Author: Andrew Cooke

The Importance of Management & Leadership Development

Andrew Cooke Leadership Management, Management Development, Uncategorized

The Management & Leadership Development Imperative

Why Management & Leadership Development is a priority and its benefits.

by Andrew Cooke, Growth & Profit Solutions

Leadership Development 2

One of the top issues for CEOs is business growth; however the ability of the business to achieve this growth is being stymied by the lack of suitably skilled staff – in short, effective leadership.

Strong leadership and management is a key factor in fostering innovation, unlocking the potential of the workforce and ensuring organizations have the right strategies to drive productivity and growth.  However, this potential is not being achieved due to managerial shortcomings and a lack of strategic thinking. Effective management is the exception rather than the rule.

So how do we address this?

Overcoming these weaknesses and improving our leadership and management capability is fundamental to creating a culture where more businesses have the ambition, confidence, resilience and skills to respond to the current economic challenges and compete successfully both nationally and globally.

By providing more comprehensive management training and development for budding leaders, companies can gain the edge over competitor firms.

Managerial Performance

A recent report in the UK stated that UK businesses are losing over £19 billion per year due to poor management.  In fact, almost half of say their line manager is effective, with 43% of UK managers rating their own line manager as ineffective – and only one in five are qualified.  However, management problems are not restricted to the lower or mid-levels, with the reporting highlighting incompetence of bad management of company directors as being responsible for 56% of corporate failures.

How much is this costing your business, and what are your risks with those at the top?

One of the root causes of management and leadership weaknesses is due to poor training and development, and this is a global and systemic problem.  For example, first line managers are primarily selected because of their technical capability rather than their potential to move into more senior positions, despite technical proficiency being far less significant when considering subsequent promotion. They frequently do not receive any specific management training and are not only ill-equipped to take on this role, but their immediate line managers often lack the knowledge and skills to support them.

So What Do We Do

The situation can be improved. Companies need to invest in leadership development for their managers, by doing this they can be prepared for the non-technical aspects of their job, which become increasingly important as they advance.

To build a robust and sustainable high performance business you have to take a more strategic view of management development.  To do this effectively you need to have:

  • Commitment to Management and Leadership Development (MLD) – driven by the CEO and senior management ;
  • HR practices that reinforce MLD – such as performance management, leadership succession planning and competency frameworks;
  • Alignment between business strategy and HR strategy – managers’ skills are clearly developed to drive business results.

Benefits of Management & Leadership Development

Good leadership and management can have a truly significant impact on organizational performance, both in the immediate and longer term.  Research has shown:

  • Best-practice management development can result in a 23% increase in organizational performance.
  • Effective management can significantly improve levels of employee engagement
  • A single point improvement in management practices (rated on a five-point scale) is associated with the same increase in output as a 25% increase in the labour force or a 65% increase in invested capital.

Management & Leadership Development is essential to long-term business success and, as such, provides a high return on investment (RoI) in both the short-term and the long-term, with the value created being realized and compounding year after year.

Growth & Profit Solutions partners with businesses to enable their key people to develop their commercial, management and leadership capabilities by working with them on addressing key challenges and opportunities on the job.  This allows experiential learning which is retained, obviates the need for key people to be absent whilst attending training courses, and is developed around the individual’s and the business’ needs. This helps to drive outcomes, retain critical talent whilst building a talent pipeline, and develops the in-house capabilities of the business allowing it to grow effectively and on a sustainable basis.

The question is not can you afford to invest in Management & Leadership Development, but can you afford not to?  If you have already started, then keep going; if you haven’t started, then start today – but don’t wait till tomorrow, by the time it becomes a “squeaky wheel” and has your attention it will be too late!

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Click here to find out more about Andrew Cooke and Growth & Profit Solutions.

How to Use Deadlines to Your Advantage

Andrew Cooke Management, Time Management , ,

How to use deadlines to your advantage

We often live in fear of deadlines or see them as the main source of our stress. You know how it goes: “Only two months left to make your annual target”, “The report has to be completed and on the boss’ desk by Friday morning”, or “The customer has to have this by the close of business today”.

Here is the thing; it is how you frame deadlines that will determine how you perceive them. Do you see deadlines as something which is there which will disturb your work-life balance or something that can you achieve a better balance? Do you want deadlines to be a source of stress or a source of energy? The choice is yours.

Here are some of the ways you can reframe deadlines to help you become more effective and efficient by adopting a perspective of:

  • Deadlines provide a means by which you can easily and quickly prioritize your work.
  • Deadlines help you and your team to focus, align your efforts and improve collaboration
  • Deadlines help you to determine when and why you “just say no”.

Deadlines can help you be more productive when used properly. In doing this:

1. Don’t give everything a deadline.  Not all work is important and urgent – only give deadlines to work that is. If you create a deadline for everything then if everything is a priority, nothing is a priority.

2. Plan around the deadlines. You need to make sure that you allocate people, time and resources in a suitable way to ensure the work gets done. This is especially true with deadlines that are further out in the future, and where we are often more prone to procrastinate and then we panic to complete the work in time.

3. Create contingency plans. We have all experienced the problem of being behind schedule. We know it can happen, so create contingency plans so that know what to do and how to recover the lost time.  Especially if your work is dependent on others doing the work on-time. If you don’t have a contingency plan you will be forced to react, this usually results in poor decisions being made and poor results realized.

4. Have mini-deadlines. If the deadline is a long way off, then create mini-deadlines for smaller pieces of the work. This helps you to monitor progress and ascertain where the plan and deadlines might be at risk.

