Challenge up and support down

During my vacation this week, I have read a book, Mojo written by Marshall Goldsmith with Mark Reiter.

I come up with the above phrase in this book.  It has 2 parts:

1. Challenge up, subordinate should challenge the manager.
2. Support down, manager should support subordinate.

Paradoxically, the business world is usually doing “challenge down and support up”.  It is even more severe in organizations with high degree of bureaucracy even though the management would like to request subordinates to challenge them.  However, it is not just saying; the effective way may be a saying by the managers like “I am sorry for making this mistake; Luckily, you point it out and rescue the team and me as well!”  By all means, a constructive atmosphere takes time to build up while the destruction of it only requires a negative facial expression or even a sentence made by a manager.  I acknowledge that managers work are demanding, they get paid to be patient and sophisticated.

On the other hand, for all up & down dichotomy, it is a matter of boundary activation which I learn from another book “Identities, Boundaries & Social Ties” (Charles Tilly).  Once the boundary is created, it requires much more effort to deactivate/delete it.  Sometimes, we unwittingly activate the boundary between managers & subordinates and enhance it when the manager feel humiliated for a weak idea raised and defended by himself.  The book “Mojo” provides 2 guiding questions from activating the boundaries:

1. How much long-term benefit or meaning did I experience from this activity?
2. How much short-term satisfaction or happiness did I experience in this activity?

Another critical quote is “Great influencers are like great salespeople.  When the customers don’t buy, they don’t whine and blame the customers.  They focus on what they can learn and do a better job next time.”  This is inspiring!  I will bear in mind and share with my participants in any future seminar.  Of course, I will also practice it in my job.

Journal of May 2010 Seminar of Internal Control

I and Hon Wan just finished the seminar of internal control on May 14~15 2010 in Hong Kong Productivity Council.  The enrolment is 28 and only 27 participant came finally.  This is the 5th re-run of the seminar since 2006.  Each time, I improve the powerpoint material by adding more concepts, quote and stories.  This time, I added some sociology theory particularly, more on social interaction and a section of “New missions of HR” which is derived from Ethics.  Maybe it is too abstract for those practitioners and senior management.  But it is a good chance for testing my advocate.

I am delighted to meet an owner of a company.  We more or less shared the same belief.  Nowadays, we cannot force and push our subordinates; rather, we need to motivate (or even beg them to work and meet the deadline).  We need to respect the staff more.  It was strange in small and medium size company particularly in a family-owned business.  But I found that his son (the other participant) was quite quiet when his father is talking!!

The seminar is quite successful at least I do not see any participants sleeping.  2 to 3 of them had joined the Costing By Excel seminar in Apr 2010.  And others ask if I have other seminar to be launched shortly.  Besides, they seems to agree with me with response of laughing.  Unfortunately, there is not much discussion.  This is the area I need to improve next time.

I really long to see the comment from the participants.  If you, being the participants, happen to read this blog, would you be kind enough to provide me some feedback?

Don’t do as I do, but do as I say!!!

This is a phrase raised in the Enron case but its applicability is not just confined to corporate governance, rather, common in management.

Readers,

• Do you see your managers never plan for the work but blame you for not planning for the work?
• Do you see your managers never work proactively but ask you to act proactively?
• Do you see your managers never focus but ask you to focus, particularly you fail to deliver results?
• Do you see your managers never trigger open-minded discussion, but ask you to be open-minded?
• Do you see your managers working on high level data manipulation, but ask you to work out all details and logic as far as possible?

Managers,

• How many times you forgot what you instill your subordinates but you never act on what you said?
• How many times you roar at your subordinates but you blame your subordinates for not raising different idea?
• How many times you raise several request at a time without proper resources being allocated to support it?
• How many times you request your subordinates to act omnipotent with crystal ball when you are in trouble?
• How many times you and your subordinates jointly make the mistake but you just blame them, not yourself?

These are triggered by reading the book, Ethics: Theory and Practice, written by Jacques P. Thiroux

Stigma – Erving Goffman

I happened to pick up “Stigma” in the book store. It is found in the shelf of sociology.  I devour it within a week.  I am excited with any great literature, the feeling I cannot take in any other circumstances.

Stigma is a matter of virtual social identity.  The discredited needs to manage the relationship with others (of course the people who now his stigma).  The discreditable needs to manage the information that can reveal its stigma.

Stigma will drive the discredited to act in certain ways.  If the discredited are not relieved, they will form group to provide free area for them.  They may perform some deviant act which tells other indirectly their stigma.

The discreditable will do passing so that their stigma will not be revealed.  However, it usually leads to reverse effects.

This book does not tell how to deal with discredited and discreditable; rather, it is only representation of all aspects of Stigma.

