Six Deadly Sins of Leadership - a comment

This post by Jack Welch and Suzy Welch appeared on Linked in and it struck a note with me. I feel that there is a lot in it that I think I agree with. I'm not sure if I'm entirely in agreement with the list or if it really matters whether I agree or not but there is, deep down in me, a healthy dislike of the mundane, uncreative and uninspired leadership/management here in the UK.

http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130327154206-86541065-the-six-deadly-sins-of-leadership?trk=eml-mktg-inf-m-top13-0827-p3

The main headings of the article are, the six deadly sins are:

1. Not giving self-confidence its due.
2. Muzzling voice
3. Acting phoney
4. Lacking the guts to differentiate
5. Fixation on results at the expense of values.
6. Skipping the fun part

The trouble with these lists are that they can only dumb-down what is a very serious problem. That's a bit unfair of me as its purpose is to highlight some problems and I guess it works at that. It's generated me to waffle on in this post to no-one in particular, so at least I'm thinking about it. But dumbing-down? Well probably. Or maybe just over-simplifying. Perhaps that's a nicer way to say it.

#1 - Not giving self-confidence its due

"Self-confidence is the lifeblood of success."

I'm not a great manager, or leader in the charismatic way, but I think and learn and challenge. Sometimes when time permits I can look up and innovate. But the above list of six things are not quite right, or in the right order. You do tend to associate precedence to the order of things and, Not giving self-confidence its due, isn't number one.

There are at least two equally important and crucial additional aspects to this. 

One - Not giving confidence or time to the person that lacks confidence. I have seen an environment where a person was not regarded highly for his talents. In fact the prevailing opinion of him was truely low. Behind the scenes, management would talk rather poorly of the person. I knew the person was bright, was hard-working, sharp, but there were issues. The transformation to this person's life, career and prospects are now profoundly improved because I worked at this, pressing  ahead with  support and mentoring. I remember that it took just one year from meeting this person to bring about significant change to him and the team.

Two - not dealing with the over-confident or arrogant.

This is tough and it takes good judgement and self-control. One person's arrogant is another person's genius. You must get it right but you must look at the personal interplay in the team and ensure that personalities are in control and in some sort of harmonious balance and that other potential stars are not being stifled. I've seen very dominant characters suppress others through bullying or sheer confidence. Whatever the method of handling this, it is important.

#2 - Muzzling voice

"Perhaps the most frustrating way that leaders underperform is by over-talking." 

Over-talking is bad. Yes I agree to that. But, over-talking is different to over-driving the discussion to your favour. I talk too much after coffee, but always listen to the input of the team. Collectively we know more and are greater than the sum of our individual voices. So I agree in general with the #2 but I think it's slightly off.

#3 - Acting phoney

"Can you spot a phoney  Of course you can – and so can your people. Indeed, if there is one widespread human capability, it is sniffing out someone who is putting on airs, pretending to be who they’re not, or just keeping their real self hidden. Yet too many leaders spend way too much time creating personas that put a wall between them and their employees. What a waste."

I didn't agree with this at first. I thought it over simplified what I imagined to be the real problem. But now I think I agree. There are a lot of "suits". Even if they don't wear them. Often they are well intentioned and well-ordered. Sometimes they are playing the corporate ladder of survival and progression. Maybe the companies need them. Maybe the company simply needs fewer of them. But there is a style that can be destructive to creativity and motivation. This needs to be understood and managed.

#4 - Lacking the guts to differentiate

"You only have to be in business a few weeks to know that not all investment opportunities are created equal. But some leaders can’t face that reality, and so they sprinkle their resources like cheese on a pizza, a little bit everywhere 

... 

But leaders who don’t differentiate do the most damage when it comes to people. Unwilling to deliver candid, rigorous performance reviews, they give every employee the same kind of bland, mushy, “nice job” sign-off."

Yes I probably understand this and agree. But  headline problem for this list. I'm not sure because I haven't managed many managers.