5. Let people know what is happening.  Your work is often impacted by the work (or lack) of others and in turn your work (or lack) of impacts other. Make sure you let others know what is happening or not, and the associated upside and risks – similarly others need to reciprocate.  Doing this helps you to determine what needs to be done to keep to the deadline, what might be needed a change in the scope of work being done, or if the deadline needs to be shortened or lengthened.

Deadlines are a tool. Using them properly they can help you get more of the work done, and more of the right work done. Use these guidelines to help you leverage the power of deadlines and get more done, more easily with less stress.

To view or download a PDF version of this blog click here

Share your thoughts and ideas here, or email me at andrew.cooke@business-gps.com.au

If you found this article of use or interest please don’t hesitate to share it with others.

Click here to find out more about Andrew Cooke and Growth & Profit Solutions.

Using the Decision Matrix for Better Decisions

Andrew Cooke Decision Making, Tool , , ,

Making Better Decisions – Using the Decision Matrix

by  Andrew Cooke, Growth & Profit Solutions

Decisions are made in a subjective and varied way, creating poor decisions and contributing to poor outcomes.  See how a simple tool can help you make better decisions – whether at business or home.

When making business decision we often find that we are reinventing the decision-process every time, and consistently allowing subjectivity to sway our decisions.  This is especially true in team or group environments where a person’s perceived position, authority or their ability to dominate the conversation can mean that their personal viewpoint carries disproportionate weight and effect.

So how can we reduce this subjectivity, yet maintain the debate and dialogue necessary to make a robust decision.  There is a simple, yet effective, tool – the Decision Matrix.

What is the Decision Matrix?

The Decision Matrix is a tool which reduces the subjectivity in decision-making by creating a series of selection filters.  The real value of the Decision Matrix lies in the conversation and discussion it engenders in the group when working through the process.  As such, it is this conversation which opens up the dialogue, creating a richer set of options to choose from, and a clear and consistent process when selecting with which option(s) to proceed.  In doing this the Decision Matrix enables the group or team to identify, agree on, weight and importantly take ownership of a set of factors that are seen by all as influencing that decision,

How the Decision Matrix Works – Step by Step

Having determined what the decision to be made is about you:

Step 1: Generate a list of the issues/options/alternatives that require a decision to be made.

As a group, having already determined what the decision is that is to be made, create a list of all the relevant issues, options or alternatives.

Step 2: Get your group or team to brainstorm the critical factors

This are the critical factors that would influence the selection of the issues/options/alternatives identified in Step 1.

Notes:

  • Criteria are both personal and business-focused, as such criteria have aspects that are both logical and emotional;
  • Don’t have too many criteria – this weakens the process and the choices made are more likely to be made on outlying factors – we would suggest no more than 10.

Step 3: Create Weightings for the Criteria/Factors

Having chosen the selection Criteria/Factors, you now need to weigh them individually to jointly total 100.  By doing this you are making it clear that not all criteria are equal – some have greater significance than others.  The more important the criteria the higher the weighting or score. The discussion in this area between the group or team members helps them to understand each other’s perspective, and to create a commonly agreed and shared understanding of how to evaluate the alternatives, and why in that way.

Step 3: Input the information from the above steps by:

  • Across the top of the chart create columns for each issue/option/alternative listed.  Label  the first column as “Weightings” and the second column as the “Do Nothing” choice.  For all subsequent columns put in each of the issues/options/alternatives.
  • Down the side of the chart create rows for each Criteria/Factor.
  • For each factor put the relevant weighting in its “Weighting” column.
  • For the “Do Nothing” column put a score in each factor at 50% of the weighting for the factor.  For example, if a factor had a weighting of 10 then the “Do Nothing” column for that factor would be scored as 5.  The total of all the factors for the “Do Nothing” column should add up to 50.

Step 4: Score Each Factor for All the Issues/Options/Alternatives Listed Across the Top

  • It is important to focus on one factor/criteria at a time and, in doing so, complete the grid row by row.
  • When scoring a factor note that you cannot score more than that factor’s weighting – for example, if a factor has a weighting of 12 then it cannot score 13 or more, the highest score it can be given is 12 – but it can always score less
  • When scoring start with the first factor, work your way across the row, and then repeat this with the next factor. This helps you to compare that factor against all the alternatives.

Step 5: Total the Scores for Each Issue/Option/Alternative

  • This will give you a score for each and the means by which to prioritise them, with the highest score being your first choice.

Notes for when using the Decision Matrix

Remember, this is a tool.  You may not agree with the result that you generate with this, in that case open up the discussion as to why and get others’ input.  Simply because this tool says that one alternative is your top priority does not mean that it should be so.

Decision Matrix – Worked Example:

In the example below the question is:

“Which of my main customers should I concentrate on to grow my business?”

  1. I have identified my 5 clients (Step 1).
  2. I have identified, with my group, the key criteria (Step 2) by which to evaluate my criteria.
  3. I have completed the decision matrix scores (Steps 3 – 5).
Decision Matrix

From this we can see the following:

  • The customer I should concentrate on growing my business is Customer 2.
  • However, Customer 4 is a close 2nd – being only 3 points behind.

Further Uses of the Decision Matrix

I may want to use this to decide that I want to focus only on customers who score more than 70 points.  Again, Customer 2 is the only one to achieve this (with 71 points).

However, I can use the Decision Matrix to ask the question of Customer 4, which is marginal with a score of 68 – “Which factors for Customer 4 can I increase their score so that the total is above 70?”.

