Is there someone in your world who you consider your leader?

Think about it. Whether at work or in your personal life, do you follow this person’s lead?

Do you follow because of their title/position or because you trust their judgment?

Do you follow blindly because you share an ideology or do you think beyond the words and consider MAP and motivation?

Do you question, suggest, discuss, offer up your ideas and thoughts?

If not, why not?

If so, does this person welcome the input?

Or does she, by word or action, tell you to keep quiet, keep your head down, stop making waves and follow?

If so, what do you do?

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Last Monday I laid out a do-it-yourself plan for mangers to juice growth among their people. Beth Miller asked why I didn’t include coaching; I responded that I believed that line managers needed to take responsibility for professional development, especially in the current economic climate.

Beth asked,“So what holds back managers from coaching?”

My response is what I want to focus on today.

“I think it’s partly language. I know a number of managers who have implemented what I described in the post, do a terrific job developing their people, but don’t consider any of it coaching or even mentoring. One even scoffs at “coaching,” yet he’s known for building his people.

In working with my MAP coaching I’ve found that what holds many managers back is terminology. If they relate to the descriptive terms there’s no problem, but if they don’t relate they can’t implement what they’ve learned. I change the language and bingo, they take off like a rocket.”

People are far more word-sensitive than most realize. They’re more aware of it in politics, religion and advertising, but less so in general business, even less when talking to their team and it’s almost non-existent when it comes to their own ‘hearing’.

The nice thing, as I said, is that it’s an easy fix once you notice. Noticing is easy, too. Just keep an eye out for a blank look when you’re talking. It’s that look of incomprehension that is the key to repeating, but in different words. There’s nothing that drives people nuts faster than having the same thing repeated over and over; if it wasn’t understood the first time repeating it or saying louder isn’t going to help.

And don’t start the change with ‘what I mean is…’, because many people will tune out at that point focusing on figuring out what you already said.

Instead, wait a bit (depending on context) and then present your thought from a different angle or change the phrasing of the thought that accompanied the blank look.

This isn’t about dumbing down what you say (or write); it’s about presenting it in a wholy different way; a way that the other person can hear.

The manager mentioned above detested the word ‘coach’ as some touch-feely new-age notion, nor was he enthralled with the term ‘mentor’.

To him, he was just doing what any manager worth a damn did—make sure that his people developed new skills and used the ones they had fully to the benefit of both the company and themselves.

As he once said to me, “developing people is part of a manager’s job, not something extra“—and his employer paid him to manage.

Gee, if I could bottle his MAP I could probably retire.

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The world is full of acronyms and many are part of corporate culture, but all acronyms are not created equal.

Many are benign, as in executive titles,

• CEO – Chief Executive Officer, COO – Chief Operating Officer, CFO – Chief Financial Officer, CTO – Chief Technology Officer;

or defining the legal entity,

• DBA – Doing Business As, LLC – Limited Liability Company, LLP – Limited Liability Partnership;

or general business terms,

• COB – Close Of Business, COGS – Cost of Goods Sold, PL – Profit and Loss, PO – Purchase Order, QA – Quality Assurance, QC – Quality Control;

or oriented to customers,

• CRM – Client Relationship Management, CSR – Customer Service Rep.

And, of course, the hundreds that are used in the technology world.

Common acronyms or those used within a particular industry are relatively harmless, as long as they’re used sensibly and not to confuse—people who overuse acronyms are PIBs (pain in butt).

There are acronyms that identify dysfunctional people, the ones that aren’t pulling their weight because they’re using,

• OPT – Other People’s Time, OPR – Other People’s Resources, OPM – Other People’s Money.

Then there are the ones that identify actions and MAP that spell big trouble for any culture and need to be eradicated immediately.

• NIMBY – Not In My Back Yard
• NIH – Not Invented Here
• WAM – What About Me
• WIIFM -  What’s In It For Me

NIMBY thinking can stifle innovation when it causes discomfort to an individual, group or even division under the corporate umbrella.

NIH also stifles innovation by blinding people to events and new products produced by the competition or other changes in the marketplace.

WAM is different than WIIFM. WAM is usually in response to something good happening to another person; it may be as minor as a compliment from the boss or as substantial as a raise or promotion, whereas WIIFM is the desire to know what personal benefits accrue in return for doing what’s asked. WIIFM isn’t always bad; it can be put to good use by channeling it into positive VSI.

