Leading the Unleadable

by Alan Willett

  Later that day, Alison was following up with that engineer and Hank in a meeting on a new feature request. She learned about what had just happened that morning. She called for a ten-minute meeting with just her and the two of them.

  The meeting was as short as Alison promised. Alison said she wasn’t worried about Hank’s mistake. She was worried that he was not going to get the support he needed to achieve his big goals. She knew that people need the space to make mistakes—and also the space to recover. She was focused on ensuring that there was rapid learning and correction. In ten minutes they came up with three actions.

  Alison and Hank decided to have a ten-minute check-in with each other at the start of each week for the next four weeks so that they both stayed on track with the new expectations.

  Hank said simply, “I made a mistake and I actually noticed! About halfway through I sensed I was off track, but I pushed on. I should have stopped and checked in. I will make sure I do that when I feel things are off.”

  The engineer apologized. He said “I really should have said the micromanager warning word. It just seemed rude.” Hank said, “It wouldn’t have been. I might have been startled and maybe even initially angry. However, it would not have been about you. I would have been angry at my mistake.” The engineer said he would tell his teammates about his mistake of not letting Hank know and about their agreement to not let it happen again.

  Over the next four weeks, there were some similar mistakes. But they happened significantly less often and were caught when they were occurring. Hank also found himself involved in the start of other projects that truly made him responsible for architecture across connected product lines. He was very gratified that he could now handle the work. In the past, the current project would have consumed him and prevented him from doing the higher-level work required.

  Set the Bar High

  It is important to set the bar of excellence high. It is a leadership mistake to recognize just effort. It is more important to recognize when success is achieved.

  The key to the success of Alison’s leadership is that she didn’t dwell on the past but kept a positive view on learning with a future focus. In her ten-minute meetings with Hank on Mondays she would ask Hank which of the benefits they agreed to were being realized.

  She didn’t focus on mistakes. She kept Hank focused on his high bar. This bar of success was mutually created and agreed upon by Alison and Hank. Hank found this extremely motivating, obviously more motivating than hearing every week “Well, you did it wrong, again!”

  Also, Alison encouraged Hank to recognize his own success and progress. She reinforced his observations with her own observations and suggestions. She did appreciate his effort, but her main focus was on recognizing not the effort but the achievement.

  When her check-ins with engineers revealed that Hank had a flawless week with them as well as being successful with the new engineering projects, she knew it was time for public recognition. She suggested to Hank that they arrange a thank-you lunch with the key developers who helped Hank achieve his success.

  It was a powerful recognition of the effort and the journey, but even more important, Hank and Alison had created a bridge to successful improvement.

  REFLECTION POINTS

  To be successful in helping people transform behaviors from troublesome to terrific, you must follow through. If you are running a race, do not stop at the finish line, run past the finish line. If you are providing feedback to someone who needs improvement, do not stop at the end of the meeting where you set a new goal, follow through!

  I have three reflection point questions for this chapter.

  1. Can you think of actions Alison could have taken to make this situation worse? Which of those actions have you seen, or done?

  2. Do you have any situations you are responsible for currently that require follow up? Are you applying proper actions to that follow up? How do you know?

  3. There are times when a leader has to decide between engaging in improvement and engaging in moving people out of the organization. What are the criteria you use to make this judgment?

  Decision Time: Remove or Improve?

  Your leadership obligation is to the group as a whole. The majority of this book is dedicated to transforming the troublesome to the tremendous. Many of the examples focus on individuals. But do not be misled. The primary purpose that guides your action should have the overall mission of the group in mind.

  Consider the case of Hank, the expert everyone wanted to run away from. With Alison’s help he was able to recover his trust with his teammates and improve his overall performance as well as that of the team, and make larger contributions to the whole organization. If Hank demonstrated that he was not interested in changing, what would have been the right thing for Alison to do? What if attrition of the group was high and the people leaving said it was because of Hank’s behavior? Your actions must change depending on the circumstances to best meet the needs of the mission and your group.

  There are circumstances where it is clear that it will not be possible for an individual to improve to the performance level required in the time required. For example, there are situations where only a scant few weeks remain before the launch of a product. If someone is being especially disruptive, it is unlikely there is time to properly remedy the situation when everyone is already under stress. However, even in this situation, you may think that saving the individual is critical for future organization improvement. All the factors involved could make you feel like your head is going in circles regarding what to do.

  Unless the troublesome behavior is outright illegal, these decisions are rarely clear and easy to make. Is it the right time to remove or the right time to improve?

