Management Perspectives - Blog performance review July 07

As you might expect, blog traffic was well down because of the way the short pause in posting I mentioned on 10 June stretched out and out. Only now am I starting to catch up. That said, there have been some interesting changes in the pattern of the top posts since my last performance review.

As before, the front page scored the highest number of visits. By far the next most popular post was Changes in Public Administration and their Impact on Public Policy 1 - Introduction. I was pleased about this, because this post is an entry point for a whole series.

The next most popular post was Demography and Demographic Change - an update. Again, this post is an entry point to a series of demographic posts.

Then came three posts with equal ranking.

The first was one of the posts in the Changes in Public Administration series: Changes in Public Administration and their Impact on Public Policy 6- A view from the Past. The second was my last blog performance review. Then came a label search on ageism. So far there are just two posts here.

The interesting thing about this list is that, apart from the front page, there is not a single post from the last list again registering in the top list.

Common Management Problems Series 1 - Introduction

Over recent months we have run a series of posts on the Managing the Professional Services Firm blog on common management problems. Our aim was to provide simple, practical, advice.

We are now grouping the posts together on this blog in a single series to make the material more accessible. As we post, the material will back-fill from this post. Each post will have a link to the next and previous post.

As always, we welcome comments.

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Common Management Problems Series 1 - the isolation of being boss

I thought that it might be of interest if I shared with you from time to time some of the problems I have experienced as a manager.

Australia has what the Australian historian John Hirst has called a democracy of manners. Differences of wealth, authority and power do exist in the country and have widened in recent years. But our language and attitude are egalitarian, democratic and somewhat cynical. This flows through into the nature of relationships within organisations.

I grew up in this world. It influenced my attitudes and approaches when I first became a manager in the Commonwealth Public Service. Among other things, it meant that I identified with and was close to my staff, an approach that got very good management results. Then suddenly I was promoted again and met a problem that took me a while to even recognise.

The Australian Public Service was then broken into four divisions:

• the first division made up of the heads of Departments and senior statutory office holders - a small group - was at the top
• then came the second division, a smallish (several hundred) group of senior managers across the Service from branch head to deputy secretary level.
• followed by the third division, the main administrative/clerical division
• and then the fourth division, all the support staff.

To put all this in terms that may be more familiar, the first division was equivalent to managing partners, the second division to partners in general, the third division covers all professional staff, the fourth division paras and support staff.

At the time of the promotion I referred to I was a Chief Finance Officer (Director) in the Commonwealth Treasury in charge of a section with nine staff. I had acted as branch head for extended periods, but I was still seen in terms of my third division role. In addition, Treasury was a relatively open non-hierarchical Department in part because of the number of well educated, ambitious and highly intelligent junior staff.

I was then promoted to the Department of Industry and Commerce as its senior economist in charge of the Economic Analysis Branch. I was now a senior officer in a much more hierarchical department with three sections and seventeen staff. I had also also inherited a branch under pressure with serious internal problems that needed to be fixed.

I had made special transition arrangements and had been receiving copies of the pinks, all branch correspondence, for a month before I formally took over. I had also met all the staff at lunch and had spoken on a regular basis to the acting branch head. So I had a fair understanding of the nature of the work and indeed was already carrying out some of the duties at the time I moved across.

Then I hit a wall on arrival. I knew that there were problems, but I wanted to make my own mind up about them. And indeed I am very glad I did because the problems were not quite as they had been presented to me. But initially I found it impossible to get the information I needed to make judgments. There seemed to be some form of barrier.

I had not changed. I was still applying the management approaches that had worked so well in Treasury. So was was the difficulty? It may sound dumb, but it took a little while to work out that I was now being treated as a senior boss, that I had moved from being one of us to one of them. As a consequence, people were now filtering what they told me.

I know that this problem is not unique. I also know that most managers are aware of it, although my experience has also been that a surprising number do not recognise its full extent. I have seen too many CEOs in particular who think that they know what is going on, that they do get good information, when the opposite is clearly the case.

The first thing that I had to accept in my new role was that the problem was real and was not going to go away. It made perfect sense for my staff to treat me with a degree of caution because I was simply too important to them to do otherwise. Importantly, I was now wearing a wider range of hats so had direct responsibility for enforcing policy in a way that had not applied in the past.

I also had to accept that it was going to take time to build trust. Trust did not mean, to use an old Australian phase, being one of the boys, boys in this case including both sexes. Rather, it meant treating people consistently and fairly, protecting confidences, recognising achievement and providing top cover. We used the term top cover to recognise my continuing role in protecting my people, in ensuring that they had the operational freedom they needed to do their job.

