The Manager - Edition 97 - Built for cooperation
THE MANAGER - BY ROB LAMBERT
Hi,
Hope you are doing well and are safe.
It’s rapidly approaching the summer holidays for the kids here in the UK. Places are starting to re-open and the lockdown rules are being slowly eased here. It’s time for my wife and I to get our thinking hats on to find things to do with the kids over the summer. Any suggestions?
This week I released a new video in which I search for the elusive deer of Micheldever woods and share with you a powerful question – “What problem are you trying to solve?”
I’ve also been musing about cooperation in the workplace.
We’re designed to cooperate
I started my career as a Software Tester and spent 14 years helping companies build better products. For my software testing readers, you can find plenty of my thoughts and ideas on software testing on my old blog The Social Tester.
Every year I still go to Testing conferences and share my thoughts on life, leadership and management. At every event some people still seem obsessed with making the role of a Tester bigger, grander and more important than other roles. They come up with cool names for testers and bemoan the fact leaders still don’t understand what testing is. To be fair, most testers still argue about that.
I’m now sitting a 14-month long CIPD diploma in HR – I’m formalising my experience in HR with an industry recognised qualification. One thing is clear from the training and the course content is that the HR industry is doing the same thing; trying to put HR at the centre of the business and make it a more influential and important role than it should be. The industry has pitched HR as the owners of a lot of work that I don’t believe they should own.
As a manager at management events and conferences the same thing happens. People are trying to put management at the heart of the business. They are trying to make management more important than it is.
I read a marketing book the other week that put marketing at the centre of a business and made it clear a business couldn’t function without a marketing lead strategy. Marketing were the most important department in a company. Customer service is the new profit area according to another book – stating that without a customer service driven and lead organisation, with Customer Experience professionals at the centre of it, it couldn’t possibly win in the marketplace.
And of course, if you’ve read the classic How the Mighty Fall – then you’ll know that one of the tell-tale signs of a company in decline is when the Executive team start to believe that they are to cause of massive success – and that arrogance leads to stupid decisions and mistakes.
I once had a challenging conversation with a developer at a Dev conference, who believed he could run the entire company just from code alone. The arrogance was unbelievable, if not somewhat hilarious at the same time. Every department in this well know broadcasting company was under-performing and he knew how to fix it… with code.
We can’t all be at the centre of a business. We can’t all be more important than other departments. We can’t all be so important that a business won’t succeed without us.
Humans are designed to cooperate.
For centuries now we have been working with others to achieve something bigger than ourselves.
What would happen in an organisation if people dropped the need to be the centre of the business and instead focused on putting the customer there?
What would happen if we dropped our egos and need for importance and we studied the work involved in delivering for the society and customers we served?
Great things.
As a leader, HR pro, tester, cleaner, manager, coder, marketer, customer service pro, anyone – it’s important to put the work at the centre of what we do and find ways to cooperate with each other to get it delivered. This will build a great culture and a great service/product.
As a manager take a good look at incentives and how they work – they are often the major lever to pull to force cooperation. Taking away money, resource and control often forces people to work with others. Taking away individual bonuses can drive cooperation. Taking away perks that come with higher ranks in the business can drive cooperation. Taking away promotions based on relationships rather than competence, is a great way to drive cooperation for results.
But the best way to drive cooperation is to role model it.
Challenge poor behaviour, openly communicate, share problems, help others solve problems and encourage cooperation day by day in your teams.
Cooperation is what we’re designed for and the best leaders, managers and business professionals know this.
And it starts with putting work and customers at the heart of what we do, then dropping our need for individual recognition and also looking at those pesky incentive schemes.
I firmly believe that if you can’t honestly describe your company culture as one of cooperation – there is still plenty to do.
Good luck
Until next time.
Rob..
FOOD FOR YOUR MANAGEMENT BRAIN
1. Apparently, permanent working from home is coming - https://www.npr.org/2020/06/22/870029658/get-a-comfortable-chair-permanent-work-from-home-is-coming?
2. But then I agree more with this piece - remote work is going to suck...and likely break many companies and people with it - https://www.seanblanda.com/our-remote-work-future-is-going-to-suck/
3. Don't let micro-stresses burn you out - https://hbr.org/2020/07/dont-let-micro-stresses-burn-you-out
4. The story in your head is a narrative - it's not complete - therefore you can change it if you don't like it - https://seths.blog/2020/07/inventing-narratives/
5. Unconditional positive regard - catchy right? Basically, no matter what someone says, how the behave or what they do - treat them with positivity - https://www.nirandfar.com/upr-unexpected-benefits-beyond-therapy/
6. Interesting read on finding and creating workplaces that reflect our values. Took me a while to understand what the article was about, but stick with it - some nice insights - https://bossbarista.substack.com/p/you-can-hire-better
7. Trick you brain in to remembering anything - https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-trick-your-brain-to-remember-almost-anything/
8. With great power comes great responsibility, and it looks like Facebook is still not entirely sure about how to own that responsibility. More calamities for the company and owner - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/10/opinion/facebook-zuckerberg.html
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Thanks
Rob..