervisor in a volunteer outreach center. There are many funding sources (board members) for the center, with one paid Executive Director.

When I was hired I thought I would be accountable to the Executive Director, but once I started, I learned that no one person controls any of the activities of the center. Most volunteers are "hired" by board members, and I am to supervise and give direction. However, there are no clear lines of authority, accountability or communication. Even though these people know I am their supervisor, they run to the person who "hired" them for their direction. While the board members mean well, they are not on the day to day scene. No one recognizes me as their supervisor and I don't know how to create a team atmosphere when each volunteer runs to their board member for direction.

I have taken this to the director and he says these people are large contributors to the company and we can't afford to offend them. I am not wanting to offend. I want to work as a team.

Response:
You are looking at your organization, as if it was a business. Elliott Jaques describes this business structure as a Management Accountability Hierarchy. The purpose of an MAH is to achieve goals. This involves conscious work, cooperation and accountability.

At the same time, there are many other types of organizations:
Academic organizations
Religious organizations
Charitable organzations

They are organized around different principles of authority and accountability for their own purposes.

Here's the rub. Whenever an organization decides to actually "do" something, engage in work to achieve a goal, they often find they are not organized to do so. They flounder with indecision, unclear accountabilities and an absence of managerial leadership practices. The result is half-baked ideas, poor execution, waste of resources, money and time.

The most effective volunteer or charitable groups are those that run like a business, meaning with the structure of a Management Accountability Hierarchy. Changing to that structure requires a clear vision and mandate from the top, from your Executive Director. Without that, you will be subjected to the predictable floundering that you describe. -TF

Comment from Kevin to yesterday's post Mine to Keep.

Comment:
I am interested in how you made the connection between due date and time span. Just because a deliverable is required later in the process, does not necessarily mean that it has a longer time span or involves more strategic thinking.

For example, when building a machine or facility, the design (site layout, engineering drawings etc.) are needed first while the finishes (paint, tile etc) could be required last. Yet it may take years of coordinating stakeholders, engineers and architects to develop the design vs. a few months of focus groups etc for the finishes. In this scenario, I would rather handle the design and delegate the finishes.

Therefore, it would seem as though the "what by when" might be a bit simplified and that we should rather focus on "what and how long" in order to differentiate between the due date and the time span.

Response:
Thanks for the distinction. Time Span is measured from the starting time for the task and indicates the time during which discretionary decisions are made to achieve the goal. Your example of the construction project is correct. Due date, as the measurement for Time Span, only works when the start time for everything is NOW. You are correct in measuring the Time Span from when the tasks are actually assigned, though the due date may be late in the overall construction process.

"When you sort your goals by length of Time Span, the "by when" part, what do you see?" I asked.

Colleen was actually re-sorting her list using arrows. "I am going to clean this up and put it in Outlook, but I can already see the short Time Span goals are those I can delegate. And some of the longer Time Span goals need to be split into some shorter Time Span goals, and I can delegate those as well.

"And some of the longest Time Span goals," she continued, "well, those are mine to keep. Those will require a different kind of thinking. I cannot delegate that."

"Convert my notes into a list of what by whens? That's easy enough, but how is that going to help?" Colleen challenged.

"When you list out your what by whens, you will have a simple list of goals. Embedded in those goals will be the magic to help you organize."

"So, then I could sort the list out by the things that are most important?" Colleen asked.

"No," I replied. "The magic is in the by when. The by when will tell you the Time Span of the goal. List them all, shortest Time Span to longest Time Span. And, what did you say was your next decision, as a Manager?"

"To decide which goals are mine and which I should delegate," Colleen smiled.

"When you look at the Time Span of the goals, which are the ones most appropriate for you to keep and which are those most appropriate to delegate?"
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Just a quick note, a milestone. Management Skills Blog published its first post November 15, 2004. This week completes four years of publishing. And I feel like we are just getting started. Look for some big changes coming in January.

"That's the first place I am stumped," Colleen admitted. "Some of the tasks I know I should be doing, and some of the tasks I need to delegate."

"How are you going to make that decision?" I asked.

Colleen laughed. "I could keep all the stuff I like to do and give away the rest." She stopped. "But, that probably won't work."