  Evaluation Criteria for Remove or Improve

  All decisions this important must be made in the context of the situation the leader is facing. A number of factors come into consideration. The following are the most important.

  1. Has the individual shown the willingness and ability to take critical input and use it for self-improvement? If you do not have past evidence, it does not mean this is not possible, but it is a troublesome indicator. If the person has issues and always indicates that the problem is not with her but with others, then the leader will have a significant challenge.

  2. How well liked is the individual by the rest of the organization? Especially consider if this is a fractured group in which some love the troublesome individual while others are ready to quit. These details help determine not just the decision to remove or improve, but also the actions to take in each case.

  3. Is the individual able to raise the ability of others through collaboration? Individuals who can bring together a diverse set of abilities and personalities are important assets to organizations. Collaboration skills that are low or negative can negate positive technical skills.

  4. Do the technical skills and experience of the individual fit the needs of the project today? Are those skills exemplary or ordinary? The big question is how much impact the removal of this individual will have on the project. Keep in mind that in some cases the removal of an individual means a productivity boost for the group as a whole. This can occur when the person is causing disruptions because of a personality issue or because of poor quality work.

  5. Do the skills and experience of the individual fit the needs of future projects? It is important for the exceptional leader to always keep an eye on the horizon. Is it going to be important to nurture these skills for a future project or is this project the last gasp for an older technology?

  6. How likely will you be able to acquire the skills this individual has from outside the organization in a timely manner? This is a critical factor. In some markets, many skilled people are readily available. In other job markets this could be a long, difficult search.

  The other set of criteria to consider are the choices that you have available to you. Each of these must be considered before acting.

  1. Yo
u can do nothing and see if the situation corrects itself. This is rarely the best solution but should be carefully considered.

  2. You can try to help the person correct the situation within the job the person holds.

  3. There can be small modifications to the current job. This is what Alison did with Hank. Note that it was a correction toward what she really needed and what Hank wanted.

  4. The person can be moved to a new position or new responsibility in the same project.

  5. The person can be moved to a different part of the organization.

  6. The person can be removed from the project and the organization.

  7. You could hire an external expert to help coach the person to improve.

  Using these criteria-based questions and options will help raise the leader above an emotional response to difficult situations, and enable him or her to begin to think clearly about both the situation and the best actions to take.

  The Process for Weighing the Options

  Taking the criteria and placing them in a table with a rating scale is a quick, visual way to help see the situation clearly. With this, you can look at the past pattern and think about what the future pattern will look like based on your leadership decisions.

  The following steps have guided many leaders in these situations. They have helped leaders to arrive quickly at decisions for action plans.

  First, for each of the criteria, make a rating in a table like the one that follows. The rating system is based on a scale of -2 to +2. The negative ratings make it clear when the impact to the group is significantly bad. The 0 in the middle should be used rarely. Typically the 0 indicates lack of information about that specific criterion. Feel free to use a scale that makes the most sense to you.

  Most of the time, you will be able to easily fill out your table. However, if after filling out the table, you have some critical information you are not sure about, you should go do the work to find out what you need to know.

  As noted before, the table will not make the decision. You have to make a decision. If you feel stuck on the horns of what the best option is, especially if it is the remove or improve decision, talk to someone who can help. If you work in an organization where you work for other people, get your manager involved. Delegate upward! If you are the CEO, talk to a trusted peer. The trusted person may be able to provide insights that you are missing.

  Let’s look at an example of improve and one of remove.

  Save One to Energize the Whole

  Exceptional leaders take people to new levels that they did not know were possible. If faced with a situation where someone is headed in a direction counter to the success of the group, it is also an opportunity to take the whole group to a new level of performance.

  When Alison was thinking about the trouble with Hank she filled out my table in her private notebook. It looked like this.

  For Alison doing this was illuminating. Hank’s skills were high, and his skills were needed now and in the future. This coupled with his relatively rare skills and experience would make it very hard to replace him. Removing him would be detrimental to the overall project. Alison also knew that doing nothing was not an option.

  She also saw that there were two things she really didn’t know. She knew that the developers were very frustrated with Hank but no one had quit because of him. Was that a risk? She really didn’t know. She also didn’t know Hank well enough to know if he could take the input to improve. This clouded her judgment on which action would be most effective. She thought she already knew, but she wanted to find out.

  She talked to other leaders who had worked with Hank. She received mixed information about his ability to take input. There were enough people who were very positive that she decided to go into the meeting with the absolute belief that Hank would want to improve.

