Managing for Results

Managerial effectiveness starts by letting go of old assumptions and approaching the role with a new mindset.

Managers who deliver results know that vision without execution constitutes nothing more than a hallucination. Despite this reality, the practice of management takes a back seat to strategy formulation. Only 10 percent to 30 percent of visionary initiatives succeed, so effective management remains critical to improving those odds of making change stick.

While some view management as elementary and only focused on people, that assumption limits managers and achievement. Effective management involves addressing results through people, processes, procedures, and innovation. Research shows that a single point increase in management effectiveness on a five-point scale cuts defects in half, reduces inventory by 20 percent, and raises output by 10 percent, according to the November 2012 Harvard Business Review article “Does Management Really Work?” In other words, effective management counts, but only when managers expand the scope of their managerial role.

Managers are falling short in four areas: analysis and planning, performance monitoring, listening and engagement, and validating assumptions. Improvement in all of these areas is easily within our ability when missteps are recognized and addressed.

Superficial or cursory analysis

Past practice, wishful thinking, or assertions that we can do more with less encourages us to add on rather than rethink assumptions and assignments. Managers must realize that we cannot forever do more with the same resources. Basing analysis on what we see also misleads. Like an iceberg, some things are below the surface. Careful analysis and re-evaluation of current procedures, workflows, processes, and roles offer better return than continuing to do what we have always done. Weak analysis produces weak plans. We need to work smart not just harder.

Adopting new terms or phrases that echo new goals and pasting them on old initiatives looks like progress, but it really isn’t. Instead, what is required is cross-functional execution planning to identify new opportunities, leverage internal synergies, coordinate resources, and launch new integrated projects

Weak performance management

Managers have long been expected to manage performance, but few truly address exemplary work due to their diversion to poor performers. When performance slips, managers need to coach them to ensure results instead of tolerating subpar performance. And when great performance surfaces, recognition may be given but not applied across the unit.

Unless leaders identify and institutionalize best practices, opportunities associated with superior performance disappear and practices revert to an average. The discipline required for effective performance management is given little attention until morale and performance suffer.

Managing performance consists of much more than managing attendance and avoiding legal trouble. Setting results-focused standards and metrics that are specific and consistently monitored is the new threshold for outstanding management. However, too often those standard and metrics have cobwebs on them because they have not been revised or updated to meet current challenges.

Inattention to listening, respect, and active support

Managers should not buy into the role of the order giver and answer provider. Over the years cartoons and comedies have reinforced the perception that managers removed from reality dispense their instructions without regard to actual circumstances. Dilbert does not define management any more than a power-wielding boss, like Henry Ford. Yes, Ford could give and enforce orders that prohibited smoking, required regular church attendance and squelched ideas. But that old salute and execute mentality misses the emerging red flag and squelches critical thinking and discretionary effort.

Managers must demonstrate respect to receive it. Questioning and influencing replace any notion that one person can know it all or gain support by decree. Today, direct reports alert managers to trends, opportunities, and concerns.

Reliance on habit and traditional roles

Management has a long history, and we should learn from it rather than be trapped by it. There was a time when managers had to carefully allocate overtime because all workers wanted it. Contests for overtime are pretty rare today. Dilemmas now center on flex time, work-life balance, career growth, and challenging assignments. And the number of direct reports has increased along with complexity, change, and discretionary effort.

Updating management roles, expectations, and practices transforms managers into team builders, influencers, coordinators, coaches, conflict managers, analysts, and planners. The new roles may not be comfortable but are necessary to benefit the team, the manager’s career and job satisfaction, and the organization.

Management excellence today

Organizations cannot survive perpetuating the status quo. Even the Vatican recognizes the need to revise and renew managerial practices. So let’s begin with recognizing that the new managerial expectations include:

operating as a change agent and change implementer

translating goals through execution planning

continuous project monitoring and adjusting plans to prevent problems

supporting, coaching, and being open and fair.

Shifting perceptions about management starts with managers recognizing their role as a change agent.

Change agent and change implementer

Instead of assuming their role is merely to announce and enforce, outstanding managers employ critical thinking skills to analyze how a change will affect their unit, assess potential risks and ramifications, test strategic plan assumptions, and plot a realistic implementation plan. Managers and their staff should not be expected to accept an idea without scrutiny. Examination and discovery through critical analysis increases the likelihood that a hoped-for successful project turns into an actual accomplishment.

As a change implementer, managers need to ask:

How will this change affect us?

What should we keep and what needs to change?

What risks might become a barrier?

Do we need to change our structure, polices, or practices to ensure success?

What can I do to help in the transition?

In addition, change agents know to allot time to allow people to get onboard and listen to concerns, without labeling anyone a resistor.

Translate goals through execution planning

Inspirational visions excite and trigger hope. However, broad vision statements do not define unit impact, describe expected actions, or clarify what will be done differently. Announcing a goal does not guarantee smooth execution; few things work out without digging into the details.

Managers must translate lofty visionary statements into concrete expectations. One executive thought that using a vision of “empower, free, and serve” would motivate his staff. It did for a few days. But the words inspired without providing any real direction. Who was to be empowered? What were they going to be freed from? What service would be offered or newly practiced? Only when details and benefits were explained did people commit to the new direction.

The translation process entails understanding the vision, collaborating across the organization at defining execution plans, and developing integrated project plans. Execution planning may be pushed aside in the rush toward getting started and producing, but failing to plan remains a plan to fail. Take the time upfront to avoid the time spent in fixing the problem later.

Planning, monitoring, and revising

Execution planning drives project formulation, staffing, goal setting, and monitoring. Oversight is essential. It provides timely recognition of discrepancies that can separate success from disappointment. NASA uses mid-course corrections to reach the intended destination. Astute managers must also set clear milestones that will gauge progress and alert to plan deviations. Sticking with an original plan when circumstances change encourages small problems to blossom into big ones. When problems surface, managers need to inquire:

What factors contributed to the deviation?

Who should we consult?

What assumptions have changed?

Do we need to change our priorities?

What options do we have to rectify the situation?

What can we be doing differently?

What should we be doing more often or less often?

Problem prevention and resolution generate from diverse input, comprehensive scanning, creative thinking, careful evaluation, and engagement. Managers must think beyond the quick fix by thinking inside and outside the traditional box.

Standards of authenticity, respect, support, and fairness

Outstanding managers display respect for the workforce, provide timely feedback and coaching, and demonstrate authenticity by being open to new ideas, accepting when mistakes occur without scapegoating, increasing discretion and autonomy, developing high-performing teams, providing career advice, and being fair in all interactions. This is a long list, but weakness in one aspect endangers them all. An adaptive culture can be built by adding a probing question to staff meetings either weekly or monthly. Consider the following:

What have we learned since our last meeting?

What risks should we evaluate?

Who has gone above and beyond expectations?

What performance barriers have surfaced?

What should be changed to ensure our effectiveness?