For example, if you could raise their score on Prompt Payment to an 8 then Customer 4 would then score 70 points and would be focused on as a result.

This then raises the question of “How do I improve Customer 4’s ability to pay promptly?”  This could involve, for example, getting the customer to pre-pay future orders or to reduce their arrears with your company.

As such the Decision Matrix not only helps you to prioritise, but to drive actions to help you realise the outcomes you are looking for.

However, making a good decision does not mean that you will get a good outcome.  To learn more on this read “Leadership & Decision-Making”.

How will you use this tool?  What decisions can this help you with?

Share your ideas, insights and experience.  Share the knowledge, share the wealth!

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Click here to find out more about Andrew Cooke and Growth & Profit Solutions.

The Key Differences Between Management & Leadership

Andrew Cooke Leadership, Management


A business needs to have both effective managers and effective leaders; it cannot operate without one of them. Leadership and management are different roles, not different people.  As such, all leaders are managers but not all managers are leaders.  Let me explain further.

There are many in management positions – those who control or administer part of the business who have a title such as “manager”, or “supervisor” or  “director” – who have the necessary management skills (for example, being able to plan, schedule time effectively, manage budgets etcetera). But titles do not make leaders.  To be a leader you need to have people who will willingly follow you.  This has two implications:

  • If no one is following you then you are just a manager.
  • You can have no formal title or authority but, because people follow you, you can be a leader.

As such, leadership is not a noun, it is a verb. But leadership is not just about having followers, and management is not just about control – there are differences that collectively make management and leadership very different but complementary. Kotter concisely defines management and leadership as the following:

“In fact, management is a set of well-known processes, like planning, budgeting, structuring jobs, staffing jobs, measuring performance and problem-solving, which help an organization to predictably do what it knows how to do well. Management helps you to produce products and services as you have promised, of consistent quality, on the budget, day after day, week after week. In organizations of any size and complexity, this is an enormously difficult task. We constantly underestimate how complex this task really is, especially if we are not in senior management jobs. So, management is crucial — but it’s not leadership.

Leadership is entirely different. It is associated with taking an organization into the future, finding opportunities that are coming at it faster and faster and successfully exploiting those opportunities. Leadership is about vision, about people buying in, about empowerment and, most of all, about producing useful change. Leadership is not about attributes, it’s about behavior. And in an ever-faster-moving world, leadership is increasingly needed from more and more people, no matter where they are in a hierarchy. The notion that a few extraordinary people at the top can provide all the leadership needed today is ridiculous and it’s a recipe for failure.”

The essence of the difference between management and leadership can be summarized in one sentence: Management is about coping with Complexity; Leadership is about coping with Change.  As such, Management is about Resources, Leadership is about People.  Let’s explore this further in the table below which highlights some of the key differences.

Key differences between management and leadership

Management Leadership
Doing things right… Doing the right things…
Efficiency Effectiveness
Transactional Transformational
Speed Direction
Practices Principles
Things People
Manage complexity Manage change
Drive stability, efficiency, and order Drive innovation, adaptability and change
Task-focused People-focused
Operational role Situational role
Content is important Context is important

As you can see from this list there is a tension between management and leadership which, if you achieve the right balance between the two, can be highly productive and beneficial.

However, if you have management with weak leadership or leadership with weak management you will have an imbalance. We explore this in the leadership/management matrix.

The Leadership/Management Matrix

So which is more important, management or leadership? This is not the right question to ask, rather the question to ask what is the balance between management and leadership that you need to have? To answer this, you need to at what role each plays. Management ensures the stability and efficiency necessary to run today’s business reliably. Leadership creates the change needed to take advantage of new opportunities, to avoid serious threats, and to create and execute new strategies. The point is that management and leadership are very different, and when organizations are of any size and exist in environments which are volatile, both are essential to helping them win.

The management/leadership matrix show what happens when you have weak or strong leadership interacting with weak or strong management.  The four quadrants are:

  • Doomed – weak management, weak leadership.  Here the business is run inefficiently and with no clear direction to guide and align people’s efforts, decisions and the allocation of resources.  People are not inspired or motivated to achieve high-performance, and the business is losing to its competitors.  The business is unlikely to survive beyond the short-term.
  • Innovative – weak management, strong leadership. Here the business is able to adapt quickly and effectively, but there are insufficient management and associated skills in place to drive stability, efficiency and to create the necessary order to manage the resulting complexity and create order from which to build.
  • Well run but bureaucratic – strong management, weak leadership.  Here the business is well-structured and managed; it works efficiently which is good while the status quo exists.  However, in an environment of change, it finds itself relatively rigid and inflexible with its existing bureaucracy and organization being unable to adapt effectively.  This can expose the business with existing strengths potentially becoming major liabilities, potential competitors going unrecognized or changes in customer need going unmet.
  • Well run and innovative – strong management, strong leadership.  Here there is a healthy balance of management and leadership skills and capacity.  The business has a clear direction around which everyone and all actions is aligned, people are inspired and motivated, and as a result, they work both efficiently and effectively.  They are competitive, adaptive and have the right mix of skills, capacity enabled by a strong business culture which supports the people in their work.

Over-managed and Under-led

A common complaint in most businesses is that they are over-managed and under-led (in the bottom-right quadrant of the matrix, bureaucratic). Those at the top of the hierarchy (note I do not call them leaders) are often more focused on doing things right (management) rather than doing the right things (leadership).

