Bob Sutton

How to Avoid Being a Nasty, Clueless, and Idiotic Boss During the Downturn

A few months back, Guy Kawasaki asked me to write something for a blog he is developing over at AMEX's Open Forum. I just got a note from him that my piece, with the above title, just appeared.  If you read this blog regularly, and have seen my HBR article on How to Be a Good Boss in a Bad Economy or the related video over at the McKinsey Quaterly, none of the stuff in his postwill come as a surprise, but it is one of the shortest presentations of some of central beliefs and recommendations.  Here is an excerpt:

Assume you lack key facts. Research on people in power shows that – even when they have no idea what is going on – they assume that they know everything that is important because, after all, they are the boss. This is called the fallacy of centrality. This gets worse during bad times because people are afraid the boss will shoot the messenger. Assume your assumptions are wrong and check them out as many ways as you can.

Really listen. Another aspect of this problem is that, even if your people tell you what is going on, people in power have tendency to listen badly to their underlings. As renowned UCLA basketball coach John Wooden put it, “Listen to those under your supervision. Really listen. Don’t act is if you’re listening and let it go in one ear and out the other. Faking it is worse than not doing it all."

Frankly, I am not quite sure what this AMEX effort is, but if they have recruited Guy, that is a sign to me that the quality will be high and there could be some fun stuff published, assuming they don't get too paranoid about censoring things, as can sometimes happen at corporate blogs (I don't like it, but understand why it happens as life becomes hellish for management when things get controversial)

Bret Simmons Blog: Check it Out

Bret Simmons is an organizational behavior professor at the University of Nevada at Reno, and appears to have been blogging for awhile.  I read through his many posts (he blogs at a pretty high rate), and was taken with both the quality and the range.  Given my biases, I like how travels among research, personal opinions, and stories, and I like the engaging writing style.  I especially like his posts here and here about great leaders. The story about Captain Kitts was inspiring, here is little sample:

His true brilliance came when we admitted we were having problems with a project.  He would simply ask “Do you need my help?”  We usually did not, and he left it at that.  If we did need help, we told him what we needed, and we knew that he would take care of it and then let us return to working autonomously.

I also was intrigued with many others, including the post about research on the limits of optimism and about Leadership:My Bias. 

There is some great stuff on this blog .. at least in my biased opinion. Let me know what you think.

Who is the Best Boss You Ever Had? Or Saw in Action?

As an academic, I am pretty lucky in that -- although there are people who wield authority over us -- we get a great of independence and our deans and other leaders don't push us around very much.  I've also been lucky to have some great bosses since arriving at Stanford, notably I was very impressed with John Hennessy's decisiveness and entrepreneurial spirit when he was dean of the School of Engineering (he rose from Dean to Provost to President in just a few years, so others with a lot more power noticed too) and I a huge admirer of my current dean, Jim Plummer, who also is quite entrepreneurial, and one of the most compassionate and least selfish leaders I've ever encountered. And he has fantastic values, as he thinks and acts like students and young faculty are the most important people in campus because he sees them as the future of the institution and beyond.  I've also mentioned that how I am a huge fan of Joel Podolny, who was never exactly my boss, but I had a lot of contact with him when he was an Associate Dean at the Stanford Business School --Joel  is now the new dean of Apple University. 

In my travels in the real world, I've also met a lot of bosses I admire. David Kelley at IDEO has had a huge influence on me and thinks more creatively about leadership and management than anyone I have ever met (and is one of the most famous product designers and design thinkers in the world). David will say things that just blow me away... like when things are confused and out of control, he will say sure, we need to try to clean up things, but that life --especially innovation -- is always messy and you just need to learn to deal with it -- it will never go away if you are doing it right. (Indeed, check out this FastCompany story  about all the things that others have learned from David) Or in thinking about how to teach design thinking better (David is also the founder of the Stanford d.school) he wills at stuff like "We are doing good design work, but we aren't telling very compelling stories about ... we need to become better storytellers).  Other bosses I admire include Mitchell Baker and John Lilly at Mozilla, and when it comes to bigger companies A.G. Lafley has consistently impressed me. And, who knows if she can turn things around (it isn't going to be easy). But I like what Carol Bartz at Yahoo! is doing and how honest she is being about the challenges and changes.    I have never met him, but I also greatly admired Donovan Campbell's combat leadership after reading the wonderful Joker One.

In looking at this list of diverse leaders, I think that, if there is one thing that all these people have in common is that I always find what they say and do to be authentic, there isn't a bullshitter in the bunch.  So perhaps that is something that is a hot button for me.  There are other qualities that each has as well, like Kelley's compassion, honesty, and simple but spot on creativity and A.G. Lafley's ability to gently and persistently express and implement admirable values and business strategies.  But clearly, I am singing  executive and author Bill George's tune here (another great boss) -- check out his book with Peter Sims if you want to learn more.