What about your workplace? What acronyms do you hear? Which do you use?

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One of the hardest things that growing companies face is the need to stop shooting from the hip.

I hear the reasons not to all the time, from startups, small biz, entrepreneurs, et al:

• It will ruin our culture.
• It stifles creativity. It’s for larger companies.
• It’s bureaucratic. It’s too time consuming.

“It” refers to the underpinnings of all successful companies. “It” includes the following in order of importance:

• Financial controls that include
  • monthly statements of revenues by product;
  • discounts;
  • costs by department;
  • cost of goods sold;
  • inventory;
  • receivables aging;
  • stock issuance;
  • cash flow;
  • manufacturing yields;
  • hiring by department
• Annual operating plan covering the above financial measures
• Organization charts and definitions of responsibilities
• Hiring process
• Long-term planning
• Centralized information technology implementation and planning

Whether it’s just you, or one, ten, fifty, or more employees, whether full time, part time or virtual, you need viable processes to keep you focused—think of it as coloring inside the lines.

Everything on this list can, and should, be scaled for applicability, but all are important to every business endeavor.

Those that don’t directly apply may be tweaked, e.g., manufacturing yields can change to productivity measures; a very few, such as “stock issuance” may be completely discarded if the action is truly warranted.

Sure, they can’t all be implemented at once, but none of them will happen as long as your MAP rejects or begrudges them—after all, you’re the boss (CEO/president/managing partner/owner) and people will follow your lead.

Finally, don’t confuse process with bureaucracy. Process is like MAP, it gets you where you want to go, whereas bureaucracy stifles whatever it touches; process, like MAP, is ever—growing, while bureaucracy is carved in stone.

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It’s always your choice!

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As you probably know there are hundreds of ways to mess up a culture and a lack of authenticity is one of the big ones.

There’s a lot about written about authenticity, but are you aware that one of the quickest ways to announce your lack of authenticity is to issue ultimatums?

Thousands of times a day, day after day, bosses in every industry, in companies both large and small, issue “or else” ultimatums, sometimes without even realizing it.

These threats aren’t always direct (Do it or start looking.), more often, they are subtle (“I expect employees who work here to be team players.”), but the threat is there: Do X if you want to keep your job.

Obviously, this is not only atrocious management, since

• threats are tremendously debilitating to those receiving them, often costing them the confidence to do their job; but
• the manger who uses threats loses the most—the credibility to run the organization.

Bad enough, but beyond the direct effect of the threats, there is a ripple effect that is far worse—the seeding of a self-propagating culture of intimidation—as with hazing people start thinking, “I’ll do it to you because the person above did it to me [and I want to get even].”

Ultimatums kill creativity, innovation, motivation, caring, ownership, in fact, everything it takes to create a culture that allows a company to successfully compete in today’s economy.

If intentional you need to look long and hard at your MAP and decide if that’s who are and how you want to be, then change—or not.

When not intentional, ultimatums are often the result of poor communications but they can be stopped—the choice is yours and yours alone.

If you do it you can change it.

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If you read any of the hundreds of how-to books written about good people management and leadership, you’ll find great similarities among them. So, what happens during implementation? Why can the de facto difference between managers be so enormous?

The answer goes back to one of two basic beliefs that are formed and held long before a person becomes a manager.

• People are intelligent, motivated, and really care about helping their company achieve its objectives.

• People are stupid, don’t care, and will screw up if you don’t watch them every minute. Variations of A are discussed, lauded, and underlay most “good” management practices. Variations of B are rarely admitted, infrequently discussed, and can be largely unconscious.

Think of it as a scale	A	B
	10_____________________0_____________________ 10

Do managers on the B side of the scale always fail while those on the A side are guaranteed success? Unfortunately no.

What does this mean to you? If you’re a current or future manager, you need to be aware of where you are on the scale and then decide if that’s where you want to be—information that is nobody elses business.

If you like where you are, do nothing, you’re all set.

But if you decide to alter your location on the scale, remember that change rarely happens when undertaken as a result of what “they” say, so be sure that it’s you who wants to change.

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I’ve mentioned from time to time that there are the two basic principles that you need to believe in if you want to implement the kind of culture that I and most other pundits describe.

Here’s the first one.

