#15-10-30-06: A Million and One
Have It Your Way
”A Million and One Ways to Lead!”
Posted by Steven Cerri on Monday, October 30, 2006
Good evening!
If you’ve been reading my recent blogs you have probably gotten the seemingly radical message that there are a million and one ways to manage and/or lead. There is the best way to manage or lead in any given situation and the best way … depends.
It depends on the context, the situation.
This is the reason that, if we are to measure a successful leader by the amount of financial reward he or she accrues, we find that in the world, there must be a million and one different ways to lead because there seem to be all sorts of ways to lead and make money.
In fact, I hear people say things like, “Real leaders care about their people”. Not necessarily. Some do and some don’t and whether they do or they don’t doesn’t guarantee success. I’m sure you’ve known leaders who have cared about their people deeply and failed and leaders who have not really cared about their people, in fact abused them (verbally), and still they produced a hugely successful operation.
So we are back to the same answer… success is not tied to how you treat people…only. Success is not tied to how well you understand business. Success is tied to six parameters that all come together to define a context. The successful leader finds the most effective way to pull the strengths from each of the six parameters to make decisions that lead the organization forward successfully.
One of the six parameters in Contextual Leadership© is the expertise of the direct report or the team compared to the expertise of the manager. That means that depending upon the quality of the people you bring on board, that will have a huge influence on the management and leadership choices available to you.
In fact, one of the reasons that Jack Welch, the ex-CEO of General Electric was so successful, was that he wanted to function within a specific set of management and leadership styles and that dictated that he keep certain of the six Contextual parameters relatively constant.
One of those parameters that he needed to keep constant was the quality of the people. That is, the only way to narrow his management choices consistently was to be certain that he had a specific quality of employees reporting directly to him. That is why he spent so much time on his employees and that is why he used the A,B,C evaluation system. Jack’s goal was to provide him with a type of direct and indirect report (one layer below his direct reports) that would allow him to use a specific range of management and leadership styles; those that he preferred.
Had he been less diligent regarding report selection, he would have had to range further in his application of management and leadership styles.
By controlling closely the quality of the employees who report to you, you control one of the important parameters that will dictate how flexible you must be in your application of management and leadership styles in order to be successful.
(Note: I’m not a personal friend of Jack Welch. I have not interviewed Mr. Welch. The conclusions I have drawn here are based on my own understanding of management and leadership, new concepts of management and leadership that I have developed, and the books I have read about Jack, interviews I have seen with Mr. Welch, and speeches I have heard given by Jack Welch.)
Be well
Steven Cerri
Posted by Steven Cerri on 10/30 at 08:30 PM Management • Engineering Management • Management for engineers • Management for technologists • Technical Management • (0) Comments • Permalink
#14-10-26-06: Contextual Definition
Contextual Definition
”Define your context, get your management style!”
Posted by Steven Cerri on Thursday, October 26, 2006
Good evening!
So ultimately we get back to the fundamental, basic question and that is:
What is the best management style to use in a given situation?
By now, after reading my last three blogs, you probably get that achieving results and selecting the management style that best achieves results is not just about the qualifications of the direct report or team being managed. In fact, I’m finishing a book right now and I’ve sent pre-publication copies out to friends, colleagues, and clients. Recently in talking to one who has been reviewing my book I asked him what was the one main idea he thought he’d gotten out of the book. (He’s a newly promoted manager in a technical company.) His response was:
“I now know that to the question ‘What’s the best management style in a given situation?’ the only answer that makes sense is ‘It depends. It depends on those six parameters you list.’”
That is the answer to Andy Card’s situation. It’s the answer to what has happened at Hewlett Packard. It’s the difference between the Army sergeant and the software business development manager.
And the best management style depends on the “Context Definition” which is defined by the following six parameters:
1. The expertise of the manager as compared to the expertise of the individual or team being managed
2. The risk of the task or project
3. The time frame of the task or project
4. The complexity or interfaces of the task or project
5. The learning outcome desired by the manager for the individual or team being managed
6. The management style preferred by the individual or team being managed
These six parameters define the context and will direct a manager to the best management style for a given situation.
These six parameters make up the Contextual Definition©. The contextual definition then leads the manager to a sliding scale of management styles from authoritative/directive to participative/coaching. The more the expertise lies with the manager, the more the task has high risk or a short timeframe or is complex, the more the manager would want to lean toward an authoritative/directive management style. The more the expertise lies with the team, the risk is low, the timeframe is longer, and the task is less complex, the more the manager would lean toward a more participative/coaching management style.
It’s quite clear that in the case of the Army sergeant, the risks are high, the timeframe is short, and the expertise generally lies with the sergeant. Therefore, the more directive approach works best.
In the case of the software development manager, the immediate risks are low, the timeframe will be relatively long, the complexity of the immediate task is low, and the expertise lies with the team. Therefore, the better management style is a more participative/coaching style.
