The Upwardly Mobile Monkey

I was reminded of the "other" monkey parable at a recent national Summit of Chief Executive Boards International. Here's a link to the first one: http://www.chiefexecutiveblog.com/2008/02/parable-of-monkeys-persistence-of.html

This article has to do with upward organizational mobility of monkeys. Ever have someone come into your office or stop you in the hallway or on the plant floor and tell you about a problem? And ever leave that conversation with yourself owning that problem? Happens all the time, doesn't it?

Or maybe it doesn't happen to you, but to one of your managers -- accepting upwardly-delegated problems from his subordinates. Perhaps you can use this story with him.

Next time that happens, turn on your imagination for a minute. Visualize that problem as a monkey on the back of the employee. He's been carrying that monkey around for awhile -- ranging from a few minutes to several days or weeks. He's tired of it, and may not know how to get it off his back & returned to the floor where monkeys belong. Or he's tried a few things to get rid of it, and it's just kept its furry little monkey arms firmly clasped around his neck. Got that picture in your mind?
Having not been able to unload that monkey, the employee is now looking for someone else to carry it around for awhile (he doesn't really care whether the monkey ultimately gets dropped to the floor -- just that it won't be on his back any more).

And then a magical thing happens. In your "go-to-guy", problem-solving way, you say something like "I'll take care of that." And that monkey leaps off the employee's back and onto yours! And then his furry little monkey arms are clasped around your neck. And the monkey is thrilled. Now he gets to ride around bigger offices, fancier cars, better clubs, etc. than he ever would have seen riding on the employee's back! He's moved up the organization!

And if this is a general habit of yours, he's even got company. There are other monkeys also on your back, and he's got a play group.

Most of us are looking for less stress and more free time to enjoy the rewards of business ownership. These monkeys get in the way of that. Monkeys are actually supposed to be downwardly mobile, handed down from yourself through your senior managers, and ultimately to be returned to the floor by people farther down the organization. If monkey handling is taking up more time in your life than it should, practice putting them on other people's backs.

Here's an article on a way to do that: http://www.chiefexecutiveblog.com/2008/02/want-your-employees-to-be-independent.html

If you have some ways you eradicate monkeys from your back, would you click "Comment" below and share them with us?


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Terry Weaver


CEO
Chief Executive Boards International
http://www.chiefexecutiveboards.com/
TerryWeaver@ChiefExecutiveBoards.com
864 527-5917

Want Your Employees to be Independent Thinkers?

At a recent Chief Executive Boards International meeting, a member was troubled by the fact that his day was constantly interrupted by employees, either in person or by cell phone, asking him for decisions.

Do you hear your key managers (or yourself) saying "I wish my employees would think for themselves" or "Most of my time is taken with answering questions I shouldn't have to answer"? These are symptoms of the "Answer Man" syndrome. It causes unnecessary interruptions, emails and phone calls and causes many managers undue frustration, distraction and stress.

What's the "syndrome" part? These are behaviors, and the manager (or yourself) is the "enabler" and reinforcer of these behaviors. The employees think that's what you want. The reasons are classic symptoms of "co-dependency". Consider the root causes:

• When an employee comes to a manager with a question and the manager instantly answers, the employee has successfully upward-delegated responsibility for the outcome. It's no longer his issue -- he's just doing what his manager told him to do. Employees love this.


• The manager's ego and self-esteem is enhanced by being seen (by both himself and others) as "The Answer Man". This can be a rewarding, fulfilling and self-affirming role for not only managers but also the classic "Go-to Guy" in an organization. Have you made yourself the "Go-to Guy"?

The problem with this co-dependency is obvious, particularly to the business owner or manager who wishes his business was growing and that he was spending less time working in the business and more time working on the business. The business becomes throttled by the capacity of the "Go-to-Guy" to decide everything.

How do you break this cycle? Simple. Practice this. Look for times and places to use this. The next time you get a question that an employee should be able to answer for himself, stop (this is the only hard part). Instead of answering the question, just say: "Jack, what would you have done if I hadn't been here (or available or answered the phone, etc.)?" Chances are, the answer will be close enough -- at least 80% as good as what you'd have said.

Then, you have two great opportunities -- motivation and coaching. Grab the motivation part by complimenting the employee profusely, to the point of his embarrassment (even better if others are present). Say "Jack that's a great plan, I knew you'd have a good idea, and I love it when you figure things out and just go get them done."

If you need to apply some "course correction" or you're still compelled to improve on Jack's plan, start that sentence with "and", not "but". Such as "And you could also ........" This reinforces, rather than negates ("but" is a negative, as in "rebuttal") Jack's self-esteem. It's coaching rather than criticism. Sooner or later, Jack will figure it out -- that you're not going to "play" and he's going to have to get his job done on his own.

