The science of management
MANAGERS AREN’T REGULAR PEOPLE
Albert J. Bernstein, Ph. D.
So, you’ve been promoted to management. Congratulations! You’re about to be let in on secrets that you can’t learn anywhere else. The first lesson is: when you become a manager, you can no longer be a regular person. Just a few days ago, you might have been able to sit around in the coffee room and shoot the bull with your fellow workers. They’d say whatever was on their minds -- off-color jokes, gripes about senseless paperwork, snide comments about the boss’s intelligence, or whatever. Now, people may still be friendly, but they’re a bit more careful of what they say around you.
You haven’t changed. You’re still the same hard-working and fun-loving team member you always were. It’s your co-workers who are seeing things differently. You’ve crossed the line, and are now one of those people whose opinion could have a direct and negative effect on their lives. People get weird around authority figures, that’s all there is to it.
Once you become a manager, you’re always managing, whether you think so or not. Everything you say and do will be blown out of proportion and treated as the company’s official position rather than your own private opinion. Speaking of privacy, you won’t have any. Comments spoken in confidence will be in everybody’s e-mail by the end of the day. Sooner if they are negative.
The price of power is giving up some of your personal identity. There is no point in
feeling surprised or hurt by a phenomenon that is as predictable as gravity. Instead, since you
will always be managing, learn to manage well.
This means thinking before you speak, and considering the effects your words may have on other people. It also means living as if every one of your actions might be discussed at the next annual meeting.
That’s what they mean when they say it’s lonely at the top.
Summary: Teamwork can be a real benefit to a business. But like any other equipment it continually needs to be adjusted, monitored, and improved. It also helps to know how to operate it.
WHAT IS TEAMWORK?
Albert J. Bernstein, Ph.D.
Teamwork. The word gets batted around like a softball at the company picnic. What does it really mean?
Most people would agree that teamwork implies a group of people working together, pooling their resources to accomplish mutual goals, and placing their own needs secondary to the needs of the group. Easy to define, hard to do.
The problem is people don't automatically know how to work as a team. Unless the common needs are explicitly defined, the group's needs will end up being synonymous with the desires of the loudest, or most powerful team member. If you have a problem with that -- well, buddy, you must not be a team player.
Businesses are full of frustrated people who thought being part of a team meant they would have a part in making decisions, then discovered that teamwork really meant keep your mouth shut, smile, and do what you're told.
Unless something is done to prevent it, teams have a way of drifting in the direction of hierarchical management. They are easier to run that way, but their main advantage--that of having many brains working on the same problem -- is canceled out for the expediency of having one brain thinking, and many hands following directions.
If you want to maintain the spirit of teamwork, contingencies must be arranged so that all team members share in rewards and punishments. If there is a chance for individuals to make big career advances by showing leadership potential (read that as being bossy) it is quite likely that's what your more assertive members will do instead of playing along with the rest of the team. As soon as one of the players starts putting his own needs ahead of the needs of the team and getting rewarded for it, the whole team concept is out the window.
To keep a team functioning as a team you have to talk regularly about the definition of teamwork on this project and in this setting. Team goals must be clearly specified, as well as each member's responsibility for meeting those goals. It has to be clear in everyone's mind which behaviors are characteristic of cooperation, and which are characteristic of vying for control. It's hard to specify these behaviors in advance, but it is fairly easy to see them when they occur. That's why you have to talk about it on a regular basis.
To keep a team working as a team you have to ensure that each member can be heard by the group at any time. If several people have become dominant and others fear retribution if they disagree, people with alternative ideas merely keep quiet and grumble to each other as the team falls apart. It may be helpful to have some anonymous way of getting items on to the agenda to prevent people who have problems from being singled out as having bad attitudes.
Teamwork can be a real benefit to a business. But like any other equipment it continually needs to be adjusted, monitored, and improved. It also helps to know how to operate it.
Summary: If you think just telling people how to do something new will work, you need to learn a little more about learning.
HOW TO TEACH PEOPLE SOMETHING NEW
Albert J. Bernstein, Ph.D.
Teaching people new procedures and techniques goes like this in most places:
You explain the new technique, and about twenty percent of the people get it right away. Most of the rest stumble through it missing some of the most important details, and a few will do absolutely nothing differently. When you ask them about it, they'll look at you with a surprised expression and ask, “What new technique?”