People are intelligent, motivated, and they genuinely want to support their company in achieving its objectives.

Sadly, many managers don’t believe this. They may say they do, but deep down their thoughts run more along the lines of ‘people are stupid, lazy and don’t really give a damn’.

I’ve know managers who would actually say this out loud, while in others it’s buried so deeply they may not even realize it themselves—but they all manage accordingly.

The second principle is even more open to distortion.

People are most productive when they receive all the information needed all at once to do their job efficiently.

Based on the games so many managers play perhaps we should rewrite it—

People are most productive when they receive all the information needed all at once to do their job efficiently.

Not dribbled out over the course of the project, given grudgingly or only when asked and then only the narrowest parameter forcing the employee to return over and over.

You would think that managers would do everything in their power to create an environment that enabled the highest levels of creativity and productivity.

But for better or worse, what they produce in fact is a reflection of their MAP.

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I’ve focused a lot over the last six months on the problems in education and attitudes of the workforce-to-be and it’s been a pretty dismal picture. Obviously, there are plenty of exceptions, but that, too, is problematic.

It’s not just that entrepreneurship attracts the best and brightest, is also attracts a significant percentage of high-initiative students and it’s those with initiative who drive innovation wherever they’re at.

And there lies the problem.

Not because these kids want to solve problems, start businesses and attack the world’s social ills—that’s great. But the MAP that drives these kids is the same MAP that is so desperately needed by today’s corporations.

“”They’re [the Net generation] great collaborators, with friends, online, at work,” Mr. [Don] Tapscott wrote. “They thrive on speed. They love to innovate.” … A report issued last year by the Kauffman Foundation, which finances programs to promote innovation on campuses, noted that more than 5,000 entrepreneurship programs are offered on two- and four-year campuses — up from just 250 courses in 1985…Since 2003, the Kauffman Foundation has given nearly $50 million to 19 colleges and universities to build campus programs.”

We live in a world of impatience; Boomers, contrary to some perceptions, were and are impatient; Gen X is still more impatient and it’s increased by an order of magnitude in Gen Y—and it will continue to increase the faster the world moves and changes.

And, to paraphrase, the world, it is a changin’.

The youngest generation is the most impatient, and that impatience is traveling up.

Yet, it is those with initiative, not just impatience; those with a desire to accomplish, not a sense of entitlement, that companies need to attract if they want to compete and thrive in the new world.

These are the people who can fuel innovation and corporate America’s ability to succeed.

These are the people you have to hire and manage.

Are you ready?

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The best cultures satisfiy the intangibles that people crave.

A Hollister poll of 1000 people, employed and unemployed, in Massachusetts last summer asked them what factors contributed the most to their job satisfaction; the majority of responses in order were

• Company Culture;
• Opportunities for Growth;
• Employee Appreciation;
• Work/Life Balance; and a
• good Benefits Package.

Dead last was competitive salary/pay. As I’ve always said, “The person who joins for money will leave for more money.”

The interesting thing about this is that numbers two through four are all parts of number one, good culture. Even benefits are a function of the culture, since they reflect the company’s attitude towards its people.

Still more interesting is that the top three are totally free—they cost the company no money—rather, they are a reflection of the corporate and/or manager’s MAP. Even number four is more about management attitude than dollars and any dollars that are spent typically offer substantial ROI.

There are tons of words that you’ll hear are important in creating a good culture, but I believe that it’s a function of two basics, one a belief and the other an action resulting from it.

Belief: People are intelligent, motivated, and they genuinely want to support their company in achieving its objectives. When people know more about their job, company, industry, and how they interact, they perform their own duties better and more productively because they understand the objectives and care about the results.

Action: People are most productive when they have all the information needed to do their job efficiently. This means that all managers, from CEO down, have both the ability and willingness to produce appropriately clear communications as to where the company is going, how it’s going to get there, what’s expected of them and how it all fits together and then disburse it accurately and completely so people can do their work in a timely manner.

If you believe that

• a key ingredient for success is a culture that recognizes employees as its most valuable (and least replaceable) asset and
• that people are required to act with initiative and their performance is directly impacted by the quality and quantity of the information they receive
• then you’ll understand that people seriously resent communication failures that cause them to perform unnecessary, incorrect or wasted work.

Technically, communications is an IBB (infrastructure building block) and we’ll be talking more about them later.

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