The 4 most common types of role ambiguity

We're near end of year, which means reviewing individuals' performance objectives for next year. The four big areas (according to expert Charles Handy) where employees feel ambiguity about their role are:

1. About how their work is measured and evaluated
2. Around their role enhancement
3. Around the scope of their responsibility and
4. Uncertainty around others' expectations on their work.

As managers, we could find worse ways to spend our time than on figuring out and clarifying the above for our team members.

Brilliant business books

Harvard Business Review posted an article last week about managing versus leading. They are often seen as different, with managing somehow coming out as tactical and less important. Robert Sutton disagrees. As do I.

As does Larry Bossidy. So nice to see his book here picked as the panel's favourite. Execution is well worth a read in you're in the business of leading (thus managing).

The manager and employee "dance of lies"

Image courtesy of formfaktor

Once or twice a year, managers and their direct reports get together to tango - in their "employee performance dance of lies". Each dance is different, but we try to follow the basic moves.

The manager knows he can't give rave reviews to all his team. He would look weak in the eyes of his own manager. And everybody can't be 'above average'. That is not physically possible. Pity, he thinks, as he has been driving them pretty hard all year and they've been doing decent work.

While plotting how to dispatch a 'good' but not 'above average' score, he does some soul searching.

If he's honest, he'd wish they make decisions themselves more often without asking him all the time. They should know this, right? And maybe they could be more creative in problem solving too. Yep, he's pretty sure he asked them to be more creative earlier in the year.

With no time left to practice his moves, he takes the lead with an energetic "you're doing a good job". In the absence of written objectives, he manages to recall some last minute good stuff the employee has done in the past month. The employee joins in, chuffed and they tango for a bit. He reckoned he had done a pretty good job. He's glad his manager appreciates his hard work.

But as the 3-minute dance is coming to an end, the manager pulls out his winning move. "Although I think you could have been more creative".

This is looking more like a dance-off than a tango. Every man for himself. The employee is a bit confused. They are still dancing but not in sync. Unsure of what to say next, the manager decides to follow up with the decision-making bit..."and you could be more decisive".

This, the employees understands. Yes, in hindsight he probably could have been more decisive. But, he wonders, why is it just coming up now? But he finds out quickly enough..."you're doing a good job. Yes, good, but not - above average. Keep it up. And work on your decision making. Chat in six months."

And the music stops.

The Art of Performance Management

I'm interested in work-enjoyment. Always have been I think. It might be due to seeing how much intrinsic satisfaction my dad got from his work. If we are going to spend so much of our waking hours working, it would be nice to enjoy it. Most people don't. Lots of reasons why.

One (unnecessary) reason why we don't like work is when we are mismanaged. Happens all the time. Managers are busy. Very busy. They are too busy to spend time with the individuals on their teams.

Ironic when you consider the role of a manager is to 'get work done through others'.

Managing is also difficult. Most of us stumble through it, honing our skills over time. As part of a project recently, I wrote some principles and practices that I try to stick to. Most of this is commonsense but I've borrowed ideas, techniques and insights from Larry Bossidy, Steve Kerr, Jack Welch, and James Kilts among others. And of course from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

I've tried to keep it practical, with an example at the end showing how objectives might be written. I've discovered (after too long) that getting a process is key to good performance management. It is time consuming in the beginning, but only in the beginning.

I've called it The Art of Performance Management, acknowledging that management is more art than science.

You can download the 6-page pdf here. Feedback (good, bad, random insults etc) is welcome.

Paint the big picture for them

When talking shop a couple of weeks ago, a friend told me she didn't see how her work was connected to her company's strategy. While this is a common complaint, I was surprised. She works in marketing - on some of her company's most important projects. In a critical role too.

If she couldn't see why or how her day to day work fitted into the bigger picture, what are the chances for the many others working on the smaller initiatives? It reminded me of a story Peter Drucker wrote in one of his many insightful management books:

Three stonecutters were asked what they were doing. The first replied that he was "making a living". The second proudly said he was doing the "finest work of any stonecutter in the country". The third replied "I am building a cathedral".

Peter Drucker explains that the first man knows what he wants from his job. He puts in his 8-hour day in return for a fair wage. That's fine. But the problem is with the second man. He may get caught up polishing the steps of the cathedral for weeks without understanding his job is to build the cathedral.

I've always felt this story was relevant to us marketing folk.

We can get caught up in how beautifully our ads have been executed. We fight for hours on how a line of copy reads. Don't get me wrong - copy is important. Very. (And we do fight for hours over words). I want our ads to be the finest they can be. I want to be proud of the work we do. I want to work with people that love what they do. But the work must always be connected back to the big picture. As the phrase goes, "Strategy without sharp execution is a dream. And execution without strategy is a nightmare".

As managers, our role is to make sure our teams understand the big picture. What it is. And where they fit into it. If they can't see it, we need to paint it for them. Regularly.

This novel beats most business books

I can't remember who recommended The Goal to me. I was recently thinking about some of the most useful books I've read. And this popped into my mind. I read it a couple of years ago. It is written as a novel. And is based on manufacturing - something I've no experience in, or any real interest in.

However, I strongly recommend it to you if you are a manager or business owner. Over at Amazon.com, I see it has a 4.5 star rating from 326 people. Not bad at all.

It is about a plant manager that needs to turn things around before he is closed down. It is also about discovering what decisions need to be made, and the consequences of these decisions. If you've read and liked books like The 80/20 Principle or Moneyball - you'll enjoy this.

Performance Management in practice

Anybody that has studied Southwest Airlines will know that devising a strategy can be easier than executing one. Many airlines have tried to copy Southwest. Few have succeeded. Southwest know how to execute.

