I recently showed the daughter of a good friend around the Ohio State campus.  She is interested in going to college, so I took her around OSU so she could get a feel for the.  As we walked, she explained she was thinking of going to a community college first to build up her resume and increase her chances of getting accepted to OSU.  My response was, “That’s a good theory you’ve made up about getting accepted, but why not apply directly to OSU first?  Then, if your application is declined, ask them what you need to do to get accepted.  At least then you will be dealing with what you really need to do, not some theory you made up.”

I don’t think my friend’s daughter is any different than the rest of us.  Rather than make a request that may be declined, we make up a theory that gets us off the hook for making the request.  Students in my classes frequently tell me they have to do some particular thing before they can take a class, or participate in a program.  But when asked, “How do you know, have you talked to the professor (program director)?”, they almost always reply “No”.

Think how much more effective people could be if they had performance conversations before they took action on the stuff they make up?

Everything seemed to work fine until Rebecca began informing the work units of her decisions.  According to Jeremy, Rebecca’s decisions ignored many of his work unit’s recommendations with no explanation why.  When he went to his unit manager to find out on what basis Rebecca was making her decisions, his manager replied “I don’t know”.  People in Jeremy’s unit were perplexed, confused, and upset.  They felt betrayed and there was a substantial increase in gossiping and complaining about Rebecca.  Some people even quit their jobs.

Change leaders like Rebecca have to make tough decisions and are accountable for those decisions.  But Rebecca could have reduced the damage both to her reputation and the future receptivity of people to change if she had engaged in understanding conversations with people prior to her decisions and closure conversations after.

I went through all my client projects from over the years, met with people to talk about them, and summarized the stories. I’ve decided to blog the “nutshell summaries” of these observations, so am leaving here to go to managementismissing.com

Hope to see some of you there!

Best regards,

Laurie Ford

The director of a lean management program recently approached me with a problem he was having with program sponsors prohibiting students from implementing their lean projects at work.  According to the director, each student who enters the program has a sponsor who agrees on the focus and scope of the project the student will do while in the program.  This agreement is worked out before the student enters the program and includes numerous “check off” points so the sponsor knows what is happening throughout.  However, when it is time to actually implement the lean project, 20-30% of the sponsors refuse to proceed.

Initially the program director thought the sponsors might be resistant to change, but I told him I didn’t think that was the issue.  Rather, I told him there was something else going on.  And indeed there was.  As students progress through the program, they see other things that could be done beyond the project they originally agreed to with the sponsor.  However, rather than renegotiate the agreement, the students proceed with developing the larger project.  It is these larger projects that sponsors refuse to implement.

The issue here is not resistance to change, but a failure to honor and manage the agreements among students, sponsors, and the program.  More complete performance and closure conversations will reduce the percent of sponsors who refuse to implement projects.

The topic in my leading change class today was integrity and its impact on a leader’s ability to effect change.  Integrity was defined as honoring your word and doing what you said you would do by when you said you would do it and if you are not going to do what you said, to communicate fully to everyone affected as soon as you know you won’t be going what you said so that they can make the appropriate and necessary accommodations.  During the discussion, several students told of job situations in which projects they were working on were not going to get done when promised, but were told by their immediate managers not to tell the project clients.  The reasoning was that if the clients were told before the due date, they would question the manger’s competence.  However, once the deadline was missed, other factors could be blamed.

Although managers may think this “don’t tell them” strategy protects them from looking bad, it actually undermines their integrity and reputations.  Each of the students involved in these situations said they lost respect and regard for the managers involved.  This is unfortunate since all the managers needed to do to maintain their integrity was to have closure conversations with their clients.

Having one closure conversation, even if it may be a little uncomfortable, seems like a small price to pay for keeping one’s integrity and the respect of others.

A student approached me at the beginning of class to inform me that, “I didn’t read the case assigned for tonight.  I wasn’t here last week and they [pointing to other students] told me you changed the case, but I didn’t know it.”  When I asked when he found out about the change, he replied “Just now, so I didn’t know to read it.”  I asked him, “Did you contact anyone in the class to find out what happened in your absence and if there was anything you needed to know about?”  Surprisingly, he replied “No, I didn’t think I needed to do that”, and returned to his seat, apparently forgetting (or ignoring) that he is responsible for any assignments even if he misses class.

