One night at dinner she said to me, “The chicken stock makes the rice too salty”. I’ve been married long enough to know there was more to that statement than met the ears.

“Oh,” I said, “Did I buy the wrong kind of stock?” She nodded. “Should I have bought the low-sodium kind?” She nodded again. “But it didn’t say that on the list.” I said, more by way of explanation than self-defense.

Her response to me is the reason you should be interested in this post. She said “It never occurred to me that there was any other kind.” Never occurred to her. Never?

Of course she KNOWS there are other kinds of chicken stock. It’s just that this is the kind she’s used for so long that the others are not part of her conscious thinking anymore.

To be an effective shopping manager, she needs to think differently than she does as an effective shopper.

It’s the same reason we’re eating lots of mushrooms this week. She prints a list from the grocery chain website. The list said “ Mushrooms are on sale – 3 boxes for $5” and it didn’t say “We only need one box.” But I digress.

This is actually a pain in the ass for her. And I sympathize. She’s frustrated with having to spell all that stuff out. And frustrated when I call from the store asking about what I’m sure she considers stupid details. And she’s more frustrated because when she shops, she does make a list but also makes a lot of decisions and changes on the fly. These are triggered by what she sees on the shelf. And it ties into what she’s got coupons for and even changes her plans of what to cook. This is all very hard to translate into instructions for someone else to follow. Even someone as smart and motivated (did I say rich and good looking?) as I am.

The truth is, in our case it’s just not worth it for her to become a better shopping manager. We’ll muddle through and she should be driving again in a month or so. But in your case, if you want to free yourself from performing a function AND you want someone to do it as well (or better) than you, you have to become a better manager. Here are some tips:

1. Use details. Lots of details. A manager (or delegator) has to think differently than a doer. List the specifics of the outcome you really want – even the minutia that should be obvious. And consider the context of the decisions you’d make if you were doing the job. Then make those explicit. This is one reason it helps to write things down. It’s harder to be vague on paper.

2. Allow more time than you think it should take. You won’t be good at explaining everything right away and the other person will need some time to learn how you think. The more nuanced the job is, and the more experienced you are the more time it will take. Schedule some time for review and ongoing training. Schedule it before the deadlines are due so you have time to correct mistakes and omissions.

3. Use Verbs. Too often we give someone a list of To Do items that includes only nouns. When your list says “Conference Topics” it may not be obvious what you want them to do about Conference Topics. Do you want that person to suggest topics for the upcoming conference? Do you want them to interview others about what topic they’d like to see?  Are you giving this person the authority to decide on the topics or just to recommend? The answer lies in verbs.

Takeaways:

• As a manager you need to think differently than as a doer.
• Use details and verbs.
• Write it down.
• It takes time. If it’s not worth the time, don’t do it.

If that’s true, then you’re not doing it right. And, of course a lot of people aren’t doing it right – that’s what keeps my blog in business. I’ll tackle the meetings bit here and leave the manager problem for another post.

Collaboration, Communication

Most people don’t do their work in a vacuum. They need collaboration and communication (C&C) with others. Let’s say you have 5 people on a team who need to organize their work together. Let’s add a sixth person – the manager – who needs to know how the team is doing, if there’s anything she can do to help any of them (that’s her job after all) AND she needs to provide direction and connection with other teams in the organization.

That’s a lot of C&C.  If all those people reach out to one another willy-nilly whenever the impulse strikes that’s a lot of interruptions. No wonder Jason wants to get away from the office.

But there is another solution. Figure out which parts of all that C&C can be scheduled and organized. It won’t make the problem go away, but it will diminish it. Hopefully to the point where the down side of the interruption is out weighed by the benefits of C&C. So if you’ve got a scheduled and organized way to collaborate and communicate, what do you have but a meeting?!?!?

I agree that most meetings are a waste of time. But that’s because they aren’t done right. Appropriate meetings not only save time, but encourage all kinds of good things like synergy, morale, camaraderie, sharing of ideas – in short, team work. But the idea of abolishing meetings because of this problem is like abolishing food because people are obese. You just have to do it right.

Here’s a quick primer for Better Meetings

• Each Meeting  needs a purpose. And the kind of meeting has to fit the purpose.
• It has to include the right people – all of them but no one else.
• People have to come prepared.
• It should have a pattern – a rhythm. This will vary with the type of meeting and it’s purpose. A brainstorming meeting has a different pattern than a meeting where you hash out alternatives and reach a decision.
• It should be as short as possible – but no shorter.
• Someone must be in control.
• Each meeting should have an outcome – one that accomplishes the purpose of the meeting.
• Keep in mind that each meeting doesn’t happen in isolation. Maybe there are times that should be “meeting-free zones” and other times when meetings should be optional.