I will write on the top cover issue in more detail later because I believe that this is an absolutely critical condition for the creation of high performing teams.

Given that the communications problem was real and that it was going to take time to build trust, I still had an immediate need to find out what was wrong in the branch, what to do about it. Here I did two things:

1. I focused on understanding work flows. What was being done, who was doing it, how was it being done, at what standard? I must emphasis that this did not mean micro-management, itself a major problem in professional services. I saw my role in setting quality standards and then letting people get on with it. As I gained understanding I was able to identify a few immediate problems that I could act on that would help people, thus building trust.
2. I also got out of my office a fair bit, just talking to people, while also encouraging a range of branch activities. Some of this was informal and social, just stopping by people's desks to ask them something, follow up something. I also tried to find ways of working with as many people as possible, trying to help them on particular tasks.

In combination, this started to give me a feel for the the real scope of branch activities, of the strengths and weaknesses of individuals, of the real problem areas. I was also able to triangulate, to look at a person or an issue using several different information sources.

People's perceptions are always imperfect.

Two of my people were perceived by the Department as non-performers. I formed a different view.

One in a fast response, high pressure area was being so badly crippled by tension induced migraine headaches as to render him a non-performer. Yet when I talked to him I found his deep knowledge of the Australian economy and of economic statistics invaluable. He also had a female staff member who I felt was being under-rated, who had considerable potential.

In this case, and with his full agreement, we restructured section operations so that the female staff member and I worked on the fast response stuff, mainly daily economic briefings to the minister, while he focused on longer term issues. His migraines eased, the standard of our economic advice improved, while the female staff member seized the opportunity, in so doing moving onto a faster promotion path.

The second case involved a deputy section head who was perceived as non-performing in large part because he could not work the required hours. When I looked at this case I found that he had a non-performing section head who spent a lot of time on a private business interests and that he was in fact trying to carry the section. I also found that he was a single father with four children, creating enormous problems for him in trying to balance work and family. There was simply no way he could be on call in the way the Department was trying to demand.

In this case I facilitated the exit of the section head. I say facilitated because the section head and I agreed that he should go on immediate leave without without pay to do other things. A little later he resigned.

In doing so I found that the Department was well aware of the performance problem. I spoke to the section head in the morning and then prepared the necessary request. The required Departmental and Public Service Board approvals came through in just two hours, with the section head on leave that afternoon. When I commented on this, I was told that it had been just too difficult to handle previously!

I now restructured the section, making the deputy section head acting section head. With his cooperation I also restructured the work to give him greater time flexibility to meet family needs with other staff providing back-up when he was not there. He was later confirmed in the section head position.

None of this would have been possible if I had not spent the time required to overcome the communication barrier created by my role as boss.

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Common Management Problems Series 1 - the over-enthusiastic boss

This post continues the Common Management Problems series, sharing with you from time to time some of the problems I have experienced as a manager. This one focuses on the dangers of the over-enthusiastic boss, a danger that I am personally prone too.

I suspect that we all know the type of person I am referring too. Brimming with enthusiasm and new ideas, he/she cannot restrain himself/herself, but immediately wants to share the new idea with those working for him/her. Staff may roll their eyes, but really have no choice but to listen.

Often, the over-enthusiastic boss has another feature as well, failure to indicate the purpose of the discussion so that staff do not know what they are meant to be doing with the discussion. Is this a new task, am I meant to be doing something with all this?

This can make over-enthusiastic bosses very poor delegators. They give new tasks before previous tasks have been completed. They also think in their enthusiasm that they are being clear when in fact staff may be completely confused but too polite to say so.

If you are an over-enthusiastic boss my advice is to pause, to take a deep breath before rushing out with the latest idea. Remember that a core part of your job is to help your people do their jobs better, and you do not do this by overloading or confusing them.

If you work for an over-enthusiastic boss your position is more difficult. However, there are a few things that you can do.

If you are not clear just what is intended by the discussion, ask. If you are being asked to do something, but it is not clear to you just what, again ask. If you are working on a priority task, then say that. Finally, if you are finding the whole approach creating really serious problems for you, then have a private chat with the boss.

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Common Management Problems Series 1 - managing up

People's inability to delegate properly is one of the most common complaints at the various management training workshops I have run, a failure I have discussed elsewhere.

A related but less recognised problem is the inability of many staff to manage up. By managing up, I simply mean structuring what you do and how you do it to make life easier for you and your boss.

Why is this important? Well, the delegation problems that staff complain about are difficult in part because staff have no direct control over the manager, they just have to put up with it. By contrast, staff can control what they do and how they do it. This includes managing the boss to make life a little easier for all. So how do you do this?