#5 - Fixation on results at the expense of values.

"Everyone knows that leaders deliver. Oratory and inspiration without results equal…well, a whole lot of nothing. But leaders are committing a real dereliction of duties if all they care about are the numbers."

I like this one. One thought along these lines that I believe is with visual products for example. It is simply not good enough to provide function and expect to differentiate ourselves from the rest. If we can get people to love our product through aesthetics or service then we have values and we have pride.  There are many aspects to this results v values equation that I need to think about. I will waffle on some more in another post.

#6 - Skipping the fun part

"What a lost opportunity. Celebrating makes people feel like winners and creates an atmosphere of recognition and positive energy. Imagine a team winning the World Series without champagne spraying everywhere. You can’t! And yet companies win all the time and let it go without so much as a high-five."

Yep.

I agree in the celebration part but celebration is not the only definition or expression of fun. Before that there is the fun of doing the job. I'm thinking particularly of a development environment here and there has to be a lot of appropriate fun. Interaction in the team, jokes, support, team work, banter - all useful where appropriate and sensitive to those who might feel alienated by certain behaviour.

Success comes daily. Solving a sticky bug, a change to a design, writing a good doc. It's not all big end-of-project celebrations.

How & why incentives do not work

Firstly, if you have 18 minutes to spare, then rather than read this, go and watch Dan Pink's video at TED.com. It really is food for thought.


In short, Dan says that proof exists to support the statement that incentives - the carrot or the sharp stick - do not work.
They do not work in many types of work. Not all, but most that we are likely to deal with.

But, and here's an interesting thing. Not only do they not work, they actually do harm. They give the opposite of the desired effect.


The candle problem
Dan starts by looking at the the candle problem.

If you give people the following: a candle, a box of pins and some matches, and you then ask them to fix the candle to the wall so that the lit candle's wax doesn't drip onto the table. How could this be done? and do they perform?

(A clue. To solve this you over come functional fixedness)

Do incentives work
If you incentivise this task, i.e. if you give a group incentives such as, 'if you're the fastest you'll get £50, if you're in the top 10% you'll get £20'. Then you get interesting results. (these £ values were not the ones used in the quoted experiement but I have adjusted for inflation :).  I'm sure the experiment holds)

The team that were given the financial incentives actually did a lot worse, and this is not a freak of this experiment or of this challenge. There are many more examples and experiments that back this up.

The solution to the candle problem?
It is at the bottom of the blog page.


Restate the problem and...
If you restate the problem as in this diagram and still give incentives, then the incentives make a significant difference. They have the desired effect and deliver an improvement in performance.

I think it's clear to see why when you realise the pins are no longer in the tray that was being used to collect them together.

So incentives appear to work for mechanistic, well defined tasks, but not for jobs that require creative thought. If the work is clearly defined and has an easy to see goal then the incentives work. It is almost as if the value of the incentive narrows the focus through a fear of losing the sweet carrot or money, or fear of meeting the pointy end of the stick.

This kind of left-brain work seems ideally suited to incentives but more and more our work is right-brain - creative, inventive.

A couple of quotes:

As long as the task involved only mechanical skill, bonuses worked as they would be expected: the higher the pay , the better the performance. 

But once the task called for "even rudimentary cognitive skill," a larger reward "led to poorer performance."

D. Ariely, U. Gneezy, G. Lowenstein, & N. Mazar, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston Working Paper No. 05-11, July 2005; NY Times, 20 Nov. 08



Autonomy - Mastery - Purpose
If we can no longer motivate using incentives or threats then what can motivates?
Dan suggests:
Autonomy - the urge to direct our own lives
Mastery - to get better and better at something
Purpose - the urge to be a art of something bigger than ourselves.


Traditional management
Management is a recent concept and it did not emanate from nature. It's an invention from mankind. It's ideal for compliance but it does not mean that it's always right. Maybe, at times, we need to rethink the management styles based on the three themes above.