[Ricardo Semler goes so far as to make all meetings optional. His point is if you're planning the meeting it's your job to make it enticing enough that people want to come (and want to pay attention instead of playing with their iphones). This is pretty extreme and only works when all other aspects of the company culture are aligned with it. But it's an interesting approach. ]

If doing meetings this way sounds like a lot of work – well yeah. That’s why no bumper sticker says “I’d rather be running a meeting.” But (as Jason points out in the video) meetings are expensive. A one hour meeting with 10 people is really a ten hour meeting. And if you add up the salaries of all those people and account for the interruptions the meeting causes before they get back into the flow of their work – you’ll jump out of your skin. If you’re going to spend that much money / time / etc isn’t it worth it to do it right? That’s why you get paid the big bucks.

Takeaways

• Meetings are expensive
• If you’re going to have one – do it right
• If you do it can pay off it spades

UPDATE: Seth Godin and I are aligned in starting the new year with better meetings.

Seriously. Check this out:

Time Management: How an MIT postdoc writes 3 books, a PhD defence, and 6+ peer-reviews papers. And finishes by 5:30pm.

You see you can’t really manage time. You can’t save it, spend it or do anything with it or to it. You have the same 24 hours a day that Bill Gates, and your cat have.

What you can manage is yourself and what you do or don’t do WITHIN the time you have. It’s a great article. Click and read it if you haven’t already.

What Do You Mean Organization?

That’s reaction some entrepreneurs have. They don’t need no stinkin’ organization. They just tell people what to do. Then they scream and curse when it doesn’t get done right. But whenever you have two or more people working toward a common goal, you have an actual organization, whether you like it or not.

The trick to developing a growing, thriving organization is to push as much responsibility as possible down the organization.

Yes, Down The Organization.

The more things that are handled as close as possible to where the work is done, the more people at the top have time and resources to do more strategic things. But this is hard to do.

Why? Because the people at the top often have more experience and ability. At least we say that’s the reason. Yes, they often are more competent. But the reason it’s hard to push that competence down the organization is that people who are good at what they do have what’s called “unconscious competence”. Remember when you learned to drive a car? Remember the focus it took? You were developing competence – consciously. At some point you got so good you could drive and talk and listen to the radio, AND think about something else. You became unconscious of the movements needed to maintain speed, steer, put on the blinker etc. That’s unconscious competence.

People Don’t “Get It” When They’re Not Unconscious

Probably the person down in your organization, the one who should be given some responsibility, is not unconsciously competent. And if you just told them to do something they wouldn’t do it right. They wouldn’t get what you wanted done. It may not be that they can’t do the job, just that they need training, mentoring, oversight (aka management) to be able to execute that responsibility as well as it needs to be done.  And that takes time and effort.

But more than time and effort it takes you being able to explain what you do well, and how you do it. That’s what trips most of us up. When we are so good that we are unconsciously competent, we can’t always explain to another person how it should be done. And so, we can’t figure out how to push some responsibility down to someone else. And we have to keep it ourselves. But that limits the growth of the company.

The Solution?

There are many: Checklists, Work Flows, Management Training, Mentoring, etc. “The Exercise of the Elves” is one of my favorites. They all take a skill set that is often quite different from the skill of actually doing the work. This is one reason many small companies stay small. They aren’t willing to invest in that skill. Big companies are. They hire people to do these things, or they bring in consultants [shameless plug] or both. Companies that aren’t willing to do this are forced to keep responsibility at the top and keep their organizations small.

But if you want to get out of the engine room and into the wheelhouse; if you want to take your company to new places; in short, if you want to function more like the CEO and less like the General Manager, it’s a skill you need to bring on board.

Think for a minute about what would happen if your employees were better motivated.

Would there be fewer problems at work?

Would you get to spend your time doing different things? What kind of things?

Would it mean more money in your pocket? How much?

You probably won’t be surprised to learn that what motivates you is different from what motivates most people. That’s why you’re an entrepreneur and they are not. You probably will be surprised to learn (as I was) that much of we think we know about motivating people is wrong. Would it be worth 10 minutes and 48 seconds of your time to learn to do it better? Check out this video.