Take Personal Responsibility: The starting point is to take personal responsibility for managing those things that you can control, focusing on the way you do things. This sounds simple, but the most common complaint among bosses - and especially from those who are in fact bad delegators - is that staff will not take responsibility.

There is a chicken and egg problem here in that bad delegation makes staff less willing to assume responsibility, thus adding to the problems created by the poor delegation.

Management Styles: The next point is to look at the way your boss works. Each person has an individual working style determined by the mix of character and experience. You have to fit the way you approach the boss within this style.

To illustrate by example. In an earlier post in this series on the over enthusiastic boss I talked about bosses who overflow with enthusiasm and new ideas, moving onto new things before past things are completed. Here I said in part:

If you are not clear just what is intended by the discussion, ask. If you are being asked to do something, but it is not clear to you just what, again ask. If you are working on a priority task, then say that. Finally, if you are finding the whole approach creating really serious problems for you, then have a private chat with the boss.

Making Things Easy for the Boss: The nature of much professional services work is individual, with a focus on individual performance. I do complain about this and the way it affects overall firm performance, but it is a reality that has to be dealt with.

Under individual pressure, people are less willing to invest time in managing others. The easier you can make things for your boss in managing you, the better the outcomes. What you do here has to be tailored to the boss's style, but there are a number of very practical things that you can do that generally work.

Perhaps the single most important thing is to adopt a structured approach so that your boss knows what he/she is dealing with in managing you. Bosses form views anyway, but you can determine or even change those views.

When asked to do something, ask questions so that you properly understand the task as well as any time lines attached to it. Summarise at the end to ensure that you are clear.

If you strike problems on a job, find yourself unclear or are likely to miss a deadline, let the boss know in time to allow a new approach to be worked out.

When you go to the boss with a problem or to report on progress, present in a clear and structured way. Don't just say I have a problem. Explain what the problem is, put forward any suggested solutions that you have. This makes it easier for the boss to understand and to respond in an effective way.

Be clear about the purpose of any communication with the boss, explain what you hope to achieve.

By the nature of the beast, most bosses feel instinctively obliged to provide solutions, answers. That's fine if that's what you want. But you may in fact simply want to discuss ideas, issues to help your own thinking. Things can get very messy indeed if the boss automatically moves into problem solving mode, leaving both sides completely dissatisfied. So tell the boss the purpose of the conversation.

Remember the boss is a person too. Here have a look at the first piece I did in this series on the isolation of being boss, a post written very much from a boss's perspective.

Most people like some degree of social interaction. They like to feel that people are interested in them. So take some time to chat, to find out what the boss has been doing. Your approach here has to be tempered by their personality and style.

Finally, try to structure your formal interactions so as to minimise time demands on the boss.

This is partially a matter of approach as already discussed, presenting things in a structured way. But you can also do things like working out how much time you think you need and then making an appointment, thus creating a structured meeting. You can also often wait until you have several things to discuss, again minimising disruption.

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Common Management Problems Series 1 - Dealing with poor performers 1

One question that I often get asked is the best way to deal with under performing staff. There is no perfect answer here, but there are a few practical things that you can do to reduce/deal with the issue.

The Manager as the Problem

In looking at my suggestions, bear in mind that poor management is the single most important cause of poor staff performance. So you need to look at your own management approach as well the under performing staff member.

Catch the Problem Early

One thing that I found is that too often emerging problems are either not recognised or not dealt with immediately, allowing a minor problem to grow into a major one.

This can be a special problem in professional services where people often work individually and in a degree of isolation from others. In more conventional organisations, day to day interactions - work and social - between manager and staff makes it much easier for the manager to see an issue and deal with it on the spot.

One of the reasons why I support (and here) simple management related appraisal systems not linked to pay is that they provide a regular structured way of looking at performance that can compensate to some degree for other weaknesses.

In the meantime, you can find out a lot, keep in touch, by asking simple questions.

Define the Problem: Get the Facts

Most people want to do a good job and be recognised for so doing, so you need to understand both the nature of the under performance and the possible reasons for it.

This may not be easy. Often, managers simply feel that something is not quite right, that the person is simply not performing in the way they would expect. Sometimes people seem to be performing well along one dimension, not on another.

Step one here is to write down your concerns and then test by looking at the facts. Sometimes the results may surprise you. To illustrate by example.

I had one staff member who was seen as creating work, as doing things that were outside her charter. There was considerable resistance to paying her overtime.

I established that she was indeed doing things that were outside her formal charter as laid down by a recent reorganisation. I also found the reorganisation itself was flawed, that mission critical work elements had not been properly recognised and that the staff member had in fact been forced to do the extra just to keep things going.

