Archive for category Leadership

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The Comedian at Work

Posted by enrique s in Career, Leadership, Rants on February 24th, 2010

Every group of workers has a comic amongst them. He lightens the mood, pointing out the absurdities of rules and procedures. In my office, our own funny man, much like the Comedian from the Watchmen comics, tends to be a little darker in his approach to humor.

Our Comedian is a true original. Nobody is safe from his satiric barbs. He’s quick with a comeback, downplaying his frequent jabs with, “you put that one on a tee for me.” His appearance is deceiving, too, as he approaches everything with an air of annoyed nonchalance. It would appear to an outsider that he doesn’t care about his job, his responsibilities, or his coworkers. That outsider couldn’t be more off base.

The Comedian, you see, is a disguise. Underneath the facade dwells an intelligent man who cares deeply about his responsibilities. Those responsibilities include not only his job, but the well-being of his colleagues. While he might try to convince everyone that he doesn’t give a hoot about anything, subtle clues emerge about his true intentions. After some harmless needling, he’ll jump in and help with a problem. He meets all of his deadlines, and produces quality work. But there is one thing that he does that’s a dead giveaway to his true self.

His biggest benefit: his honesty. He ’s the only one who isn’t afraid to say what he truly thinks. He’s the King Solomon of the office. If you want the straight dope, you ask the Comedian. He pulls no punches, and suffers no fools. Take it or leave it.

He’ll also ask the questions that nobody else has the balls to ask. During a recent gathering with upper management, he asked the VP what everyone else had on their mind: “So, when do the layoffs start?” After a stunned silence, the VP gave the standard, non-answer answer. The Comedian, our champion, rolled his eyes and sat down. A brave question to ask, but not without its perils. I’m sure that he now has a bullseye on his back. No VP likes to be showed up.

The Comedian is our pressure-release valve. When tensions rise in the office due to unrealistic deadlines, and everyone’s hackles are up, a well-timed one-liner from the Comedian diffuses the tightness in the office.

So I’ll enjoy the Comedian for as long as he shares our foxhole, which may not be long. Even he acknowledged that possibility, as he asked me after the meeting with the VP, “Where do they keep the cardboard boxes?” I’ll miss his willingness to take one for the team.

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Lessons from Watching Jeopardy!

Posted by enrique s in Career, Leadership, Productivity on January 5th, 2010

The wise man knows he doesn’t know. The fool doesn’t know he doesn’t know. - Lao Tzu

One of the TV shows that I like to watch is Jeopardy! Sure, I like to show off how smart I am for my wife, which counteracts my failure to remember to take out the garbage. But I also use it as a barometer of how much I don’t know. And that’s today lesson, grasshopper.

The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.
-William Shakespeare

I think it’s in our nature to want to learn new things. The problem is, many corporations develop procedures that force everyone to do things the same exact way. While this does create a consistency, it can also stifle any positive development. I’ve talked about this in the past in this post:

Throw Out the Cookbook

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing. -Socrates

Procedures serve their purpose. You need some consistency in the day-to-day operations of your company. But procedures should be written that allow a little “wiggle room”, in order to let you deviate a bit. Otherwise, they should be changed when necessary. The business world is constantly evolving, and companies must be flexible enough to be able to change on the fly.

Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomfort. - Arnold Bennett

Procedures keep us in our comfort zones. They are the Golden Handcuffs, the leash that keeps us in line. They’re the excuse of last resort. If your strategy doesn’t work, you can always blame it on the procedure that you followed. But why blindly follow a procedure that’s forcing your company to weaken itself? Take a hard look at your procedures, and change the ones that do more harm than good. Break out of that cage right now!

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Deming’s Seven Deadly Diseases

Posted by enrique s in Career, Leadership, Motivation on December 17th, 2009

I’ve wrote about W. Edwards Deming and his 14 Points in a previous post. You can read it here. Today, I’d like to talk about his Seven Deadly Diseases. These were the ailments that Deming saw as reason for the decline of Western Management:

Lack of constancy of purpose to plan product and service that will have a market and keep the company in business and provide jobs.

General Motors, anyone? Remember the Hummer? As people were clamoring for hybrid vehicles, dealerships couldn’t give these beasts away.