I've left many folks out, but as I have been thinking a lot about great bosses for both my recent HBR article on How to Be a Good Boss in A Bad Economy and another writing project that I am working on, I wonder if others could might want to join the conversation, I'd love to hear your stories and ideas about:

1. Who is the best boss you ever had, or saw in action?

2. Why? What made him or her so great? 

I'd love your thoughts.

The Boss's Journey

As I was reading and thinking about bosses yesterday, something struck me.  I realized, or perhaps a better word is speculated, that in the 30 years or so I’ve spent teaching, studying, and hanging out with aspiring bosses, rookie bosses, and (both good and bad) veteran bosses that, although the names change, it seems as if I keep seeing the same movie again and again.   The journey most bosses take seems to comprise roughly four stages. 

The first stage is awe, where the aspiring boss is overly impressed with anyone who has an impressive title and lead’s others. 

The second stage is cynicism and disgust.  After working for a couple years and seeing how lame their boss is (and perhaps seeing seemingly once great bosses take a fall), they wonder who so many bosses are so lame given how easy the job is to do. 

The third stage is how can I be so lame? It sets in shortly after the boss takes his or her first leadership job.  I once taught a master’s student who ripped apart every boss he ever had and every boss discussed, but this all changed when he got his first management job heading a small product development team. He confessed, “I was always talking about what a loser my last boss was; now I find myself hoping that I can be as good as him some day.”  

The fourth stage (which not all bosses make it to) happens when the boss comes to believe, this is a damn hard job, but the more I do it, the better get at it.

I wonder, does this sound right to you?  What am I missing or oversimplifying?

Suggested Names for the Selfish Superstar Inventory

Last week, I did a posting about the Selfish Superstar Inventory that I am developing for a current writing project, and I asked people to suggest names and items for this non-scientific scale. I got quite a few suggestions via email and in comments on the post. I think I have dug them all up.  Here they are:

CRASS -- Critical Ranking Analysis of Selfish Superstars

EGOS -- Evaluation Gauge for Overbearing Superstars

BRATS -- Basic Ranking of Asshole Tendency of Superstars

BRASS -- Basic Ranking Assessment of Selfish Superstars

MESS -- Measurement Exam for Selfish Superstars

S.H.I.T. --   Superstar Hubris Indicator Tool (Or Selfish Human in need of Training)

WIIFM -- What's In It For Me

Pretty Things for Pretty People

I.A.M. -- It's all about me

SPARSE -Superstar Primadonna Asshole Rating Self Exam

What is your favorite? Also, let me know if you have any other ideas for titles or items on the scale. 

Thanks,

Bob

The Selfish Superstar Inventory: I'd Love Your Ideas

I am working on a little quiz based on something that Jeff Pfeffer and I have been thinking about since we wrote The Knowing-Doing Gap a decade ago, that continues in The No Asshole Rule, and I am thinking about again right now for my current work on great bosses.  We've thought a lot about the problem of destructive internal competition,and one of the little revelations we've had over the last few years is that one of the best diagnostic questions for determining if a boss or organization is fueling cooperation and information sharing-- or stomping it out -- is "who they are the superstars here?"  Bosses who reward solo superstars who stomp on others, stab them in the back, and steal their ideas are -- whether they want to or not -- breeding people and building a culture that anoints greedy and selfish superstars.

In contrast, bosses who anoint people as superstars only when they do stellar solo work AND when they help others succeed too, are creating the right kinds of stars.  I have written a lot over the years about different reward systems.  Hard Facts reviews pretty compelling evidence that organizations that emphasize the differences between the very best versus the "merely" competent and reliable employees may do a better job of holding on to the stars. But they often undermine overall team and organizational performance.   Nonetheless, I have been fascinated to learn in recent years that, although there are huge differences among the compensation systems at places like IDEO, McKinsey, GE, and Procter & Gamble, all are similar in that -- to be treated as a star -- you need to help others succeed, not just do great individual work.

Along these lines,I am trying to come-up with a fun and instructive way to show the damage that selfish superstars do (for a current project).  I am trying to come up with something as fun and useful as the ARSE (Asshole Self-Assessment Rating Exam), which is closing in on 200,000 completions.  The working title is the SSI (Selfish Superstar Inventory), and I am looking to generate about 20 diverse --  including humorous -- items.  This post is a plea for help.  In particular:

1. If you have a better title, I would love to hear it. The SSI doesn't quite sing like ARSE.

2.  I'd love suggestions for items on the quiz.  To give you a sense of the kind of thing I am experimenting with:

People we hire:

Love to brag about their accomplishments.

Say “we” but think “me.”

See their peers as competitors, even “the enemy.”

People who get ahead here:

Stomp on colleagues on the way to the top

Are always loved by their superiors, but often despised by their peers and subordinates

Ask for help, but never seem to give it

Don’t need to play well with others.

Constantly push for more goodies for themselves, but never go to bat for colleagues.