I currently work in a very traditional environment and have found myself in a team of dispirited developers that distrust management, distrust each other, and are distrusted by management. I'm stuck in the middle as a Development Manager. My approach has been to apply two themes to improve things. One, traditional management - that is, clearly manage the tasks, the projects and the list of work. Senior management folk like that and the developers do too. The estimates are still off a bit but we can work on that.
The other theme is non-traditional. I encourage Mastery and Autonomy in the way I treat developer tasks and collaboration. I expand their range of influence and never pass on their successes as my own up the traditional management line. I motivate by letting them motivate themselves.
Warning. Senior management don't get this. Not mine anyway and that's probably why my days will be numbered. But I'll keep on trying. It's the only right way.




The answer.

Question the norm in the dev team

 Apologies but it's a bit pompous of me using Einstein in the same post as my work, but here goes.

"Concepts that have proven useful in ordering things easily achieve such authority over us that we forget their earthly origins and accept them as unalterable givens." - Albert Einstein. 

It seems to me that software development generates a lot of acronyms and methods all providing the definitive in wisdom. As you get longer in the tooth you get cynical and question these saviours. Einstein was on a totally different level of course but the principle is worth thinking about in the development team.

The Planning Fallacy

Do we all experience the Fallacy on our work:

• Overoptimistic in the time planning therefore underestimating time taken.
• Overestimating the benefits

In 1979 a paper by Daniel Kahneman coined the term the Planning Fallacy.

It is a very real and measurable effect. Using a number of different subject areas from origami to tax returns. The tendency is to plan on the light side. Interestingly this only happens when we estimate our own work. When people uninvolved in the work are asked for estimates, they tend to over estimate.
No one really knows why, but vocalism is thought to be a candidate.

One curious observation is that people still tend to underestimate the task even if they have evidence from previous similar tasks.

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team - Patrick Lencioni

A QUICK OVERVIEW OF THE MODEL

As difficult as teamwork can be to achieve, it is not complicated. And so, if I can't describe it in a page or two, then I've probably made it too complex. Here goes.

The true measure of a team is that it accomplishes the results that it sets out to achieve. To do that on a consistent, ongoing basis, a team must overcome the five dysfunctions listed here by embodying the behaviors described for each one.

• Dysfunction #1: Absence of Trust: Members of great teams trust one another on a fundamental, emotional level, and they are comfortable being vulnerable with each other about their weaknesses, mistakes, fears, and behaviors. They get to a point where they can be completely open with one another, without filters. This is essential because ...
• Dysfunction #2: Fear of Conflict: ... teams that trust one another (they have #1 above) are not afraid to engage in passionate dialogue around issues and decisions that are key to the organization's success. They do not hesitate to disagree with, challenge, and question one another, all in the spirit of finding the best answers, discovering the truth, and making great decisions. This is important because ...
• Dysfunction #3: Lack of Commitment... teams that engage in unfiltered conflict (they have #2 above) are able to achieve genuine buy-in around important decisions, even when various members of the team initially disagree. That's because they ensure that all opinions and ideas are put on the table and considered, giving confidence to team members that no stone has been left unturned. This is critical because ...
• Dysfunction #4: Avoidance of Accountability: ... teams that commit to decisions and standards of performance (they have #3 above) do not hesitate to hold one another accountable for adhering to those decisions and standards. What is more, they don't rely on the team leader as the primary source of accountability, they go directly to their peers. This matters because ...
• Dysfunction #5: Inattention to Results: ... teams that trust one another, engage in conflict, commit to decisions, and hold one another accountable (they have #4 above) are very likely to set aside their individual needs and agendas and focus almost exclusively on what is best for the team. They do not give in to the temptation to place their departments, career aspirations, or ego-driven status ahead of the collective results that define team success.
  

  
  

  
  

I dislike the book really. Probably because  I'm too lazy to read it. The above snippet is in Chaper 42. In Chapter 43 there's a team assessment thing.