Emphasis on short-term profits: short term thinking, fed by fear of unfriendly takeover, and by plush from bankers and owners, for dividends.

My company focuses on “key salients”, i.e. measurable targets such as new orders, sales, profit, etc. Bonuses for the directors are tied to achieving their numbers for the year. It gets real interesting at year-end, as contracts are accepted with less-than-optimal profit margins just to achieve the new orders target. If this isn’t short-term thinking, I don’t know what is.

Personal review system, or evaluation of performance, merit rating, annual review, or annual appraisal, by whatever name, for people in management, the effects of which are devastating. Management by fear would be better, than management by objective without a method for accomplishment.

Oh boy, a pet peeve of mine. Every year, we have to compile a list of our objectives. The achievement of many of these is out of my control, but they count towards my performance anyway. What everyone does is sandbag their objectives, making most of them easy to attain, so that there’s only good news at review time. Nobody wants to miss accomplishing an objective. The system as it exists is basically useless as a management tool.

Mobility of management: job hopping.

One of my former employers encouraged this practice. They felt that you were ready for a new assignment every 18 months, and encouraged job-hopping. The only problem with this, besides lack of continuity with your customers, is that someone could do a lousy job and get promoted out of it - the Peter Principle in practice. You wouldn’t even know what damage was done until the dust settled. These screw-ups were using company policy to run away from their own messes. People were changing jobs more often than Larry Brown.

Use of visible figures only for management, with little or no consideration of figures that are unknown or unknowable.

Our division has been tasked with an 8% annual CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate). Our division is in the defense industry. We’re in a recession. Guess what’s getting cut to help pay for all of last year’s bailouts? That’s right, new defense contracts. Rather than look at a dollar value, we should measure our success against market share. Market share might be harder to measure than new orders, but it is more accurate in determining effectiveness in a declining market.

Excessive medical costs.

My company has a health club on the premises. You pay a small amount as a “copayment”, and you can use the equipment on your own time. We also have free blood pressure screenings. If more companies would offer these preventative measures, maybe we could cut health care costs.

Excessive costs of warranty, fueled by lawyers that work contingency fees.

The product line that I support has a built-in level of expected failures. This leads to the purchase of excess material, which ties up working capital. For every dollar that could be saved, we could invest it back into the company. Think about that when your foreman wants a few extra pieces “just in case”. Improve the quality, and improve the profits.

I’ve pointed out where my company has “sinned”. How about yours? Do you see your own company in any of these examples? If so, have the problems been identified, and any corrective action taken? Let’s hear it in the comments!

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Deming’s 14 Points

Posted by enrique s in Leadership, Motivation, Productivity on November 30th, 2009

Back when I was working towards my MBA, I had a professor that was very passionate. Let’s call him Nick. One night, Nick polled the class, asking us who we thought was the epitome of a great leader, a person whose policies allowed for everyone to win. When one of my classmates offered Lee Iacocca, the then-chairman of Chrysler as an example, I swear that I could see steam pouring out of Nick’s ears. “LEE IACOCCA!” he bellowed. “Lee Iacocca is building his engines in Mexico! How does that help everybody win? He’s trying to solely increase the bottom line by costing Americans jobs!”

You’re kidding, right?

Rather than ague with Nick, lest he burst a blood vessel in his forehead, we let him rant on. When he finally calmed down, he gave us his example of a good leader: H. Ross Perot. Yup. This was before he ran for president, and just after he sold his business, EDS to General Motors. All that I knew about Ross Perot was that Richard Crenna played him in that movie about a hostage rescue in Iran. As part of this diatribe, Nick also managed to dismiss Peter Drucker and Management By Objectives (MBO), and introduced us to W. Edwards Deming.

Who?

W. Edwards Deming was a statistician by trade, who wound up in postwar Japan to work on the census. He was invited to teach statistical control and the concepts of quality to a group of engineers, managers, and scholars. His concepts were put into practice by Japanese industry, and the rest is history. Japanese goods became renowned for their quality and reliability. Couple that with the energy crisis in the 1970s, and you can understand why Japanese automakers took away market share from Ford, Chrysler, and GM.

Indelible mark

See, while American auto companies were giving us the Corvair and the Pinto, Japanese car companies were building a reputation for quality that trumps American car companies to this day. Maybe Iacocca should have listened to Deming. Anyway, here are his 14 Points:

1. Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service, with the aim to become competitive and stay in business, and to provide jobs.