Note I am in the early stages of this project, so please don't hesitate to suggest a different structure and, in the spirit of brainstorming, go for wild ideas.  I think I am making things too tame thus far. Thanks! I am looking forward to your ideas

Layoffs: One Deep Cut Versus Lots of Little Cuts

There is a good conversation about the challenges of managing during tough times over at McKinsey.com where people are discussing the video, Good Boss, Bad Times, which is based on my current HBR article. There is an interesting and insightful comment by Wendy (and quite a few others too, I especially like the one by Alan Himmer) about the nuances of leading during tough times.  As I look at the comments, however, I realize that although videos are wonderful, they can't quite contain the nuances of an article.  And, in fact, Wendy makes an excellent point that, although I don't touch on it in the video, is something that comes up in the article, and is something I've been painfully aware of since doing a case of the collapse of Atari over 20 years.  As Wendy put it, 'try to make budgetary cuts in one fell swoop—it is better to cut too deep than to go back to the troops with more bad news. Incremental cuts only destroy employee confidence and leave them “stuck” with confusion and resentment.'

Wendy's advice dovetails with the argument in my article in that, to manage well during tough times, a good boss gives people as much predictability as possible -- and especially does everything he or she can to make clear when people are "safe" versus have reason to worry.  One of the worst things a boss or company can do is to make constant cuts at seemingly random intervals, as it causes people to live in a constant state of fear as they wait for the other shoe to fall.  As Wendy suggests, although a single deep cut is hell, it is a better alternative than wave after wave of smaller cuts.  Of course, things these days are unpredictable enough that what may seem like a deep and adequate cut today may later turn out to be inadequate,doing fewer and deeper cuts to the extent possible is a more effective strategy in the long-run.

Pink Slip: Maureen Rogers' Great Blog

Right after The No Asshole Rule was published, I wrote a bit about Maureen Rogers' blog Pink Slip and she wrote about the book.  But I had not visited much recently until the other day.  I not only was reminded was reminded of her sharp wit and delightful writing style, I realized that her blog had got even better over the last year or two. I was just delighted by her post Throwing at the Batter about workplace "situations that should result in a return bean-ball, a suspension, or a good old-fashioned bench clearing brawl - but never do" such as throwing team members under the bus and the vile practice of unnecessary fire drills. Maureen blogs mostly about workplace issues, but somehow ties it to everything from Grapenuts to When Hockey Moms Go Bad.

Maureen has a strong and original voice, a sense of fun, and makes creative connections among seemingly unrelated ideas -- but after you listen to her, it all makes good sense.  Maureen, I am sorry to have been away so long, but I will be back as a regular.  

Free PDF of "How to Be a Good Boss in a Bad Economy" to 98 Readers

Harvard Business Online charges a pretty penny for articles and cases; indeed, although their prices annoy me at times, I also admire them because they produce and publish a lot of high-quality and original content, and actually get people and companies to pay for it -- something that many other organizations are now struggling to do.  The author in me likes that, even if the consumer in me does not.  One nice thing they do for authors is to create a link that allows us to give away 100 copies of a PDF version to anyone we want.  As I said earlier in the week, I want to give the copies to readers of Work Matters.  If you want a copy of "How to Be a Good Boss in a Bad Economy," please go here to download it:

http://custom.hbsp.com/b01/en/implicit/p.jhtml?login=SUTT052609S&pid=R0906E

Also, I would be grateful if you limited yourself to a single copy so that more people can get one. Finally, when these run out, you can read the opening of the article and buy the rest here; and if you want to see an interview with me about the article at the McKinsey site, check out Good Boss, Bad Times.

Good Boss, Bad Times: Video Interview at The McKinsey Quarterly

 I've written here about my new Harvard Business Review article on  "How to Be a Good Boss in a Bad Economy."  Right after I finished the article, I was lucky enough to be at conference where Rik Krikland had a camera crew. Rik runs the The McKinsey Quarterly and a bunch of other related stuff at McKinsey; as some of you may remember, Rik was the long time editor of Fortune magazine. Rik asked if I wanted to do an interview about something, and we both thought that the forthcoming HBR was most timely. So we did the interview, which they call Good Boss, Bad Times --you can see it for free if you follow the link.  The article contains more nuances than the interview, but Rik is such a good interviewer that he gently guided me to provide a pretty accurate compact summary of the ideas.

In addition to the interview, there was some interesting "inside baseball" with this interview as HBR and the McKinsey Quarterly in some ways compete for attention (although they do have different goals in many ways). But rather than getting weird and uncooperative, Rik and the new HBR editor Adi Ignatius were wonderfully cooperative about the whole thing.  They were colleagues at Time-Warner, as Adi was at Time magazine for 13 years, so that helped.  McKinsey waited to post the interview until the HBR article came-out -- and the HBR article links back to the interview (They are acting just like bloggers, kind of cool to see).  My thanks to everyone at The McKinsey Quarterly and Harvard Business Review for playing so well together, and for being so fun and inspiring to work with.

