“Let people accomplish your objectives their way.”

Where systems or processes are concerned, it really is essential that everybody use them uniformly. Imagine an assembly line. Each station on the line must perform its function in a very precise way, each and every time, or stations further down the line won’t be able to do their work. But for the most part, management challenges don’t lend themselves to an assembly line approach. They tend to be unique situations that require specially crafted solutions. However, that’s not to say that there couldn’t be two or five or a hundred specially crafted solutions that would all work equally well.

For most of us, the joy of work is in figuring stuff out . . . doing or trying things that haven’t been done or tried before. When we’re told, “Here we are at A, and you need to get us to D,” that’s a great assignment. Right away we’re thinking, “I wonder if there’s a way to get directly to D without going through B or C. Or maybe it would work better if we went from A to C, then back to B and finally to D.” On the other hand, if we’re told, “Here we are at A, you need to get us first to B, then to C, and then to D,” all the joy, excitement, and creativity just went out of the assignment.

Micro-managing can tear the heart right out of an organization. Leaders set a broad direction and then get out of the way. Tell your people what to do, but let them figure out how to do it. They may not complete a task the way you would have completed it, but so what? As long as the end result is what we wanted, who cares whose method achieved that result? Besides, that’s when innovation happens and breakthroughs occur . . . when someone takes a fresh look at a situation and decides to address it in a way that no one has thought of before.

“We hire for skills and fire for behaviors.”

That’s true isn’t it? We were excited about our new hire. He had worked at some great places, been trained in the exact systems and processes we need, and impressed us as someone who is diligent and efficient. This was going to be a marriage made in heaven. Unfortunately, we were so impressed with his skills, we neglected to learn that he is rude, self-absorbed, imperious, and nobody can stand to work with him. So the marriage we thought was made in heaven ends in an ugly divorce.

There are no guarantees when it comes to hiring people. Try as we might to hire only the people who are a “good fit” for our company, we sometimes make a mistake and take in someone who is a bad fit. But there are ways to stack the odds in your favor.

First, in an interview, focus on behaviors that will be necessary success factors for the job you’re trying to fill, and ask for actual events in the candidate’s past that demonstrate those behaviors. For instance, you might say, “You will need to work with a team of people to do your job successfully. Give us some examples from your prior work experience to show how you worked with others to accomplish a particular goal.” Or you could say, “Tell us about a really tough customer service issue you’ve had. How did you handle it?” The point is, don’t ask hypothetical questions (What would you do if . . . ?) because there’s no way to verify the candidate’s answer. Ask questions that illustrate the behaviors you want and ask for actual situations from the candidate’s past.

Second, when you do reference checks, verify the interview answers you got. “I understand John had a tough situation with the XYZ Company but was able to defuse it by doing thus and such. Is that the way you recall it?”

Behaviors are tough to predict, but if you spend some time thinking carefully about the behaviors you need and then thoughtfully constructing questions to highlight those behaviors, you’ll be surprised how much you can learn about a candidate before s/he becomes an employee.

“Progress always involves risk, but you can’t steal second base and keep a foot on first.”

“Change with the world – or it will change without you.”

There is always risk with change, and in general, the greater the change, the greater the risk. But you know what? There’s also risk in not changing . . . arguably even greater risk.

Changes in the business world are coming at us faster than ever before, and the rate of change will continue to accelerate. So we need to prepare our organizations to not only accept change, but to embrace it. Yes, change brings risk, but it also brings new opportunities. If you’re unwilling to take the risk, you will be shut out of the opportunity.

People aren’t afraid of change. They’re afraid of the unknown. So the best way to introduce change is through good communication. Tell your people what change is coming, why the change is necessary, and what you need from them to affect the change smoothly. If you communicate the change clearly and completely and you answer all questions about it, the fear is largely gone because the change is no longer unknown.

If your culture is risk averse and resistant to change . . . you’d better change it.

“The best ideas for improving a job come from those who do it every day.”

Absolutely true. If you want to know where there is waste in your organization, ask your people. They know where it is, but they won’t tell you unless you ask.

At a medical practice that has a number of offices, we asked the staff for “time wasters”. . . activities that take up a lot of time without an obvious benefit. In this practice, patient records are kept centrally, so when a doctor is seeing a patient at one of the outlying offices, the patient’s record (which can be voluminous) must be faxed there. The staff reported that they spent a lot of time standing at the fax machine. We checked with the doctors who told us they don’t need the entire record, only two or three pages of it. So it was an easy fix that saved a lot of staff time with no adverse impact on doctor or patient. But we wouldn’t have found this “time waster” if we hadn’t asked.

Go through your entire organization from the executive offices to the loading dock and ask everyone where they see waste . . . wasted time, materials, or space. You’ll be surprised by what you learn. In some cases, an employee will believe something is wasteful because s/he doesn’t understand its value. This becomes an opportunity to help that employee learn more about how your business actually works. But in many cases, the employee will point out something that really is wasteful and can be corrected. You just have to ask.