In another case, I found an undefined feeling that our receptionist was not doing her job properly, that she was away too much. All that was required here was a simple check of our records. This showed a pattern over some time of varying Friday and Monday sick days. So in this case there was indeed a problem.

Take a Deep Breath

Okay, you have got the facts. Now what do you do about it?

Obviously this depends on the nature of the problem. However, my usual advice is pause, to take a deep breath. Too often, people go into see problem, fix problem mode. This can be disastrous.

Take the time to think your course of action through.

What options do you have? Can you address it indirectly by, for example, changing work flows? Or your own approach? What is the fair thing to do?

Once you have done this, then you will have a better feel for what to do.

I will extend this analysis in my next post looking at common mistakes people make in acting on staff problems.

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Common Management Problems Series 1 - Dealing with poor performers 2

My previous post on this issue focused on getting to understand the problem.

You now understand the problem and have to deal with the individual in question. What do you do? Again, while there are no easy answers, there are a number of practical things that you can do that will make things easier on both sides.

Note that I say easier on both sides. Depending on the circumstances, nothing may stop things being very unpleasant. But you have an obligation to the other person as well as yourself to makes things as easy as possible.

The Importance of Esteem

A very wise Ndarala colleague of mine called Tim Russell developed what he calls the microskillstm approach to interpersonal communication. Tim is an international trainer and management consultant with major clients on four continents.

Tim started by breaking all forms of communication down into a small number of classes. Examples include reflecting, summarising, give information, give opinion. He then went a stage further and linked each class to the effect on the other person's esteem.

Here Tim makes a very particular point.

All communication has some effect on self-esteem. When we nod or murmur mm mh during a conversation, we increase the other person's esteem by showing that we are listening. When we give an opinion, we may increase or decrease the other person's esteem depending on whether or not they agree with it, on what the impact is on the other person.

Because the effectiveness of communication is affected by listener response, the impact on esteem has a critical affect on the success of the communication. This needs to be taken into account in structuring discussions.

I make this point because conversations about performance, and especially poor performance, are some of the most difficult conversations of all since they bear upon a key thing for most people, the way we perform and are seen to perform in our job. The negative esteem effect can destroy the very thing you want to achieve through the conversation. The challenge is to manage this.

So how might you do this?

Know what You want to Achieve

The starting point is knowing what you want to achieve. If your primary objective is to gain information, say finding out what in fact is wrong, then you obviously need to follow a different approach than that holding if the person is to be fired.

I know that this sounds self-evident, but too often people rush in without a clear idea in their mind as to the end-point of the conversation.

Keep the Message Simple

People can only absorb so much before tuning out. This holds in all cases, more so where significant emotional content is involved. So you need to keep things simple, focusing just on core points.

Fit your Approach to the Message

You need to fit your approach to your message.

If your objective is to gather information, to perhaps confirm or scope a problem, then you start by giving information, explaining your concern. Then follow with questions to let the other person talk, to flesh things out. Summarise as the discussion proceeds to ensure that you have things right, that you have understood what the other person is saying. Then at the end summarise again, outlining conclusions reached including any agreed action steps.

If, on the other hand, you are going to fire the person, you do not want to get involved in an argument. The other person may well be upset, but you need to be able to handle this. So in this case you focus on giving information, why the action is being taken, what is involved.

There are a range of alternatives in the middle of these two parameter cases.

As a general rule, the greater the problem the more you focus on giving information, on summarising, less on asking questions.

I am not saying here that you stop the other person talking, although you may need to through judicious summarising. The key point is that, as a general rule, the greater the problem the more the purpose of the conversation is transmission of information to the other side, the less receipt of information from the other side.

Giving Information versus Giving Opinions

You will notice that I have used the words give information as opposed to giving an opinion. I have done this advisedly because your objective is to explain, to give information and then, in most cases, to gain agreement as to next steps.

If you do all this, then you will find that handling poor performers becomes, if not easy, then at least much easier.

Note to readers:

This post completes series 1 in the common management problems series.

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A Short Pause

In my last post I looked at traffic on this site over May.

I am now taking a short post from posting to reflect, recharge my batteries and to collect new material. Back soon.

Management Perspectives - Blog Performance Review May 07

Every so often we look back at who has visited this blog to see just what has interested our visitors.

One measure here is the most popular entry pages.

Looking at the last 100 visits, the front page itself - the main blog address - was by far the most popular with 63 hits. This covers those who came to the site direct, plus those who came via search engine references that picked up the main page.

By far the next most popular entry point with eleven visits was The Importance of Demography and Demographic Change - an Update, a stocktake post summarising various previous posts on this topic across several related blogs. This was a helpful reminder that it is time we updated this material.