In the case of HP the same thought process holds true. When the HP board went looking for a replacement for Carli Fiorina, they went looking for someone with a “difffernet management style”. From my vantage point, it’s not even appropriate to ask what management style an HP CEO should have. Carli Fiorina shouldn’t have had one, major management style to work from. Mark Hurd shouldn’t have one, major management style to work from. Their management styles should be tailored to the specific task to be achieved based on the six parameters that define the Contextual Definition. Their management style should change. A leader or manager shouldn’t be capable of being “pigeon-holed” as this type of manager or that type of manager.
The downfall of Carli Fiorina is that she joined HP with the idea that a specific management style, hers, was what was needed. It wasn’t a fit and a match and she was ultimately forced out. Now Mark Hurd is at the helm and he seems to have been labeled with a specific management style, one that currently is a fit and a match. As HP changes will Mark Hurd change his management style as well? Does he change it now as the tasks change on a daily or hourly basis or is the culture in such a backlash that his general style will due, for now, even if it doesn’t vary much?
Watch the news and the results will tell us.
Be well
Steven Cerri
Posted by Steven Cerri on 10/26 at 06:57 PM Management • Engineering Management • Management for engineers • Management for technologists • Technical Management • (0) Comments • Permalink
#13-10-23-06: Mgnt Extremes
Management Extremes
”And the winner of the Best Management Style is….!”
Posted by Steven Cerri on Monday, October 23, 2006
Good evening!
In this blog, I want to continue the thread I started two blogs ago in the blog of 101606. The topic is how best to manage to get results. I’ve introduced Andy Card’s comments in the book “State of Denial” and the situations brought about by Carli Fiorina and Mark Hurd at Hewlett Packard.
The basic message is that different situations require different management styles to get results. I want to give you two more examples to bring this important topic home.
Example #1: “Who’s going to take that hill?”
Imagine you are a U.S. Army Sergeant. You have group of privates under your command. Your team comes over a rise and spots the enemy on top a three hundred foot hill about a thousand yards away. Your mission is to take that hill. Either capture or kill the enemy, but take that hill.
This is the situation.
The question is: What’s the best management style to get the job done?
The answer:
It’s probably self-evident that you can’t use a “coaching” or “participative” management style and get the mission accomplished. Can you imagine the sergeant huddling with his men discussing and asking the following questions: “Ok fellas, who thinks they can get to that hill first? Who has a family? Single guys, without wife and kids, you probably ought to go in front. What do you think? What’s the best approach here?” It becomes obvious that neither participative or coaching management styles wouldn’t be a very effective management here.
The rationale :
The risk to life is very high. The time frame is short and intense. The battle is immanent. The weapons are known and understood. The terrain is known fairly well. This is not a new and uncertain situation. While there may be uncertainties, the team has practiced for just this event over and over. The leadership style is very directive. The sergeant knows exactly what the best approach to success is. The sergeant knows what the choices are. And therefore, the best management style is one in which the choices are limited, the training is called into play, and the most effective management style is a directive, authoritative one.
Now let’s go to the other end of the spectrum.
Example #2: “How creative can you be?”
Imagine you are managing a software team and your goal is to come up with the functionality of a new software program to compete with Intuit’s Quicken program. What functions will you want to include in order to provide a better product than Quicken and what functions will you leave out? How do you know which functions fall into which category and why? How much work will the various functions take to implement?
This is the situation.
The question is: What’s the best management style to get the job done?
The answer:
It’s probably self-evident that you can’t use a directive, authoritative management style here (although a good number of managers try to). Can you imagine sitting around a conference table and “dictating” that people come up with ideas and forcing a specific process to get the answers? Can you imagine a manager saying something like, “OK, I want thirty incredible functions that Quicken doesn’t currently have that are going to make our customers switch to our product, and I want the product to be cheaper than Quicken. And I want this product out the door in six months.” It isn’t going to happen.
The rationale :
Using the parameters discussed in Example #1 we know that there is no risk to life. The timeframe, while short as projected by the manager, may not be as short as six months. There is no battle around the corner. The elements of success are not really known. The functionality that will provide success is not known. This whole project is filled with uncertainties and what is most needed is creativity and decision-making, or even action. The group needs “ideas”. Therefore, the best management style is a “participative” management style that allows everyone in the room to contribute their best AND worst ideas.
With these two extreme examples you can see that a management style that works in one case will fail in the other. These extremes are everywhere in our everyday work environments. In the morning you can faced with a discussion about what equipment to purchase for your intranet and in the afternoon you can be faced with a crashed server that has to be brought up as fast as possible. These two situations can require two very different management styles.
On Thursday I’ll generalize this across a broad spectrum of situations and tell you what a coaching client says about the best approach.
Be well
Steven Cerri
Posted by Steven Cerri on 10/23 at 04:43 PM Management • Engineering Management • Management for engineers • Management for technologists • Technical Management • (0) Comments • Permalink