If you have more time, read the book

She is a client.  Her company makes web sites and on-line products for a specialized industry. They’ve got a reputation for high end work, solid market penetration and about a dozen employees. She is the primary sales person and has the most common complaint I hear from business owners: “I can’t find good employees”

The meetings were going well. She was staying on track, learning what people were up against, and heading off complications before they became actual problems. The words were very positive, but her tone was not.
“So?” I asked.

“All these meetings. They’re keeping me from my real work.”

But she was wrong about that. What a small company has in common with a small child is despite their size, they still need all of the parts. So even small companies need three levels of management, someone to do collections, to analyse the numbers, and all that stuff big companies have whole departments for. But being small you don’t need them all full time. So people wear multiple hats. And when that happens, you tend to wear the hats you’re best at or enjoy the most. So my client loves sales and coming up with new product ideas.

Because she’s done a good job in those areas, the company needs more production capacity, and better coordination. So now she must consider management to be her “real job”. By focusing on this (not exclusively but predominantly) she’ll enable others to do more with fewer problems. That’s the real job of building a company. When problems decrease, and productivity improves, she’ll be able to wear this hat a little less and put on another a bit more.

One-on-one’s: Great management tool.
Have one with each of your direct reports.
Meet weekly at the same time for 30 minutes. Never reschedule. It’s that important – it is your real job.
Prepare. They should and you should too.
Don’t solve problems. Or train. Some of that may happen. But if you can’t fit it into 30 minutes along with the other stuff, then you need  a separate meeting for training or problem solving.
It’s a time for you to share certain things and learn certain other things. Generally the same kinds of things each week (maybe even in the same order depending on your style) which makes it easy for each of you to prepare.
What to share. Anything the other person must know to do their job better. That’s your role as manager: to help them do their job better. Maybe share what’s happening in other departments so they can interact better. Maybe it’s feedback of how they really made a difference. Share what they can expect from you and the rest of the company; both before the next one-on-one and longer term. You prepare by keeping a notebook around all week and jotting down stuff that you’ll need to share with each person.  Then spend a few minutes pulling it together before the one-on-one.
What you should learn. Status: what happened since last time and how that compares to what you expected. Why there’s a difference. What problems they are running into. Their opinions on things. Insights you don’t know about because you don’t live at their desk. Over time, you’ll get a sense of who they are as a person: what motivates them, what puts them off. You’ll get a feel for what they do well and where their limitations are. Make notes about this.
Written take-aways: What each of you will do before the next meeting based. This becomes the status for next week’s meeting. Notes you can use for their annual review. They should take away your impressions of how they’re doing so nothing (I repeat nothing) in their review is a surprise. If it is, you’re not doing it right, but that’s another column.

Trust (in both directions) is a non written take-away.

Beware: You’ll think you don’t have time. But it reduces time spent on interruptions and problem solving. And it’s your real job.

Takeaway:

• Do Them.

[tags]management, CEO skills, entrepreneur, small business owner [/tags]

Probably Never.

So what does this mean to you? The number one complaint I hear from entrepreneurs about employees is that employees just don’t get it. What I think that means is that entrepreneurs just don’t get it.

Get what? Get that their job is to keep employees moving in the right direction. If the employees knew how to “get it” or what the “right direction” is they’d be working for themselves right now. The reason yours are working for you is that they need that constant reminder of where the company’s heading.

Obviously when things are tough you’ve really got to keep a grip on the wheel. But just because things are going well doesn’t mean you can go “hands off”.

To switch analogies – it’s how you coach a winning sports team.

It’s hard to build a sports dynasty because winning players have a tendency to feel they’ve made it and then slack off. The coach needs to keep them moving forward just as hard.

Takeaways:

• Sure you’re busy – lots of opportunities await. But don’t forget to keep reminding everyone where the company is heading and make those little nudges in the right direction like you do with the steering wheel on the highway.

First image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/bob406/487249298/
Second image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/19783530@N00/1779549245/

[tags] Entrepreneur, manager, CEO, Small business [/tags]

Most people react to that last sentence with something like: “But they’re people not animals and they do speak English and what’s more they’re adults. They SHOULD be able to do what I say.” So true. So true, and yet so remarkably ineffective.

Whenever you find yourself using the word SHOULD with another person in a fit of frustration take it as a sign to change your behavior not theirs. Your behavior is the only one you can control anyway unless the other person is small enough that you can pick them up. You can influence others not control them and only by changing your behavior.