"When you look at the list of things to do, the tasks that have been assigned to you, how easy is it to pick out the goals embedded in the list?"

Colleen looked at her notes. "Not so easy. It made a lot more sense in the meeting."

"You know you need to organize this list in some way. But you can't do that until you transform your notes."

Colleen looked puzzled.

"Look, the goals made sense in the meeting," I continued, "but to create an effective list, you need to transform your notes into a list of what by whens."

"I am a little overwhelmed," Colleen admitted. "I just got out of a planning meeting. We're looking down the road a bit. I think I got a promotion, not a raise, just a new area that I have to supervise in addition to all the work I am already doing. Downsizing, you know."

"Lot's to do?" I asked.

"Yes, and I know I have a team to support me, now a bigger team. Some of the things we have to accomplish are brand new to me. I am trying to sort things out."

"So, you have a fresh set of goals and priorities? How are you going to organize what to do?"

"I don't know, but I have to decide fast. I'm not sure what things I have to work on and what things I can give away to my new team. I guess I am going to have to make some quick evaluations."

"What are you going to start with, organizing the tasks or evaluating the people?" I prompted.

"I am thinking about a spreadsheet," Colleen replied, "a spreadsheet listing my team members across the top and listing the tasks down the side."

"And how are you going to sort the tasks?"

"There are many disciplines for Time Management," I said. The group was taking notes. "Which is the most important?"

"OHIO," shot a voice from the back of the room. "Only Handle It Once."

"Okay," I replied. "But who cares? Without this discipline, who cares if I handle a piece of paper once or handle it 50 times?"

"Prioritization?" came another guess.

"And what is it, that makes one task more important than another task?"

"The goal?" answered a voice in the third row.

"The goal," I repeated. "Without the goal, all Time Management is meaningless."

"But, I don't understand. They fill out the form. What discretionary decisions do they have to make as they collect the data from the customer?" Arlene asked.

"Lots, and it is those discretionary decisions that determine success and failure," I replied. "Let's look at the form. The first field is the name field. So, you capture the name data for me."

"Well, it's your name."

"Wrong place to start. See, you think if you put my name in the name field, you are done. You missed the first discretionary question."

Arlene sat up. "Which is?"

"What's the goal. That's the first question. What's the goal?"

"To complete the form?" Arlene tested.

"No! The goal is to have the name information accurate on the policy, so in the event of a claim, there is no clerical confusion or denial of coverage based on the mismatch of a name that may be compared to driver's license or other identifying paperwork."

Arlene nodded her head. "So, your name isn't your name."

"Not at all. You know me by my nickname. To complete the form, you will have to ask a better question. Mr. Foster, I need to make sure the name on the policy matches your other identification, what is the full name on your driver's license?

"Arlene, it is questions like these that make all the difference between success and failure. And there are too many of them to train. They become the discretionary decisions for the team member. And if you want a productive discussion with your team, sit with them, as their manager, and talk about the discretionary decisions they have to make. To reach the goal."

"Do you, as the Manager, sit with your team and talk about the decisions they have to make as they collect this data?" I asked.

"Well, we go over how to fill out the information on the form. We have training every month on changes to the form or changes in the way it is processed," Arlene replied.

"Have you ever had a team member follow all the instructions, complete every box on the form, but at the end of the day, there were problems?"

Arlene started laughing, nodding her head. "Oh, yes!" she blurted. "We had this one guy, we had to let him go, finally. And it was difficult, because he did everything he was supposed to, but he was such a mess, disorganized. It was all last minute with him. I mean, he would get the filings in just under the wire, but the underwriter, who had to approve the paperwork was always kicking it back. In the end, the customer would not be approved and they would be mad at us. But remember, all we do is the paperwork, we don't approve the underwriting."

"That's not true," I countered. "You could tell the difference between poor performance and good performance with this guy. As his manager, when did you know you had a problem?"

"Oh, it was the first week. You could just tell," Arlene explained.

"And, how long did it take before your company terminated him?"

Arlene hesitated, "Eighteen months. But we had to give him a chance. We had to make sure he had the proper training and that he didn't just get a batch of problem customers."

