Karl and I talk about local job placement agencies – how they work, what to watch out for, how to use them – in our fourth podcast on the Practical Lexicon
What is the right size for your team? Is your organization too flat and the team too big? Can your company become too big?
Vladimir Lenin once said
“Quantity has a quality all its own.”
He was talking about guns and tanks, of course, but it holds true for people too. Adding somebody to a team doesn’t just increment the complexity and communication within that team by 1, it increases it by the size of the team plus one. For example, if there are two people working together, there is 1 path for communication. Three people, 3 paths (an increase of 2). Four people, 6 ways to communicate (and mis-communicate). Five people, 10 ways and so on.
One More Makes All the Difference
By adding one more person, pretty soon the number of relationships to keep track of becomes very crowded. One of the principle of Scouting laid down by it’s founder was “working in small groups”. He knew from his previous experience that both adults and youth work best in groups of about eight or so.
Years later research came up with the “seven plus or minus two rule“*, which tells us that our brains can hold about seven pieces of information, or deal with seven people (give or take) at the same time. More than that, and we start to lose track of what’s going on.
In Real Life
As a Scout leader I had the unique opportunity to observe the affect of adding or removing and individual Scout to or from a patrol. Just by changing one person the dynamic of the group changed entirely. An energetic, disruptive kid would make the patrol energetic too. Not always a bad thing mind you.
Now, in my work as a consultant I work with many executive teams that come in different sizes and configurations. I’ve noticed that when there are three or fewer people in the room the interaction, conversation, challenging ideas just don’t take off with any energy. At nine or more it starts to break down again. People don’t get heard, one or two people dominate the conversation, there’s just too much going on to capture it all in a meaningful way. The ideal number of thinking, contributing, energetic people in a room has an upper and a lower limit.
Your Actions
Are your teams the “right” size for your organization? Are you trying to get too much done by stuffing as many people into the room as possible, and therefore slowing things down and falling into the trap of a false economy? Or are you trying to “keep people focused” by making your team too small, and then losing out by excluding people them instead of getting them engaged and switched on?
Posted in communications, engagement, influencing, leadership, productivity, relationships
Tagged communication, effectiveness, engagement, influence, leadership, meetings, productivity, team size
I was doing some strategic planning with a long-term client last week. They’re doing well, expanding their business in tough times, making the hard decisions about staff, and being leaders. They’re the kind of business I love working with because they run with what they decide. Which has translated into some fantastic cultural and business changes for them in the last year.
We landed priorities for the next quarter, and it came time to assign champions for each one. First pass: the CEO ended up as the champion for all three. So I asked her:
“Are the best person to do all of these, or are you absolutely the only person that can do these?”
Often the leader is the best person to be accountable for any strategic given initiative. They’ve got the experience, the training, the track record. That’s why they’re the leader. They could do the best job. It doesn’t mean they’re they should.
Mine Mine Mine
I’ve seen this often enough now: the leader takes all the important initiatives, leaving nothing for anybody else to do (strategically leastways). The consequences?
Baden-Powell, the founder of Scouting, had several very simple principles of developing leadership in young men and women. One of them was:
Learning by Doing
He believed that the best way for young men and women to learn leadership was to lead a small group of their peers. That’s why the patrol system (6-8 boys or girls organized as a small team that do their planning, camping, cooking, etc. together) is so powerful. They can learn all the things they need to in a mostly safe environment, where feedback is immediate and honest, and mistakes are easily forgiven.
The fastest way to squash the enthusiasm of a patrol of Scouts is to start micro-managing them. Adults, especially if they have their own children in the program, get in there and start “fixing” things before they even go wrong. The kids don’t learn anything, the adult becomes over-whelmed and frustrated trying to keep up, and Scouts start drifting away to other troops or even out of the program.
Adults do the same thing. They’re just a little more subtle about it. Sometimes.
So here’s my recommendation:
Delegate Like Crazy
Delegation is hard, because we’re often prone to believe we’re the best person to do any particular task or lead a specific initiative. We might even be right, we are the person that could do that job the best. But we’re not the only one who could.
Stick to the jobs that only you can do, and delegate everything else. It’s a huge opportunity to develop your staff and the culture of your team / division / group / company. Which is your single biggest responsibility (after turning a profit).
You are now the leader of leaders. It doesn’t matter if it’s a snotty twelve-year-old boy who hasn’t changed his underwear in three days, or an executive vice-president. Develop them!
