MANAGEMENT DERAILMENT: PERSONAL ASSESSMENT AND MITIGATION by Joyce Hogan, Robert Hogan, Robert B. Kaiser: THE PERIPATETIC PHILOSOPHER RUMINATES
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© December 10, 2011
JORGE FERNANDEZ WRITES:
Jim,
After reading your talk to the high school seniors, I thought you would be interested in the following:
PS - I've been using the Hogan tools since the late 90's
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DR. FISHER RESPONDS:
Jorge,
It is not the best of times for me at the moment to peruse this document, but I have examined the first ten pages and see a pattern here. I think "executive derailment" is an oxymoron and you will see why.
I've been invited to submit a paper for a conference on Management and Service Science to be held in Shanghai, China August 10 - 12, 2012. Reading the Hogan's document, which I find misleading, encourages me to do the hard work to putting together a system's theory on 21st century management, as I've pretty well dispatched all the ideas of Peter Drucker, et al, over the past twenty years. Moreover, I've never been past the Middle East in that direction, and it would be nice to have that experience. No doubt the paper will be the equivalent of a small book, but we shall see. Stay tuned. Here I will make comments on the pages I have read:
Page One
The authors say, "Modern study of management is stagnant and out of date." They go on to say attempts to create a science of management have failed. Then they make reference to the fact that "well established management practices" find financial firms operating at a high level of performance.
Comment:
Of course, the study of management is stagnant. We've never graduated beyond the MBA mindset, which makes bean counters out of everyone, and then brags about it. Frederick Winslow Taylor tried to create "scientific management" by treating people "to more resemble an ox than any other type." Alfred Sloan, the legendary head of GM during the Great Depression, laid off tens of thousands of workers, but boasted about never missing a dividend to stockholders, putting profits before people. MIT to this day has the "Sloan School of Management" echoing his sentiments.
Finance is a thing to be managed and obviously performance management has some success here, but flippantly impetuous Jon Corzine of Goldman Sachs lost more than $1 billion on a whim that Europe was going to solve the problem of Greece and the euro. Even the managers of things occasionally go a little heywire.
Steven Jobs built Apple, Inc. into one of the largest corporation in the world, as well as into his own image and likeness. He never graduated from college much less a business school. It would have ruined him. He defied conventional wisdom on organizational structure by creating eccentric but highly challenged teams. This is reminiscent of the Skunk Works at Lockheed, and earlier, the guilds in pre-industrial Europe.
Page Two
The authors say "management incompetence has serious moral implications because bad managers cause great misery for their subordinates."
Comment:
Let's get rid of the term "subordinates" altogether, okay? It should be excised from the language.
Managers are incompetent because they think their job is to manage, so they go to management schools and learn how to manage things, then return to treat people as things to be managed.
Managers look bad, the people look bad, and productive work falls between the cracks. Again, the authors quote all kinds of literature, and a few figures as to this cost. I wish academics would get away from making writing a veritable jigsaw puzzle of parentheses (authors and references). Think, brothers and sisters, and let us decide if what you write has merit.
Page Three
The authors: "40 percent of American workers report that their jobs are very or extremely stressful."
Comment:
Dr. Hans Selye put it best: "Stress is the spice of life, if it were not for stress you would be a vegetable, or dead!"
It is stressful to write these words, to submit articles and books to publishers and receive rejections, but the purpose of my life is what I do and that is I write. Were I not under this wonderful umbrella of stress I would be a couch potato and watch mindless television all day, or sit in front of a computer screen and play senseless games.
Grow up, Americans! Stress is your invitation to life, not a retreat from it. Selye goes on to say the problem is "distress," or worrying about what never happens or worrying just to be worrying because you're not recognized for your value, not making as much as you think you should, and on and on. It is the complaining mentality of the comfort and complacent worker who would rather be doing something else, but that something else he has no idea what it is.
Control is the problem, and control is a matter of choices.