2. Adopt the new philosophy. We are in a new economic age. Western management must awaken to the challenge, must learn their responsibilities, and take on leadership for change.

3. Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate the need for inspection on a mass basis by building quality into the product in the first place.

4. End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag. Instead, minimize total cost. Move towards a single supplier for any one item, on a long-term relationship of loyalty and trust.

5. Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service, to improve quality and productivity, and thus constantly decrease costs.

6. Institute training on the job.

7. Institute leadership. The aim of supervision should be to help people and machines and gadgets to do a better job. Supervision of management is in need of overhaul, as well as supervision of production workers.

8. Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company.

9. Break down barriers between departments. People in research, design, sales, and production must work as a team, to foresee problems of production and in use that may be encountered with the product or service.

10. Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the work force asking for zero defects and new levels of productivity. Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships, as the bulk of the causes of low quality and low productivity belong to the system and thus lie beyond the power of the work force.

11.a. Eliminate work standards (quotas) on the factory floor. Substitute leadership.

11.b. Eliminate management by objective. Eliminate management by numbers, numerical goals. Substitute leadership.

12.a. Remove barriers that rob the hourly worker of his right to pride of workmanship. The responsibility of supervisors must be changed from sheer numbers to quality.

12.b. Remove barriers that rob people in management and in engineering of their right to pride of workmanship. This means, inter alia, abolishment of the annual or merit rating and of management by objective.

13. Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement.

14. Put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the transformation. The transformation is everybody’s job.

It’s funny how these concepts are just being accepted now, more than 20 years after Deming wrote about them in his book Out of the Crisis. My company has started preaching the “factory without walls” concept to help our diverse divisions work together to bring in new business. Too bad they’re still stuck on slogans. Here’s a link to a Wikipedia entry that provides more background on Dr. Deming: W. Edwards Deming at Wikipedia

I’ll be revisiting Deming in the coming weeks, so stay tuned! Why not subscribe, so you don’t miss a new installment? Subscribe

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Slacking Off at Work

Posted by enrique s in Career, Leadership, Motivation, Productivity, Rants on November 26th, 2009

Happy Friday!
Photo by cell105

As we get toward the end of the year, people in my area of expertise (finance) tend to get busy. Very busy. It starts just before Thanksgiving, and just gets crazier as the end of the year gets closer. So today it’s Thanksgiving, and I’m planning on slacking off big-time. Because when the bell rings on Monday, all Hell will break loose.

To everything there is a season…

Some professions have their busy seasons, while others don’t fall prey to quarterly reporting like finance and accounting people do. In my case, these are the engineers, who work on projects that may span years. Sure, they have certain milestones to meet along the way, such as Technical Readiness Reviews, Critical Design Reviews, and Functional Bench Tests, but these aren’t contingent on the calendar year.

I guess it’s just not my season

So, for my friends in Engineering, the time after Thanksgiving is slack-off time. Holiday parties are arranged. Extra vacation time is burned. Trips to Rockefeller Center to see the tree are taken. I know this, because the ranks are thin in Engineering during the holiday season. I had one guy tell me years ago, as I was going balls to the wall in order to get home at a decent hour, that he was “pretty much finished” with his work for the year. This was two weeks before Christmas. I must be in the wrong racket.

Personal Standard of Excellence

So, as I kick myself in the ass for not becoming an engineer, I see that my technical brethren are just enjoying the spoils of their craft. I can’t blame them for exploiting the peculiarities of their profession. But even if I had the opportunity, I don’t think that I’m wired for slacking off. I think way back to college, and one of my business lessons that dealt with motivation and the responsibilities of managers. My favorite teacher, Professor Stanford, told us a tale of a worker who lowered his productivity to that of his coworkers. One of my fellow students thought that the worker was smart for not “rocking the boat.” Prof. Stanford admonished him for not upholding his own personal standard of excellence, regardless of what those around him were doing. Wow. That one really hit home, and I carry it with me to this day.