"He didn't fail because of the training," I replied. "And customers are always problem customers, so that's not it. And he did not fail because you didn't tell him what to do, the prescribed duties. He failed in the discretionary part, the decisions he had to make as he approached the work. These are the decisions that managers never talk about with their team. And it is these decisions that make the difference between success or failure." -TF

"You describe the role as entry level. The output must conform to strict guidelines, which creates the quality standard. What are the decisions that must be made in connection with the work?"

Arlene was shaking her head from side to side. "We don't allow a lot of latitude with this work."

"You think you don't allow latitude. In fact, you tell your team members there isn't a lot of latitude, when in fact there is. There are a ton of decisions that must be made."

Arlene was quiet.

"Look, most of the prescribed duties involve collecting data from your customers to determine their qualifications. While it seems cut and dried, there are many decisions that must be made about the quality of their responses, the accuracy and completeness of the data.

"The difference between ok performance and outstanding performance is not in filling out the forms, but in the decisions related to the quality of the data that goes on the forms. The job may be completing the forms, but the work is the decisions that must be made.

"An important discussion between the manager and the team member is not about the forms, but about those decisions." -TF

"I still don't know what you are getting at," Arlene shook her head. "It's entry level work. You are right, it's not that interesting."

"Don't be so swift," I reprimanded. "Let's talk about this entry-level work. First, what is work?"

Arlene was looking up, retrieving the answer planted in her mind some weeks ago. "I remember. Work is making decisions and solving problems."

"Okay. And what decisions must be made in connection with this entry-level work?"

"It's pretty cut and dried," Arlene related. "Our work is highly regulated. Everything we do has to be within very specific guidelines."

"And what if it's not cut and dried," I challenged. "You see, the guidelines you work under only set the quality standards for the output. Let's ask the question again. What decisions must be made in connection with this work? And as we answer, I think you will find this work is quite a bit more than entry-level."

"What has been missing in this young recruit's career?" I asked.

"I don't know," Arlene replied. "All she seemed interested in was how many vacation days she is going to get."

"Why do you think she is focused on her vacation days? What has been missing? Missing in her work before she came to your company two months ago? And perhaps still missing in her work?"

"Well, I don't know," admitted Arlene. "It is pretty basic, entry level work. Perhaps there really isn't that much to focus on, except how much vacation comes with the job."

"You might be right be right about the job," I agreed. "But what about the work?"

Goal Directed work is a basic feature of all life. -Elliott Jaques

All life. Not just humans, all life.

What is work?

Work is an organism's judgment in making decisions to reach a goal? -Elliott Jaques

Work is not pushing the red button. Pushing the red button is not the goal. In the orientation, we made it a point to tell the technician that his job was to push the red button. Maybe that is the job, but that is not the work.

The goal is to produce a specific quantity of material at a specific quality standard by the end of the day. The work is not to push the red button. The work is using judgment to make decisions to produce the goal.

There are staging decisions, decisions of speed and pace, decisions about work station organization and cleanliness, decisions about scrap, decisions about machine noise, machine funny noise, maintenance engineering. Do I lubricate now, or make three more cuts, then lubricate? Am I behind in my task assignment or ahead in my task assignment? Did this last piece meet the quality standard? Pace and quality, pace and quality?

Arlene's desk was clear. Her arms were folded. "Yesterday, I had a discussion with a recent hire, two months, asking about her experience with us so far. Her response was, two weeks vacation wasn't enough, would like to take lunch at no set time, and doesn't understand why no Christmas bonus."

"What has been missing in this young recruit's career?" I replied.

Hassan started this the other day looking for Reasons People Work. Here is Elliott's take:

From Social Power and the CEO: -Elliott Jaques
People want work in which they can have the opportunity to exercise their full potential capability, to spread their wings widely, to receive a fair compensation for that work and to be recognized and understood as not needing artificial carrot and stick treatment on order to get on with that work.

By work, I mean an organism's use of judgment in making the decisions necessary to reach a goal. Goal directed work is a basic feature of all life.

All humans need to do work that not only benefits oneself, but is, at the same time, of value to others.

