Putting out fires: Managers who “want it now” or “want it yesterday” are managing from a deficit
Have you ever had a manager who has a last minute request, “I need this now!” The more extreme version of this is, “I need this yesterday.” Usually, this is a new last-minute request, and this can be very disruptive and annoying to employees, and a sure sign that the manager is “managing from a deficit.”
Now, I’m not talking about jobs where there is a last-minute nature to the job. A firefighter’s job, is, by definition, a “last-minute” kind of job. The firefighter’s boss will no doubt say, “We need to do this right away!” But there is a lot of preparation that firefighters engage in – with the aid and coordination of their bosses — that goes into meeting the demands of that “last minute” request known as a fire.
I’m talking about a boss who interrupts your job to request something new, and it is needed soon. And this request is made with urgency, perhaps with some yelling involved. These are requests that are metaphoric fires, not actual fires.
So if you are someone on a team that seems to have a lot of “fires”, then read on.
Let’s take a look at some of the sources of these last minute requests (a.k.a., fires):
1. Is the request primarily to assure the manager looks better to his manager?
A common source of this kind of last minute request is to provide assistance to the manager in helping him report up to his manager what is going on, most likely the request of the manager above her. So, ironically, the request keeps rolling downhill. If you have an organization with more than three levels, you have at least three “sources” for needs for updates. If the upper management team does this consistently, such last-minute requests can start to appear to be the norm. For example, let’s say that the upper management decides to schedule an “all team meeting” and wants all of managers in the group need to present to the team. And it’s going to happen next week. Last minute request spawned!
So the team needs to stop what they are doing and instead create a report on what they are doing. When this happens, the manager is asking the team to take the “hit” and not the manager. The manager should have the option to say to his manager, “This would disrupt my team in achieving its goals, which have already been prioritized” and provide the level of reporting already agreed upon. The request can be made to add it to future reports, as part of the core team deliverables. The manager can choose to make an exception and start the “metaphorical” fire, but should also note this as an opportunity to renegotiate what reporting –and the timing of it– the upper management needs. Read more
Managers: Know your change events and track these
When you are a manager, one of the things that you are responsible is the ongoing improvement of your team and how it operates.
Now, with that expectation set, are you tracking the “change events” that account for and assess this?
Change happens on a team and in a group all the time. In fact, it happens so often that it is easy to lose track of all of the change that is happening.
Here are sample “change events” that could constitute change on your team:
- A new person or joins the team or someone leaves the team (or many people join or leave the team)
- A new budget is implemented
- Your organization or your team launches a strategy
- There is a process improvement or process change
- There is a change in scope of work
- A new project starts or an old project ends
- There is a new environment or element to the work environment (change in office space or new equipment)
Some of this change is instigated by the manager, and some of it is implemented by external events, either from above or by the passage of time. It’s all change, and it needs to be understood as such.
So the first task of understanding change is to track these events. If you don’t do it as a manager, perhaps someone on your team can track these events. Having these change events documented and tracked creates a better understanding of what your team is handling.
So here are some suggesting things to track for your team change:
- Item number
- Source of change
- Change description
- Initial date of learning of change
- Expected positive impact
- Expected negative impact
- Who is responsible for delivering the change
- Who is involved
- Change plan location
- Change implementation / assessment date
Here’s what it may look like on a spreadsheet
| Item Number | Change description | Source of change | Initial Date of learning of change | Expected positive impact | Expected negative impact | Who is responsible for delivering change | Who is involved | Change plan location | Change implementation / assessment date |
| 1 | Marci leaves | Marci | 6/1/2011 | Opportunity to identify emerging team needs and hire to it | Lose Marci’s skill set | Manager hiring | Manager, HR, Team Members | Hiring process site | 7/1/2011 (replacement hired) 12/1/2011 (up to speed) |
| 2 | New quality assurance program | Manager initiated | 3/1/2010 (kick off of implementation) | Improved quality | Resistance/inertia of prior system, less efficiency | Alex | All team and partner teams | Team site : projects | 12/1/2011 (program implemented) 3/1/2011 (assess quality) |
| 3 |
Quick tips for making all-hands meetings tolerable and useful
My recent articles discuss how all-team meetings (or “group meetings” or “all-hands meetings”) are essentially risky endeavors for group leaders (here and here). So here are some tips on how to mitigate the risks:
1. Don’t make the meetings mandatory
If you have to make a meeting mandatory, it is a sign that something is not compelling about your meeting. Call meetings that people want to attend. As a corollary to this, try not to have your lower level management team spend time in their team meetings talking about why it is mandatory and why people need to attend. Instead, they should talk about what team members are expected to get out of the (preferably) non-mandatory meeting. Read on for what that might be. . .