When managers get such results, they think, incorrectly, they're seeing the evidence of a motivation problem in the people who don't get it right the first time. These results are exactly what you'd expect with a group of normally motivated workers. Only about twenty percent of the population can learn something new by just being told. People process information differently. Some people take in new information best by hearing, some by seeing, some by reading, and some by the feel of practice. Here are some ideas:
Teach behavior, not attitude. Many business learning programs try and instill an appropriate attitude, and assume that will lead to the correct behaviors. No way. The more practical the material the better. Show people what you want them to do, and tell them why they should do it; don't worry about what they're thinking while they're doing it.
don't be afraid to be redundant. Or repeat yourself, or say the same thing over and over. Whatever the channel, people learn by repetition.
Provide the same information through several different channels. Say it, put it on a screen, and give handouts for people to take away with them.
Use memory aids. Lists are great. Acronyms are fine if they aren't strained. Here is an authentic example of an acronym that does not work:
S - Superior concern
E - Excellent service
R - Read the handbook
V - Value added
E - Expect the best
If you cant do considerably better than this, just use a list.
Demonstrate. Show people how the technique looks. Videos, role playing, and practical demonstrations are great for this. The more people know about what the techniques actually look like the better they're going to learn them.
That's the input half. But to get real learning there has to be output as well. Here are some more ideas:
Practice, practice, practice. Did I say redundancy was okay? Give people the chance to actually do what you're teaching. Use practice, role-playing, or whatever is appropriate in your setting. People often resist this part of training--no one likes to be a beginner. Do it anyway. It's an important part of learning.
Ask questions for group discussion. This will clarify ambiguities and encourage problem solving skills.
Give quizzes. Fill in the blanks are best. Grades are not necessary, but the feedback is. Having to give back information helps people to organize material in their mind. Never mind if it's like the 6th grade. Learning works the same wherever you are.
If you approach teaching new material through several sensory channels, give people input, and allow them to learn by practicing and recalling, your results will be considerably better than the twenty percent success rate that comes with merely telling people what to do.
WHAT EXPERIENCE TEACHES MANAGERS
Albert J. Bernstein, Ph. D.
Here are some of the most important lessons about management that experience teaches. Many managers wish they had learned them when they were first starting out.
There are only three things you can manage: Money, task, and people -- Quibbling over whether there might be other categories may be an interesting exercise, but the important point is that your job requires you to manage all three, not just the ones for which you have a natural affinity.
Maturing as a manager means seeing money as a means rather than an end, accepting
that other ways of doing things might be better than yours, and realizing that leadership comes
from understanding other people rather than requiring that they understand you.
The hardest of the three to master is managing people. At first, your own humanity will
stand in your way, later it will become your greatest asset.
To manage anything well, you must first learn to manage yourself -- The essence of maturity is doing what needs to be done, rather than what you feel comfortable doing. Power can trick you into believing that they are one and the same.
Like electricity, human thought seeks the path of least resistance, but what comes easiest
is not necessarily what's most effective. To mature as a manager, or as a human being, you need
to remember only one thing: The correct path is always the one that feels most difficult. To manage others, you have to be able to manage yourself.
Managing information is really about managing yourself --The vehicle for managing anything is the dissemination of information. It is your job to see that people know what they need to know, when they need to know it. But how do you decide who needs to know what and when?
The greatest temptation you face as a manager is increasing your personal control at the
expense of overall efficiency. Nowhere is the daily struggle between power and responsibility
more apparent than in the management of information. There is always a temptation to firm up
your own position by not telling people things that would make them stronger and you weaker.
Not that you would actively withhold information, but with so much to do and so little time, you
might occasionally find yourself forgetting to tell somebody something important. Being too
busy to think about why you're doing what you're doing is, of course, an excellent way of
withholding information from yourself.
Whether you know what you're doing or not, you're still accountable for what you do. In
managing information, or anything else, you must judge your own actions by their effects rather
than your conscious intentions.
You can't manage something you don't understand -- No matter what they say at the Harvard Business School, management is not an independent discipline, separate from the task that has to be done. Managers who don't understand how their company's product is produced inevitably push the process toward the production of their own products. The company's product becomes worse, but the spreadsheets look better.
Managing a job is not the same as doing it -- People who know a job well are often tempted to do it rather than manage it.
There is great value in understanding a process well enough to know exactly what has to happen at every step from raw material to finished product, but there is a danger also. You can delude yourself into thinking that your way is the only way, and that you have no choice but to micro-manage every detail.
As people mature, their conception of managing task moves from doing the job
themselves, or telling other people exactly how to do it, to encouraging people to do it their own
way. A beginning manager is a single person with many sets of hands. A mature manager can
use excess heads as well.
Inexperienced managers attempt to control the process as well as the product. They
manage every task as if it were the rapid, orderly production of hamburgers at a fast food
restaurant. If you manage for hamburgers, you get hamburgers. Forget new ideas and ground
breaking insights, the best that you can hope for is that your work comes out cooked on both
sides.
