Relations with Others
November 28, 2007
Managers prefer to work with people; they avoid solitary activity because it makes them anxious. Several years ago, I directed studies on the psychological aspects of careers. The need to seek out others with whom to work and collaborate seemed to stand out as an important characteristic of managers. When asked, for example, to write imaginative stories in response to a picture showing a single figure (a boy contemplating a violin or a man silhouetted in a state of reflection), managers populated their stories with people. The following is an example of a manager’s imaginative story about the young boy contemplating a violin:
“Mom and Dad insisted that their son take music lessons so that someday he can become a concert musician. His instrument was ordered and had just arrived. The boy is weighing the alternatives of playing football with the other kids or playing with the squeak box. He can’t understand how his parents could think a violin is better than a touchdown.
“After four months of practicing the violin, the boy has had more than enough, Dad is going out of his mind, and Mom is willing to give in reluctantly to their wishes. Football season is now over, but a good third baseman will take the field next spring.”
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Posted by Maximillian | Filed Under Insight
Conceptions of Work
November 25, 2007
Managers tend to view work as an enabling process involving some combination of people and ideas interacting to establish strategies and make decisions. They help the process along by calculating the interests in opposition, planning when controversial issues should surface, and reducing tensions. In this enabling process, managers’ tactics appear flexible: On one hand, they negotiate and bargain; on the other, they use rewards, punishments, and other forms of coercion.
Alfred P. Sloan’s actions at General Motors illustrate how this process works in situations of conflict. The time was the early 1920s when Ford Motor Company still dominated the automobile industry using, as did General Motors, the conventional water-cooled engine. With the full backing of Pierre du Pont, Charles Kettering dedicated himself to the design of an air-cooled copper engine, which, if successful, would be a great technical and marketing coup for GM. Kettering believed in his product, but the manufacturing division heads opposed the new design on two grounds: First, it was technically unreliable, and second, the corporation was putting all its eggs in one basket by investing in a new product instead of attending to the current marketing situation.
In the summer of 1923, after a series of false starts and after its decision to recall the copper engine Chevrolets from dealers and customers, GM management scrapped the project. When it dawned on Kettering that the company had rejected the engine, he was deeply discouraged and wrote to Sloan that, without the “organized resistance” against the project, it would have succeeded and that, unles the project were saved, he would leave the company.
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Posted by Maximillian | Filed Under Insight
Attitudes Toward Goals
November 22, 2007
Managers tend to adopt impersonal, if not passive, attitudes toward goals. Managerial goals arise out of necessities rather than desires and, therefore, are deeply embedded in their organization’s history and culture.
Frederic G. Donner, chairman and chief executive officer of General Motors from 1958 to 1967, expressed this kind of attitude toward goals in defining GM’s position on product development: “To meet the challenge of the marketplace, we must recognize changes in customer needs and desires far enough ahead to have the right products in the right places at the right time and in the right quantity.
“We must balance trends in preference against the many compromises that are necessary to make a final prod- uct that is both reliable and good looking, that performs well and that sells at a competitive price in the necessary volume. We must design not just the cars we would like to build but, more important, the cars that our customers want to buy.”
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Posted by Maximillian | Filed Under Insight
Manager Versus Leader Personality
November 19, 2007
A managerial culture emphasizes rationality and control. Whether his or her energies are directed toward goals, resources, organization structures, or people, a manager is a problem solver. The manager asks: “What problems have to be solved, and what are the best ways to achieve results so that people will continue to contribute to this organization?”
From this perspective, leadership is simply a practical effort to direct affairs, and to fulfill his or her task, a manager requires that many people operate efficiently at different levels of status and responsibility. It takes neither genius nor heroism to be a manager, but rather persistence, toughmindedness, hard work, intelligence, analytical ability, and perhaps most important, tolerance and goodwill.
Another conception of leadership, however, attaches almost mystical beliefs to what a leader is and assumes that only great people are worthy of the drama of power and politics. Here leadership is a psychodrama in which a brilliant, lonely person must gain control of himself or herself as a precondition for controlling others. Such an expectation of leadership contrasts sharply with the mundane, practical, and yet important conception that leadership is really managing work that other people do.
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Posted by Maximillian | Filed Under Insight
Managers and Leaders; Are they any different?
November 16, 2007
The traditional view of management, back in 1977 when Abraham Zaleznik wrote this article, centered on organizational structure and processes.Managerial development at the time focused exclusively on building competence, control, and the appropriate balance of power. That view, Zaleznik argued, omitted the essential leadership elements of inspiration, vision, and human passion – which drive corporate success.