2. Stick to the strategy
People want to hear what the strategy is. The strategy should be stated, and discussed. When getting everyone together, the main objective should be getting the full team on board to understand the group or company strategy. Anything other than the strategy is, to a certain degree, specific execution, and probably isn’t appropriate at the “all-group” or “all-hands” meeting level.
3. Review the key performance indicators, and performance against these
As part of the strategy, look at your key performance indicators, and show that this is what the management team is looking at. Avoid showing stress at the metrics that are lower than target. Instead, discuss how you are going to support improving not only the underperforming metrics, but further accelerate the metrics that are above target.
4. Stop there.
This makes the all-team meeting short and sweet. It shows level that the layer of management running the meeting the strategic level at which they are working. If there isn’t much content beyond looking at the strategy and the key performance indicators, then the meeting can be short and sweet. Your greater team will thank you that you haven’t taken more time out of their work.
5. Don’t mistake “Q&A” with “interactive”
Many managers leading all-hands meetings say that they want the session to be “interactive.” This often means that there is a question an answer session after the presentation. This isn’t interactive, since the vast majority of the attendees aren’t interacting during the Q&A session. It’s a Q&A session, not interactivity. Meeting leaders can budget time in for Q&A, but know that it doesn’t create the impression of openness and interactivity to leadership. Instead, it shows that leadership is implying that their interactions with the larger group is limited to all-team meeting Q&A sessions.
6. Have the team work together to solve a problem or generate ideas
Many managers want their all-team meetings to be “interactive.” They also want the members of the larger team to “get to know each other.” Many times they’ll have post-meeting receptions, or require that people introduce each other during the all-team meeting. These actions rarely create lasting connections.
Instead, here is a way to create interactivity that is more meaningful:
Break up the larger session into groups of 4-6 people. Now issue a challenge with a time limit – what can we do to better execute this strategy? Improve this key performance indicator? Improve the work environment? What areas are we not investing in, but you think we should?
In short, find a problem that the leadership team wants solved, and then put the larger team to work to solve it. Have the teams document the results, and have them delivered to the meeting leaders. The leaders (or the groups) can then share them back to the larger group or a few other groups.
The meeting leaders now have tons of ideas related to their strategic concerns, and with tons of problem-solving brainpower. And it was interactive, work related and a more meaningful use of time. I would consider this a little bit better than introducing each other or having a post-meeting party.
OK, follow these tips for all-hands meetings, and you’ve increased the chances that the all-team meeting is useful, relevant and meaningful to the attendees, and the meetings will probably be a lot shorter and cost less. Not bad!
Related articles:
Do your all-team meetings make your team cringe?
Reasons many employees dread all-team meetings
If you’re the manager, it’s your job not to act surprised
Nine simple tips to make meetings more compelling
More reasons mandatory meetings are bad for you and bad for your team
Making it a mandatory meeting sabotages the meeting
More reasons mandatory meetings are bad for you and bad for your team
Managers behaving badly: Training the team not to report bad news
What to do when you see a status or metric as “Red”
Reasons many employees dread all-team meetings
In my previous article, I mentioned that all-team meetings (big meetings with 30+ people) create a risk of degrading employee’s experience as an employee. When managers a) try to entertain or b) praise the great work of people that aren’t so great and who did work that was terrible, it is guarantee that at least some people in the room will cringe. Especially when the director calling the meeting makes it a mandatory meeting, this guarantees that people who don’t want to be there will be there.
