Archive for ownership
One small world….whether you like it or not
Posted by: | CommentsMy generation is working longer and harder than any of those before us. The demands on the average employee in a company’s workforce have never been greater, in regards to hours or results. While the output of the worker has increased, the global technological output has increased at an even greater rate. The age of the internet has somehow morphed into the age of the blackberry – where internet access is available virtually anywhere – to create an atmosphere in which truly competitive companies operate in a culture in which the work day never actually ends. A day in New York ends as a day in Shanghai begins and before that day in Shanghai has ended, the next day in New York has begun again. One could argue that we clearly have figured out how to maximize production while adapting to globalization. One could also argue that we have entered into quite a vicious cycle.
So, if the marketplace has essentially shrunken because technology is making the world a smaller place, then it would stand to reason that globalization is happening whether a company is looking to grow on a worldwide level or not. Through the connectivity of the internet, companies of all sizes are now competing against each other in the same larger space. Your company can either embrace this reality or continue to try and operate in a regional marketplace that no longer exists – and those that emerge successful will be those who can adapt quickly and efficiently.
The key factor when trying to adapt quickly to change is the ability to understand strengths and weaknesses. A department that has operated at one pace for many years will need to be ready to change when that pace picks up. If a group leader understands – and embraces – the greater demands this is a positive; an opportunity to grow, improve, and produce even greater results. But a group leader who resists such change can actually set his team back, and even worse, hold the larger company back too. Proactive thinkers who see a fundamental change coming well before it is actually needed use these times as an opportunity to separate from the competition. Reactive thinkers spend months trying to clean up processes and logistics, working within companies that are always behind the curve. Identifying which type of people are leading groups throughout your company is the first step of a consultation – and the first step to ensuring that you are ready to thrive in a shrinking, more demanding, faster-paced global marketplace.
And unfortunately, if you are reading this and don’t know in which group your company belongs, you may have already missed the boat. They key to a productive consultation is being self aware, understanding what your company is well equipped to do and where it is lacking. From there, we just need to identify solutions that are practical. But a company that delays the all important first step of identifying the necessary changes is only going to have more trouble adapting, if and when they finally realize all of the change they need.
Consultant as Parent? Relinqishing Ownership of Success
Posted by: | CommentsIn IM lingo, it reads, POS: parent over shoulder. If it were a crossword puzzle clue, it would read “end to ‘helicopter’ and ‘velcro’.” Enter a new age of high parental involvement, the age of the hovering, overconcerned progenitor whose sons and daughters are hard pressed to find unbridled freedom. In mild cases, parents remain on call if a crisis situation arises; in more dire situations, parents will fight their kids’ battles for them in both school and work. Speculation abound as to why this is–a chance to live vicariously through their children, or the desire to engage in “peer-enting” instead of parenting (see Phil Dunfee, “Modern Family”)–but whatever the reason, parents are getting überinvolved. It’s gotten to a point that colleges even create parting rituals during orientation to explicitly tell parents when they’ve overstayed their welcome.
In parents’ defense, most of it springs from a genuine concern for their children. Now that they’re given the opportunity to make sure that Billy or Susie is okay 24-7 via cell phones and Skype, it seems foolish not to do so. It’s a much different era from the one when you couldn’t be reached as soon as you left the house. And often it’s nice to have guidance from someone who does know better, if not best. Ultimately, though, it results in a loss of ownership of successes and failures on the part of their children. It’s one thing to take someone’s hand. It’s another to yank their arm out of the socket while dragging them around.
Consultants are like parents. It’s our job to give our clients guidance, and we’re assumed to know best. But there is again a fine line between making suggestions and making demands. If your word becomes bond, you become the only trusted authority for decision making, and you can effectively cripple your clients. Additionally, if your advice goes sour, you become the scapegoat. Part of consulting is putting a framework in place to aid your clients without them continually tracing their results back to you. Think of it like the Inception of business. Yes. You are the Leonardo DiCaprio of the corporation. Instill the idea, but let them take ownership.
The question is: how can you feel comfortable letting go of your clients? What steps can you take to be sure that your clients will make good decisions in the future without your guidance? How can you prevent your inclination toward hovering?
One means of doing so is by providing your clients with frameworks and formulas. If you attempt to fix every problem they encounter, they’ll see the solution to any future problems as “ask someone else what we should do.” Frameworks act as tools for them to use when they need to make decisions themselves. The principle is captured in the adage, “give a man a fish, and you’ll feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.” You can hand them the answers, but it’s much more effective to allow them to come up with them on their own. Although it seems counterintuitive, it’s your job to make them a higher functioning team, not a higher dependency one.
When they get to a good solution, stress their success. Show them specifically how it was that THEY achieved their goals. Push them toward valuing their own agency in the decision making process. Once they realize they have the power to make change and be successful, your role might naturally phase itself out. And what might help is to change your mindset as well. Your success should be viewed as facilitating the success process, not directing it. Just as a parent teaches their child to remove their training wheels, you should encourage your clients to see that they can be successful without help.