COST CONTROL IS ENTRY LEVEL MANAGEMENT
Albert J. Bernstein, Ph.D.
In a previous column, I said there were only three things you can manage, money, task, and people. Today were talking about money. In many ways, it's the easiest of the three to manage because it is the most precise.
If you have to limit yourself to managing only one thing well, it should be money. If you don't pay attention to the bottom line, what do you pay attention to? If all you pay attention to is the bottom line, you probably wont be fired, but there is a whole world of management possibilities that you will never see. To access that world, however, you must first show the money.
Like every other skill, managing money can be practiced at many different levels. In the muck at the bottom of the food-chain is cost avoidance. To manage at this level you don't need to know where the money comes from, where it goes, what it's used for, or even how much of it there is. All you have to do is take a firm stand against spending it at any time, for any reason. When it comes to managing money, you are expected to be tough-minded and even cynical. And this approach is as cynical as it gets. Many people without a dream of their own have made lucrative careers for themselves by just saying no to other peoples ideas.
At the second level of difficulty is cost-cutting. Just announce that any budget category is lowered by 5%, and let people deal with that in any way they choose. it's like finding money in the pocket of your suit. The assumption is that there's always enough slack in any budget to cut some out and not have that make much difference. If that assumption is incorrect, there's a good chance that you will have been promoted before anybody above you finds out.
At the third level of difficulty is avoiding attribution of expenses. This more esoteric approach to management is practiced completely at the rarefied level of spreadsheets. In any company, there are many overhead expenses that are shared by a number of departments. The larger the share that is attributed to other departments, the better your bottom line will look. This approach to management is not for the faint of heart, because it requires the ability to intimidate your peers into accepting more overhead than you get. People who excel at this approach often see a great deal of similarity between management and professional sports.
At higher levels, managing money requires some theoretical knowledge of what you get for what you spend. This requires an understanding of how spreadsheets relate to the process of providing goods and services. Only then can you see a good deal quickly enough to jump on it.
The secret to managing money well is remembering that, in the end, your accomplishments will be judged by what you said yes to.
Summary: New ideas could mean the end of the universe as we know it. Here’s how to protect yourself.
HOW TO PROTECT YOURSELF FROM NEW IDEAS
Albert J. Bernstein, Ph.D.
New ideas are dangerous. They can move you right out of your comfort zone into places you’ve never been, and make you do things you’ve never done. At the very least, your job will be harder, and at worst a new idea could mean the end of the universe as we know it.
There is hope. The great managers of the past have devised many techniques for protecting themselves and their companies from new ideas. In this column, I’ll let you in on some of their best-kept secrets. With a little luck you’ll never have to consider a new idea again. Here’s how:
1. Don’t listen to it in the first place
2. Call a meeting to discuss it
3. Be too busy to come to the meeting
4. Create a committee to study it
5. Create a blue ribbon committee to study it
5. Get a legal opinion
6. Put it on a back burner until money is a little less tight
7.Transfer the person who suggested it
8. Convince yourself that the idea is not really new, that it is merely:
a. What you’re already doing, so why change?
b. What you tried back in 1987, and it didn’t work then, so why should it work now?
c. Just another name for Quality Circles, and they didn’t even work in Japan.
9. Say you like it, but the guys in finance will never buy it
10. If the guys in finance buy it, say the union will never buy it
11. If you don’t have a union, say it’s against federal regulations
12. Assume, without a financial analysis, that it would cost too much
13. If there is a financial analysis, add in one third of your entire departmental budget as startup costs and overhead expenses that were somehow left out of the initial proposal
14. Stonewall it because it would probably benefit somebody else more than it would you
15. Misplace the proposal
16. Remind everyone of the biggest mistake the person who came up with the idea has ever made, then point it out as yet another example of his or her sloppy thinking
17. Appoint an independent prosecutor and say you can’t do anything until the investigation is finished
18. Claim to be trying it out, but don’t really do anything differently
19. Throw a tantrum, and hope that people will be so busy trying to calm you down that they’ll forget all about it
20. Say, "Liberals would love that idea.” (or Conservatives, depending on who is considered more demonic in your organization)
21. Ask if the idea has been tried before
a. If it hasn’t, say “We can’t use an untried idea here.”
b. If it has, find out if it didn’t work somewhere, then say, “If it didn’t work at Hewlett-Packard it won’t work here.”
c. If it has worked everywhere else, say, “It won’t work here because our culture is unique.”
22. Don’t mention it to the person above you about it, then say, “I can’t do anything until I get J.B.’s read on it.”
23. Just say NO
24. Say it isn’t in the budget
25. What new idea?
These are some time-tested methods great managers have used to defend against the dangers of new ideas. How is it done in your company?