When Layoffs are Immoral: Randy Cohen in The New York Times

Sunday's Times had an essay by "ethicist" Randy Cohen that made a remarkably black and white argument about when it is and is not ethical to layoff employees.  I had a mixed reaction to the article.  On one hand, I agree that too many organizations use layoffs as a first or early resort and that there are too many times when senior executives slash employee jobs just to protect their own pay --and there is an argument from some research that companies that do layoffs at the first whiff of trouble are at a competitive disadvantage.  But I think that Mr. Cohen's arguments strike me as too moralistic and too naive at times.  This really bugged me:

"This is not to assert that Caterpillar can never downsize. Companies must be able to shrink as well as grow, to adjust to changing circumstances. (A restaurant with fewer customers needs fewer waiters.) But prudent staffing must be part of an ongoing strategy, not a panicky response to an economic downturn."

The economic collapse that led to layoffs at Caterpillar wasn't predicted most industry experts and economists, let alone by most corporate leaders.  I think that simply calling layoffs at Caterpillar a "panicky response" is sort of like criticizing people for a "panicky response" to Tsunami.  I am sure, in hindsight, that executives might have been better prepared, but I think Mr. Cohen does not show quite enough understanding of how hard it is to manage during times of harsh uncertainty. 

I was also a bit disturbed because,although I think that many companies do not show enough loyalty and humanity toward their workers, Mr. Cohen seemed to saying that any leader or company that did not first try practices short of layoffs was immoral:

"Before adopting the ethics of the overcrowded lifeboat, before tossing thousands of non-millionaires over the side, gentler — and more equitable — methods must be tried. Everyone’s hours might be reduced, diffusing the pain. Dividends to stockholders can be eliminated. Pay cuts can be instituted company-wide, with the deepest reserved for the highest paid (that is, those most able to endure them)."

That "must be tried" really bugs me.  In the case of Caterpillar, I wonder whether the workers, shareholders, and analysts would have agreed with the strategy of reducing hours or more severe pay cuts -- management works under many constraints that sometimes make such actions difficult.  Also, as Cohen notes, Caterpillar executives have taken some cuts (but perhaps not enough).

I spent much of my early career studying organizational death and decline, and am working on the topic again a bit, especially in my current HBR article.  When I first studied declining and dying organizations in Michigan in the early 1980s, I thought that layoffs were misanthropic and any company that did not spread the pain equally was immoral.  But as I have seen the difficult and complex set of constraints that executives face in organizations of all kinds and sizes, I have learned to avoid pointing the morality finger at those leaders who do layoffs -- there too many times when it puts the remaining business at risk or when because of immovable constraints (such as union contracts, work rules, or the nature of the work) cost-cutting short of layoffs is not feasible.  There are also other times when, to save the company, or at least a lot more jobs, a company has too many workers with the wrong skills, and although perhaps they should have realized it sooner, they get in a position where a restructuring is needed to change the composition of the workforce, and layoffs are the only viable path. There are even times when paying no dividend may end-up hurting the stock so badly that layoffs are a better path for the common good over the long haul. 

Layoffs do massive damage to people, I am not defending them as humane acts, but there are too many times when they are the lesser evil.  And if they are the best choice NOW because of PAST managerial incompetence, that is horrible, but life does not have a rewind feature.

I do agree with Mr. Cohen that some CEO's out there are not taking there fair share of the hit, although even then I worry that if we take the finger-pointing too far here that executives won't have the right incentives for managing organizations well on the both the way up and on the way down the economic cycle -- and everyone will suffer as a result. 

Finally, perhaps it is my weird bias in life, but when people claim to be more ethical than others, it always makes me squirm because so often they end-up taking the same --or worse --actions than those they demonize.  As my father-in-law likes to say, "when people talk about ethics, I hide the good silverware."  I agree with many of Mr. Cohen's points, but I guess his moralistic tone bothers me above all else. Too many ethical and unselfish executives I know who have done layoffs have suffered mightily as they tried to balance efforts to keep their companies healthy -- or at least alive -- and to save as many jobs as possible in the wake of the current awful and largely unexpected mess.  Mr. Cohen is mighty quick to trumpet his own moral superiority when discussing executives who did not plan for these extremes or who believe that --for the good of the whole -- layoffs rather than spreading the pain more evenly are the best strategy. 

I wonder, if he walked a mile in their shoes, would he be as ethical or as competent?   Morality, like management, is something that is a lot easier to talk about than to get right every time given the messiness and uncertainty of the world as it exists (rather than the world we wish it would be).

HBR Online Jumps on the Baboon Bandwagon

I wrote a post last week called "Of Baboons and Bosses" that described the source supporting my assertion that, in baboon troops, the other members of the troop glance at the alpha male two or three times a minute.  I talk about this in my new Harvard Business Review article on "How to Be a Good Boss in a Bad Economy" to help make the point that, when you are a boss, your people watch your moves very closely, especially when fear is in the air.