If you're not happy where you are doing what you are doing, do something else. Don't retreat into the palaver you can't afford to, or you have too many responsibilities, all this is a con job on yourself. I have absolutely no patience with people that tell me their lives are too stressful. They created the circumstances of their lives either by commission or omission. The studies referenced here make no impression on me.
Page Four
The authors quote a 30-year study of managerial derailment. People were said to be uniformly bright and socially skilled, but lacked business skills, unable to deal with complexity, were reactive, unable to delegate, unable to build teams, unable to or slow to learn, unable to network, let emotions cloud their judgment, and had overriding personality defects. One other thing they had in common, their halted progression wasn't voluntary.
Comment:
I read this and wept. My wonder is why I have written all these books, books that are not quoted in these studies, but books that have shown that fear of the parent-as-manager has made workers management dependent, afraid to take a toilet break, afraid to initiate any action for fear it would not be what was wanted or expected, fear of stepping out of line for fear of being demoted or fired, fear in all its stripes. The most comfortable thing to do "is not make waves." It is why I call it "the culture of comfort."
The consequence of this has been to suspend mature workers in permanent adolescence with the quaking recalcitrant mood of a spoiled twelve-year-old child in a 30, 40 or 50-year-old body, and then they wonder why management is derailed.
Of course, it has nothing to do with intelligence. It has everything to do with adapting to the predominant culture, and halted programming of this culture is a function of that system and nothing else.
Page Five
The authors now direct their attention to derailed executives, who fail because of business problems, insensitivity, arrogance, betrayed trust, over managing, overly ambitious, failing to staff effectively, unable to think strategically, unable to adapt to different management style, overly dependent on a mentor.
Comment:
This is the other side of the same coin. The previous problem -- of that coin side -- was culture. The problem of this side of the coin is the shift in power without any shift in structure. Now eighty to ninety percent of the workforce is better educated than its management in terms of knowledge, electronic know how and in level of sophistication. Yet, the negative attributes listed here for managers are indicative of this shift without the organization adjusting intellectually, emotionally, operationally and strategically to it.
In point of fact, managers are atavistic and the management system is anachronistic.
Since it will not change, these bright and sociable workers, as the study accurately noted, retreat into what I have called "six silent killers," of which you are most familiar as you were instrumental in finding a publisher for that book, a book that I think is still relevant, but unfortunately, has a price tage of $74 a copy.
Elsewhere, especially on my blog, actually several years ago, I wrote of a program management system that included career roadmaps, mentoring, and computer programming to track workers in terms of training (education), skill level (gradient index), job complexity (job level), readiness (for promotion or organizational needs assessment), and adaptability (emotional intelligence).
I never did anything with it but I might dust it off, polish it up, and include it in my soiree for China.
Page Six
Authors discuss other surveys of what upper level managers should be able to do behaviorally, including handling complexity, directing-motivating-developing, honoring, driving for excellence, savvy, composure, sensitivity, and staffing.
Comment:
This has the sound of 21st century stuff but not the feel of 21st century requirements because nothing anymore is either manager or workers, but especially workers who are now in charge as Jobs showed. Remember he was fired from his own company, a company he co-founded. "His style" was considered out of sink with that Pepsi Cola guy, John Sculley, who practically drove Apple into oblivion with his MBA approach.
The attributes listed here are fine, but not a guide to "top management," but rather a guide to all managers-workers in the system from top to bottom. The key is development.
Page Seven
The authors talk of derailment research, generally, across time, organizations and cultures.
Comment:
There is too much timidity collectively in the organization to depart from business as usual practices, from the reign of infallibility of the hierarchy, from the promotional schemes that don't go anywhere other then to shore up a deteriorating image. The madness still exists that endless meetings are a way to network and keep people on task.
Time, organization and culture have entered a new dimension, not only because of the Internet and the global economy, but because diversity and heterogeneity mean dealing with, respecting and adjusting to peoples of different cultures in a timely fashion. It will never happen if profits are always put before people. Nor if our schools continue to operate as if we are still an agrarian society.