I cannot tell clearly what I have been told from management perspective; but I can tell that I got some insight of stigma and know some about how to detect stigma of people.  Very interesting!

I strongly recommend you to pick up this book if you are interested in people management.

Might makes right?!

Nobody would object it unless the have-not.  The only argument is how mighty is the might.

How do we define might?

• Is it the one who occupies the position?  Interestingly, it needs to know why he is in the position
• Is it the one who win?  But how long does it last for?
• Is it the one who controls resources within an organization?  But what justify the one that could control the resources?
• Is it the one who is self-centered and nobody would care less in arguing?  (It is joking! And he is jerk!)

From another perspective, is the right mighty?  Not necessary I am sure.

What am I telling here?  It looks I am self-conflicting.  Of course not.  Might & right can only be justified on long-lasting result.  I change the would-be response a little bit and you can see the right meaning.

• Is it the one who builds the platform that enables the right person in the position?
• Is it the one who makes the right decision at the right time to pull down the wrong person?
• Is it the one who enables everybody can be the right one?
• Is it the one who can uphold the right principles and spread it?

There are 3 things that can link up people.

• The common enemy.  But when the common enemy is resolved, is there still any link-up?
• The common interest.  But we know that no common interest can last for long.  We may to take the interest of our partner
• The common values.  Only it can help long lasting relationship.

Darwinism – can it apply to organization evolution?

I am sure that it is definitely applicable.  When I study anthropology, Darwinism is one of the critical theory in cultural or societal evolution.  It is always survival the fittest.  Human can learn while organization also possess organic growth – from primitive operation flow/model to systematic/civilized manner.  Think about a sweatshop, it is worthless to hire people with sole experience of working in multinationals.  A starved person cannot eat steak/pork because the fat and oil in meat will lead to diarrhea.  This also hold true for a MNC which should not hire people with sole experience of working in local Chinese companies.  There should be a process of evolution.  I had ever made a mistake when I acknowledged that I should not hire the former talent for a poor managed company.  However, when it is only me who could understand and insisted on hiring greenhouse talent, I would be regarded as a non-qualified manager, at least, being thought of by the majority.  Ultimately, I yielded to and I feel sorry about it.

In a life cycle of an organization, different kind of talents are required in different period.  When I was working in the food processing company, the financial controller has admitted that the company should not hire MNC experienced because they may not be willing to get their hand dirty.  However, when the company step forward to an advanced stage, we need them because they can guide the company towards it – hands-off enough and keep clear in mind of what should do and what should not do.  Andy, you may not remember this, but this words remain in my mind always.

Domino effect of lying

From the book – Ethics: Theory and Practice by Jacques P. Thiroux, he re-state what Sissela Bok said as follows:

“It is easy, a wit observed, to tell a lie, but hard to tell only one.  The first lie “must be thatched with another or it will rain through.” More and more lies may come to be needed; the liar always has more mending to do.  And the strains on him become greater each time – many have noted that it takes an excellent memory to keep one’s untruths in good repair and disentangled.  The sheer energy that liar has to devote to shoring them up is energy the honest man can dispose of freely.”

I shall bear in mind the above lesson whenever I intend to lie.  I will also relentlessly share it with my peers and my staff, particularly the potential candidate to manager position.  However, I would definitely not point it out to my manager when he is lying on me because the consequence of lying he should take is cynical reaction from the people.

A practice of community

I have done a testing when I do several interviews for the company.  The common situation is all the candidates are nervous which to certain extent affects their performance and hide their strength.  I am fine with their weakness since no man is perfect.  What I care is their strength.  To this end, I applied the techniques I learn from “Crucial Confrontation” – providing safety.

Firstly, I declared that I am no senior than the position they applied for.  I only provide help to the management for first screening and I am doing something low level with focus on costing and operation.

Secondly, I point out their weaknesses and comment that it is fine since their weakness are common and trivial.  Apparently, I found that they felt relaxed suddenly, it can shown by their facial expression and sitting style.  As a result, you can expect a candid conversation and it can help impress the candidates the situation of company, though it is bad, we adopt an open-mindedness attitude.  (I worried if I will be accused of lying when they come on board!)  What matters is in a community, there should not be any strong sense of hierarchy.  We are all at the same level and should feel free to speak; otherwise, we cannot collaborate and initiate creativity.

This techniques is also helpful when I am working with my staff – remain at low level, being bold to admit making mistakes but soft when they make something wrong, always leave some room to them on my work so that we can produce better result (no pretention but just move my effort to other focus when I think it should be their turn to enrich the working).  In short, it is actually what I state in my blog – empowerment enables growth.