Less bullshit, more work

If I think even farther back, I had a lesson in not slacking off from my older cousin, on a roofing job. His was less subtle, however. It went something like, “Less bullshit, more work”, accompanied by an angry shake of his fist, but the message was basically the same. He was also bigger and could beat the crap out of me, so work hard I did. I consider it a primer for Stanford’s more elegant lesson.

So, before you slack off, think about your personal standard of excellence, and whether you want to risk compromising it by getting caught goofing off. But, you can goof off today.

Happy Thanksgiving! Gobble ’til you wobble!

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Take the Fork in the Road

Posted by enrique s in Career, Leadership, Motivation, Productivity, Rants on November 10th, 2009

And unto Edward appeared a fork
Photo by Ed.ward

“When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” - Yogi Berra

Many of us were stuck last week awaiting further clarification on a hot assignment that was due later in the day. The assignment could be interpreted in two different ways. Most of my coworkers literally stopped in their tracks; they were paralyzed by not having complete instructions for carrying out the task, and didn’t want to proceed, lest they waste their efforts. I, on the other hand, took a novel approach: I did the assignment twice, covering each possible outcome, while they contemplated The Road Not Taken.

Woof, woof

We’re used to following instructions. Do Step 1 before proceeding to Step 2. We’ve been conditioned throughout our childhood so that we can become good workers when we graduate college. We’re not taught to question authority; that would be counterproductive in a corporate setting. But this leads to a dependence upon management, the Alpha Males and Females in the wolf pack called Corporate America. We’re kept in a suppressed state of puppyhood, always following, never leading, waiting for the next order to be barked at us.

Lone wolf

So when one of my coworkers asked for my opinion on how to proceed, my answer shocked her. “You’re going to do it both ways? Isn’t that a waste of time?” Well, it’s also a waste of time to sit around and do nothing while you wait for an answer. I figured that if I finished one part of the assignment before receiving the instructions, I had a 50-50 chance of being right, and of having the assignment completed. If I guessed wrong, and “wasted” my effort, I would still be in the same boat as everyone else, so no harm, no foul. It can be summarized on the following crude flow chart. Click on the thumbnail for a larger view:

If you follow the timeline on the left side of the flow chart, you can see that I saved myself about 4 hours because I decided to forge ahead with my assumptions. My coworkers, who waited for precise instructions before even starting the assignment, finished 4 hours later. While I was diving headlong into the exercise, they were carping about lack of communication, et cetera, et cetera ad nauseum.

“In any moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.” - Theodore Roosevelt

So, unlike the protagonist in the Robert Frost poem, I didn’t have to wonder about the road not taken, because I took ‘em both. I chose the wisdom of a New York Yankee over that of a New England Yankee.

And THAT has made all the difference.

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Don’t Be a Weasel! 5 Rules for Accepting Blame

Posted by enrique s in Career, Leadership, Rants on October 23rd, 2009

Your not a Bunny!!!
Photo by law_keven

Yesterday, we had our monthly program review with our director. One program manager had bad news about one of their projects. Let’s call him Larry. He did a good job explaining, in great detail, about where they went wrong, and the steps that his team needed to take to finish the job. He didn’t get ripped too badly. But then, he said something that will come back to haunt him, and earned him the Mark of the Weasel!

Pointing the finger

The item that was being produced under Larry had firmware that was developed under another job, headed by Mike. Larry was almost finished with his explanation, when he threw in a parting shot. He blamed the “poor” design of the firmware as a contributing factor to the cost growth. I know for a fact that this was not true. Mike, who also knew that this was bullshit, also was in the room, and I could see the smoke start to pour out of his ears. He kept his mouth shut, but I don’t think Mike will be helping Larry the Weasel again any time soon.

Incurring wrath

The point was, Larry is the program manager. He’s ultimately responsible for the success or failure of his projects. He gets all of the credit when things go right, so he should be prepared to take his lumps when things go wrong. Blaming an innocent bystander just to avoid the wrath of your boss is a weak tactic. Plus, you run the risk of incurring the wrath of the person who you blamed. I know that Mike is sharpening his knives, and will probably inform the director that the firmware passed all of the required tests, and that Larry is full of shit. The director will probably ask himself: Is this type of leadership acceptable? Has he no character?