I was talking to a client today who runs a small office: himself and four others. He’s so mad a two of them that he’s thinking of making it an even smaller office: himself and two others. And he’s got a right to be mad. They did some really stupid stuff recently. And so he’s upset with what they SHOULD be doing differently.

Taking my own advice about the SHOULD word, we looked at how he was communicating, and realized that he was not being much of a manger. If employees didn’t get it right the first time he said something, he never followed up. When it wasn’t done right, he either did it himself or let it go undone. Of his four people; one of them usually gets it – she’s been with him for decades. The others do most of their jobs right most of the time, but not always. And the company’s in a tough market right now. He’s been asking them to do different things to move the business forward. And for the most part they don’t. They stick with what they’ve always done and even though it’s slow and they don’t have as much work as they can handle, they don’t do the extra stuff.

Of course they SHOULD; but there’s that word again. So we talked about what he could do differently as a manager – what level of detail he needed to explain his request and how often he needed to follow up, and what incentives or consequences he could put in place.

And we talked about if he even wanted to bother. It would be much simpler to cut back and only have two employees. I still don’t know the answer to that one yet – he’s going to think about it.

If I may change analogies, let me tell you that when I was single and I lived alone, I never cooked. As much as I loved to eat, the cooking part was not something I wanted to spend the time doing or learn how to do well. After I got divorced I cooked, because I wanted the kids and me to have dinner time together. But I still didn’t put a lot of time into learning the nuts and bolts of cooking. I got a few meals down, and could follow a recipe or three and it was good enough. Now I’m married to a wonderful cook. She loves to eat as much as I do – maybe more. But she’s willing to actually be a cook. Not only can she follow a recipe, she can augment or even invent one. And her technique is outstanding. Of course she puts a lot of time into it, and she loves it. So why am I telling you this?

The situation with most entrepreneurs is they want to eat really well but they don’t want to learn the nuts and bolts of cooking. By that I mean they want the benefits of a well managed workforce, but don’t want to learn the techniques of managing, or put the time in to actually do the work of being a manager.

Here’s what it takes to manage: Direction, Support and Monitoring.

Here’s what too many entrepreneurs think is management:
For direction, they provide the vaguest set of directions in the fewest words, almost never written. “Hey, somebody just called from the Framus company about our account – handle if for me will ya?”
For support they never figure out what the employee needs and give it to them. Instead they expect people to get it done with stuff that costs less than it did last time. And what they do provide only shows up if the employee asks for it – hounds may be a better word than asks.
As for monitoring? They don’t check back till after the deadline’s passed and they get real mad if it isn’t done right.

A better manager handles it this way:

1. Direction. First you have to know what results you want. You have to describe them in terms of deliverables or behaviors (not attitudes). Think of what would happen if aliens flew their UFO into your facility at night and did the employee’s job perfectly. What would be different when you came to work in the morning? That’s what you need to describe to the employee. Until you can describe these results in detail, don’t try to manage anyone, spend your time describing results.

2. Support. Your next job as manager is to provide the employee with everything they need to do their job. This includes training, facilities, tools and equipment, time, reasonable expectaions and other people to provide the parts that they can’t do. Motivation and recognition is also part of support. Different people need various amounts at different stages in a given job.

3. Monitor. Employees should know how they will be monitored. If you did a good job giving direction they’ll be able to monitor themselves and come to the same conclusions you do about their performance. But you need to do it more frequently than you think – especially when you’ve given someone a new assignment with changes their routine or they’re doing something they’ve never done before. You need to see how they’re doing in time to make changes and corrections and give more support before the stuff hist the fan. That way you can both be successful.

Takeaways:

• If management sounds like a lot of work – it is. There are whole professions dedicated to it and lots of schools give advanced degrees in it. Some people are naturals at it, but not many. The rest of us can learn.
• Without good management you can’t have very many employees without going broke.
• I know owner/CEOs who are not good managers, but they hire someone to be the manager. Then they give them the authority they need and the salary they deserve to do the job.
• With good management you can build a team that kicks butt.

[Tags] Management, CEO Skills, entrepreneur, small business, manager [/tags]

So the first time I used the blue tub for garbage it they refused to take it. I asked around and someone said it was over the limit. “What was the limit?” I asked and was told “It has to be able to be lifted easily.” A very logical limit. Also a very stupid one. Can you imagine the arguments and even law suits the city would get into if their limit was so vaguely defined? They’d have arguments from customers, from sanitation workers, from people who didn’t get hired as sanitation workers and even from their workers comp insurance company.