The difference between managers and leaders, he wrote, lies in the conceptions they hold, deep in their psyches, of chaos and order.Managers embrace process, seek stability and control, and instinctively try to resolve problems quickly – sometimes before they fully understand a problem’s significance. Leaders, in contrast, tolerate chaos and lack of structure and are willing to delay closure in order to understand the issues more fully. In this way, Zaleznik argued, business leaders have much more in common with artists, scientists, and other creative thinkers than they do with managers. Organizations need both managers and leaders to succeed, but developing both requires a reduced focus on logic and strategic exercises in favor of an environment where creativity and imagination are permitted to flourish.
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Posted by Maximillian | Filed Under Insight
The Sage, Second Childishness
November 13, 2007
As I’ve pointed out, mentoring has tremendous value to a young executive. The value accrues to the mentor as well. Mentoring is one of the great joys of a mature career, the professional equivalent of having grandchildren. It is at this time that the drive to prepare the next generation for leadership becomes a palpable ache. I wrote earlier of my relationship with a young nurse who had ambitions to become a doctor. Clearly, the young man benefited from our relationship, but so did I. I learned about the true nature of mentoring, about its inevitable reciprocity and the fact that finding and cementing a relationship with a mentor is not a form of fawning but the initiation of a valuable relationship for both individuals. My respect for my former nurse only grew over the years. When he graduated near the top of his class from the University of Southern California Medical School, I was there to watch.
When you mentor, you know that what you have achieved will not be lost, that you are leaving a professional legacy for future generations. Just as my nurse clearly stood to benefit from our relationship, entrepreneur Michael Klein was indebted to his grandfather, Max.
But imagine the joy Max must have felt at being able to share the wisdom he acquired over a lifetime as a creative businessman. The reciprocal benefits of such bonds are profound, amounting to much more than warm feelings on both sides. Mentoring isn’t a simple exchange of information.
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Posted by Maximillian | Filed Under Insight
The Statesman, with Spectacles on Nose
November 10, 2007
Shakespeare’s sixth age covers the years in which a leader’s power begins to wane. But far from being the buffoon suggested by Shakespeare’s description of a “lean and slippered pantaloon,” the leader in this stage is often hard at work preparing to pass on his or her wisdom in the interest of the organization. The leader may also be called upon to play important interim roles, bolstered by the knowledge and perception that come with age and experience and without the sometimes distracting ambition that characterizes early career.
One of the gratifying roles that people in late career can play is the leadership equivalent of a pinch hitter. When New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., needed someone to stop the bleeding at the newspaper after the Blair debacle, he invited Howell Raines’s predecessor, Joseph Lelyveld, to serve as interim editor. The widely respected journalist was an ideal choice, one who was immediately able to apply a career’s worth of experience to the newspaper’s crisis and whose tenure was unsullied by any desire to keep the job for the long term.
Consider, too, the head of a government agency who had chosen to retire from his leadership position because he had accomplished all his goals and was tired of the politics associated with his job. When an overseas office needed an interim leader, he was willing to step into the job and postpone retirement. He was able to perform an even better job than a younger person might have, not only because he brought a lifetime’s worth of knowledge and experience but also because he didn’t have to waste time engaging in the political machinations often needed to advance a career.
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Posted by Maximillian | Filed Under Insight
The General, Full of Wise Saws
November 7, 2007
One of the greatest challenges a leader faces at the height of his or her career is not simply allowing people to speak the truth but actually being able to hear it. Once again, Shakespeare proves instructive. In Julius Caesar, that brilliant study of failed management, Caesar goes to the forum on the ides of March apparently unaware that he will die there. How could he not have known that something dreadful was going to happen on that inauspicious day? The soothsayer warns him to “beware the ides of March.”There are signs of impending evil that any superstitious Roman would have been able to read, including an owl hooting during the day and a lion running through the streets. And then there is the awful dream that makes Calpurnia,Caesar’s loving wife, beg him to stay home. She dreams that his statue gushed blood like a fountain with a hundred spouts. Shouldn’t that have been clear enough for a military genius used to amassing and evaluating intelligence? If not, consider that Artemidorus, a teacher in Rome, actually writes down the names of the conspirators and tries three times to thrust the note of alarm into Caesar’s hand, the last time seconds before Brutus and the gang fall upon him.
