In the early days of the Industrial Revolution, Frederick Taylor helped business owners understand how effective management of workers could lead to increased productivity and profitability. Taylor showed that if managers planned the work and defined the most efficient processes, workers would perform better than when they had to figure things out on their own. The ratio of managers to workers grew in most industries as a result in the years leading up to World War II.
Peter Drucker defined management in the 1960s as getting the right things done through other people, but the ratio of managers to workers has been steadily declining since he printed that. Today, not many people have a role that is 100% managerial. Most managers I know maintain individual contributor roles and perform their managerial duties in their "spare" time. For example, a sales manager might have a personal sales quota that is 70-100% of what her sales reps have. This means that she's spending the majority of her time cultivating her own sales pipeline rather than helping her team be more effective in the way Taylor and Drucker envisioned.
I had the same challenges when I was an operations manager. I once calculated the number of weeks of vacation our operations team was eligible for during a year and figured out that our supervisors must spend at least 50% of their time doing nothing but covering for workers who were on vacation. In addition to covering vacations, they also had to manage new account start-ups, address any customer dissatisfaction issues, and cover any accounts left unserviced due to employee turnover. This left very little time to work directly with, mentor and develop our existing team. And most troublesome, the first thing that got squeezed out each month was time they planned to spend with our strongest technicians.
One unintended consequence of the evolution of management into the 21st century is that companies promote people more and more based on their technical knowledge - which makes sense when you consider that managers are spending most of their time performing technical, not managerial work. But this has lead to increased job dissatisfaction and decreased levels of engagement from workers who consistently say they wish they received more feedback and had better interaction with their "technician" bosses.
The economic realities of this trend are not likely to change. Few companies can afford managers whose only responsibilities are to plan for and monitor the work of others, like Frederick Taylor recommended. But companies shouldn't forget the benefits of effective management and the costs that go along with devaluing management skills.
The answer is not necessarily investing in more management. The answer is investing in better management. Helping those technical experts become better managers through training and coaching is one way. Promoting people into management roles who have a stronger management skill set to begin with, even if they don't have the strongest technical skills is another. Imagine promoting your 4th best sales rep into the sales manager role because she has a stronger management skill set than numbers 1-3 on the results board. This would send a definite message that the organization values management skills, not just individual results.
Either way, the benefits of effective management are the same as they were in Frederick Taylor's day - workers will perform better and the firm will have higher productivity and profitability if workers have effective managers. The trick is figuring out how to equip managers to be effective within the realities of modern time constraints and aligning their rewards to include managerial excellence in addition to technical or individual contributor excellence.
Friday, January 1, 2016
We're Hiring....Again!
Bob was sitting at his desk staring at a stack of resumes. It's deja vu all over again, he thought to himself, both as a tribute to the late Yogi Berra and as an appropriate description of how he felt. Bob was in the process of filling the same job for the third time in two years. He has another job that has been vacant twice during that time. If you asked him if he had a turnover problem, he'd quickly point out that 7 of his 9 direct reports have been with him for many years, but he just hasn't been able to find the right people for those other two spots.
He was about halfway through the stack when his phone rang. It was his new Regional VP, Mary. I heard your new hire didn't work out. Bob answered the way all managers answer, Yeah, he just wasn't right for the job.
What wasn't right about him?, Mary asked. Once again, Bob gave the answer that Mary was used to hearing, He seemed perfect in the interview, but it's like a different person reported to work on his first day. He began showing signs of frustration almost immediately and he was mentally checked-out by the end of his second month. We tried to salvage him, but he gave his two week notice on Monday.
What are you going to differently this time? This was not a question Bob was used to being asked. His old boss would have just said, tough luck and wished him well on the next try. When Bob didn't answer right away, Mary followed-up, This is the fifth time you've had to stop doing productive work and go through the interviewing and selection process for these two jobs in the past two years. Stop to think what the inability to fill those two roles has cost you and your branch. Not just your time, but the time and frustration of the other people on your team who must keep covering for those vacancies. If you missed out on five critical sales opportunities, you would make adjustments to improve your chances next time. This is a similar business problem, so what are you going to do differently?
