The Manager - Edition 41 - People are not always a result of the system - by Rob Lambert

Cultivated Management Newsletter

Hi Cultivated Managers. 

I hope you've had a good weekend and are looking forward to getting stuck in to the week ahead. 

Life's interesting at Lambert Towers. My daily commute is grinding away and now the darkness is coming in the morning, it might be time to roll out the SAD lamp to combat the winter blues. 

Working so many hours with an epic commute has put a lot of projects on hold and it also means I don't go on Twitter much nowadays - (to be fair I also find it a little bit angry and shouty). But I was dithering around on there the other day and someone I follow tweeted a common statement about systems thinking (I think it may have been Deming who originally said it). 
 

"People are a result of the system they work in."

I'm a self labelled "system thinker" and a huge fan of systems and the effect they have on people, but I don't really subscribe to this statement entirely.

Trust me, I've seen average people never live up to a good system. And I've seen high performing people overcome poor systems.

And this gives me faith. It gives me confidence that if I work in an organisation with broken and dysfunctional systems I (and existing high performers and other people I hire) can overcome these systems. We can make a change. We can make it better. We can improve the systems. We are not constrained entirely by them.

Sure, it's hard to overcome broken and dysfunctional systems - but it is possible. And once you build a great system - it is easy to break it down with average people. Sadly, I've seen this too. Years spent building great systems only to have others destroy it and wonder where it all went wrong. 

So have faith. Go forth and overcome broken systems. Hire other high performing people and overcome the barriers you face. 

Rob

Stuff To Click On :

1 - I'm having a lot of success with DevonThink instead of Evernote. And I'm fine tuning my Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) workflow. I'm still not there with it - but it is getting better. If you're building your own PKM then this useful list of 25 resources will be super helpful.

2 - Communication skills really are a super-power in the world of business. 10 effective ways to improve communication from INC.

3 - I've seen this so many times - execs blaming external circumstances. "If a few rivals are doing exceedingly well in the same competitive environment, then one has to ask why executives are so readily blaming external circumstances for the poor performance." - Via Michael Roberto

4 - I travel a fair amount and have been lucky enough never to have been bumped from one flight to another. Here's why it happens though - found this fascinating. Ethical? Economical? Practical? Why Airlines Overbook Flights.

5 - Ironically - I found myself skim reading this article about skim reading. It's the new normal. Sadly.

6 - As a manager - hiring high performing people should be one of the most important activities you do. Sadly - for most this is usually what happens.

7 - When I moved from Evernote to DevonThink I realised I'd been guilty of capturing too much information. I clipped everything and anything. I should have slowed down and thought about it more. Here are others things to consider when you're building a PKM.

8 - Tech experts need to share what they know.

Thanks for reading this week's edition of The Manager. 

Thanks
Rob..