Julia Kirby over at Harvard Business Review online has added a lovely post on the baboon angle over at the editors blog, called Beware the Baboon Boss. I like Julia's opening:

If your workplace is like many these days, all eyes are on the boss. The numbers aren't good, the senior team is huddling, and change is in the air. Everyone studies their supervisor's every move and utterance for clues to the danger ahead.

It turns out this isn't just a rational response to uncertainty; it's in our evolutionary biology.

Julia edited this and many of my past HBR articles, and perhaps more than anyone else, is responsible for the sequence of events that led me to write The No Asshole Rule, as she wrote me about five years ago to ask if I had an ideas for their annual breakthrough ideas. I said I had an idea, but they wouldn't publish it because it involved publishing a seven-word expletive that would not be acceptable in a respectable publication like HBR.  I also added that it probably was not a breakthrough idea.  Julia seemed undeterred and, although the essay was called "More Trouble Than They Are Worth," it contained the "A word' at least seven times.   The essay was published and it unleashed a deluge of responses -- notably hundreds of emails -- that led me to realize that the damage done by assholes in the workplace was something that people cared about a lot, and that touched many lives.  If Julia had not supported the idea, and urged me to send her text, the book never would have happened.

"How to Be a Good Boss in a Bad Economy" Featured in the New HBR

The folks at Harvard Business Review told me that "How to Be a Good Boss in a Bad Economy" would be "sort of" the lead article in the June issue.  I am not entirely sure what that means, but I thank them for making it so prominent on their cover.  My initial reaction to the cover was to flinch as it is disconcerting, but as one CEO I know said, unfortunately, it is spot on because it reflects how so many people are feeling during these tough times.  I already blogged a bit about some of the themes developed in the article in Of Baboons and Bosses, and will put-up more thoughts over the next couple weeks.  Also, stay tuned because HBR will be sending me a link, I think next week, so I will be able to give away 100 copies, which I will do here as soon as I can. I haven't seen the issue, but I am a huge fan of both Rod Kramer, Joel Podolny, James O'Toole, and of course, the famous and charming Warren Bennis.  Also, I note that all four five of us live in California.  HBR has been accused of being overly disposed to publish articles from Harvard Business School faculty -- perhaps they also have a pro-California bias!  Although Joel's last job was being a dean Yale, he is now at Apple, so is back in California.

Of Baboons and Bosses

I wrote a Harvard Business Review article that is hitting the stands (and I guess the web) next week called "How to Be a Good Boss in a Bad Economy."  One of the points I make is that bosses aren't always sufficiently aware of how closely their subordinates are scrutinizing and trying to make sense of their behavior, and that people watch their bosses every move especially closely when fear is in the air, such is during the tough times so many organizations are suffering now. (see this "Interesting Shoes" post for a great example).

In the HBR article, I suggest that hyperfocus on the creature at the top of the pecking order is evident in other primates as well. And  I quote research suggesting that in baboon troops, the typical members looks at the the alpha make every 20 to 30 seconds to see what he is doing.  I was exchanging emails with the HBR editor I worked with on the piece, the amazing Julia Kirby, and she suggested that I put up a post to give people a bit more information about the source of this tidbit. 

It comes from an article by anthropologist  Lionel Tiger and here is the key excerpt.  Note the key insight is pretty fascinating:"Chance's argument is that a major, if not the most significant, characteristic of political interaction involves who looks at whom." Start thinking about when you go to your next meeting or when you observe your next meeting -- it is an insight with hundreds of implications, as it reveals the power and communication patterns, and helps explain why, although a group of seven or eight people may all seem to have been at the same meeting, in essence, each saw and heard completely different things.  This quote below is pretty academic, but most academic writing isn't nearly this insightful or intriguing:

A proposition by Chance about attention structure requires explication; it may well be one of the few original and useful basic ideas to be developed about political systems in a very long time (25). Chance's argument is that a major, if not the most significant, characteristic of political interaction involves who looks at whom. The suggestion is that the chief functional difference between the leader and the follower is that the followers look at the leader; the opposite does not happen as regularly or intensely. Chance's proposition refers primarily to primates and applies most obviously to terrestrial animals, such as the baboons, for whom it clearly would be in the interest of survival to centralize information-like that coming from suba-dult males at the more dangerous and revealing periphery of the troop-and to pay close, united regard to the dominant male's signals. This is a deceptively simple idea; its analytical virtue is that it crosscuts a host of structural factors in primate systems and attends to very obvious behavioral ones.

For example, in a baboon troop all animals will glance at the leader every 20 or 30 seconds and return to whatever they are doing. The leader is, of course, normally found at the center of the group, and almost by definition where the leader is constitutes the group's center (except during movement). The forces of interaction then, in common with the general importance of gregariousness in such animals, render these societies centripetal, as Chance calls them, as opposed to centrifugal. The tension between escape and staying and the problems of status and hierarchy are articulated in a relatively elastic but nonetheless definable web which constitutes the boundary between one primate group and another.

