Leadership
#12-10-19-06: The Round Peg In…
The Round Peg In...
I want my one management style!
Posted by Steven Cerri on Thursday, October 19, 2006
Good evening!
“The first type of White House chief of staff was a micromanager—tight control, someone who would pronounce that no person, no piece of paper could go to the president without the chief knowing and approving. They both knew that the model for this type was former New Hampshire Governor John Sununu, the well-known imperial, blustery chief of staff in Bush senior’s first three years as president.”
I want to pick up on this blog where I left off on the previous blog… basically,
“What is necessary in order to manage to get results.”
Recently, I’ve been reading the new book by Bob Woodward, “State of Denial”. Now my intention is not to get into politics. This blog is not about politics, it’s about management. The book has an interesting example of management and managing for results, which is the topic of this specific blog.
The part I’m thinking about takes place on page 355. It recounts an episode when Andy Card, who at the time was George Bush’s White House chief of staff, is talking to President Bush at Camp David after Bush’s re-election to a second term. Andy Card is tired of government service and would like Bush to replace him. He is talking to Bush about the typical event that takes place when a president wins a second term; the removal of the old staff and the introduction of a new team to go forward with the second term. Andy Card is trying to convince Bush that it is time to get a new chief of staff and Card has compiled a series of candidates that he wants to discuss with the president.
Here is where the interesting part comes in. Card begins to list off names but does so by categorizing them into three “management style” categories as follows:
“The second type was a prime minister type—a Hill operator, deal-cutter, negotiator and policy person who could handle the Congress, the media and the world.”
The third and final type would be a facilitator—doing what the president wanted, keeping the cabinet and staff focused on the president’s agenda. That was Card’s type.”
Now, the point I want to make and the most interesting point of this page in the book is that managers get a “reputation” of having a certain management style. Andy Card is clearly acknowledging that different situations require different management styles. And different people come “already prepped” with a specific management style. Also implied in this discussion is the idea that people don’t change their management styles. The goal is to “match” the situation to the person. Match the best management style for the situation to the preferred management style of the person. It’s the old “match the round peg to the round hole.”
The same situation is evident in the Hewlett Packard debacle. Carli Fiorina was considered to be the necessary CEO for HP when she took over the leadership role. By the time she was ousted, the consensus had changed. Now what the company needed was a hands-on manager, like Mark Hurd. So the board moved one peg off the board and brought in another, different shaped peg. It’s as if when Carli joined the need was a round peg for a round hole. Then the circumstances changed. The business changed. The hole went from being round to being square. So the board decided they need a square peg for the now square hole.
This is very much the old school of management thinking. People have their preferred and perfected styles and they fit certain circumstances and they don’t fit other circumstances.
Frankly, I think this is outdated, erroneous thinking. Circumstances are always changing and they are going to be changing at an ever more rapid rate. If companies have to keep changing managers and leaders every time the environment or the business changes, we are going to have a long parade of new leaders (and of course, that is exactly what we see in some companies).
The goal is to get managers who can shift their management and leadership style to accommodate the changing and shifting situations. What we need are managers and leaders who aren’t “married” to one management/leadership style. We need managers and leaders who are flexible in behavior and solid in values and ethics.
This applies directly to technology management. Many technology managers have their preferred management style and they use it in all circumstances. They might prefer a very directive, authoritative approach and they use it everywhere even when a coaching style would be more effective. Or they might prefer a consensus management style and they use it everywhere, even when a directive approach would work better. Or they might prefer a coaching style and they use if everywhere, even when the best style might be a consensus approach. Are you beginning to see the pattern here? And you probably know managers who have a preferred style and they use it in all situations. In fact, perhaps all the managers who you’ve come in contact with have a preferred and consistent style regardless of the circumstances.
I believe the single-minded, one management style fits all approach is not useful, not effective, and is not for our next generation of technical managers. It is time that our new technology managers be flexible enough to adapt to the situation so that they can be most effective. Whether you are the White House chief of staff, the CEO of HP or a middle manager in an IT department working with people around the world, you should not be the “constant in the system”. You should be the most flexible component in the system and therefore, the most influential.
I’ll write more on this topic on Monday. Have a great weekend.
Be well
Steven Cerri
Posted by Steven Cerri on 10/19 at 07:36 PM Leadership • Management • Inter-Personal People Skills • (0) Comments • Permalink
#1-09/12/06: My First Blog
My Introductory Blog
Who is this guy?