Corrective action

When you’ve “screwed the pooch”, so to speak, here are the steps that you should take to keep your credibility and your job:

Rule #1: Fess up, and right away

Raise your hand and take the blame. You want to leave as much time as possible to correct the mistake. Don’t sit on the problem, and hope that it just goes away. As one wise man said, “Bad news doesn’t improve with age.” Deal with it now, swiftly, like ripping off a band aid.

Rule #2: Accept responsibility

Don’t try to weasel out of taking the blame. If you screwed up, admit it. People will think more highly of you. They will eventually find out the truth, anyway. Admitting your faults will help you keep your credibility. People like working with those who have character; people of character can be depended upon.

Rule #3: Have a recovery plan

Even though Larry broke Rule #2, he did have a plan to mitigate the problem. Don’t just drop a load of crap for someone else to clean up; explain how you’re going to make things right. And make sure that you have the concurrence of everyone involved; you don’t need any dissension.

Rule #4: Execute the plan

Now that you’ve identified the problem and planned a recovery, follow the plan. There’s nothing worse than not following through on your promises. It’s that character thing again. Get to work!

Rule #5: Lessons learned

At the end of each South Park episode, either Kyle or Stan will sum up their latest misadventure by saying, “You know, I’ve learned something today.” Don’t just file this lesson in the deep recesses of your mind. Write it down, and share it with your peers. You might be able to save someone else, and your employer, additional heartache in the future.

So the next time that you mess up at work, rather than trying to weasel out of responsibility, follow my rules and accept the blame. You’ll show that you have character, and everyone will like you better for it.

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accepting blame, character, mitigation plan, recovery plan, South Park, taking blame, weasel

Sun-Tzu Sunday, August 30, 2009

Posted by enrique s in Leadership on August 30th, 2009

Ã¢ï¿½Â¥ Morning SunRise At Leephae Ã¢ï¿½Â¥ / Ã Â¸ï¿½Ã Â¸Â£Ã Â¸Â°Ã Â¸ÂÃ Â¸Â²Ã Â¸ï¿½Ã Â¸Â´Ã Â¸ï¿½Ã Â¸Â¢Ã Â¹ï¿½Ã Â¸ï¿½Ã Â¸Â¶Ã Â¹ï¿½Ã Â¸ï¿½Ã Â¸ï¿½Ã Â¸ÂµÃ Â¹ï¿½Ã Â¸Â«Ã Â¸Â¥Ã Â¸ÂµÃ Â¹ï¿½Ã Â¸ï¿½Ã Â¹ï¿½Ã Â¸Â°
Photo by AmpamukA (Busy in ICU for 1 month)

Here’s this week’s update for Sun-Tzu Sunday. Sun-Tzu was a military strategist of ancient China. Every Sunday this summer, I’ve presented an excerpt from his treatise The Art of War. This week’s passage is the series finale, and comes from the seventh chapter entitled The Fray.

The soldier’s spirit

Is keenest

In the morning;

By noon

It has dulled;

By evening

He has begun

To think of home.

Boy, Sun-Tzu hit it right on the head with that one. I’m way more productive in the morning. It coincides with my scripted to-do list, as I hit the ground running. The early bird gets the worm. Late in the day, I’ve usually had enough, and I begin planning out the next day.

How about you? Are you more productive in the morning, or are you a strong finisher?

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Sun-Tzu

Sun-Tzu Sunday, August 23, 2009

Posted by enrique s in Leadership, Money on August 23rd, 2009

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Photo by nuomi

Here’s this week’s update for Sun-Tzu Sunday. Sun-Tzu was a military strategist of ancient China. Every Sunday this summer, I’m presenting an excerpt from his treatise The Art of War. This week’s passage comes from the fifth chapter entitled Potential Energy.

Relying on the energy,

He sends his men into battle

Like a man

Rolling logs or boulders.

By their nature,

On level ground

Logs and boulders

Stay still;

On steep ground

They move;

Square, they halt;

Round, they roll.

Skillfully deployed soldiers

Are like round boulders

Rolling down

A mighty mountainside.

At first glance, the passage would appear to be related to the utilization of your employees. You want to fit their skills to the tasks you assign them. But it can also be applied to investing. Each dollar can be viewed as a “soldier”, sent out by you to capture other soldiers. You just need to match them up to where they’ll do the most good. In the investment world, that means doing your research, and investing thoughtfully.

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