I guess that The Office's Michael Scott and that snarling baboon might have more in common than might appear at first.  Indeed, that TV show captures pretty well how closely his people watch him, and how oblivious he can be to their actions, reactions, and needs. As the saying goes, one of the reasons that show is so funny is because it is so true.

P.S. The excerpt is from: "Dominance in Human Societies" Author(s): Lionel Tiger Source: Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, Vol. 1 (1970), pp. 287-306 Published by: Annual Reviews. 

Kelley Eskridge's Wise Advice on Running Meetings

The comments and questions generated by my post last week on Do You End Meetings on Time? are consistently wise and thoughtful, but I wanted to highlight the one by Kelley Eskridge in particular.  It isn't just about ending meetings, it is about how to run a great meeting in general.  I also suggest that you check out Kelley's website and blog.  Her website is for her company, Humans at Work.    You can see why she knows so  much about running groups, as she does this for a living.  The most amazing thing about her company website is that -- although she will charge you to do it herself -- she provides detailed advice about how to use her group intervention method yourself for free... now that is rare.  I can't imagine Bain, BCG, or McKinsey doing quite the same thing! 

Also, as I read her blog, I also learned Kelley has published a well-reviewed novel and many stories.  Here novel, Solitaire, is being developed into a film.  I guess that explains why her blog is so well-written, as is this lovely advice below on meetings.  I especially like her advice about how a combination of rules, process skills, and a bit of polite courage can be used to gently tamp down destructive and overbearing team members:

One tool that has always helped me facilitate meetings -- my own, and those fun times when I am the facilitator for the 35 300-pound-gorilla executives in the room -- is Ground Rules. 

I pre-publish a prepared list of ground rules to attendees, and also bring it on a flip chart into the meeting and hang it on the wall.  The rules typically include:

-- Start/end the meeting on time
-- No interruptions
-- No side conversations
-- No phone calls/email in the meeting
-- Everyone participates in brainstorming
-- In dealing with conflict, we focus on the business choices, not on the people arguing for or against them
-- We use a "parking lot" to capture ideas that are important to pursue, but not relevant to the work of this meeting. 
-- We leave the room with a clear record of decisions made and who is accountable for follow-up.

At the start of the meeting, ask if there is anyone who is not willing to work by these rules, and if there are additional ground rules needed.

And then when the EVP of Bananas starts steamrolling the conversation, cut her off; point to the flip chart; and say, "Cheetah, we have a rule about no interruptions.  I'd like Tarzan  to finish what he was saying and then I'll turn it over to you."

Cheetah won't like it.  But 95% of the time, she'll do it.  The other 5% of the time, you have to be willing to enlist the group's help to enforce the rules.  That goes something like: "Okay, we all agreed to these rules.  Cheetah has just said that she doesn't want to be bound by them.  Does the rest of the group agree that these rules should be ditched?  In my experience as a facilitator, if you're not willing to have rules for meetings, you'll have less effective meetings.  That's up to you.  What would you like to do?"

And then abide by the group's decision.  Which will usually be "well... I think we should have rules... " (with covert looks at Cheetah, who will be pissed but basically powerless, unless she is real asshole).

I can already hear the howls of disbelieving laughter from folks, along the lines of "if only"... but I've done this plenty of times, always with success and never with any kind of retribution beyond the occasional "oh, right, PROCESS!" sneers.

The thing is, people will generally follow the most effective behavior that's modeled for them.  Ground rules help you model the behavior and give you an objective reference point for calling out rudeness/ineffective behavior.

Most workplace assholes get away with it because no one stops them.  Having an objective tool agreed on by the group can really help.

Kelley, thanks for taking the time write such a lovely and thoughtful comment.

What Should a New Boss Do the First Few Weeks?

One of my former students wrote a great email this morning, and although I fumbled to give him a few answers, I felt like I didn't give him the answer he deserved.  He has been working the past couple years as an "individual contributor" at a professional services firm.  I know him pretty well, as he was a student in a couple intense d.school classes I taught and was also my teaching assistant in another class. He is very smart and very hard working.  But he is about to start a new role from him: As the boss of a four-person team.

Here is his question:

"I am a bit nervous as I will be leading a team of four, all more senior than myself in both age and tenure.  And to be honest, I'm not sure what to do or say over the first few weeks.  I don't believe I'll be an asshole, or have a power trip, but am more concerned about making the right impression off the bat.  Got any nuggets of wisdom?"

I wonder if any of you can help this new boss. How does he make a good impression -- and I would add -- set the stage so that they not only like him, but also do great work?

Do You End Meetings On Time?

I realize that there are times when true crises arise, decisions need to be made, urgent action need to be taken, and so on --so a group leader must keep a meeting running after the scheduled ending time.  But I have been in a number of situations over the years-- with meetings inside and outside Stanford, in classes, conferences, and dozens of other situations -- where the meeting stretches on well-past the appointed ending time for no good reason.  I also occasionally hear stories from my kids about how they are late to their next class --and get in trouble -- because one of their teachers insists on holding them in class after the bell rings for some ridiculous reason.