Over recent years the emphasis of senior management has been on having an efficient business (management) rather than an effective business (leadership).  In pursuing this they have focused on getting the business processes (management) right, rather than the people right (leadership).  This focuses senior management on controlling people (management), not on helping them collaborate (leadership).

Part of this problem has been historical in that for many years businesses operated in a relatively static environment and having a management focus made sense. Now we are in an environment of accelerating change. We are experiencing volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA) at an unprecedented level and rate.

The problem with many businesses being overmanaged and underled is that the business focuses on maintaining the status quo at a time when people need to change to meet the new challenges and opportunities.  This creates an organization that is inflexible, backward-looking and slow to change. We need to change as fast as the world around us to avoid becoming obsolete.

To overcome VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Agility) we need to develop, articulate and drive across the business a clear Vision, Understanding, Clarity and Agility.  This is all about dealing with change and helping people to embrace that change successfully.  In short, it is the work of a leader and not a manager.  It is a case of the old adage – what got you here won’t get you there! Leadership is more important than ever in these changing times.

If you want to be successful in your career, your business and your life then change always starts with you! You need to adapt and change yourself first before you can help others to do so.  You need to move from being a manager to being a leader.  You need to become agile in what you do, to challenge the status quo and to become comfortable with ambiguity and volatility. If this is uncomfortable for you then you can stay a manager – but be prepared for a life with fewer challenges, fewer options, and fewer opportunities.

To view or download a PDF version of this blog click here

Share your thoughts and ideas here, or email me at andrew.cooke@business-gps.com.au

If you found this article of use or interest please don’t hesitate to share it with others.

Click here to find out more about Andrew Cooke and Growth & Profit Solutions.

What You Said Is Not What I Heard – How to Communicate Effectively

Andrew Cooke Communication ,

Message Distortion – What You Said Is Not What I Heard

What you said is not what is heard…

by Andrew Cooke, Growth & Profit SolutionsSherlockHolmes

Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle wrote his first Sherlock Holmes story in 1886. The fictitious character was based on a real man, Dr Joseph Bell, a renowned forensic scientist at Edinburgh University. Conan-Doyle wrote 60 adventures in total. The collection is known as The Cannon. All but 4 stories are narrated by Holmes’ loyal sidekick Dr Watson. Together, they solve the most amazing mysteries. Now think for a moment. What’s the most famous Sherlock Holmes expression you know?

Most probably you answered, “Elementary, my dear Watson.”

Now here’s the interesting part. The character Sherlock Holmes never actually uses this precise phrase. You won’t find it in any of Conan-Doyle’s books. Holmes does say ‘Watson’ all the time. He was his loyal companion after all. He also uses the word ‘elementary’ repeatedly, as a way of showing how smart he is. (They run into the most complex situations. Holmes points out the solution and states it’s ‘elementary’ as if the solution is the most obvious thing in the world). And somehow, both words ended up together. Why? Because there’s a nice fit. We can easily imagine Sherlock Holmes saying, “Elementary, my dear Watson,” showing his unique ability and intellectual superiority towards his friend Watson.

It’s a characteristic of a communication phenomenon science calls Message Distortion, another villain on the execution road. Gordon Allport and Joseph Postman researched message shortening. And their results are astonishing. A message loses a whopping 70 percent of its details after 5 to 6 mouth-to-mouth transmissions.

Imagine the effect of this happening with the messages you are putting out internally and externally. Internally we can get message distortion when senior management cascade messages downwards. How these are communicated and the essence of the message changes slightly with each repetition, often making the final transmission of the message quite different to what it started out as. Similarly, when information is escalated up the management chain we find that details, nuances and key information is often omitted or changed giving a very different picture to what was intended or expected. There is a large body of research that indicates the effects of the hierarchy on the distortion of messages.  Just a few of those findings are that:

  • Employees tend to send more favorable than unfavorable information is sent up the organizational hierarchy, especially when that information is important.
  • Employees tend to send messages that please their supervisors or managers.
  • Employees tend to send information up the hierarchy that they think their supervisor or manager wants to hear.
  • Unfavorable information is more likely to be blocked from being sent up the hierarchy.
  • The more upwardly mobile an employee is, the greater the distortion of messages that go up the hierarchy.
  • The less that employees trust their supervisors or managers, the more that information is distorted as it moves up the hierarchy.

Externally message distortion can also happen when you communicate with customers, suppliers and other stakeholders – and when messages are misunderstood they can be costly in terms of money, time, relationships and management attention.

To reduce the incidence and effects of message distortion use these three techniques:
1. Communicate only the essence of the message – keep it brief and succinct.
2. Check that the other person has understood what has been said.
3. Check that the other person has interpreted it correctly, ask how they will share the message with others.

This won’t eliminate message distortion, but it will help to reduce it significantly, and to help people communicate clearly and consistently, and to avoid misunderstandings and mistakes.

Click here to find out more about Andrew Cooke and Growth & Profit Solutions.

Why You Should Measure HOW You Perform

Andrew Cooke Performance , , ,

Measuring Performance Doesn‘t Help! Measuring How You Perform Does!!

It is not what you do that matters, but how you do it that does!

by Andrew Cooke, Growth & Profit Solutions

Significant effort, time and resources are spent by companies in assessing the Managing Performance 2current level of performance in order to be able to determine what we need to do to perform at the right level.  This focuses on the result.  This is backward thinking.  This is like managing for profit by measuring your profit.  Profit cannot be improved by managing profit, rather but by improving your revenues and costs.  So it is with performance.

