posted on Thursday, March 06, 2008 6:28 PM by AnjaliSastry

What will make you (even more) effective?

I enjoyed the conversation about what makes for a skilled manager, change agent, leader--I guess the things we talked about are key for any professional who gets things done by working with and through others.

See the wiki page I put together to capture our discussions, in which I combined student comments from this week with thoughts from past classes. I see a few key clusters of ideas. In brief, my students admire the person who:
  • gets the important stuff done every day
  • learns continually by iterating and testing
  • works with the external environment (the organization, stakeholders, etc)
  • knows and manages herself or himself
  • communicates well in the moment
  • builds shared commitment to move from ideas to action
  • cares, develops, and enables.
Click through to the wiki page to see the full set of ideas developed in class. But come back here to consider some thoughts I want to share.

Many of the ideas are still very general. In order to focus on specific skills that you cultivate in any project or other joint work, you will need to translate from the general idea ("gives honest, timely feedback") to even more specific practices—e.g., "Sets up regular meetings with teammates to seek informal feedback"; "develops and uses a simple feedback framework at various points throughout a team project"; "backs up feedback points with specific examples to keep it honest." Another example: if we think that effective managers "build buy-in for objectives"—how does this translate into practices you need to use now? Whose buy-in do you need for a class project, for instance? How do you know if you have it? Perhaps your team will plan to revisit objectives every other week; perhaps after every meeting with your hosts, if an objective of any sort is discussed, you follow up with an email to confirm. Remember you also need to get faculty buy-in for your objectives; how do you do that? Together, this set of practices provides the means for you to translate the important idea of buy-in to action.

What else?
Interestingly, in looking over the list I notice we focus a lot on the "nice" things bosses do, and didn't linger much on the stakeholder management issues that are cruicial for any effective manager or team. So, consider the following proposed additions:
  • Saying "no"
  • Telling someone they're wrong, off course, or simply not working out
  • Negotiating and renegotiating (including engaging and disengaging partners)
  • Technical expertise and skills in analysis, synthesis, criticism, testing
  • Building and using deep knowledge about the organization, the customers, suppliers, etc
  • Designing work and projects with falsifiablility in mind
  • Gating projects to force go/no-go decisions at appropriately early points
  • Walking away from "sunk costs" when appropriate
  • Seeking feedback from others, learning from others, asking for input, managing expectations
  • Examining, framing, and presenting failures to your stakeholders
Let me know what you think!

Comments

# re: What will make you (even more) effective?

Wednesday, March 12, 2008 11:46 AM by Amy Fazen
Professor Sastry mentioning how our class focused on the “nice” aspects of managers reminds me of one of my all-time-favorite bosses.

Let’s call him John. John had a reputation at the first firm I ever worked at as being a tyrant who no one wanted to work for. Matt has the opposite reputation – he was known to be down to earth and easy going – more like a friend. I had the opportunity to work with John on one project before he left the company and while I never saw a ruthless side to him, I was definitely intimidated by his manner and reputation.

Matt and John both left our firm and after 6 months, decided to start their own firm. About six months after that, they approached me to join them. I was hesitant to go work for John, but excited to work with Matt – based solely on reputation, I had never worked with him. I decided to join their firm as their 4th employee.

Much to my dismay, for my first 8 months I was staffed with John. Even more to my dismay, after the first month or so, I found I loved working for him. He was harsh, but there was always truth to his criticisms and everything he said was constructive. Analysts working for me were also intimidated by him and I frequently found myself playing go-between, but even they warmed up to his no bullsh*t ways.

One of my favorite examples of his behavior was while we were debating hiring an analyst. His main objection to hiring the candidate was that while the person was smart, she lacked self confidence in the way she communicated. He agreed to hire her only if she was staffed with him for the first 6 months. During her first day, he spent 2 hours with her talking about his “problem” with her way of carrying herself. She walked out of the office crying – we didn’t think she would return. But she did, and he worked with her tirelessly over the next 6 months – giving harsh but constructive criticism after each client interaction. By the end of that 6 months, not only was she his biggest fan, but she was also our top analyst.