But why stop at two reasons people cringe at all team meetings when there are so many more reasons all-team meetings could be considered high-risk and even damaging to the team?
Forced interaction that is not work-related
Frequently people will have to introduce themselves to their neighbor or someone they don’t know and “get to know” them. This is great on one level, and painful to many on another. Those who like to get to know each other and socialize love it. Those who would rather be back at their desk getting work done think it’s pointless. Just because the director thinks that all the people ought to all know each other, this is not a good venue for doing this.
The director should instead identify work-related efforts to get people from different parts of the organization to work with each other. Creating a working relationship that involves producing real deliverables will be much better than ad-hoc forced networking at an all-team meeting. If you want people to socialize, then socializing should be the main event (but still don’t expect everyone to be there).
Not relevant
I warn against trying to entertain people at an all team meeting, because this can create the most embarrassing moments. Slightly less embarrassing, but no less painful, is being bored through lack of relevance. An all team meeting is boring precisely because it often talks about stuff not related to the person’s job.
Long
I haven’t been able to figure out why it is that the bigger the meeting is, the longer it is. My observation is that an all-team meeting is at least two hours, sometimes three, maybe more. And they tend to go well past the regularly scheduled time. So if the director is trying to set an example of how to manage a meeting, and meeting runs long by 45 minutes, so much for setting an example on the smart use of time.
Irrelevant Games
This is an off-shoot of trying to entertain the full team. Play a game! I don’t really care what game it is, unless you are entirely skilled at creating a game that is specifically related to a work-challenge currently at hand, then it this will come across to some –not all—as filler, and as a waste of time. Games are fun, but is fun the objective of an all-team meeting? If so, is the message that you expect the non-all-team meetings to be half-filled with non-work-related game time? That’s the message that’s being sent. Games should be played during breaks and off hours, so wrap up the all-team meeting and let people go out and play.
The costs of the meeting
There are those who attend a meeting with 50 to 100 people, and immediately start calculating what the cost of the event is. Let’s say the average salary is $50,000. That’s about $25 an hour. 50 people, 2 hours at $25 hour. That’s $2500 to hear the director play games, entertain, and talk – and then there’s the stuff that is not being done while everyone is at the mandatory all team meeting. Is it worth it? I’m sure there will be some who doubt the director’s fiscal responsibility.
Not able to get work done
The director has called an all-team meeting for 60 people, lasting 2 hours. Perhaps a quarter of those 60 people had some pressing deadline or responsibility for that day. That’s 15 people who don’t want to be there, would rather do their work, and do a good job at their work. That better be a really good meeting to pull these folks from getting their work done on time. It might be a late night at the office for these folks.
Not having to do something differently after the meeting
Perhaps the most pernicious of all. You attend an all-team meeting. You’ve heard three or four director-level people talk. You’ve learned a lot about the organization. Now what do you have to do differently on your job? Nothing. There is rarely an effort to equate the information being shared at a group meeting with what on the job needs to be done differently. This, of course is hard to do. However, one the hallmarks for a good meeting is that there is some change as a result of the meeting. If the all-team meeting can’t do this, then should you expect the other meetings that happen in your organization to be any different?
I’m being pretty tough on the all-team meeting. That’s because all-team meetings can be pretty tough. I’m not saying all people hate all-team meetings, just a lot of people! So if you’re planning an all-team meeting, beware!
Related Articles:
Do your all-team meetings make your team cringe?
Quick tips for making all-hands meetings tolerable and useful
Criteria to generate a virtuous cycle for meetings
How to get out of what seem to be useless meetings
How to get out of really useless meetings
A leading indicator for team performance: Chart your meeting quality
Nine simple tips to make meetings more compelling
More reasons mandatory meetings are bad for you and bad for your team
Making it a mandatory meeting sabotages the meeting
More reasons mandatory meetings are bad for you and bad for your team
Do your all-team meetings make your team cringe?
