Whose fault is it anyway?

Accountability – it’s such a 2000 management cliché.

I remember when it first became popular, superseding ‘responsibility’ like a hare on crack with spare rollerblades from the 90s. Suddenly, everyone was espousing it from the office to school to home. It wasn’t enough to be responsible, you needed to be accountable too.

Except that isn’t the reality in practice, is it?

There are some places and people who pay this lip service and obviously because it’s the ‘right thing’ to do, being accountable. But consider the following situations:

• Lack of enthusiasm and motivation in customer service staff, leading to irate customers and higher attrition rates
• Slow or unpredictable sales turnover in markets for industries with 6-9 month cycles
• Clunky events: disrupted operations, poor turn out, lack of relevance to participants

Whose fault is it? Let’s count the ways:

• “This generation does not have good work ethics. They want more time off, work from home flexibility and are slow learners. Gone are the days when people valued honest pay for honest day’s work!”
• “Well the customers in this market are just resistant to technology. They like doing things the old way. Also, they won’t invest in technology – they just want to buy things for cheap so it’s almost impossible to convince them to buy our solutions.”
• “That was Marketing’s job. We don’t know what happened – our job was just to call a few customers, and to turn up. We’re here to close the sales.”

Sound familiar? Good. Here are some alternative responses:

• “It’s a different work era, and if we are going to be sustainable we will need to strike a balance between doing things like we used to and creating better work culture. It isn’t easy, but it’s necessary. More open dialogues are a good start.”
• “We need to determine the operating parameters for this market: what are their expectations? What are their goals? What is the purchasing power? How can we help the market grow?”
• “We need to spread the responsibility scope here: it’s not practical for one person to be responsible for an entire show, and if for whatever reason that person is unavailable, things will come to a grinding halt. What can we do to ensure that the end goal is met?”

There is a pattern here:

• Blaming something that is abstract, vague or distant because that is the easiest way to remove oneself personally from the situation (ie. Markets, gender, generation, culture)
• Blaming someone else in a partnership or a group endeavour, in the hope that others will jump in as well and collectively wash their hands off the problem

Oftentimes though, the problem is a lot closer to home.

But you won’t realise until it is a lot too late.

What’s that smell? Smokescreen.

Some people just need the manual.

With that they can learn to operate sophisticated machinery, concoct amazing creations and delight the world with their new found inspiration.

Some people need others to read the manual, show them the ins and outs of the machine, test the recipe a few times, make the final product, QA it for them, package and put it on the shelf with a nice description card then hand over all the credit as they slink into the shadows on their tippy-toes.

Some call the latter illustration ‘taking ownership’; the few to see through the smokescreen call it ‘insecurity’.

The Leadersh*t Position

Who’s your driver today?

Boy, it has been a helluva year AND we’re still not done yet.

I have no statistics but observation alone tells me that the last quarter of the year is usually chock-full of articles related to leadership, management and strategy issues. And aptly so, when it is also the most reflective (good and bad) time of the year, before people mentally shut down for the holidays.

An associate wrote recently:

“If your team dreads coming to work because of you that’s call leadershit. If they love what they do and do it because they believe in what they do that’s call leadership. You just need to stay the heck outta their way.”

Very introspective for this time of year.

It also prompted me to think:

“If I hired a co-ordinator who didn’t book my hotels, organise the transportation, confirm the meetings, prepare the documentation and ready the pen for signing – just so as it should be – then the failure is not on the co-ordinator, but on me.

Even if the co-ordinator was incompetent, I am dumber for investing in incompetence.”

(in which I hope never, ever happens.)

This came when I thought of a metaphor recently presented about a crashing plane in relation to a failing team. To me, there is always only room for one pilot, one captain, one driver and one chieftain.

Not two, not three, not five and three quarters.

ONE.

Coincidentally, most vehicles and systems operate that way and for good reason too. You can always have a co-pilot, co-driver, co-GPS programmer or Assistant to Chief on Dinghy but you never have two wheels going at the same time – because that will inevitably, lead to a real crash.

Or clash, whichever comes first.

One driver in the cockpit, everyone else is a passenger with a function (or not). In the end, the decision lies in the driver’s hands and that includes taking the wrong turn, not re-fuelling the vehicle and not engaging the brakes on time.

Everyone else can sleep, but the driver should never sleep or take their hands off the wheel. That, ladies and gentlemen, is what gets people ‘killed’.