Communication is two-way, which means both parties have a responsibility.  Managers have a responsibility to be clear on what they want, when they want it, and, if appropriate, how it is to be done.  Employees also have a responsibility – to be clear on what the assignment is, when it is due, and how it is to be done.  If employees are not clear, they have a responsibility to find out rather than hide behind the excuses “I didn’t know” or “I wasn’t told”.

The student could have demonstrated his responsibility by having a closure conversation.

I recently read an article in which the authors maintain that effective leadership requires influencing others and that leaders can influence those others through five different influence styles. The authors point out that we each have preferred influence styles and that we use them even when they don’t work.  Increased effectiveness, therefore, comes from learning and using other influence styles.

Influence, however, is more than a matter of style, it is also a matter of using the appropriate type of conversation.  If you want someone to consider a new idea, for example, an initiative conversation is appropriate.  However, if you want to influence their understanding or opinion, then an understanding conversation is the way to go.  If its action you want to influence, then partnering performance and closure conversations are what’s needed. And, if you want to influence someone’s opinion of you, then closure conversations are your best bet.

Clearly there are lots of ways in which you can have conversations – aggressively, timidly, etc. – and these ways of conversing contribute to your influence style.  However, if you use the wrong type of conversation, style won’t make up for it.  Influence depends on our ability to use the appropriate conversations as well as the manner in which we have those conversations.

As one manager explained, “It is my assessment that the success of my change has been a direct function of the choice, use, and content of the conversations I used to communicate with members of my team to adequately illustrate the shared value of the desired future state I believed we could achieve.  I feel it is important to highlight the power of utilizing a well-placed closure conversation to establish my credibility with the Senior Bankers that comprised my team.  Upon the onset of my initiative, it was evident that many of the Senior Bankers were experiencing fatigue and frustration with the ongoing efforts to support the merger of Their Bank with Our Bank.  By connecting with these individuals through the use of closure conversations, I made a concerted effort to acknowledge the additional time and effort that they have already contributed to making the merger a success. Prior to this acknowledgement, the majority of the Senior Bankers were of the belief that few individuals “truly” understood how requests of their time to complete merger related tasks negatively impacted their ability to complete their regular job assignments.

“Providing the Senior Bankers with this recognition of their  efforts allowed many of them to move past their feelings of resentment towards being asked to accommodate a change in the way they conducted a profit analysis of  corporate clients.  Giving this recognition fostered my ability to successfully propose my initiative in a manner that enlisted their active support for the desired future state instead of exacerbating their previous state of dejection towards new demands on their time.

“I discovered the value that can be produced through deliberately planned conversations with the individuals whom I hoped to enlist in the support of my change.  This willingness to place faith in the success of my change as a product of communication allowed me to view the concept of a “conversation” as something more than interpersonal discourse.  I began to view the four conversations as a tool to be used to deliberately manage the evolution and direction of my change . In recognizing these conversations as a tool to be used in implementing of my change, I was able to view myself as a manager of change from the perspective of a “facilitator of action” rather than as an authoritative figure who viewed the accomplishment of  change as a function of ordering an action and expecting a corresponding re-action.”

Communication is key to the accomplishment of change, but not any communication.  As this manager illustrates, successful change is a product of using the appropriate types of productive conversations.

I see why performance conversations are such a confront: saying publicly what I’ll do and by when would be fine if I was sure nobody was listening!

So, I have created a timeline for getting my “management is missing” summaries – including solutions – out on the Management-is-Missing blog before the end of December. And I’ll meet with my weblog guy to learn how to turn the prototype into something user-friendly – in that timeline too.

To box myself in, I’ve requested an appointment with him. So as soon as he picks the date and time to meet, I’ll have an agreement to turn over a deliverable.

When I know someone will be expecting to meet with me and discuss my deliverable, I have an obligation to produce, and to arrange my schedule to do the work and be at the meeting. That’s why performance is a product of agreements.

OK, I’m a woman at work!