To improve performance you need to understand what the three drivers of performance. Once we do so we can then start to analyse what we need to do to sustain or improve our performance

Andrew’s 3 Drivers of Performance

  1. Right People
  2. Right Tools
  3. Access to the Development of the Skills (Aptitudes) and Behaviours (Attitudes) Needed 3 Drivers of Performance

Right People

You want people who want to work for you, who are able to use their talents in the right role and find gratification and recognition in their work. Their values and approach match those of your business.

Right Tools

People need to have the necessary tools to enable them to do their work and to support them in doing so. For example, an architect needs to have the right software to design and develop buildings, the necessary space

Access to the Development of the Rights Skills & Behaviours

These are probably the most important drivers.  You may have the right people and the right tools, but it is the skills they bring to bear in doing the work, and their attitude they have to how they do their work, that will differentiate how they individually and collectively perform.

  • Skills – people have the necessary skills to do the work, or ability to learn the skills they need to be a high-performer.  This is the what of the work done.
  • Behaviours – this is the how of the work done.

You want people who have high-performing behaviours, that is the way they do their work creates synergies, opportunities and virtuous cycles – for example, they hold themselves accountable for their work, and look to remedy their own mistakes without being told and share lessons learnt with others.. You also want to ensure you don’t have people whose behaviours are those of low-performers (for example, they always find fault in others but never themselves, they are unable or unwilling to learn and develop (especially from their mistakes), they put their self-interests above those of the team etcetera).

Here you need to be able to provide access to the means by which people can develop the right skills for their job as their role and business conditions change, and to have the rights systems in place for recruiting, managing and developing the right behaviours – the high-performing behaviours which drive higher performance.

Next Steps

So stop measuring your performance in terms of what you have done – this is an end-result.  Rather, start measuring how you perform – look at how you have performed (or  failed to) in terms of each of these three factors, and how you can improve each factor both individually and in their interaction with each other.  Only by focusing on how you perform can you improve your performance.’

Look at your performance in terms of each of these three factors in term.  In doing so look at where you are performing now, and determine where you need to perform, and identify several strategies to help you bridge the gap. Look at how each factor interacts with the others, assess the gap in performance, and again identify several ways to bridge the gap. Once you have done this then identify the top three actions from the list you have created which, if you address first, will have the greatest impact on improving your performance.

Good luck and share your experiences here!

Click here to find out more about Andrew Cooke and Growth & Profit Solutions.

How to Stop those You Manage from Managing You

Andrew Cooke Delegation, Management

How to free time, reduce your to-do list, and move back to managing from being managed!!!

Many managers often find themselves with long to-do lists which get longer, with more seeming to have been added then taken off at the end of each day.  The fault for this most often lies with the manager himself or herself, especially if they are caring managers who want to help others.  Why is this?

First, let’s understand what we mean by a “monkey”.

What is a “monkey”?

A “monkey” is simply a task or project.  The important factor here is that every task requires ownership and supervision. The monkey metaphor is a nice way to describe how tasks get pushed toward managers when they really need to be kept away to improve efficiency. For example, if a staff member comes to me and says “I can’t find this” or “how should I do that”, what do you think is happening? They are passing their “monkey” to me:

  1. They identify a problem and immediately pass it to me
  2. I take the problem and offer a solution

In doing this the “monkey” is climbing off from your report’s back and onto your back.  This happens a couple of times a day, day-in and day out, and for every week.  Suddenly you wake up to find yourself overloaded with work while your reports twiddle their thumbs while they wait for you to come back to them with a solution.  They then hope that the work has been done and they have escaped the need of having to do it.

The irony here is that your reports come to you and ask for a status update on what they have, effectively, delegated to you!  The managers are being managed! And so you get managers who are running out of time while their reports are running out of work.  It is not a pretty picture, but it is one we all recognize, of managers feeling overwhelmed and becoming a bottleneck.

How You Should Manage the “Monkey”

There are two simple steps that ideally should occur, and which you need to have in place to ensure you are not managed – and in the process made a monkey!

What should happen is:

  1. Staff member identifies a problem and offers a solution
  2. You approve solution or recommend alternative

By following some very simple processes you can easily optimize my time, give staff more responsibility and motivation, and focus on the important things (which tend to get buried under the morass of other’s work.

By getting rid of the monkeys that others have given you, you free up time which you can spend with your people!  

Four Golden Rules for Monkey Management

When a report comes to you with a “monkey” (or two), here are a few guidelines on how to ensure the monkeys (the tasks they have to do) stay with them and not with you, and yet still progress the completion of these tasks.

RULE #1 – Describe the monkey

The dialogue between you and your staff member must not end until appropriate next moves have been identified and clearly specified as regards what has to be done with the task or issue.

Example from the staff member:

  • “I will schedule the project and inform the client when it will be completed and notify you if there are any problems”

 

Examples from the Manager:

  • “Prepare a one-page brief outlining the problems and possible solutions to this problem”

Benefits:

  1. Everyone knows that the dialogue will not end until “next moves” have been specified.
  2. People get better prepared when they know that their next moves need to be specified.
  3. The rule assumes action by staff.
  4. The more clearly we understand what needs to be done the greater the energy and motivation that exists for doing it.

RULE #2 – Assign the monkey

All monkeys shall be owned and handled at the lowest organization level consistent with their welfare.

Example:

  • “Mr. Avery is now John’s client so his satisfaction with our service is John’s responsibility”

Reasons:

  1. Staff has more collective time, energy and, in some cases, knowledge.
  2. Staff is closer to the work and so are better equipped to handle it.
  3. Creates more time for business management.
  4. Management should only handle tasks that only they can do.