It’s hard to let go of a client. Without constant follow-up, you’ll never know if your guidance was received correctly. At the risk of becoming a helicopter consultant, though, you have to know when to let go, and attempt to give them tools to be successful when you’re not around. Your clients are kind of like your kids–you want to see them grow, and you want to share in their successes. But you have to know when to let them go it alone.
There is some good that arises from increased parental involvement. But child leashes…that’s just a whole new level of unfair.
To our readers: what do you do to put ownership of success in the hands of your clients?
Sharing Isn’t Erring: Embracing Teamwork
Posted by: | CommentsGrade school. The time in which we learn some of the most important lessons of our life, including but not limited to: don’t eat paste, don’t spit on your neighbor, don’t let your mother dress you past kindergarten. Included within the elementary curriculum were useful stepping stones for the rest of our academic careers. The powers that be refer to them as the three “R’s”–reading, (w)riting, and (a)rithmetic–whose mnemonic suggests that its creator failed the first two subjects. Regardless. There was a particular tactic that teachers would use to teach us the importance of sharing and cooperation while attempting to learn these three “R’s,” and that was group work. Group work–the two most dreaded words a teacher could ever utter (second only to “no recess”). Somehow, I always ended up doing the most work, and I always suspected that it was a ploy by the teaching staff to grade fewer papers. Seeing as how my sixth grade teacher would invoke “group work” whenever she made calls to her boyfriend in San Diego, I figured it wasn’t far from the truth.
Unlike numerous paste-eating incidents, group work was one thing that failed to stay behind. Junior high group work still afforded us the luxury of wasting class, but the high school teachers must have wised up to the time-suck factor, because we had to find outside time to meet with our groups. “Team meetings” amounted to a fifteen-minute delegation-of-tasks and gossip block, with Dunkaroos if you chose the right house at which to convene. If someone didn’t pull their weight on the project, one of the team members would end up finishing the project themselves. That hypothetical team member usually ended up being me. In my post-pubescent head it was just easier for me to do it all and do it my way than delegate and reconvene. It may have meant more work, but we’d do well. In my many years of fake group work, I never once received a “doesn’t play well with others” on my report card. I sneakily escaped it every go-round; the only inconvenience of group work became figuring out how to get out of it.
This is a mentality that most domineering, results-oriented individuals have toward teamwork. Having faith in your own ability to accomplish tasks without anyone else helping you can be a point of pride for most people, myself included. Past clients for Monar have had trouble giving up ownership of their projects and diffusing responsibility, choosing instead to take on the work independently. If my grades were any indication (I’m currently patting Past Danielle’s back) then my circumventing group work wasn’t actually detrimental to my performance–and that’s a mental disposition that isn’t unique to me. But the elementary school attitude toward group work has remained unflinching, and it continues to affect everyone from the jungle gym to the corporate ladder. Why? What’s the benefit to having six people do in a week what one person can do in two days?
The question is: what’s so great about group work?
The truth of the matter is, one person often can’t do in two days what six people need a week to do. If that were the case, cavemen would have to carry around their children while hunting mastodon, and humans probably would’ve died off a long time ago. So it’s safe to say that group work may be evolution past this cro-magnon way of thought. Differentiation of knowledge and task specialization are two of the best things that group work can provide you. When different team members have expertise in different areas, many parts can be contributed to make a whole. If you have to put together a multimedia presentation, the song and dance portion you’ll inevitably insert is easier to tackle when you can let the creative person take charge of that and let the wordy person write the supplementary paper. There needs to be a healthy medium set between delegation and individualism, and that involves targeting and playing to team members’ strengths. (See Jessica’s blog post, “Weaknesses: Just STOP!” to see the pros and cons of that methodology.)
The other component is the lessening of the workload. Relinquishing responsibility is something that individuals higher up in an organization tend to lose sleep over. When their name is on the line, it becomes harder to trust others with work that they will ultimately be critiqued for. As a default, many leaders may choose instead to take it all on themselves. But diffusion of responsibility also leads to diffusion of stress. Letting others take ownership decreases leaders’ own personal stake, and allows others in the organization to take pride in the company’s projects and successes. It may also increase productivity, allowing individuals to take on smaller roles in many different projects. Trust is integral to teamwork. If people don’t trust that others in an organization will do an effective job, they will be reluctant to hand over responsibility. As the adage goes, however, many hands make light work. Light work, as we all know, is better than heavy work. Giving others a role to play in a particular project can make the project more efficient and perhaps more successful. After all, idle hands are the devil’s playthings. To avoid Satan, it’s best to let your employees get involved.
Switching to group work within an organization will encounter resistance from the independently minded. As with all change, hard headed people like myself will most likely be reluctant to adapt to the team mentality. Simply let the results speak for themselves. With reduced stress, diffused ownership, a collective sense of accomplishment, and utilization of specialization, working within a team may soon become the new pink.
I’d like to hope I’ve evolved a bit past high school, and I’ve come to be a lot better about sharing with others, whether it be work or ideas. But I remain unflinching on snack time. Get your own pack of Dunkaroos.
To our readers: what merits do you see to group work? What obstacles?