Give this a try for a week. Then another week, until it becomes habit. Let me know how it works for you.

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Terry Weaver


CEO
Chief Executive Boards International
http://www.chiefexecutiveboards.com/
TerryWeaver@ChiefExecutiveBoards.com
864 527-5917

Do You Have Too Many Direct Reports? -- Six Questions to Consider

This is a topic that came up in a recent Chief Executive Boards International meeting. A member said he was just "burned out" by the continuing pressure of "fire fighting" and "having to do everything myself". He said he had trouble "holding managers accountable" and getting his key managers to do handle their responsibilities themselves, rather than delegating them upward to him.

When asked "How many people do you have reporting directly to you?", he answered "Ten". Bingo. Few, if any, managers can manage ten people -- let alone more. And if, in fact, you can manage ten people, what will you do when the company reaches twice its current size -- manage twenty people? If you're having trouble growing your company or seeing too many things falling through the cracks, have a look at the span of control at each layer within your company.

Span of control (how many people report to a given manager or supervisor) varies, inversely with the complexity of the job being supervised. See a great Wikipedia article on this topic here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Span_of_control.

In short, the more diverse (less homogeneous) the functions managed, the fewer people most managers can manage. At the top tier of a mid-sized company, that number should be no more than five or six. Functions like Sales, Finance, Marketing, Operations, HR, etc. are highly diverse -- being a CEO and looking after 8 or 10 such functional managers is a job Superman wouldn't sign up for.

On the other hand, as the jobs being supervised become more homogeneous, such as a group of delivery drivers, machine operators, etc., a span of 10 or 20 is not beyond imagination. The work is routine, the exceptions few, and the "face time" between the supervisor and the work is minimal.

What happened to this CEBI member was that he was trying to manage ten managers, each with substantially different responsibilities -- a span of control beyond most CEOs' abilities & energy levels. This super-human effort caused him to be unable to spend enough "face time" with each to define expectations, and as a result their accountability slipped. To solve that problem, our member found himself fighting fires -- reaching around his managers, making diving catches of things falling through the cracks. A downward spiral, resulting in his feelings of burnout and overload.

He's presently reassessing his organization, considering breaking it up into three or four smaller units, managed by his three or four most capable managers. This strategy repositions him to grow, as well. It's easy to imagine extending this structure to handle double the amount of business by adding 1 or 2 additional managers at the top level and still maintaining a reasonable span of control for himself.

As a quick "check up" on your own organizational chart, look for situations where spans of control exceed six. Are those situations working, and are they explainable, perhaps because those supervisors are managing highly homoegenous jobs? Or is there, in fact, a "superhuman" manager (perhaps yourself) in a position where he's become irreplaceable? Would it be better to break that job into parts that a couple of "ordinary" managers could handle?

Here's a checklist you can use:

1. Is it really clear to each person in my company who they report to?


2. Is it really clear to each person in my company what their direct manager/supervisor expects?


3. Where do I have more than 5 people reporting to a single manager or supervisor?


4. Could he handle twice as many? If not, it's a growth bottleneck that will soon need a second manager to share the load.


5. Do I have more than 5 people reporting to me? If so, what would happen if our business doubled? What do I need to do to plan for that and build my management team's capacity?


6. Do I do lots of fire fighting myself -- catching things "falling through the cracks"? Do I have enough time to hold my key managers accountable, instead of myself?

An always-useful organizational design question is "What would the organizational chart need to look like if our business doubled"? Putting the question this way makes "we'll work harder" an unlikely answer. Yet, if you ask "what would happen if our business increased at 15% per year?", "we'll work harder" is a more-than common answer. At that rate, a business doubles in only 5 years, and generally overwhelms a management team that hasn't planned for it. It takes awhile to grow and develop a management team, and running them at their maximum span of control is a subtle, yet inevitable limitation to growing the business.

Take a hard look at the way your organization is structured and at spans of control at each level. You may discover one of the things that's getting in the way of your growth and perhaps also getting in the way of your own satisfaction with the way the organization works.

These kinds of ideas surface at every meeting of Chief Executive Boards International. If you have an interest in ideas that will accelerate your business and provide you more fulfillment, more wealth and more time to enjoy it, contact me at: terryweaver@chiefexecutiveboards.com

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Terry Weaver

CEO
Chief Executive Boards International
http://www.chiefexecutiveboards.com/
TerryWeaver@ChiefExecutiveBoards.com
864 527-5917