This was followed by six posts with two direct hits each.

• Our 9 November 07 post on Building Local Tourism
• The 8 November post on Teleworking a personal perspective
• The 17 November case study on the potential use of blogs as a communication device in specialist medical colleges
• The 20 May 08 post on Demographic Change and the Problem of Ageism
• The 5 June post Changes in Australian Higher Education - UNSW's Singapore Problems

One of our problems with this blog is to know what will interest our readers, given the broad span of interests of our Ndarala professionals. Here the most popular entry points provide a guide as to areas where we might provide further information and comment.

Another way of monitoring and assessing visitor patterns is to look at individual referrals. This one is more complicated, simply because of the difficulty in counting and presenting a varied pattern.

No less than 48 of the last 100 visitors came direct to the site, a very high percentage compared with most sites where search engines are the main driver.

Some 10 visitors were the dreaded spam blogs. Six visitors came from referrals from other Group related sites and especially my personal blog. Three visits came from feeds.

This leaves 31 visitors who came in via search engines. The low search engine percentage is partly a consequence of in-house traffic - my own visits are not counted, partly reflect the fact that the site is still quite new, partly that we have sometimes had difficulty in maintaining regular posts because of other pressures.

Our experience across sites has been that good search engine recognition depends upon the combination of regular posts with good accumulating content.

As you might expect given the entry page rankings, there were 11 searches on various aspects of demography and demographic change. Some of those searchers would have found our material useful, others not.

The next largest group were five searches linked in some way to public administration. This is an area where we have a part completed series of posts drawing heavily from my own experience. There were three searches linked in some way to management perspectives, then came two searches linked to UNSW.

From this point, the remaining ten searches were all individual topics from teleworking to time management.

There has been a fair bit of discussion over time on the importance of the tail in web site and blog promotion and development. In our case, the tail is the last ten hits on individual topics. The argument is that the tail provides clues as to visitor interests that you might build on to attract further traffic.

In our case, individual search terms in the tail included Sydney Aborigines history, Dilanchian, intellectual property audit, steps in conceiving a project, set up business in a new country, group discussions in which management should look in and beyond for perspective, manager expectations for telework, fashion web site, blogging and time management.

In all, a mixed bag!

Change in Australian Higher Education - UNSW's Singapore Problems

The University of New South Wales (UNSW) has closed its newly opened Singapore campus because of disappointing student numbers. Apparently only 148 students enrolled in the initial intake as compared with an anticipated 300, opening up a $15 million revenue hole.

Back in April 2004, UNSW announced with much fanfare that agreement had been reached with the Government of Singapore to establish Singapore's first foreign university.

The University stated that UNSW Singapore would be the first wholly-owned and operated research and teaching campus to be established overseas by an Australian university as well as UNSW's first offshore campus.

The announcement of the new venture was jointly made by Singapore's Minister for Trade and Industry, Mr George Yeo, and UNSW's Deputy Vice-Chancellor (International), Professor John Ingleson.

Professor Ingleson said at the time that UNSW Singapore would be a major research and teaching institution independently governed and run by UNSW.

"This sets it apart from most offshore universities which are primarily teaching-only institutions. It is also unique in that there will be no third-party involvement," he said.

To be viable, the new venture had to attract non-Singaporean students to study in Singapore. This does not appear to have happened to the expected degree.

In a story on Channel Asia, UNSW VC Professor Fred Hilmer said that the university had anticipated an initial intake of 300 students, but its current enrolment was only 148. And, based on applications for its second intake in August, the university projected that it would achieve just over half of its enrolment target of 480.

According to Professor Hilmer, every 20 students fewer meant A$1 million ($1.2 million) less in tuition fees. So, the firstyear enrolment numbers would equate to a shortfall of A$15 million.

“An intensive review of our operations in Singapore clearly indicates that to continue would involve an unacceptable level of risk to our institution,” Prof Hilmer said.

The University tried to negotiate a scaled down version of its plans with the Singapore Economic Development Board, but failed. According to a story on Yawning Bread's blog, the UNSW failure followed an earlier decision by Warwick University rejecting the idea of a Singapore campus.

The University has offered places and financial support to students wishing to continue their studies in Australia, but this has left staff and some students facing an uncertain future. The total cost to the University of the failed venture is estimated at $40 million.

In an earlier story on this blog, Sandra Welsman looked at the change pressures and processes affecting Australia's universities. UNSW's high profile Singapore failure is an example of the processes she described at work. It probably won't affect UNSW's main campus operations, but it shows the problems that Australia's universities face as they try to respond to domestic change and growing international competition.