So who is your driver today?

Time to get your…act together

So I’m back.

And since I’ve been back, it has been a flurry of activity in all areas. You’d think getting in touch, being in touch and staying in touch would be relatively easy in this new fangled age. We’re light years ahead now from the days when one would have to write letters, lick stamps and find time to pop down to the post office to see Ms Daisy and spend at least five minutes chatting to her about her herb garden so she gets your post sorted.

That whole process took at least an hour of your day, and who knows when your letter will arrive (especially if you lived in a small village which relied on trains to get your mail out)? You had to cross your fingers and wait for a reply, which would take the other person possibly an hour to repeat the process.

Then there’s that tricky thing about how long it takes to write responses.

So you’d think with the advent of high speed processors, fibre optic communication lines, automated software upgrades, soft QWERTY keypads, reflection-less screens, a phone named after a fruit and technology that sounds like a mass of rain droplets would improve things considerably?

I mean, did you?

Because I thought so too.

Until I tried to send an email to someone and got an error for email address (despite the person having repeat the email address to me several times to be darn sure), another telling me they get so many emails they cannot keep up and as such ‘emails to me don’t work, because I don’t read them’ and a few more who don’t read their emails until it’s too late and upon being asked for feedback return a blank stare.

Is it me? Or are we choosing by some retarded default of character, to just ignore communications? I should think so. Because these people could have some rocket science, new fangled, jazzed up tech which plugs emails directly into their eyeballs and they would still have the same problem.

An attitude that needs fixing.

This is not a rant; I have a point and I am getting to it.

It was just in time on that fateful morning whilst I was chewing on cereal that Entrepreneur.com posted an article “Richard Branson on Time Management”. One of the things that I like about Mr Branson is his honesty about how hard it is to run a business, and how he still takes a humble and holistic approach to how it is run. There’s no-nonsense with this guy when it comes to the real down-and-dirty of business management; he tells you to run or ruin it. For a man who is associated with radical marketing and PR stints, he’s dead serious about making his business personal.

I remember once sitting across one operations manager who was giving her team the riot act on punctuality: you have to be punctual, it’s the company policy, you will be penalized if you are not, be on time or else…

You should have seen the looks on the faces. (Contrary to popular assumption, not one of fear or anger – it was just deadpan.) I won’t drone about tardiness because that’s just the tip of the iceberg; I get the majority of readers are possibly not interested in that topic. We’re specifically discussing time management here: tardiness, being present, organization skills, self leadership and discipline, delegation, prioritization. For far too long, managers and a segment of HR run people like stickmen with clocks as heads.

Clock in early? Arse kisser.

Clock in on time? OK.

Clock in late? You’re inefficient.

Clock out late? We might like you if you clock in early and kiss arse, too.

Well sorry, it’s no wonder why some companies just keep having people clock in early, start work on time, clock out on time, never offer to do any extra tasks, maximize all off days and resign at the next available opportunity. You wanted to hire clock heads, not high performers – remember? All the other important aspects of time management are either ignored, or not measured or both.  It’s no wonder managers in these companies find it hard leading subordinates: if you get them to come on time, you can’t get them to perform; if you get them to perform, you won’t get more than following simple instructions. And then they bail on you once you have just managed to balance the proverbial orange on a toothpick. Essentially, these companies end up having disassociated, regressed circus clowns for managers and cameo appearances for sandwich filling – what gives?

“I can tell the time, but that’s all I know”

“I will commit the time, but not the crime”

“I only work for the money; if you want performance, hire a battery”

If I had a dollar for every time someone said ‘delegation is an art’ I could play A Minute to Win It for fun because I’d be sponsoring my own prize money. An art is generally unquantifiable; it is soup pot of skills, talent, knowledge, divine intervention – which makes it more qualifiable than quantifiable. Time management is not qualifiable; you don’t need to be a manager to develop excellent time management. It is a skill – quantifiable, and learnable with the right examples and parameters set into place. The problem lies with people who regard it as some qualifiable quack-art, which is often the same view extended to effective leadership skills. Yes, skills. The reason why it is so tricky for certain people to accept this is because time management is essentially behavioural management (cymbal clash, please). One could run their life like clockwork and never get anything meaningful done – many of us go through days and weeks like those. The difference is some people stop, take a look at the big picture, identify the gaps and start re-routing the plugs. Others just keep, well, plugging.