I was talking to an independent consultant the other day, and she told me that, while tempting, she didn’t want to go full-time at the business she was consulting with. The reason she didn’t want to report to the client as a full-time employee was that she didn’t want to go to that team’s “all-team meetings” (also known as “all-hands meetings” or “group meetings.”) She felt that her relationship would go right out the window as soon as she had to attend one of those dreaded meetings. She would go to that meeting kicking and screaming, and then cringe through the whole thing. Instead, she’s happy as someone who can focus on doing her work, getting results, and establishing great relationships with her clients.
The lesson learned from this discussion – “all hands” meetings can be de-motivating and take away from good work.
So clearly something is wrong with all-hands meetings. So wrong, in fact, that this highly capable consultant who would otherwise consider working for the company full time has ruled it out for this reason only. Yikes!
So what’s so bad about these all-hands meetings?
First, as the name implies, the “all-hands” meeting is usually “required” or “mandatory”. So, by definition, a certain percentage of the population doesn’t want to go for whatever reason but is there anyway. The “mandatory” element builds in a tough audience from the start.
Next, oftentimes all-team meetings make the attendees cringe — especially the ones didn’t want to go. Perhaps they didn’t want to go because they know the proceedings will make them cringe.
Perhaps you know what this cringing looks like – I call this the “horrified at the all-team meeting gesture” where participants look away from what is happening at the front, heads down, hands over eyes. This gesture is often seen when the events are so embarrassingly awful that participants have to look away. They cringe at the terrible proceedings unfolding before them.
But Walter, you may ask, what could a manager or director or senior vice president be doing that is so bad? What is it that they could be doing that is so awful that people on the team can’t bear to watch?
OK. I’ll give you two common actions and tell me if you’ve never witnessed these:
1. Performing skits that attempt to entertain
This was a large part of the premise of the comedy series “The Office” (I recommend the The UK Version
The humor from the show stems from the phenomenon that people in management positions often mistake being a leader with being an entertainer. Managers who try to entertain are, by definition, amateurs at entertaining (they should be professionals at managing). Their ideas as to what is funny and what works as entertainment are usually poor. Also, many people find it a waste of time. Attempt to entertain only if you have professional entertainers there to assist you (and probably at great expense). Even then, know that a percentage of your audience will consider it cheesy.
Attempting to entertain should be considered a highly risky endeavor and, at best, would constitute advanced “style points” of being a manager. At worst, it negates all of the good work done as a manager.
Similarly, you can be a great manager without ever having to entertain the troops.
2. Publically praising the wrong people, the wrong projects, and the wrong work
All-team meetings are often used as venues for the leader to publically praise people on their hard work. They will call out different people for what they did and why they are great. This, too, should be considered risky, since the leader of the meeting will risk praising the hard work of someone at work that others have noted to be ineffective, difficult, or otherwise produce poor work.
Here’s how it works: The director says, “I want to thank Jeremy for his amazing work.” Now, perhaps Jeremy has indeed produced great work – for the boss. But imagine if Jeremy is also the proverbial “A**hole at work” — Jeremy has been unresponsive to multiple people, yelled at others, lied to get ahead, called people he doesn’t like “stupid,” has dumped work on them or taken credit for other people’s work. And now the director stands in front of everyone and says how much she likes Jeremy? You can expect that many in the room will cringe.
Not only that, many in the room will wonder just how clueless the director is, to publically call out someone who is clearly an awful co-worker. Then they will get depressed, knowing the difficulty of shedding light to the manager on the problematic aspects of Jeremy.
Now, the same thing can happen for projects. Let’s consider Project Y: It is over budget, the people working on it have extended the timeline multiple times, and it is generally considered a debacle. Then the director says, “I want to thank all of those on Project Y who have worked so hard to make it a success.” The director may earnestly be trying to show support for those on Project Y, but by highlighting project Y – even with an eventual positive outcome, those on Project X, W, V and U (projects that, if run smoothly, didn’t get attention from the big boss) get upset about the public praise, because now they feel like they are being ignored, and the boss has no concept as to who is doing the good work. Cringing ensues.