Don’t know how to delegate? Learn. In the age of the internet, business and executive coaching, and self-help books there’s no excuse! Never done it before? Start small and work your way up.
There’s no way to get the most out of your team or get to the top of your profession without delegating. You may be very good at your job, but that’s the only thing you’ll ever be doing if you don’t learn to develop relationships and leadership in the people who work for you.
Learn delegating by doing it.
More Learning:
Manager Tools – The Art of Delegation (podcast)
Delegation on Amazon
Why I Suck and Delegating (and Why You Might Too) (blog)
Posted in delegation, developing staff, emotional intelligence, engagement, execution, leadership
Tagged culture, delegation, leadership, learning by doing
I had an interesting search term show up in my web metrics the other day. When Google or some other search engine sends somebody to my blog I can see the search terms they entered that landed them at my page. The one that caught my eye was:
“how to get my people to stop coming to me for everything”
It’s Called Co-Dependence
“Stop answering all their questions” would be the simple answer. “But Bernie”, says you, “chaos would ensue. Without me to tell them what to do every minute of the day they wouldn’t know how to scratch their behinds.” And you’d be right. If you’re going to treat them like morons, they’re going to act like morons. It’s your own fault.
They’re helpless because you keep rescuing them. You keep rescuing them because they’re helpless. See how that works? You’re going to have to break the cycle. Yes, they might screw up, and yes, you might have to clean it up. Sometimes. But not every time, and much less often than you might think. Even less often as time goes on. Here’s the thing:
They won’t take they’re responsibilities unless they’re allowed to screw up and bear the consequences. Of course, if you enjoy the thrill of being able to solve everybody else’s problems for them then carry on. Just don’t ever expect to be promoted, appreciated, or recognized. You’re going to be stuck there for a while.
Dealing with Problems is Leadership
If you’re afraid to make a mistake, then you don’t be a leader. If you’re afraid your followers are going to make a mistake, then you really shouldn’t be a leader. It’s going to happen, you’re job is to deal with it. If things always went perfectly, and people were totally honest at all times, then we wouldn’t need leaders (or police).
Think of it as a “learning opportunity”, for both them and you. Set things up so that you know before they go off the rails if possible. But you’ll never be able to do that unless you can get everybody else’s monkeys off your desk and onto theirs where they belong.
Being a leader also means developing your people to the point they don’t need you anymore. What will you do then? How about get promoted! You’ve trained your replacement, which makes you more promotable in several respects: there’s no need to find your replacement – you’ve already done it; you’ve a proven track record developing talent; you’re department / division / team is so self-sufficient that your obvious talents are needed elsewhere. Congratulations!
Use These Words:
“What do you think we should do?”
“Have you thought of . . . ?”
. . . and then go ahead and let them do it. Yes, they might not do it the way you would have. They might even be doing it totally wrong, but unless somebody is going to die or get hurt, then it’s okay. It’s their idea, they’re invested in it, and who knows they might just even be able to pull it off. If they fail, they fail, and you help pick things up. If you have to, think of it as training.
If this kind of interaction with your staff is unusual for you, don’t be panicked if they don’t take to your new style right away. Be patient, be consistent, be confident. They’ll come around once they figure out you’re serious.
I think it was The One Minute Manager or a similar book I read years ago talked about how the author’s CFO had made a multi-million dollar mistake in a merger & acquisition situation. The CFO was distraught, and said “I suppose you’ll need to fire me now.” “Why would I do that?”, he replied, “I just spend three million dollars training you. Don’t do it again.”
Discussion
What’s the most important thing you learned from a professional mistake or oversight? How valuable was that lesson to learn?
Posted in behaviour, coaching, delegating, developing staff, engagement, listening, mentoring, motivating, teamwork
Tagged codependance, delegation, employee engagement
The old adage “People are your most important asset” is wrong; the right people are your most important asset
~ Jim Collins
“Forget the past, focus on the future, live in the now.”
~ Cesar Millan
“If you treat an individual as he is, he will stay as he is, but if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be he will become what he ought and could be”
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The question has to be asked — and asked seriously — “If we did not do this already, would we go into it now?” If the answer is no, the reaction must be “What do we do now?” Very often, the right answer is abandonment.
~ Peter Drucker
“One cannot teach a man anything. One can only enable him to learn from within himself.”
~ Galileo Galilei
What do you think is an essential skill for good managers? E-mail me bernie@practicalmanagers.com and share!