A retiring GM worker once said, “For 25 years you’ve paid only for my hands when you could have had my brain for free.” Don’t make that mistake.

“Never let the urgent crowd out the important.”

As small business people, we spend a lot of our time putting out brush fires. When we arrive at work in the morning, we probably have in mind the things we hope to get done during the day. But five minutes later, our best customer calls with a problem or a key piece of machinery breaks down, and in a flash, whatever plan we had for the day is gone.

Most consultants are familiar with a two-by-two grid where one axis says “Important” and “Not Important” while the other says “Urgent” and “Not Urgent.” Unfortunately, many of us spend far too much time in the part of the grid where “Urgent” and “Not Important” intersect. Is it urgent to get a key piece of equipment back in operation quickly? Of course. But will that be important to the long-term health and growth of the business? Probably not.

Each of us needs to carve out some protected time to work on the business, not in the business. We need to commit to some time each week . . . maybe a day, maybe half a day, maybe just a few hours . . . for activities that will move the business forward in a measurable, strategic way. If you can accomplish that by closing your office door and unplugging the phone, fine. If not, go to the library or to a coffee shop, or maybe work from home. However you do it, find a way each week to put aside your fire-fighting gear for awhile and focus on the longer term problems and opportunities for your business.

Can’t do that? You can’t be out-of-touch with the business for even a little while? Then your first “important” task is figuring out how to change your organization so that it runs just fine whether you happen to be on the premises or not.

“As managers, we have to get out of the behavior modification business.”

We can help people with skills . . . to improve old ones or learn new ones. But it’s just about impossible to change their behaviors in any meaningful way. Yet we continue to waste time trying.

Take the example of Bill, ace IT guy. He’s an electronics genius. There isn’t anything with a circuit board that he doesn’t know or can’t figure out. Unfortunately, he’s perpetually crabby, ill-tempered, and believes everybody in the building is an idiot except for him. He’s been counseled, numerous times, about his hostile behavior. He always acknowledges the criticism and pledges to do better, but within about an hour and a half, he’s back to his old crabby, ill-tempered self. He’s 35 years old. It’s very unlikely that a few counseling sessions are going to undo the behaviors it took Bill 35 years to learn.

The best solution, of course, is to hire people whose behaviors are a good fit with your company’s culture. But nobody bats 1000 when it comes to hiring the right people. Sometimes we get it wrong and end up with Bill. When we do, we have to recognize that he is what he is and wasting time trying to modify his behavior would be a fool’s errand. Our only real options are to show him the door or find ways to put up with him.

But we don’t like those options. His skills are a valuable company resource that we would hate to lose. Besides, finding and hiring a replacement is expensive and time-consuming. On the other hand, putting up with him sends a signal to the rest of the organization that rude, abusive behavior is OK. So we look for a third option. We say to ourselves, “We can work with this guy. We can get him turned around.” No, you can’t. Not unless you’re a trained psychologist and are willing to spend years working with him. Much as you want an Option 3, don’t waste your time. Stick with Option 1 or Option 2. Show him the door or put up with him.

“Consider how hard it is to change yourself and you’ll understand what little chance you have of trying to change others.”

“If you listen closely enough, your customers will explain your business to you.”

Your customers don’t have to do business with you. They have many suppliers from which to choose, but they have chosen you. Why? What is it about the product or service you offer that brings you customers and keeps them? You think you know why your customers have chosen to do business with you, but do you really know?

Sadly, too many business people aren’t in touch with what their customers are buying. We think we’re selling price but our customers are buying on-time delivery. We think we’re selling world class service but our customers are buying long-term durability.

The answer is to stop telling your customers what you want to sell them and start listening to what they want to buy. Ask them point blank. “You have lots of other companies you could be doing business with, but you’ve chosen us. Why?”

Take a customer to lunch, leave your pre-conceived notions at home, and he or she really will explain your business to you. You might just learn that you’re not in the business you thought you were in.

“A decision is an action an executive must take . . . “

For owners and managers, decision-making goes with the territory. We can’t escape it. It’s an important part of the job. Even if an executive presides over an inclusive, democratic decision-making process, he or she must still make sure that process is effective and efficient and doesn’t lead to grid lock. Decisions are what move an organization from where it is to where it wants to go, so allowing grid lock to creep in will bring an organization to a grinding halt. To avoid grid lock, please read below.

“A decision is an action an executive must take when he has information so incomplete that the answer does not suggest itself.”

We’ve all heard of “analysis paralysis,” right? And most of us have probably seen it in action. It’s the decision-maker who won’t make a decision. There’s always one bit of information missing that he or she needs before making a decision. Then another. And another, on infinitum.