In previous articles, I discuss “public feedback” (another common all-hands meeting error), where the manager attempts to provide corrective feedback to the entire team. “Public praise” has a similar problem. Providing the manager’s view of who the top performers are in front of everyone and in real time has own dangers.
These cringe-worthy actions are exacerbated because these all-team meetings are often deemed “mandatory.” This means that the people who will not be entertained – no matter how high-quality the entertainment — have to sit through the entertainment. This means that the people who feel that they are not being recognized, while the less deserving do get recognized, will have their worst fears confirmed.
A disastrous all-team meeting might even be a galvanizing reason someone will want to leave their job (i.e., leave their managers), as they will see many things they don’t like about the job compressed into a single event and channeled through the senior leadership’s so clearly on display. As in the case of the consultant I was speaking with, all-team meetings are the first reason she didn’t want to join an organization.
So what I’m saying is: All-hands meetings should be considered high-risk. Managers and directors risk inadvertently embarrassing themselves and their team, and also inadvertently make it seem like they don’t know what is happening on the team and how the team feels at the precisely moment they are trying to assert their leadership.
In my next article, I’ll enumerate more reasons all-team meetings are high risk.
In the mean time, please share your memorable “cringe-worthy” moments at all-team meetings!
Related articles:
Reasons many employees dread all-team meetings
Quick tips for making all-hands meetings tolerable and useful
Criteria to generate a virtuous cycle for meetings
How to get out of what seem to be useless meetings
How to get out of really useless meetings
A leading indicator for team performance: Chart your meeting quality
Nine simple tips to make meetings more compelling
More reasons mandatory meetings are bad for you and bad for your team
Making it a mandatory meeting sabotages the meeting
More reasons mandatory meetings are bad for you and bad for your team
Here’s a goal for managers: Create a system that doesn’t rely on finding top performers — you’ll get more top performers this way
It seems that many organizations are on the quest for finding top performers. People who have the ability to get the job done, to do what no one else can do, and really “exceed expectations.” This quest makes sense intuitively: Find top performers, and your organization will succeed. After all, who would want an organization full of mid-range and lower performers?
But here’s the problem: When you are on the quest for finding top performers, you risk ignoring the quest for systemically creating top performers.
Here’s the quest to find top performers. This quest tends to involve finding great hires, offering big bonuses, providing quick promotions, and conducting annual reviews that attempt to identify who is great and who is not-so-great. In this quest, top performers are found and elevated.
Then there’s the quest to create top performers. This quest is more boring. It involves creating systems and processes that ensure basic level performance, creating teamwork that creates better output than any one individual, having a positive work environment that fosters creativity, productivity and collaboration, and opportunity to express ideas and see them through without political ramifications.
How to use the team strategy document to help you manage your team
In my previous article, I provided four uses for how a manager can use a team strategy document (example here). Today, I provide four more! Today, I focus on the internal uses – within your team — of the team strategy document.
1. Use it as a basis for improving processes, workflows and operational innovation
When you have a team strategy document, it allows you to better understand what the team is trying to achieve. With this, now you can start looking at your team processes and workflows. It also affords the opportunity for you and the team to discuss areas of innovation and opportunity that your team can perform to better achieve the goals. With a strategy in place, you and your team are less likely to meander in the status quo and more likely to strive toward a higher level of performance.