Keeping people later that scheduled is, to me, rude because it means they are often late to their next meetings, late for after work activities (I recall a meeting that made me late to one of my kid's plays years ago), and it infringes on their individual productivity.

There are at least four reasons that this seems to happen, none of which are very flattering to leaders:

1. The Leader is Clueless.  This is when the leader doesn't realize that it is well past ending time or doesn't know when the meeting actually ends.  I am disorganized enough that I have kept students later than I should because I didn't know the ending time, but when it happens, it is clearly a failure of my management skills. Those of us who lead routine meetings have an obligation to know when they are supposed to end, and to stick to it.

2. The Leader Lacks the Courage -- or Perhaps the Power -- to Stop Overbearing Blabbermouths.  I've seen this happen when a leader with good intentions realizes that it is past the appointed ending time, but can't quite bring him or herself to stop one or more blabbermouths from droning on and on. In some of the worst cases, the blabbermouths KNOW that they are holding everyone hostage, the leader tries to stop them, but they keep insisting that on talking and talking -- in other words, they, rather than the leader, is suffering from an exaggerated sense of self-importance.

3. The Leader has an Exaggerated Sense of Self-Importance.  Unfortunately, this happens all too often. Although the meeting or conference is about a routine or trivial matter, the leader believes that he or she is such an important person that nothing else in the other participants' lives -- their next meeting, their individual work, their friends and families -- could possibly be as important as ME.

4. The Leader is Doing it as a Power Move.  This is related to 3, but is a more vile form. It is when the leader keeps people late to show that he or she CAN --to demonstrate he or she has the power to screw-up your next meeting, undermine your other work, make you late to see your friends, lovers, and families, and generally run roughshod over you.  By the way, research on commitment suggests that if you continually allow your boss to run roughshod over you in this and other ways, and you believe you are doing it voluntarily, your commitment to the leader will increase: to reduce cognitive dissonance, you will need to explain two thoughts to yourself, "I am screwing-up the rest of my life as I wait for this meeting to end" and "I am doing this by choice."  A good way to reduce this dissonance is to convince yourself that the leader and the group are more important than everything else -- even if they are not.

If you are a leader, I would ask you to start thinking about if you have a habit of keeping people late. Why are you doing it?  Is it really worth screwing up people's lives, and in the case of people who have individual work to do, really worth stealing time from their individual projects to make one more point?

If you are constantly subjected to such treatment, try walking-out. Even better, do a little "pre-work" with others who feel similarly oppressed and all work out together -- that is a great way to show an overbearing boss that he or she can't push you around.  This may be impolite as well, but I think that leaders who continually disrespect people in this way deserve to get the message.

I also think that there is something about the way our schools socialize us that brainwashes us to believe we have to stay in our seats and can't get-up until the teacher dismisses us -- indeed, this is so ingrained in many of us that we don't even THINK about getting-up. There are many times in adult life when you can just walk out, and you and everyone else might be better for it.Views: Defending Collegiality - Inside Higher Ed

P.S. As I wrote when discussing Microcosmographia Academia a few months back, if you really want to please people at a meeting --whether you are the leader or not -- move for early dismissal! As F.M. Cornford put it so well "Motions for adjournment, made less than fifteen minutes before tea-time or at any subsequent moment, are always carried."

Upadate: Thanks to Chris Young over at The Rainmaker group for picking this as one of his Fab 5 picks of the week.

Which One of My Children Should I Stop Feeding?

I heard this line from a manager I've known for many years. He was describing how painful layoffs had been for him at his company, and how that was his gut reaction to being asked who should be let go.  He believed layoffs were necessary for "feeding everyone else," but it reminded me how tough these times are on everyone. Even the most compassionate and caring companies are feeling compelled to cut people -- including the top rated companies on Fortune's Best Place to Work survey: both Google (top in 2008) and NetApp (top in 2009) have done layoffs in recent months.

Information Sharing in Teams: Impediments To Overcome

The Journal of Applied Psychology just published a "Meta-Analysis" on the links between information sharing and team performance.  This method entails using quantitative analysis to uncover patterns across large numbers of studies -- in this case, 72 studies of nearly 5000 groups.  The overall findings aren't a surprise, that groups that engage in more information sharing enjoy better performance, cohesion,   knowledge integration, and satisfaction with decisions made -- but given the best bosses are usually masters of the obvious first and foremost, this is useful reminder that getting people to feel safe enough and to have enough time to share their knowledge is worth the trouble. 

There was another twist, however, that bosses ought to devote a bit more attention to, a pair of red flags.  The first was that the more distributed the information (the more different places it is in, including spread among different people,locations and departments), the less sharing there was and, perhaps most troubling, the more heterogeneity there was (i.e., the more diversity there was on things ranging from gender, to race, to age, to professional background) the less likely they were to share information. 