The message here is clear. Don’t wait until you have all the information you need to make a perfect decision, because you’ll never have it. That’s not to say that important decisions should be hasty or rushed, but leaders need to discipline themselves to recognize when they have assembled as much information and as many opinions as they reasonably can, and that further delay will not produce a better decision.

Decision-making is more art form than science. It mixes data with experience, good thinking with instinct. So don’t allow its imperfect nature cause a thoughtful and deliberate decision-making process slip into procrastination and unnecessary delay. As the folks at Nike would say, “Just do it!”

“One of the greatest challenges as a manager is how to delegate so effectively that once you have gotten the monkey off your back, your employees don’t return it to you . . . with instructions for its care and feeding.”

An important part of leadership, delegation, is growing the people who are under the leader’s care. It takes time and it takes effort, but it’s the only way to develop a strong, effective team.

Picture this. You’ve just given one of your direct reports an important assignment. Soon the direct report returns with questions, lots of questions. In the back of your mind you’re thinking, “I could do this myself in just a fraction of the time it’s going to take me to explain everything.” If you give in to that thought, two bad things happen: the monkey climbs on your back again, and you miss a growth opportunity for your direct report.

So how do you move the assignment forward and still keep the monkey where it belongs?

First, you need to invest time in your direct report. And that’s what it is. It’s not a waste of your time, it’s an investment in growing one of your people. Second, to make this a learning and growing opportunity, don’t spoon feed your direct report with all the answers. Make him/her come up with his/her own answers. For instance, when your charge says, “I’m not sure if we should do X or Y.” Don’t say, “Let’s go with X.” Instead say,

“What do you think?”

“Why do you think that would be a better choice than the other?”

“Have you asked any of your colleagues for their opinions?”

“Have you talked with others in the organization who will be affected by your decision?”

“Have you talked with stakeholders outside the organization who may be impacted?”

The point is, don’t be the answer person. Be the question person who helps draw out of your direct report the excitement of creativity and discovery. Yes it will take some time, but you’ll end up with a more effective, self-confident employee. And the monkeys will stay where they belong.

“If your horse dies, get off.”

Inertia can be a terrible thing. It can keep us rooted in decisions and activities that may no longer be productive. It can keep us astride ol’ Trigger long after it has become obvious that Trig isn’t going anywhere.

For example, let’s say we launch a new product or service, but the new offering isn’t getting the acceptance in the marketplace that we had planned. We try different pricing models and different promotional efforts, but nothing seems to help. What should we do? After all, we’ve invested a lot of time, effort, and resources in this thing, right? How can we quit now?

A more practical course might be to concede that the horse is deceased, give the animal a decent burial, cut our losses, and move on.

Remember the Kenny Rogers song, “the Gambler?” “You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away, know when to run.” That’s instructive here. It would be foolish to shut down a new product or service offering at the first sign of trouble. But at some point, after we’ve used our best efforts to overcome whatever problems the market is throwing at us, we may have to make some hard-headed decisions to lick our wounds and move forward in another direction.

We often see the same behavior in personnel decisions. We don’t want to face a hiring mistake because it took a lot of time, effort and money to find this person and to get him or her trained. We tell ourselves, “We can work with this person. We can get this person turned around,” because we don’t want to lose our investment and have to start the whole hiring and training process all over again. In many cases, this causes us to waste even more time, money and effort before we finally have to face the inevitable. Again, a better solution is to concede the problem, deal with it, and move on.

Can we avoid these situations? No, we can’t. As business people, we all make decisions that do not create the results we expect. But we can defeat inertia. Before we make an investment decision . . . whether it’s an investment in people, equipment, or new products . . . we should lay out clear, measurable results we expect from this investment, and a deadline for achieving those results. And we need to determine, in advance, what action we’ll take if the expected results are not achieved by the deadline we have set. This approach takes a lot of the emotion and trauma out of the situation because we’ve mapped it all out in advance. At this point, we’re simply executing a plan designed to prevent inertia and to avoid investing more than we intended. We’re saying, “We’re prepared to invest this much in resources over this period of time. Att the end of that time, if we’re not achieving the results we expected, then we will intervene and take this corrective action.”

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“Let people accomplish your objectives their way.”

“We hire for skills and fire for behaviors.”

“Progress always involves risk, but you can’t steal second base and keep a foot on first.”

“The best ideas for improving a job come from those who do it every day.”

“Never let the urgent crowd out the important.”

“As managers, we have to get out of the behavior modification business.”

“If you listen closely enough, your customers will explain your business to you.”

“A decision is an action an executive must take . . . “

“One of the greatest challenges as a manager is how to delegate so effectively that once you have gotten the monkey off your back, your employees don’t return it to you . . . with instructions for its care and feeding.”

“If your horse dies, get off.”

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