2. Use it as a guideline for strategically placing work assignments and identifying gaps in team capability
The team strategy document identifies who is on your team. You can also add some biographical and work interest info about each member. For example: Walter – management consultant, performance improvement, innovative instructional design. With this info, you can look at the strategy, and think about the job roles of the people on your team, and identify the strategic placement of where the people on your team perform their job. If you have someone who is outgoing, and makes excellent connections with people on their first meeting, and if you have as strategic need to make new connections outside your team, perhaps you should put that person on the task of developing new relationships. Read more
How to use your team strategy document externally
In my previous article, I describe a practical way to create a team strategy document using the input of the team. I recommend the team strategy document (example here) have the following elements:
–The team name
–Who is on the team
–What the team is trying to accomplish/what it produces
–Guiding principles and expectations
–Metrics that rate the productivity and quality of the team
–Business metrics that the team could affect
–The plan for how to meet the metrics that rate the productivity of the team
Now that you have the document, here’s what you do with it. In today’s post, I’ll focus on the external uses:
1. Use it as a basis to share with your partner teams and customers
No team works in a vacuum, so if you are armed with a strategy, you can share your strategy with the teams you need to work with to be successful, either the partner teams you receive work from and hand off to, or customers that you provide deliverables to. Of course you need to customize it for the team you’re meeting with. Sharing your team strategy will help your partner teams understand what your priorities are, what you can do to help them, and what your team capabilities are.
2. Use it as a basis for prioritizing work
Now that you have the team strategy in place, any work that comes or opportunities that present themselves should somehow fit within that strategy. Evaluate the opportunities against the strategy, as well as the reactive or legacy work that comes in. Many times a meeting invitation comes in where team members with legacy relationships naturally seem to require that they be involved. So the team member feels compelled to attend the meeting, even if it has nothing to do with the team strategy. As a manager, you have the ability to say, “No, you don’t have to attend that meeting and take on action items from it because I need you to work on the areas that are our team priorities.” It gives you a basis to keep your team focused on the priorities that you and your team agreed to.
How to create a team strategy document—use the team
In my previous post, I discussed the expectations that any team manager should have some sort of team strategy document. This is a key deliverable of any manager. OK, so how do you create one?
The operative word in the term “Team Strategy Document” is the word “Team.” Use your team to create the team strategy document. The manager who doesn’t use the team will create a manager strategy document, which will reflect the manager’s view of the world, and not the team. The team will ignore it, and therefore it is not a team strategy document.
So here’s how you do it:
1. Have a team meeting with the objective of creating a team strategy document
Don’t do the usual agenda items like updates. Those are likely boring anyway. This meeting should be focused on the team strategy document, and the objective is to have enough information to create a document.
2. Set up the meeting to be collaborative and brainstorming
Many team meetings end up being one person (perhaps the manager?) giving various status updates, news from above. This meeting needs to be different. It needs to require input from everyone on the team, even the quiet ones and the ones who possibly think team meetings are useless. Say, “In today’s meeting, I’m going to ask all of you to provide your input. This is an opportunity to think creatively and to get our ideas out. I welcome all ideas, and later we will hone it down and consolidate.”
In addition, find some tools to allow everyone on the team to provide input. If you’re serious about getting input from the entire team, do not just stand in front of the white board and ask people to shout suggestions during brainstorming. Instead, I suggest getting a pen and paper or Post-It notes in each person’s hand. Bring these tools to the meeting.
Teams should have a team strategy document. Here’s an example.
In my prior post, I discussed the need for team managers to produce deliverables that contribute to adding up to managing. Individual contributors are used to delivering specific items, but when they become mangers, a new manager can believe that there is no longer a need to produce deliverables. However, this is not true! A manager for any team should have at least one deliverable: That is a team strategy document.
It doesn’t matter what team you lead, if the team does not have a team strategy document, then it is the manager’s responsibility to create one. At the minimum, having a team strategy document is better than not having a team strategy document. Once a team manager has created a team strategy document, the manager has “delivered” something that is designed to increase the performance of the team. It is a step in the right direction, and a leading indicator of success. Not having a strategy document is a leading indicator of failure.
What is on a team strategy document? It can vary because there are so many teams out there, and so many ways to define strategy. But there should be some sort of the following elements on it:
The team name
Who is on the team
What the team is trying to accomplish/what it produces
Guiding principles and expectations
Metrics that rate the productivity and quality of the team
Business metrics that the team could affect
The plan for how to meet the metrics that rate the productivity of the team