He demanded that you worked hard, but he did too – no one ever complained that they were doing all the work and he was slacking off. He also expected that you would have equally harsh constructive criticism to him and was genuinely disappointed if you did not provide him with some at the end (or during) a project.

The irony of this story is that when I finally get staffed with Matt, I found that working with him was extremely frustrating. He provided little to no guidance during a project or feedback. Frequently you’d walk into his office and he’d be playing online golf.

A friend of mine who is still at the firm and I always joke – people come to the firm because of Matt, but stay because of John.

# re: What will make you (even more) effective?

Sunday, March 16, 2008 12:16 AM by Beatriz Tinajero
Following the discussion of contrasting different type of leaders, I want to share my experience with two personalities that have not been my bosses but that I know quite well and have an extremely different type of intelligence and leadership style. The first one, Paco, would get a very high score on what Strenberg´s Model I tests, which are the conventional intelligence tests that focus on memory-analytical abilities. The second one, Maria, would easily score lower in such tests but when taking into account her creative abilities and the way in which she relates to others, which form part of the broader definition of intelligence measured by Model II, she would make up for her mathematical weaknesses. It is interesting to see how most people would be amazed by Paco´s capacities, his high IQ and intelligence scores obtained since very young, and his ability to solve all type of complex problems. People did not talk much about Maria´s intelligence as something that outstanding, perhaps given the fact that it was not registered by a specific score that outnumbered the average significantly. Paco was expected to reach higher success by most people, as his intelligence was proved by those numbers captured in Model I. He understood and solved complex models, had great memory, got the big picture as well as the smallest details that most people would miss, and he still does, by the way.
The promising career path predicted for Paco and the one he expected for himself turned out to have huge bumps and wholes that after years he has not been able to overcome. The model did not take points off for his arrogance and egocentrism, which life kept on feeding and this is what, during tough times, have prevented him from taking the right decisions. He soon got into the business world and started his own company, which was originally a very successful one. He kept extreme control of management and always denied to accept partnerships or associates. Why would he want to have an associate if he had the money and intelligence to do it on his own? Only few people dared to make constructive comments or give him advice, and his answer was always the same one – people didn’t really understand his strategies or perhaps wanted to weaken him by dividing his success, but he wouldn´t allow it. Fighting and getting rid of internal and external enemies was part of his road to success, but often he invented his own enemies without knowing that he was paving his path to loneliness. Times changed and we entered an era of “globalization” with increasing competition, mergers and technological innovation. Paco still considers himself a different animal who doesn´t need any external capital, help or support…he can deal with the world and he has the proof of his superior intelligence! But will his model I intelligence help him acquire some of the Model II intelligence in order to adapt to the new challenges and reality?
A while ago I understood Paco´s paradox – his intelligence and believing so much on it were the core of his decline. His arrogance didn´t allow him to listen to others´ advice or to look for a strong team that could make up for his weaknesses, as he never recognized them. He considered his critics were a bunch of envious people and he could never delegate important decisions because he didn´t trust others intellect. And actually, isn´t this what has happened to many world leaders who end up going through a dark era after their great success?
Going through Sternberg´s article helped me see that indeed, Paco and other people I know are very intelligent as accounted in Model I, but lack profoundly the most important piece of Model´s II intelligence: having the dynamic ability to figure out their strengths, figure out their weaknesses, capitalize on their strengths, and compensate for or repair their weaknesses. Paco only got 50% of the whole piece right and he is now paying for it.
As you can guess, Maria has a Model II type of intelligence and I won´t go through her whole story to exemplify it. The main point is that she has the successful type of intelligence which is a mixture of analytical, creative and practical aspects of intelligence that has taken her very far. She created a very strong group that has made up for her weaknesses. She has always been open to learning experiences and has developed creative strategies to adapt to changes. Although traditional tests would still score Paco as a more intelligent person than Maria, life and their professional careers are a proof of the opposite. Adapting tests to Model II seem to be a good idea for universities, companies and other institutions, and recognizing our weaknesses a good starting point for us.