So I looked it up. The rules are: Can no larger than 42 gallons weighing less than 60 pounds, the garbage has to be bagged and the lid of the can cannot be hinged. My can violated 3 of those rule. I didn’t do my job. And the sanitation workers just didn’t take it. No fuming or yelling, no covering for my lack of performance. They just did their job and moved on. I’ve seen them be lenient about the hinged lids and also about the no bagging rule many times in the neighborhood which I appreciate, but I don’t begrudge them their decision to enforce the rules in my case.
Why am I telling you this?
This blog is supposed to be about business – your business – not my garbage problems. The point is that I’m familiar with too many business where the performance standards (rules if you will) are vague, even if they are logical. Things like “able to be lifted easily” which begs the question by whom? And how easily? For the record, I’m a middle aged, overweight guy who doesn’t work out and even I can lift that blue can easily, but I don’t want do to their job.

And so there is a lot of confusion and frustration in the work place about whether someone is doing their job properly. My garbage man and I have no such disagreement. My job is to put the trash out by 6AM on Wednesdays, bagged in a can less than 42 gallons weighing less than 60 pounds and his job is to take it away. The end.

Takeaways:

• If good job performance is not as clear to each employee as it is to you there will be problems
• People should not cover for another’s lack of performance under normal circumstances
• Everyone should be able to self-monitor their job performance against unchanging standards
• Some people won’t want to perform under that level of transparency. Set them free to work elsewhere.

[tags] entrepreneur, small business, CEO, Management [/tags]

We have a system for tracking our sales efforts (number of calls, follow ups, contracts sent out etc) and our results. One of the guys in our fulfillment department quit and they decided not to replace him, figuring the people in the front office could fill in. This month, sales are down 33% from last month. That sounds worse than it is: we keep client for years and only get about 10 new ones a month (and we generally loose about 10 as well) so sales went from 9 to 6 and it so happens we only lost 6 so we’re even. But still 33% down is not the way you want to go.

My wife could tell from the sales tracking system that the number of contracts sent out was about the same as last month but the number of follow up calls was way down. And she could tell from the timing of when the calls were made (or not) that it’s because the people in the front who are now filling in in the back are letting the follow up calls fall through the cracks.

So what does she do? She goes over these numbers with our general manager and says basically “You see the problem? I’ll give you the month of April to fix it and if sales don’t come up we’ll have to do something different”

What would I have done? As a typical entrepreneur, I would have said that it’s OBVIOUS that the guy who left needs to be replaced and I would have been frustrated as hell that somebody didn’t see this coming half way through the month and waited till I saw it at the end of the month and I would have wanted changes made right now.

Which way is right?
What? You think I’m going to say my wife is wrong – all over the internet? I may be dumb but I’m not crazy. And I like to think that I’m not a typical entrepreneur anymore. There are three things to think about.

1. A typical entrepreneur’s approach only works if you’ve instructed people how to analyze the numbers and told them that it’s their job to do so and how frequently you want them to do this and how to come up with solutions to the problems they uncover when they analyze the numbers. If you’ve done that and put people who have that skill in the right positions then you have the “right” to be frustrated when they don’t do their job. In my experience most entrepreneurs don’t do any of this, but they still want the results of having done it.

2. My wife has never done this, and given the way responsibility is assigned in our company she has no intention of doing it. She’s keeping the job of analysis and problem solving on her desk. So her way is perfectly suited for our company – even though it’s slower than what a more typical entrepreneur might want.

3. I’ve given you a bit of a red herring by talking about the typical entrepreneur the way I have. If my experience of coaching entrepreneurs since 1994 has given me insight to what’s typical, the typical ones don’t even start to measure things to the degree that we do. So they would have no idea why sales were down. They’d just be upset when they saw the decline. So what appears to be slow as I tell this story (taking a month to see the problem and another month to fix it) is actually fast compared to what usually happens. (A month to see the problem and several months fuming about it while casting about for a fix – and maybe never uncovering the real cause). Because we’ve always measured a lot of stuff in our company, and always looked to find the root cause of any problems, not just the immediate solution, I don’t think I’m the typical entrepreneur.

Takeaways:

• You need to measure the right stuff. At first you don’t know what’s the right stuff so measure more than you think you need.
• Make sure your expectations for people are in line with their skill set, and what you’ve trained them to do. They can’t read minds.

[tags] management, entrepreneur, small business [/tags]