Benefits:

Sometimes when you insist on the very best in your people’s work, you may encounter resistance because doing their very best often requires hard work. On the other hand, if you permit your people to be less than their best, they sometimes don’t actively resist. So it sometimes seems that they would rather do less than their best. The leaders we remember most in our lives are the ones that push us.

RULE #3 – Ensure the monkey

Every monkey leaving you on the back of one of your people must be covered by one of two insurance policies:

  1. recommend, then act, or
  2. act, then advise.

When people have freedom, they will make mistakes. That’s why monkeys need to be insured. At times staff may want to take more risk but the safety and needs of the business need to take precedence.

Monkey insurance policies

  1. Recommend, and then act. If there is a high risk then the team member should be told to recommend, then get approval from the manager and then act.
  2. Act, and then advise. If there is little risk, then the team member can act and then advise the manager of the results. As team members get more proficient in their tasks this will happen more, but the responsibility has to be delegated from the manager to ensure safety.

RULE #4 – Check on the monkey:

Proper follow-ups mean healthier monkeys. Every monkey should have a check-up appointment. You must specify the time and place for follow-up. Monkeys sometimes develop unexpected problems and the process of discovering and correcting problems in meetings tends to:

  1. Lower the boss’s anxieties
  2. Develop people’s competence through coaching – which increases the boss’s confidence in their competence and further decreases his or her anxieties
  3. The coaching increases the odds that the boss will eventually be able to delegate to that person

Delegation

Finally, some notes on when to delegate work and, in doing so, reduce the need to manage the monkeys. Managers should only delegate when they are confident that:

  1. The project is on the right track and staff know what has to be done
  2. Their people can successfully handle the project on their own
  3. That costs, timing, quantity and quality are acceptable
  4. That there is commitment from staff

Note: if you delegate without following these guidelines you will quickly find yourself the proud parent to a family (or troop) of monkeys.

By delegating effectively you give people responsibility, and this is the best way to develop responsibility in others.  It allows you to practice hands-off management as much as possible and hands-on management as much as necessary.

Next Steps

What are you going to do to manage your monkey?  For a free “Manage the Monkey” template to prioritize, re-assign and manage your monkeys please email andrew.cooke@business-gps.com.au.

This overview is based on an article in HBR “Management Time: Who’s Got the Monkey?” (1974).

To view or download a PDF version of this blog click here

Share your thoughts and ideas here, or email me at andrew.cooke@business-gps.com.au

If you found this article of use or interest please don’t hesitate to share it with others.

Click here to find out more about Andrew Cooke and Growth & Profit Solutions.

The “Salutary Science of Hierarchiology”

Andrew Cooke Leadership, Leadership Development, Management, Management Development, Uncategorized ,

Managing the “Peter Principle” – Developing Key Leadership & Management Skills

by  Andrew Cooke, Growth & Profit Solutions

What are the risks of poor leaders, what are the key skills and capabilities a good leader needs to have, and how can you do this?

Introduction

Effective leadership requires a blend of skills – commercial, relational, managerial and cognitive.  However, many organisations suffer from having leaders who lack these skills in full or part.  Often such leaders are victims of the “Peter Principle”.  It was formulated by Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull in their 1969 book The Peter Principle, a humorous treatise, which also introduced the “salutary science of hierarchiology.”

In summary, the Peter Principle assumes that people are promoted because they are competent, and that the tasks higher up in the hierarchy require skills or talents they do not possess. It concludes that due to this, a competent employee will eventually be promoted to, and remain at, a position at which he or she is incompetent.

An alternative version of this is the “Dilbert Principle”, a 1990s satirical observation by Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams which, by contrast, assumes that hierarchy just serves as a means for removing the incompetent to “higher” positions where they will be unable to cause damage to the workflow, assuming that the upper echelons of an organization have little relevance to its actual production, and that the majority of real, productive work in a company is done by people lower in the power ladder.  This is beautifully illustrated here and below.

The Dilbert Principle - Leadership

What We Need From Leaders

Whichever principle you subscribe to there is an underlying theme – leaders who lack the necessary skills, experience and insights can cause considerable damage to the business. This can happen even if the leader is acting in what he or she believes is the business’ best interests.

Leaders need to be able to listen and respond, be flexible, adaptive, and be able to develop innovative solutions whilst handling multiple and conflicting priorities.  The speed and complexity of business is becoming faster as is the rate of change in the business environment.  This means that important and significant decisions have to be made quickly, often with incomplete information, which can carry significant risks.  Leaders need to be able to handle this and more, they cannot rely on the skills that got them to their current position to keep them there – they need to grow themselves and develop new skills and capabilities on a continual basis.

From this it is clear that leaders and managers need a broad general management development that focuses on commercial, relational, managerial and cognitive capabilities. We need to ask some tough questions about how our organization is training its leaders and managers to develop these vital elements. Those responsible for commissioning, designing and/or delivering leadership and management training must ensure that programs move beyond task-related knowledge and skills and emphasize a fuller range of general management competencies that are needed to manage increasingly complex markets and business relationships.