This is a natural challenge for anyone assuming a new post, or new promotion: how best to maximize time while capitalizing on existing people and opportunities. Ah, capitalization. We’ll get to that in a minute…

The defiance (or denial, pick your verb of preference) to perceive time management as a skill stems for a deep fear or stubbornness to change behaviour. This includes unhealthy perceptions of time, respect for others’ time, prioritization of duties and tasks, disjointed views of delegation and autonomy, micro-management, inability to work in a cohesive team, refusal to improve on weaknesses, fear of ownership and responsibility. And if one is planning on being an effective leader, they are going to have to pluck their heads out from the sand and have a real hard look at behavioral changes that are required to get the job done. Be it transitioning from one position to another, or one company to another, accountability to self and to one’s team is imperative in ensuring there is a semblance of leadership – and it starts with time management driven by positive behavioural management.

One of the most important (alternatively, ingratiating) aspect of time management is prioritisation skills. This is possibly most easily recognised in how people communicate: specifically, email communications. There are some of us who live on our fruity smartphones; flitting from emails to conference calls to BBMMs and WhatsApp or whatever they call it now (SMSing still?). That noisy thing has the potential to take over our lives – and as so aptly pointed out by Branson, we should to be in control of it. Being in control also means being present and responsive – what’s the point of having a toy that allows connectivity in so many ways but yet others are getting a dial tone or goodness forbid, silence? It is infuriating to hear excuses such as “I get so many emails I can’t keep up” or “I don’t like reading emails” or worse “I prefer face to face discussions”. In an ideal world, people would be in their toilets reading Sports Illustrated while telekinetically getting work done.

That’s ideal, not real.

In the real world, many people are orchestrating regional operations from Sydney to Tokyo to London with only their Blackberrys, a notepad and a pen (yes, I do know people like these – there are many and they will put these whiners to shame!). This is how the current real world communicates and gets things done; people don’t need face to face discussions (although ideal) to get instructions and project ideas. If you want to see a face, download Skype – it’s free! All those excuses above are merely excuses; nobody cares that you don’t like reading emails of can’t get on top of it. Unless you work with a company full of gremlins that CC and BCC every email, that smacks of a refusal to focus, prioritise and action on things.

If a leader or manager cannot ‘get on top of my emails’, you are basically telling your people two things:

1. You may give me the same excuse when I send you emails (uh oh, Law of Holes applying here)
2. You may also apply this to customers and other important stakeholders

Simply put if you can’t even get your emails sorted, what else can you do? And what are you here for?

Back to capitalization of people and opportunities:

I once took a 360° assessment online which involved a number of business associates and subordinates who had the opportunity to ‘anonymously’ rate me and provide feedback on strengths and weaknesses. Now, I assure you this was truly anonymous – I just have a sickening knack of telling who’s who based on their responses (that’s some qualifiable ‘skill’ for you there). Suffice to say I weeded out a comment by my then Managing Director who listed my sole weakness as ‘delegation’. Was I surprised? Yes and No. I was a not-so-new manager but I didn’t have the luxury of suitably qualified staff, lacking in learnable examples, literally no parameters and was doing a lot of things on my own of which half were unproductive for a manager. It has then been a self-imposed sharp learning curve on developing my delegation skills and I have many mentors to thank for this, including Mr Branson, although my learning process is nowhere near its end. What mattered to me then was that delegation is a skill (not something vague like ‘creativity’, which is an expression of thoughts not some weird, fluid concept involving spit and water colours) – which I could learn given the right information, examples and practice. I understood that it required self-leadership; I had to exorcise what I understood to be ‘being a good worker’ and review what I aspired for myself as a developing leader.

I had to determine what sort of leadership style I wanted for myself and for others. And I have to work really hard at it, everyday. How you delegate is only 20% of what makes up for your leadership qualities and style, but it is one of the defining reasons why people follow – and stick – with you.

Not enough managers and executives understand the true nature of effective delegation and accept that time management is really behavioral management. This misunderstanding trickles throughout companies creating a culture that is too busy ‘looking busy’ whilst totally missing out on high performance, growth opportunities and market relevance.

You may not be able to overturn a whole company of clock heads in a day or a lifetime, but you are entirely in control of your choice in being the clock head who runs a bunch of clock heads at the end of the day. For those fighting against CHC (Clock Head Culture), keep fighting the good fight: you are a minority, and a the beacon of hope, for the masses seeking real leaders and not mere time keepers.