Posted by Steven Cerri on Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Good morning,
You’re probably wondering… who am I and why do I have this blog? The answers
to those two questions are very important to me as they are to you.
To the first: I’m an engineer, a scientist, and a business person and entrepreneur. I have degrees in each area: a BS in aeronautical engineering; an MS in geophysics; and an MBA. I’ve done international training, I’m an author, and I’m an adjunct professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara in the
Technology Management Program Department. I have over 30 years of experience in aerospace engineering, software development, and printer manufacturing companies, in both the technology and the management areas. And that experience has been in commercial, government, and in department-of-defense business arenas. So I’ve gotten a taste of how all three of these environments function.
I began my career as an engineer and ultimately became a general manager. I’ve made the transition from technical professional to technical manager and beyond (product manager, general manager, and corporate trainer). By most standards I’ve been very successful and yet, I got very little help along the way. By that I mean I got very little help that would have made my transition to management easier. Primarily this was because there was no one who really, and I mean really, understood what a technical person goes through when they become a manager. Technical people either make the transition to management or they don’t and if they succeed their success is attributed to some “innate” ability.
Oh, for sure, there were the psychologists who could teach me what they thought I should know about people and management. But they were psychologists; what did they know about what was going on in my head, the head of an engineer? And there were the engineers and technical managers who would teach me about project management, schedules, and budgets. But those were the easy functions. No one was there to teach me what I really needed to know to make management “comfortable” for me. There was no one there who was willing to discuss the “transition” from technical professional to technical manager. And while I was lucky enough to be successful, I made the trip pretty much on my own, so to speak.
In fact, I was extremely successful in building teams. I was able to turn projects and organizations around, even in situations where others had failed. Somehow I had learned how to motivate and move people to achieve results that others could not. And I began to help those who worked for me make the transition from technical professional to technical manager. I began to groom program and project managers to take on their own major projects. Some even started their own companies.
To the second question: From these results, I more and more began hearing myself say; “I want to teach technical professionals how to do this because I really think I understand what they need to know that no one is telling them. Most of my approaches to building teams and managing people and projects went against the accepted practices, and yet the results were fantastic. So I had to ask myself what was going on here and why was I successful building technical teams and grooming managers while others weren’t as successful?
I decided about 15 years ago to embark on a consulting, training, and coaching career. I decided that it was important to me to get what I considered to be my message out to technical people. And so while I’ve continued to work inside corporations on and off since I started my consulting, training, and coaching company, my main interest has been in training technical professionals to have successful long-term careers, either as technical professionals or as technical mangers and helping them make a smooth transition if they decide to become technical managers.
The message of this blog then, is really my message. It’s based on my experience, and on my ideas about what works and what doesn’t work in technology management. It’s about the personal development of the technical professional required to become a truly long-term success as a technologist or a manager in their organization.
You won’t find a compilation of other people’s ideas here. You won’t find any straddling of the fence either. You won’t find me giving you several ideas about a management topic and then telling you that it’s up to you to decide what to do. If that is what you want, there are plenty of good blogs that you can visit that will provide that kind of information. That’s not this site and it’s not me. I definitely have an opinion developed over a long career. I have strategies that work in a wide variety of technology management situations. They have worked for me and they have worked for the people I’ve trained, coached, and taught. This is not about theory, it is about practical technical management.
On this site, my message will consist of my ideas, my experience, and my suggestions. Try them out. If they work, please come back. If they don’t work then please feel free to let me know. I encourage you to ask me questions; pose specific situations you might be facing; get specific. This can and should be a powerful learning process. And that’s what we do as technical professionals, we learn and we apply what we learn. You’ve learned about the physical laws of the universe. It’s time you learn about the “laws” or maybe “theorems” of technical management.
You’ll find that my message consists of three parts and three parts only. Part one is that I help technical people be better and more effective as technical people in their technical organizations. Part two is that I help technical managers be better technical managers. And part three is that I help technical professionals make a smooth and effective transition to technical management. All three of these components comprise a program I call “The Fully Integrated Technical Professional” (more on this in future blogs.)
I’ll update this blog twice a week; on Mondays and Thursdays. Enjoy and much success.
Be well
Steven Cerri
Founder of “The Fully Integrated Technical Professional©”
“Training and coaching technical professionals to be as good with people and management as they are with their PCs”
Posted by Steven Cerri on 09/10 at 02:23 PM Engineer to Technical Manager • Leadership • Management • Inter-Personal People Skills • Fully Integrated Tech Professional • (0) Comments • Permalink