Caesar’s deafness is caused as much by arrogance as anything else, and he is hardly the only leader to be so afflicted. Like many CEOs and other leaders, movie mogul Darryl F. Zanuck was notorious for his unwillingness to hear unpleasant truths. He was said to bark,“Don’t say yes until I finish talking!” which no doubt stifled many a difference of opinion. A more current example can be seen in Howell Raines, the deposed executive editor of the New York Times. Among the many ways he blocked the flow of information upward was to limit the pool of people he championed and, thus, the number of people he listened to. Raines was notorious for having a small A-list of stars and a large B-list made up of everyone else. Even if Raines’s division of the staff had been fair, which it certainly was not in the case of now-disgraced reporter Jayson Blair, the two-tier system was unwise and ultimately a career ender for Raines. He had so alienated the vast majority of people in the newsroom who knew what Blair was up to that they didn’t even bother to warn him of the train wreck ahead, and he refused to believe the few who did speak up. The attitude of Raines and his managing editor, Gerald Boyd, was that their way was the only way.
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Posted by Maximillian | Filed Under Insight
The Bearded Soldier
November 4, 2007
Over time, leaders grow comfortable with the role. This comfort brings confidence and conviction, but it also can snap the connection between leader and followers. Two things can happen as a result: Leaders may forget the true impact of their words and actions, and they may assume that what they are hearing from followers is what needs to be heard.
While the first words and actions of leaders are the most closely attended to, the scrutiny never really ends. Followers continue to pay close attention to even the most offhand remark, and the more effective the leader is the more careful he or she must be, because followers may implement an idea that was little more than a passing thought. Forget this and you may find yourself in some less dramatic version of the situation King Henry II did when he muttered, of Thomas à Becket,“Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?” and four of his nobles promptly went out and murdered the cleric. Many modern-day Henrys have mused along the lines of, “We should be looking at our technology strategy,” only to be confronted a few months later with thick PowerPoint presentations and a hefty consulting bill.
Followers don’t tell leaders everything. I know of an executive I’ll call Christine who had a close working relationship with the rest of her group. The department hummed along productively until the day one of her top performers, Joseph, showed up at her door, looking uncomfortable. He told her he’d been offered a job at another company and was planning to take it. The timing was terrible; the group was headed toward a major product launch. And Christine was stunned, because she and Joseph were friends and he had never expressed dissatisfaction with his position or the company. Why hadn’t he told her he wanted a new opportunity? She would have created a job especially for him, and she told him as much. Unfortunately, it was too late. The fact is, however close Christine and Joseph were, she was still in charge, and few employees tell their bosses when they’ve talked to a headhunter. And because Christine and Joseph liked each other and had fun working together, she’d assumed he was satisfied.
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Posted by Maximillian | Filed Under Insight
The Lover,with a Woeful Ballad
November 1, 2007
Shakespeare described man in his third age “sighing like furnace,” something many leaders find themselves doing as they struggle with the tsunami of problems every organization presents. For the leader who has come up through the ranks, one of the toughest is how to relate to former peers who now report to you. Shakespeare painted a compelling portrait of the problem in Henry IV, Part II. Before Prince Hal becomes Henry V, his relationship with the aging rogue Falstaff is that of student and fellow hell-raiser. For all Falstaff’s excesses, he is often Hal’s wise teacher, helping the future king see beyond the cloistered, narrow education traditionally afforded a prince to glimpse what his future subjects feel, think, and need. But when it comes time for Hal to assume his royal responsibilities, he rejects Falstaff, despite their having shared a sea of ale and the sound of “the chimes at midnight.”Henry doesn’t invite Falstaff to his coronation, and he pointedly tells the ribald knight,“I know thee not, old man.”
Today’s leaders would instantly recognize the young king’s predicament. It’s difficult to set boundaries and fine-tune your working relationships with former cronies.
Most organizations,with the exception of the military, maintain the fiction that they are at least semidemocracies,however autocratic they are in fact. As a modern leader, you don’t have the option of telling the person with whom you once shared a pod and lunchtime confidences that you know her not. But relationships inevitably change when a person is promoted from within the ranks. You may no longer be able to speak openly as you once did, and your friends may feel awkward around you or resent you. They may perceive you as lording your position over them when you’re just behaving as a leader should. I know of a young executive, let’s call her Marjorie,who was recently promoted from middle management to head of the marketing department at a pharmaceutical company.
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Posted by Maximillian | Filed Under Insight