Critical Leadership & Managerial Skills & Capabilities

We have identified four categories of skills and capabilities that leaders and managers need in this new environment: Commercial, Relational, Managerial, and Cognitive.  These comprise of 10 specific yet integrated skill sets that exist.  These are listed and detailed below:

Summary of Business Development Skills & Capabilities

Commercial Skills & Capabilities Financial Insight
Business Acumen
Customer Insight
Relational Skills & Capabilities Managing Relationships
Inspiring Trust
Managerial Skills & Capabilities People Management Skills
Openness to Change & Adaptability
Influencing Skills
Cognitive Skills & Capabilities Innovative Problem-Solving
Ability to Identify Opportunities

Commercial Skills & Capabilities

Financial Insight

This includes understanding the implications of the proposed work for the company – revenue, margins, profitability, cash flows and risks associated with the work and the associated opportunity costs.  It also includes the ability to forecast and analyse client work, budgeting and prioritizing the work accordingly. The leader needs to be able to identify, uncover and anticipate the financial aspects of current and proposed work in terms of being able to assess the costs associated with the status quo, the benefits and associated value of the work, and its impact and implications on the achieving key financial metrics and objectives.

Business Acumen

This is the ability to understand the implications of the technical/specialist work and how it applies to the client’s business at both the level of the work being done, and how it impacts other areas of the business and the business as a whole.  This includes being able to translate technical outcomes and benefits to those of the business, and to align them with the business’ objectives and goals and those of the economic buyer(s) within the client (the individual(s) who have the authority and budget for the work and who have a vested interest and responsibility for the outcomes of the work).

Customer Insight

The ability to understand the client and to adopt their perspective, ensuring that current and proposed work is aligned with the clients’ needs and requirements.  This includes having a good understanding of the client’s company, industry, competition and key trends.  This allows the company to orientate its positioning and work around the client, and ensure that the outcomes are aligned with the client’s needs.  This ensures the company is not focused what it does, but it focused on the outcomes the client needs (these are often not what the client wants).

Relational Skills & Capabilities

Managing Relationships

In complex business situations there is a need to be able to manage multi-level, multi-functional relationships to uncover, identify, develop and manage business opportunities.  Externally, the company needs to identify and address the economic buyer, key decision-makers and influencers and to understand their respective roles, interactions and what they need to progress the relationship, and how to build it according to their personal preferences. There is a need to ensure that the right people with the right technical and commercial skills are matched appropriately with their peers in the client’s organisation to ensure a proper communication flow, and for the company to integrate itself into the client organisation at multiple levels.  Furthermore, how to manage and influence stakeholders is key.

Inspiring Trust

Trust is the essential component to being able to uncover and win opportunities with clients, as well as maintaining and developing key stakeholder relationships.  This takes time and effort, and requires creating rapport, understanding and establishing common areas of interest where the individuals in the company can demonstrate and prove themselves as helpful, relevant and of use.

Managerial Skills & Capabilities

People Management Skills

Much of business-to-business selling is done via teams and cross-functionality.  There is a need to manage the demands on the company in internally managing the resources and people required in winning client business, and the ability to handle people and deal with conflict in doing so. Business is based on relationships, and the ability to both manage the people and the associated relationships is important.

Openness to Change & Adaptability

Businesses are subject to change at an accelerating rate.  This requires the company to be able to adapt and meet these changes to survive and thrive, and to maintain focus and direction as priorities change and create conflicts.  Leaders and managers need to anticipate and to facilitate this. Similarly, the company also has to manage the effect of changes within the client’s organisation (e.g. new key people joining, existing contacts leaving etc) and in its markets and industry (e.g. deferment of projects with a fall in market demand).  This requires leaders to be able to take a holistic view of the company’s opportunities and understanding how and when to address changes or anticipated changes.

Influencing Skills

Complex sales in the business-to-business environment frequently involve working with personnel from the client and third parties over whom the company has no formal authority or control.  The ability to influence and negotiate with such people, as well as with people within the company, is key to dealing with changes and driving successful client outcomes.

Cognitive Skills & Capabilities

Innovative Problem-Solving

More work is won by companies who think in terms of developing a solution to an emerging client problem.  Being able to uncover and anticipate problems, whilst creating an innovative solution which creates real value for the client, whilst avoiding the risks of the status quo, differentiates the company and drives business opportunities.  Being able to put structure to this approach, without compromising the level of innovation, and to leverage this throughout the company’s different departments and other clients provides growth opportunities.  Leaders need to create, build and sustain the environment to foster and develop this.

Ability to Identify Opportunities

With rapid change occurring so there are a plethora of opportunities that can be identified and exploited.  Many more can be identified working in conjunction with the clients.  Being able to identify, capture and prioritize these opportunities in conjunction with innovative problem-solving and excellence in managing relationships and people will strengthen the business.  Leaders need to identify such opportunities, prioritize them and resource them properly to ensure there is the optimal opportunity for success.

Next Steps

Applying the business development diagnostic across the four areas of Commercial, Relational, Managerial, and Cognitive is the start of the process which comprises of three steps.  These include:

1. Understand Your Organisation’s Business Development Skills & Capabilities

Understanding the importance and interdependencies of these 4 areas, and how your organisation’s leaders and managers overall rate in each of the 10 skills and competencies, is the first step to understand what foundation you have to build from and to allow you to address the gaps.

2.  Focus on Developing & Implementing the Required Skills

Once we have determined this we need to prioritise how we leverage and develop this skill base, and to determine which priorities to address first in achieving our business goals and desired outcomes. On-going assistance with actual business development opportunities helps to drive this, and improve both the skill level and understanding.

3. Maintain, Review and Improve

Creating an on-going process of continuous improvement in the area of business development, and extending the skills throughout the organisation helps to deliver better and more sustainable results.  Enabling those who have developed their leadership and management skills to achieve mastery is done by having them coach and mentor others in this area.  This helps to create a common approach to business development, establishes best practices across the organisation, and shared insights and experience.