It may be noted that, not only do millions gain work opportunities by becoming engaged in employment, but need something on the order of 40 hours per week of such engagement. That is what explains the fact that the employment work week, which came down to 40 hours during the first half of the twentieth century, has gone no lower. Any smaller number of hours is not sufficiently fulfilling. Indeed, people who work on their own, routinely spend many more than 40 hours per week.

Tomorrow
What is Work?

Yesterday's question: Reasons people work? brought some very thoughtful responses. You can see them all here.

Many of you subscribe by email so unless you follow the link above you are going to miss this one, from Ozzie Gontang, a good friend and Vistage Chair in San Diego. You can visit his blog Mindfulness.

From Ozzie on Reasons People Work:
As social animals, since we are herd or pack animals, there is a drive to contribute, to find meaning and purpose in what we do. Work allows us to challenge what we are capable of becoming.

The word competition means to "seek with" so work is a way of measuring one's value to community and to oneself. Since the measure of performance is performance, work allows us to measure ourselves against our best performance in being the unique world class human I can create and instrument myself to be.

It is interesting that the word "job" which is Anglo-Saxon and means a lump was presumably used at the beginning of the industrial revolution meaning that someone could not do a job/lump of work. What one needed was the bigger picture in which the piece/job/lump existed. The old story of laying brick or building a cathedral.

Two hundred and fifty years later we are afraid of losing our "lumps" and also that in our global economy we are brought back to the fact that we are and always have been: interdependent.

Tomorrow
More thoughts on this subject from Elliott Jaques.

From the Ask Tom mailbag:

Hassan writes:

Good day Mr. Tom. I really appreciate the service you are providing. I've got a business studies assignment to create 20 reasons why people work. Could you please help me out with some reasons?

In response to Hassan's request, think about why it is important for people to work. Hint: It's not for the money. Please post your comments and we will debrief tomorrow.

To view comments as they are posted, please visit the site www.managementblog.org.

The past couple of weeks, we have been looking at teams and accountability, some great comments.

Don writes:

Team responsibility is a nonsensical theory developed by academics that have never functioned in the work place. No one is ever responsible for the ultimate outcome of the group or the damage done to the company. Every major crash in American business can be tracked to every level of management claiming they were never informed of a problem by their "team". Group rule equals wasted time in the form of unproductive meetings, unrealistic goal setting and the pushing of responsibility to the lowest level. If American businesses doesn't wake up, this team business format will be called the predecessor to economic depression.

Colleen writes:

I work for an internet marketing company with team members all around the U.S. We've never even met in person, know very little about each other, but somehow we accomplish a lot together. I guess it's about the quarterbacking, huh. Just a matter of doing the task you're assigned and letting the quarterback do the coordinating.

The essence of accountability. The manager is to be held accountable for the performance of the team. This simple concept is a game changer. -TF

"At first, this group dynamics stuff looked interesting, you know, everyone together under a team incentive bonus. It sounded exciting in the seminar, but in real life, this is painful," Naomi explained. "The worst part, is we're not getting any work done."

"So, who is accountable?" I asked.

"I think everyone has to take a small part of the responsibility for the team not cooperating," Naomi replied.

"No, I don't mean who is responsible for the mess. I mean, who is accountable for the goal?" I insisted.

"The goal? We're not even talking about the goal. We are just talking about cooperating better together, as a team."

"Perhaps, that's the problem," I suggested. "You are spending so much time trying to cooperate as a group, that you forgot, we are trying to get some work done around here.

"Is it possible," I continued, "that you have been misdirected to think more about shared fate and group dynamics than you have about your team. A team is not a group. A group may be bound together by shared fate, but a team is bound together by a goal. Stop thinking about group dynamics and start thinking about the goal. That's why we are here in the first place." -TF

"Well, the bonus was designed to promote teamwork. At the end of the year, if they made their team goal, everyone would get the same amount of incentive from the pool," Naomi explained.

"And?" I prompted.

"And, it turns out that some team members feel like they are doing all the work and that other team members are not contributing at the same level. A little resentment. And it goes both ways, the others say they are doing their best, but circumstances are preventing the team from reaching their goal."

"And, what is your role, as the manager?"

"My role? I am trying to stay out of it. The consultant said to let the team work it out. This group dynamics stuff, you know."

"And how is that approach working for you, as a manager?" -TF