When it was apparent to Mary that Bob hadn't really thought about his staffing problem as a business problem with real costs, she said, Bob, whenever a unit is experiencing targeted repetitive turnover, it usually has its roots in one or more of four problems. One, it could be the boss. Two, it could be the co-workers. Three, it could be the job description. Or four, it could be the candidates, themselves.
What I'd like you to do is have Sam from HR visit your unit. I'd like him to do three things:
First, I'd like him to conduct an employee engagement survey and a job analysis with your people. This might help us figure out if one or more existing members of the team are contributing to the repeated failures of new hires and to what extent the combination of duties assigned to those two jobs are a contributing factor.
Second, I'd like for you take our Executive Coaching assessment and let Sam walk through the results with you. I can tell you from personal experience that I became a much better manager after working through some of my own issues identified by this assessment. Those improvements are a big part of the reason I got this promotion and I'm sure it'll help you as well, even if your behavior is not linked to the turnover.
And finally, I want Sam to benchmark our new pre-employment assessment against those jobs. When I began utilizing a benchmarked assessment with top candidates, my good-hire percentage improved significantly.
Two years later, Bob and Mary were sitting side-by-side in Bob's first executive meeting as a Regional VP. I've got to tell you, Mary, I was skeptical and nervous when you sent HR into my operation two years ago, but that visit from Sam and the exercises he put us through were a major factor in the improvement in my branch's financial performance. I owe you a debt of gratitude for helping to position me for this promotion.
Mary smiled and said, You earned it, Bob. Just help some branch manager who reports to you learn the value of getting the strategic HR foundations of their operation right, and we'll be all square.
He was about halfway through the stack when his phone rang. It was his new Regional VP, Mary. I heard your new hire didn't work out. Bob answered the way all managers answer, Yeah, he just wasn't right for the job.
What wasn't right about him?, Mary asked. Once again, Bob gave the answer that Mary was used to hearing, He seemed perfect in the interview, but it's like a different person reported to work on his first day. He began showing signs of frustration almost immediately and he was mentally checked-out by the end of his second month. We tried to salvage him, but he gave his two week notice on Monday.
What are you going to differently this time? This was not a question Bob was used to being asked. His old boss would have just said, tough luck and wished him well on the next try. When Bob didn't answer right away, Mary followed-up, This is the fifth time you've had to stop doing productive work and go through the interviewing and selection process for these two jobs in the past two years. Stop to think what the inability to fill those two roles has cost you and your branch. Not just your time, but the time and frustration of the other people on your team who must keep covering for those vacancies. If you missed out on five critical sales opportunities, you would make adjustments to improve your chances next time. This is a similar business problem, so what are you going to do differently?
When it was apparent to Mary that Bob hadn't really thought about his staffing problem as a business problem with real costs, she said, Bob, whenever a unit is experiencing targeted repetitive turnover, it usually has its roots in one or more of four problems. One, it could be the boss. Two, it could be the co-workers. Three, it could be the job description. Or four, it could be the candidates, themselves.
What I'd like you to do is have Sam from HR visit your unit. I'd like him to do three things:
First, I'd like him to conduct an employee engagement survey and a job analysis with your people. This might help us figure out if one or more existing members of the team are contributing to the repeated failures of new hires and to what extent the combination of duties assigned to those two jobs are a contributing factor.
Second, I'd like for you take our Executive Coaching assessment and let Sam walk through the results with you. I can tell you from personal experience that I became a much better manager after working through some of my own issues identified by this assessment. Those improvements are a big part of the reason I got this promotion and I'm sure it'll help you as well, even if your behavior is not linked to the turnover.
And finally, I want Sam to benchmark our new pre-employment assessment against those jobs. When I began utilizing a benchmarked assessment with top candidates, my good-hire percentage improved significantly.
Two years later, Bob and Mary were sitting side-by-side in Bob's first executive meeting as a Regional VP. I've got to tell you, Mary, I was skeptical and nervous when you sent HR into my operation two years ago, but that visit from Sam and the exercises he put us through were a major factor in the improvement in my branch's financial performance. I owe you a debt of gratitude for helping to position me for this promotion.
Mary smiled and said, You earned it, Bob. Just help some branch manager who reports to you learn the value of getting the strategic HR foundations of their operation right, and we'll be all square.
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