What has been your experience of this? What issues have you had, and how have you resolved them?  How would you like to raise the performance of your managers and leaders?  Share your ideas, insights and experience here – someone, somewhere has resolved the problems you face, just as you have resolved ones that others face.

Share the knowledge, share the wealth!

To find out how Growth & Profit Solutions can help you in developing your leaders and their critical leadership and managerial skills please contact us as below.

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5 Steps for Managing Delegated Work

Andrew Cooke Delegation, Management, Uncategorized

The skill in delegating work comes after you have delegated it

Now you have delegated work you need to make sure it gets done. Just because you have delegated the work does not mean it will automatically get done how or when you want to.

 

Follow these five steps to help you manage your delegated work more effectively:

  1. Assign the task to one person.Don’t assign the task to multiple people, just one person who will be responsible. Get them to confirm that they understand the assignment and have accepted responsibility for it.  A good way of doing this is to ask them to share with you what they understand the assignment is, and to ask them, explicitly, if they will be responsible for this. Until this is done, the hand-off is not complete.
  2. Articulate a specific outcome. In other words, what exactly are you expecting the other person to deliver to you or for you? I always start the assignment with a verb (e.g., “Call,” “Notify,” “Write,” “Order,” etc.) and finish it with an objective “deliverable” (such as a report, email list, agenda, meeting etcetera). You have to be able to tell whether the task was completed as assigned.
  3. Include your delivery timetable. Some projects have hard fast deadlines. For example, I might tell someone I need a task done by “the close of business on Friday.” Others are not as time sensitive. I might say I need a task done, “anytime in the next two weeks.” Regardless, you have to express your expectations and be clear.
  4. Make yourself available for consultation. You want to be a resource, but you don’t want to micro-manage the other person. The best way to do this is to stay focused on the outcome rather than the process. I personally don’t care how the other person gets the job done (assuming it is ethical); I only care about the end-result.
  5. Track the delegated task on a to-do list. This is crucial. Not everyone you delegate to will have a good task management system in place. Perhaps those directly under your supervision will—because you trained them—but what about the others?

Doing this will save you time, effort and make you more effective when delegating.

 

To view or download a PDF version of this blog click here

Share your thoughts and ideas here, or email me at andrew.cooke@business-gps.com.au

If you found this article of use or interest please don’t hesitate to share it with others.

Click here to find out more about Andrew Cooke and Growth & Profit Solutions,

Why Motivation Alone Is Not Enough & What Else You Need

Andrew Cooke Change, Motivation, Uncategorized

The Motivation Trap

by Andrew Cooke, Growth & Profit Solutions

Why motivation alone is not enough, you need more…

Imagine what would happen if your favorite football team took the field and the ONLY training they received in the last 8 months had been sitting in a room. Within the room, they’d be listening to legends of the game motivate them on what it takes to win and being shown presentations of what past champions have done by way of plays / strategies?

No practice drills, No fitness sessions, No practice games, No one-to-one coaching, No individual goals being set, No reviews of previous games and No new techniques.

Impossible task to win isn’t it. Logically it just doesn’t make sense to receive valuable motivation to change without then putting it in the right context and following it up with the hard work required to put strategies and actions in place to achieve the desired outcome.

However this is what countless businesses, teams and individuals do each day when it comes to their professional development and approach to change at present. And then they wonder why they are not getting the success they are looking for, and they continue in the same way yet expecting a different result.  As Einstein described it, “Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results”.

To understand why this occurs in professional development you need to look at human behavior.

At the end of the day it is much easier when it comes to professional development to be entertained by a motivational speaker (with many sitting at the back of the room responding to emails and chatting on social media these days!) than sitting down and slogging away developing clever strategies/actions in order to adapt your business. While there are terrific benefits for your professional development by listening to great speakers who provide the motivation to change and thought leadership to be innovative; the problem arises when the balance is 80% motivation and 20% strategy/action.

Many business advisors when providing advice to clients give in to this dynamic and only provide their clients what they ‘want’ – the quick fixes and magic bullet solutions. However clients need to be challenged as to what they really ‘need’ to achieve their desired objectives, and good business advisors will do this and challenge their client to ensure the thinking is robust, objective and underlying the real needs of the client.  As such the business advisor provides a balanced package where they become part consultant, part facilitator, part psychologist and part motivator as they customize their approach to deliver the outcomes their client desires.

The statistics are well known that 70% of change initiatives fail. There are countless business models on change and a myriad of great books about change such as Switch by Chip and Dan Heath. Each model, book or guru essentially brings achieving successful change back to three core factors being:

  1. The right motivation / desire to do something different
  2. The clarity to your vision / direction in order to head down the right path
  3. The robustness to your strategies / actions to ensure your team can implement effectively while in the right environment for change.

At GPS we state that if you scored yourself out of 10 for each of these three factors (where 1 is very low and 10 is very high), multiplied them together and then looked at it as a percentage you need a score of at least 64% (so 640 out of 1000) to successfully make the change occur. We call this your ‘change potential’.

Reflecting back to our football analogy, imagine in that example your team scored a 10 for motivation, a 2 for vision and a 1 for strategy. Their score would be 20 out of 1000 or 2% change potential. Nothing would change.

Having balance in professional development across all three areas is critical for success. Motivation alone while easiest to obtain, won’t get you far.

What has worked or not worked for you? Share your knowledge, share the wealth!

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