Effective Management 101

Lesson 1: all men are not created equal

Foundational to my over all leadership theory is that there are different qualities of group participants. In general, I would categorize 4 types of group participants:

1. Angels: these are motivated and capable group members who’s primarily motivation seems to be the good of the group over all.
2. Mercenaries: also capable, these employees are motivated primarily by self-interest.
3. Mushrooms: not necessarily capable, but needed for some obvious reason, these group members can’t be trusted with important information because they will utilize it against other group members. They need to be “fed crap and kept in the dark,” for the sake of the other group members.
4. Demons: wolves in sheep’s clothing, group members who’s motivations are antithetical to group success. Isolation is not sufficient to handle these group members, only banishment will contain their destructive tendencies.

First, no group can afford to have Demons. Demons should be banished immediately: an example of a demon is someone who his fellow coworkers worry may commit work place violence, or a supervisor who is having sex with one of his subordinates.

Second, most of the group should be comprised of Angels and/or Mercenaries. The idealism of the Angels can clash with the self-interest of the Mercenaries, but both types are sufficient participants for group success. A business owner who no longer needs to work but continues to work because he enjoys helping his employees is an example of an Angel, and a Manager who is likely to take another job as soon as a better offer comes along is an example of a Mercenary.

Third, Mushrooms are a great burden on a group, since they they take extra effort to communicate with, they are a lot of extra work for other group members to deal with. Isolate Mushrooms until you can turn them into a Mercenary or banish them. An example of a Mushroom is someone who “does just enough to not get fired,” but who is frequently on management or human resources radar as someone they need to keep an eye on.

The two sources I would cite here is 1) William Felps’s Bad Apple theory, and 2) Thomas MacGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y. To summarize Theory X and Theory Y, Theory X assumes employees are smart and motivated, while Theory Y assumes they are not. Theory X and Y are two opposites on a sort of gray-scale. On one side Theory Y types need to be watched very closely and given very specific instructions, because they basically do not think on their own. Theory X types sometimes need no instruction at all, because they are capable of figuring out what needs to be done next without having to be asked to do it. Keeping in mind that group members have different capacities, the X and Y scale helps us figure out how to help each individual group member on the level they need. People can vary from time to time in how X vs. Y they are, and asking “how theory X is this person right now” can help answer how to help that person participate in the group.

Lesson 2: Solidarity = Autonomy

In the context of Leadership, group “solidarity” and group “autonomy” are no longer opposites, but are instead one in the same. I mentioned before some times group members have to be excluded in various ways. Groups must also be selective of the feedback they get from people outside the group. The reason for this is because processing feedback is work, and if a group is not selective of the feedback they process, they can easily be overwhelmed by the labor involved in processing feedback and thus end their productivity.  For a group to be able to work together (solidarity,) they should be able to make decisions, which means they should be able to define who they are and disregard those who are not group members (autonomy.)

In “Waging Peace”, Scott Ridder mentions the “OODA Loop” process for decision making used in some military training. When a group first encounters a situation, they first Observe what is going on. The next thing the group does is Orient themselves to the situation, or in other words determine what their place is in the situation. After Observing and Orienting, the group must then Decide what action they will take. After the group Decides, they can finally Act. Action then creates a new situation the group must then Orient themselves to. When comparing groups side by side, a group with faster OODA Loops is more agile, able to adapt and survive more efficiently.

When we can involve more people in a decision, we usually get a better decision. The problem is that involving more people in decision making is time consuming, slowing our group’s OODA Loops. On one end we have “strong consensus” decision making, where everyone in the group must “give 4 out of 5 stars” to any one possible choice before the group has officially made a decision, and on the other hand we have “Benevolent Dictators” who try to listen to the other group members, but intentionally avoid wasting much time in doing so.

The big secret here is that how many people are involved in a decision making process is really more about the group culture than it is about the group’s formal decision making process. On one hand we could have a Benevolent Dictator like Ricardo Semler who uses his formal authority to promote radical workplace democracy. On the other hand we could have consensus-based decision making process that leaves our OODA loops at the mercy the first Mushroom or Demon that comes along. For further reading on the complexities of authority, check out “The Tyranny of Structurelessness” by Jo Freeman.

This balance between “involving others in decision making” and “making decisions quickly” is one of the key challenges of leadership.  Understanding that this challenge exists will help us to develop effective leadership practices.

Lesson 3: Leadership is a Group Dynamic

“Leadership qualities” are a group trait. Each productive member in a group has good leadership qualities. No one has every possible good leadership quality. Consider all of the qualities leaders are supposed to have:

• Strictness to keep everyone “on track.”
• Vision to guide the group into new productive paths.
• Enforcer of group norms.
• Communication ability that pulls everyone together.
• Strength and moral fortitude and “leads by example.”
• Mastery of history that helps the group learn from its past success and mistakes.
• A good team player who understands team roles (as per Scott Ritter.)
• Organized planner who can help the group stay true to it’s values (as per Stephen Covey.)
• Risk taker willing to take initiative.
• Ambition and will power sufficient to do whatever it takes to succeed.
• Expertise in the field that makes him the most qualified to decide what to do next (as perScott Adams.)
• Persuasive public speaking and debating.
• A keen negotiator who can resolve conflict (as per Mary Parker Follett.)
• and the list can go on infinitely.

Whoever has the authority in the group is probably a leader, but that person’s leadership is likely to be dependent on other members of the group leadership qualities as well. For these leadership qualities to emerge from the group, it helps if the people in the group work well together.

Distributed people skills throughout the group is then one of the most important things for a group to demonstrate good leadership. If most of the members can “play well together,” then their individual leadership qualities can benefit the whole group, since good people skills will prevent them from resisting or feeling threatened by other’s leadership qualities. These people skills are probably best described as “Emotional Intelligence“.

However, the tried and true text on building people skills is nothing other than the notorious text called “How to win friends and influence people.”  The basic idea in that book is that each person has a sense of self-importance. It is good people skills to avoid challenging other people’s sense of self-importance. If you want to help someone make a decision, it is good people skills to do this by building on that person’s sense of self-importance.

There are other various schools of charm and how to play well with others, ranging from major world religions to certain self-help books. However it happens, the group members should to know how to be nice to each other to help group leadership traits emerge. Groups are built on relationships. These relationships have everything to do with how effectively a group can make decisions together.  For more study about how relationships are the foundation of good group dynamics and thus good leadership, check out the works of Meg Wheatley.

Lesson 4: The Holy Grail of Successful Leadership

The big secret of leadership is that groups should have plenty of “small talk” about potential decisions that might be made in the future, long before the decisions have to actually be made. This kind of small talk is sometimes called “Dialogue“.

In my professional opinion the main reason why alternative “strategic planning” techniques work is primarily because they promote Dialogue in the group. Dialogue does the most to empower the individuals in the group to make decisions in the best interest of the group on their own, helping the group go through time-consuming decision-making process less often. Dialogue also helps to keep most of the members of the group well informed, so that group decision-making processes take less time. Normally in the USA our supervisors don’t “pay us to sit around and talk,” but ironically this “chit-chat” is one of the most productive things we can do when it comes to our workplace having “good Leadership.”

Recognize that every effective team member is demonstrating some form of leadership.  The main barrier to the group’s collective leadership ability surfacing is not being able to trust the other team members.  If the group has trust among it’s members, they will not fear others leadership or revealing their own leadership capacity.  The best formal exercise I know of to build this trust is dialogue.

For more study on how Dialogue is used to improve leadership in real-life situations, check out my master’s thesis, “Starting Worker Cooperatives Through Dialogue.”