Death by Mismanagement

I had breakfast recently with an old colleague who is a top-notch ASIC designer. Among the many stories he told me, the lessons of this one stand out:

One year when he had been a key player in designing a new interface that doubled the speed of the devices we made, he was nominated for "Inventor of the Year." But he didn't find out about this nomination from his boss. Instead, he was invited to the dinner event at which the award is given out (without anyone knowing in advance which of the nominees is to receive the award). Of course, he says, he didn't receive the award; his boss, who had to attend the event with him, would not make eye contact with him during the event.

Later, at annual review time, he was ranked in the bottom 1/8th of the company's contributors. Naturally, he was curious about how this could happen while he was being nominated for Inventor of the Year. He asked HR about it. "Is this consistent?" he asked. "Of course not," they replied. "Can you do anything about it?" "No."

When management is sending two extremely conflicting messages to individual contributors like my colleague, it is an indication of deep trouble at several levels in the company. First, the immediate boss was almost certainly acting out a personal aversion -- if not vendetta -- against this engineer. Second, the fact that no one from higher levels of management were willing to take action is a sign of serious sickness in the company.

How long would you expect a company to lasst which sends such messages to experienced and long-term contributors? In fact, the "boss" in the story above was eventually laid off. But the damage to the engineer's morale and respect for the company were irreversible.

And so, no doubt, was the decline in the company's competitiveness. The company's sale to a former competitor was announced just a couple of months ago.

Trust and initiative

A client put his finger on the problem: The CEO doesn't trust the people working for him.

This CEO is an excellent salesman, financier and manager of his Board of Directors. But when it comes to everyone else, he gets his way or ... he gets his way. The client put it this way: Since he doesn't trust people to do things the right way, he judges their performance on one criterion only: Are they doing exactly what I asked? As soon as one of them challenges his directions, that person becomes suspect and eventually gets discredited.

Lacking trust in people below him, the CEO judges them only on loyalty and conformance. The result: lack of commitment. As the client said, "If you know that your decisions are going to be second-guessed, you stop taking responsibility for making them." It's much easier to let things go until "the Word" comes down from the top. It saves a lot of stress -- and removes intiative.

This is a disease often seen in large organizations. Top management does not delegate any real authority to the lower levels of management, so the managers stop trying to take initiative.

But this client's firm has fewer than 100 employees. Can you guess how long this enterprise will last without intiative coming from the ranks? The most creative and driven people will leave, and those who are left will not make the effort to distinguish this company from the competitors. Even if it survives, it will not be a fun place to work.

Are you languishing in a position without real authority? There's only one way make things better for the long term. Put your job on the line and demand the authority that is needed for your initiatives to be effective. Keep demanding it until they throw you out or make you the CEO. Or something in between. If you fail, you're better off somewhere else anyway.

Managing and listening

What makes management difficult for people who are technical experts? In a way, it's like the reputation that medical doctors have when they are managing their investments -- they are so accustomed to being the ones who "know" they have trouble taking advice from financial advisors. As a result, docs are reputed to be have the worst record as self-managed investors.

I can sympathize. As a technologist, I tried managing my own investments over a long period of time. Eventually, I realized that I "knew too much" about the technology and the companies as technology sources. So I would invest in companies that had great technology, but they would turn out to have poor businesses or inadequate marketing -- things I didn't recognize.

Moving from technical contributor (engineer, programmer, analyst, etc.) to manager is another difficult transition in which the contributor is accustomed to "knowing." As a resource for others on technology, we're used to being the authority. So the first thing we have to learn as managers is humility.

Actually, the first thing we need to learn is that management is an honorable profession with its own set of objectives, methods and styles. Our training is in "hard" sciences and technology, so we're rarely prepared to deal with the "soft" stuff of people interactions, influencing, leading, and communications. So let's be clear: there are a lot of new things to learn about.

Since we tend to manage our interactions by intuition and by reference to our upbringing, most of what we do as managers is not conscious: we don't see it as skills, but temperament. Believe me, however, you CAN change your interactions. The keys? Being interested in becoming effective as a manager. Becoming aware of the effect we are having on people. Being willing to listen to feedback. Being willing to listen.

Becoming a manager is all about dealing with non-quantitative stuff. Let the MBAs bring out their spreadsheets. When we need to do quantitative measurements, we'll have plenty of expertise with the methods and the tools. What we need is a willingness to listen, learn and improve.

Improve what? How do we measure ourselves as managers?