I realise this piece may look like a deviation from my general posts about marketing communications. But getting high performance marketing is a team effort. You need highly motivated, talented and hard working people to deliver on any marketing strategy. It requires leadership and management.

I posted last week about performance reviews. These are critical to executing strategy. The most difficult part of performance reviews is getting the objectives right at the beginning of the year. In fairness, getting them right takes a bit of time and usually a few drafts.

I wanted to show the the process I use.

The starting place is clarifying what exactly you want done and how well you want it done. One way to figure this out is to ask yourself what would you do if it were you doing the work yourself. And to what standard would you do the work. When you know what you want, next step is to figure out an objective way to measure this performance. Involve your team member. Get very specific and agree (1) the output itself (2) how it will be measured (3) when this will be measured and (4) by who.

I'll use a typical 'Direct Marketing Exec' role as an example.

Let's say it is January and one of your team members manages your direct marketing activity. Let's assume you need 100 sales each month to hit targets. Assume also that you know from experience that your direct marketing activity needs to generate 250 sales leads each month to create these 100 sales. Finally, let's assume that you know you need to target 5,000 people each month to generate 250 leads.

Objectives for the Direct Marketing Exec might be something like this:

1. His overall objective is 100 sale a month. Often the big objectives are not fully under the control of the individual. He may be relying on the sales team to close the sales. This is why it makes sense to have a few other sub-objectives which would be fully under the individual's control. I believe it is important to include the overall objective though, as this the real output objective the business wants.
   
2. A sub-objective might be to get the actual campaign out, by a specific date each month, targeting 5,000 people.
3. Another sub-objective for him might be to drive up response rates to 7% by 31st March. So currently, 250 leads from 5,000 people is a 5% response. To meet this objective, he would need to generate 350 leads from 5,000 by 31st March.
   
4. Another sub-objective might be to drive down the cost-per-piece. So if it currently costs €3,000 to target 5,000 people, the cost-per-piece is €0.60. His objective might be to drive the cost down to €2000 per 5,000 people, costing just €0.40 per piece.
   

The performance-review is not for rating how your team did

Image courtesy of apfelbaum

For many years, my daily work activity and my yearly performance-review were unrelated. I saw the performance-review as a task that needed to be completed for HR once or twice a year. A bit of paperwork.

Don't get me wrong. I've had good managers who were genuinely interested in me, my work and my progress. And I worked hard. I had some objectives at the beginning of the year. But these objectives did not drive my performance. They sat in a drawer or were saved in a folder somewhere on my computer. And I'd go scrambling looking for them the day before my review.

As would my managers I suspect.

This disconnect between what I did every day and my how my performance was rated and reviewed is not unusual. James Kilts, Jack Welsh and Larry Bossidy have all written about this at the companies they ran. Many individuals and their managers see the performance-review as an awkward chore to get out of the way, so they can all go back to the real work.

This is a mistake. The performance-review is not there to rate how the individuals on your team did. It is there to drive the performance you need now. The rating of the individual is just one aspect.

This difference seems subtle - but is critical. It is not a task to complete once or twice a year. It is a method of regularly monitoring an individual's progress. So you can both agree what bits need more focus or less focus. If you had a sales target, you wouldn't wait till November to look at the figures and decide what areas need more work. This is no different.

Which is why I believe in monthly performance reviews. Yep, formal performance-reviews every month where you both review objectives against agreed measures.

This allows the manager and individual to (1) discuss the previous month's performance, (2) understand what is working well and what needs more work (3) agree what will be done about the poorer performing areas and finally (4) let the individual know officially what their performance or rating has been for the month.

I've written before about the link between strategy and execution. Reviewing performance regularly is critical to execution. Monthly reviews are not difficult. They do require some prep work but I think it is worth it. The hard bit is putting the right measures in place. I'll write a post about this another time.

Thoughts?

How has your manager rated you so far this year?

Strategy is invariably linked to execution.

World acclaimed CEO and author, Larry Bossidy, believes that poor business performance is often not the result of poor strategy. But from poor execution.

Peter Drucker is often credited with the quote "What gets measured, gets done". If you know exactly what is expected from you, exactly what needs to be done, exactly how it will be measured and what this means for your bonus, career prospects - and possibly job security - there is a pretty good chance you'll focus on it.

Sounds obvious. Yep. So is this what happens?

Well, given it is two months into the year. My question is - do you know exactly how your manager has rated your performance, so far, this year? And if you're a manager, do your team members know exactly how you have rated their performance? If they were asked today, could they confidently say exactly how their performance has been against defined objectives? And how their performance rates on the scale your company uses?

You should know. And so should they. It's not much use telling them at the end of the year that they've missed their objectives. It will be too late at that stage. Not fair to them. And your company may pay the price.

If you don't know - why is this? I think there are several reasons and will scribble these down for a later post.

What's your thoughts?

What is the most inspiring thing your manager has said to you?

This post is not connected to marketing or advertising. It's about people and their jobs. The tenuous link of course, is that the people I work with are primarily responsible for advertising. And their efforts ultimately determine how good or bad the end result is.

So I've a selfish reason to try and understand what motivates them. Which is why I picked up "The three signs of a miserable job". Yes, I'm guilty again of judging a book by its cover. It's a fable for managers, which sounds naff, but I enjoyed the book.

So the three signs?

1. Anonymity - Nobody wants to be invisible. We all need to be appreciated and recognised, ideally not just by peers, but by people in charge.
   
   
2. Irrelevance - We need to know that the work we do matters. We don't have be changing the world. But at the very least we need to know that our work matters to our boss.
   
   
3. Immeasurement - We all need to be able to measure our progress. Our results. And we need to be able to see this for ourselves.
   

I'm always a bit sceptical of simple solutions laid out in books. However, it's not a bad starting point when organising or structuring roles. I might add my own views in another post.