The upshot for people leading teams and in teams is that you've got to remember that in the situations when you need to share information most -- both in terms of avoiding pitfalls and reaching top performance --are times when there are strong impediments. To be more concrete, if information is spread around different people and places, and if people have different backgrounds, you really need to work in getting them to trust each other, take the others' perspective, and listen carefully to each other. 

I see this in the best Stanford student teams. Last year, we did project for a major airline to increase the customer service experience at a large airline.  The three person team was about as different as you could construct in a three person team (except all were under 35).  An African American female MBA, A female Romanian doctoral student in chemistry, and a male Ph.D student in engineering.  They went through a brief period of getting to know each other, but once they got past their differences, the speed at which they started talking, listening, and brainstorming, and combining knowledge was breathtaking -- and indeed, they came-up with implemented a prototype to improve the experience of retrieving luggage that was implemented a few months later.  The worst groups, however, are composed of people who, say, act like the most stereotypical of MBAs, engineers, and designers, don't listen to each other and don't teach each other.  On average, though, I am impressed that, if you create conditions were the differences are raised and people have time to work together on short projects to learn each others strengths and weaknesses, teams that have the most diverse members do the best work -- and to add a note of warning, the worst work too, because if they never get past their differences (as people open-up more slowly to others who are "different"), they are the worst. 

So, having the information spread around a team and having diverse team members is a high magnitudes situation -- it brings out the best and worst in teams, and as a boss, part of your job is to make sure it brings out the best.

Finally, the weirdest twist is that groups that tended to TALK more, shared LESS information.   My guess is that this happens because some groups are prone to having norms and a status game where the goal is steal the air time and display dominance, rather than to listen to each other, combine what was said, and act.  This is especially true in occupations where people aren't paid to talk, but to do stuff. I recall a great old study of British string quartets where the best groups would talk and fight less, and play more.  They were more effective partly because you can't fight as easily when you are playing and partly because disagreements about what to play are worked out best while testing what will work, not arguing over it.

P.S. I found this article described at BPS Research Digest.  Here is the reference:Mesmer-Magnus, J., & DeChurch, L. (2009). Information sharing and team performance: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94 (2), 535-546.

Here is the study of quartets: Murnighan, J. K. and Conlon, D. J. (1991). The dynamics of intense work groups: A study of British string quartets. Administrative Science Quarterly, 36, 165-186

Preview of Peter Principle Foreword

As I wrote yesterday, it was A Big Day for Incompetence as two things came out about the 40th Anniversary Edition of The Peter Principle. Yesterday, I talked about the INC interview with Leigh Buchanan. Today, I will focus on the Foreword, which I wrote for the book.  The book is actually not officially out, but BusinessWeek has published the entire Foreword online. You can get it here.  To give you taste, here is the opening of my take on "Dr. Peter's Useful and Hilarious Classic."

The Peter Principle came as a revelation to my father, Lewis Sutton. He ran a little company in San Francisco called Oceanic Marine that sold furniture and related equipment, which he installed on United States Navy ships. His livelihood depended on U.S. government bureaucrats and shipyard managers, who often made him miserable. I grew up listening to his tirades about how these "overpaid idiots" insisted that he produce and procure poorly designed furnishings, how they could barely do their jobs, and how pathetically lazy they were. To make matters worse, senior government officials produced an onslaught of absurd procedures that required him to jump through an ever-expanding maze of administrative hoops—which wasted his time, drove up his costs, and made him crazy. He concluded: "The morons at the top must be paid to waste as much taxpayer money as possible."

My father loved The Peter Principle because it explained why life could be so maddening—and why everyone around you seems, or is doomed to become, incompetent. The people who ran the U.S. Navy and the shipyards didn't intend to do such lousy work. They were simply victims of Dr. Peter's immutable principle. They had been promoted inevitably, maddeningly, absurdly to their "level of incompetence." Dr. Peter also taught my father not to expect the few competent bureaucrats and managers he encountered to stick around for long, as they would soon be promoted to a job that they were unable to perform properly. Dr. Peter even showed that such incompetence had pervaded my dad's business for hundreds of years. The book quotes a report from 1684 about the British Navy: "The naval administration was a prodigy of wastefulness, corruption, ignorance, and indolence…no estimate could be trusted…no contract was performed…no check was enforced."

My dad took special delight in the pseudoscientific jargon that Dr. Peter invented to describe the weird and wasteful behaviors displayed by those languishing at their level of incompetence. Peter gave absurd and comedic names to the tragic realities of working life. The root of the entire book, the condition of incompetence that Peter called "Final Placement Syndrome," leads some to develop "Abnormal Tabulology" (an "unusual and highly significant arrangement of his desk"). This pathology is manifested, for example, in "Tabulatory Gigantism" (an obsession with having a bigger desk than his colleagues)  .......  (see the rest here)

P.S. Here is a story about 28,000 UC San Diego students who accidentally got congratulatory emails and letters indicating they had been admitted -- when they were actually rejected.  The Peter Principle lives!