January 26, 2006
All the stuff I would have liked to write about, Part I
I came across the idea last year of using the occasion of the new year to clean the slate and publish all the notes contained in draft posts. So here we go:
Managers, Not MBAs
This NYT article on George Bush came out at the same time as I was reading Henry Mintzberg's Managers, Not MBAs. There were lots of interesting things spinning through my head, so many that I never wrote the post. ;-)
"Bush has been called the C.E.O. president, but that's just a catch phrase -- he never ran anything of consequence in the private sector. The M.B.A. president would be more accurate: he did, after all, graduate from Harvard Business School. And some who have worked under him in the White House and know about business have spotted a strange business-school time warp. It's as if a 1975 graduate from H.B.S. -- one who had little chance to season theory with practice during the past few decades of change in corporate America -- has simply been dropped into the most challenging management job in the world." - The New York Times Magazine > Without a Doubt
Store Design
Store design makes a big difference - although you want to make maximum use of every square foot of expensive retail space, it's also important to ensure the design delivers the desired customer experience.
I recently visited a store specializing in storage and organization products - plastic bins, shelf dividers and the like. The reason for my visit was to find products that would help to reduce clutter in my home (including my home office) and thereby reduce stress. I presume that my goals were similar to those of many other shoppers.
The in-store experience was anything but serene. The aisles were narrow, and oriented across the store so that, once I'd progressed halfway down the store I no longer could see the exit. It was visually overwhelming and claustrophobic, exactly the opposite of the solution I sought.
It seemed that the design was intended to give the impression of a massive selection. On that front it was successful, but only to a point: with the product categories split into short aisles across the store width, one was only able to see 1-2 categories at a time. A longitudinal design would have allowed customers to view the entire selection of the store at once from the doorway, and would still have provided exposure to the broad product selection.
Team Building
I'm constantly amazed at how little effort most organizations put into giving people teamwork skills, especially since they simultaneously put a ton of emphasis on working in teams. I will probably come back to this point again, as I see the consequences every day.
The Fallacy of the Golden Rule
One of the most common mistakes made is managing by the golden rule. "Do unto others as you would have done unto you" may be good social behaviour but it falls short as a management philosophy.
This article in Fast Company addresses a specific way the golden rule can steer you wrong. However, I think the story here is more about dealing with differences in relative power, which I may address at a future date.
The article did remind me of a more general problem: it's still relatively rare for first-time managers to receive much in the way of training. Sure, most companies will include some task-specific training such as payroll processes and maybe even some touchy-feely techniques. But from talking to a lot of people about their first time as a manager, it's become clear to me that the first mistake everyone makes is to manage by the golden rule.
The problem is that everyone reacts to different stimuli - for example one member of your staff may need frequent praise, while another may devalue the praise because of its frequency. Depending on which camp you're in, you're not going to get the best out of the second person. Enlightenment comes when you realize that you need to do unto others as they would have done unto themselves. This of course takes a lot more work, but it's also very rewarding.
Business Plans
Dave Taylor published an article about why you should "never outsource your business plan", some of his reasoning being as follows:
Why would this be the case? Because it's the process of creating the plan that's important not the end document. When you share your business plan with an investor or venture capital firm, they want to see something coherent and learn about a smart business, but just as importantly, they want to know that your team can sit in a room and hammer out a single, unified vision of your company, one that covers all the major bases, from marketing to defending your intellectual property, cost of sales analysis to partnership ideas.
I think it's even simpler than that - even if you aren't trying to raise a ton of money, the process of writing a business plan forces you to think through your options, and make choices. And when some of those choices turn out to be wrong, you will be up shit's creek without a paddle if someone else wrote the plan. If you did the work yourself, on the other hand, you'll know the assumptions that went into the choice you made, and will be in a position to retrace your steps and take the road not travelled.
Investing in Personal Relationships
Roger McNamee said it better than I could - this is why I go way out of my way to maintain relationships and form new ones. Enlightened self-interest aside, though, it's just fun to have a pint with an old friend.
A J-curve runs through the New Normal. That’s when you invest more than you reap in the early stages, but in the long run you get paid huge dividends. You won’t be able to predict when a relationship will be valuable to you—or even if a particular relationship will be valuable to you—but if you invest in enough relationships, the payoff will be huge. - The New Normal - Invest in Personal Relationships
Protecting the Workgroup
A short article in Fast Company about protecting the workgroup reminded me of the going away party when I left my first management gig.
My team gave me something that's still one of my favourite gifts ever - a custom-made certificate for "excellence in buffering", reflecting the fact that I spent a great deal of my time dealing with all of the office BS so my people could focus on doing their thing. It is also reflective of my philosophy that you work for the people "below" you - if managers spent their energy on figuring out how to help their direct reports to do better work instead of currying to every whim of their bosses, they might actually achieve something.
Posted by kenking at January 26, 2006 8:52 PM