A long time ago, when I was an organizational psychologist in a high tech company, I did a study of waste, and found that the emphasis was placed on the back end (the product) and not on the front end (the process).
The study indicated that scrap and rework was costing the division as much as $5 million at the product end. The program manager with whom I was working reported this to management. He could not move it to operate more strategically (i.e., focus on chronic process problems in the system). In fact, he lost some favor with his management over this initiative.
Page Eight
The authors quote a study that verifies the above. Managers failed because of poor administrative skills, difficulty making correct choices, lack of strategic thinking, failure to build a team, lack of interpersonal savvy, low self-awareness, poor political skills, inability to deal with conflict, questionable integrity.
Comment:
Attitude, aptitude and attributions are locked into what I have said elsewhere as "being winning side saddlers," that is, not taking risks for fear of failure and therefore failing, not wanting to share power and therefore not being able to build teams, not wanting to show vulnerability and therefore being mainly a stranger to self, while trying too hard to fit in and therefore shying away from conflict and confrontation and therefore pleasing no one, especially politically.
As you know in my paradigm, I show how the organization has gone from being "manager dependent" with workers reactive and motivated by fear (culture of comfort or unconscious incompetence) to managers as "permissive pleasers," giving workers everything but the kitchen sink with workers motivated by security (culture of complacency or unconscious incompetence).
Management's intentions were to buy positive performance with the generosity of pay, perks and entitlements only to find it backfired into worker complacency, which was counterproductive.
Actually, what management wanted but was not mature enough to accept were self-directed, self-managed and self-disciplined workers who would need little or no supervision. These workers would be able to work in project teams (culture of contribution or conscious competence) where the motivation was work itself, and where workers were not afraid of conflict but preferred managed conflict, and who would not hesitate to confront management when the mission was in jeopardy or threatened to be aborted for some selfish managerial angst.
Page Nine
The authors next dealt with the increased complexity and pace of change as well as the need for cross-cultural exposure where workers likely will have to work abroad sometime in their careers.
Comment:
This is apropos to the future and is quite relevant. I spent a good deal of my life working abroad and had little orientation, indoctrination or schooling in these assignments. Moreover, I was limited in language skills and cultural understanding of the situations with which I had to deal. No race of people is more xenophobic than Americans when it comes to other cultures, yet, paradoxically, Americans have little trouble merging cross culturally at home.
As for complexity and pace, this is huge and, again, it is not something that can remain at the level of explanation. William L. Livingston III has written widely and wisely on the subject of complexity, as I've pointed out before. No writer understands the demands of complexity better or how to deal with it. He points out that most of our complex problems we avoid, and solve the problems we can understand and believe solvable. This has led to the mess we are in financially, politically, institutionally and, yes, culturally.
Page Ten
The authors summarize the habits of unsuccessful people, which includes, overestimating their strengths, and underestimating their competition, putting personal interests before company, being arrogant and reckless in decision making (Jon Corzine comes to mind), sabotaging challengers, ignoring the company's purpose and concentrating on managing the company's image, minimizing obstacles and planning accordingly, relying on outdated strategies and tactics.
Comment:
My first reaction is that they should read Dov Seidman's "How" (2011) and David Brooks' "The Social Animal" (2011), as these authors cover the waterfront. Seidman is an optimist; Brooks is a cautionary pessimist, both are right.
The page ends with the authors calling attention to why CEOs fail.
It occurred to me that the authors describe little boys and girls that never left the sixth grade (incidentally, I wrote an article to this effect). They are arrogant, melodramatic, volatile, and cautious to sneaky, distrustful, aloof, mischievous, odd, passive resistant, anal, and eager to please. Scary, huh?
Jorge, I apologize for going on, but I knew when I started commenting on the pages that I was hooked. In conclusion, I don't see derailment. You have to be on the rails to derail. We long ago left them.
Be always well,
Jim
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