  She had the meeting with Hank and found that he could take input and was willing to try to change. She also had walkabouts to talk with developers that didn’t reveal that anyone was upset enough to leave. She decided she had the time to improve the situation and that the group’s success really did need Hank’s skills.

  The decision to go for improvement was obvious.

  Sacrifice One to Save the Whole

  Sometimes the best decision is to remove. Consider the case of Sanjay and the projects that were in deep trouble.

  Sanjay was an executive responsible for multiple business lines. One division had such significant quality and service issues that he was afraid they would result in losing the division’s two main customers. That division’s business was a break-even venture at best. Losing the number 1 and number 2 customers would not be a fatal stroke, but it would be close. Getting new customers with the current issues was a major concern but, even worse, if the company did get a new major customer, Sanjay believed that it would break the organization.

  Sanjay hired me as an expert consultant to help specifically with that division. He felt he had troubles in the other divisions, but this business line was in jeopardy of going out of business without significant action being taken.

  We started work on designing an intervention for that specific division. While working, I noticed that he was getting into details that really belonged well below his level of leadership. I asked him why he was getting into that level of detail in this case, unlike the problems in the other divisions where he was very quick to delegate.

  Sanjay paused and looked at me thoughtfully. Noticing the long pause, I asked him the hard question. “Will the manager in the troubled division be able to lead them out of trouble?”

  Sanjay’s answer was a meandering one that could be accurately summarized as “I do not know.”

  I followed up with another question. “Sanjay, will you ever trust that manager enough to let him run the division? Your attention to this level of detail indicates to me that you don’t trust him now.”

  Sanjay saw the point I was driving toward and said, “I do not trust him now. Most of the troubles in that division should have been prevented by him. Many of the troubles he is having with employees lead back to his lack of tact with the customers and his own employees. I really don’t think I could ever trust him to run this division. However, he has been with our company a long time and really knows the business. If you are suggesting firing him, that would be wrong.”

  I said, “Sanjay, let’s stop here and pick this up tomorrow. I want you to think about what your responsibility is. In my opinion, it is to the overall division employees and their customers. Furthermore, you are responsible for all the divisions. Your attention cannot be focused on just the one. You are giving me mixed messages on this executive. For us to be successful, you must be willing to trust this individual and give him the responsibility to improve this division’s results.”

  I asked Sanjay to fill out the evaluation table before we talked again.

  The next morning, he brought me the table.

  Sanjay now looked confident, but a bit unhappy and said, “You are right. My responsibility is to each of the divisions and to each of the divisions’ customers and employees. Not to any single division and its leader. The right thing is that this leader finds different employment. I am prepared to terminate his employment.”

  Sanjay explained the table to me. He related multiple occasions when he had asked the manager to change his methods and attitudes. Sanjay was especially vivid about how that manager had been unprofessional with customers who were still mad at him after an incident more than a year ago. When Sanjay asked him to apologize, he refused, saying it was their problem. Based on this and other interactions, Sanjay was convinced the manager could not take feedback and improve.

  When Sanjay considered the question if the manager in question was “well loved,” he found it was a split decision. Sanjay said there was a small handful of people who did love this manager. Yet many in the group would be happy if he was removed. Sanjay put representative “X” marks in that row to show this split decision.

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p; Sanjay explained that it would not be easy to find the right replacement. However, when he thought about the time frame, he realized that the long-term health of the division was more important than finding a fast replacement. He was ready to terminate the troublesome leader and put an acting manager into position during the search for the new manager.

  The questions we must consider are the following: “Did Sanjay make the right decision? Could he have saved the one to energize the whole? Did he have to sacrifice the one to save the whole?”

  Sanjay made the hard decision because of these critical factors:

  1. The group was on the verge of losing top customers. Those customers did not trust the division’s products. There were at least a few who did not trust that manager.

  2. There were a number of employees in the group who Sanjay knew would “dance in the aisles” when the manager left.

  3. The troublesome leader had not provided any previous evidence that he was willing to improve.

  Sanjay knew that he made the right decision especially because the situation was becoming more urgent. Losing a customer seemed very possible, which would likely be an event that could end the business line. Sanjay had to act quickly and needed a person he could trust in the role.

  In fact, Sanjay was now upset he had not acted sooner. He had known about this trouble for a long time but admitted he had never had the discussions with the troublesome leader as outlined in this book. The past did not matter; Sanjay had to act in the best interest of the group that existed as it did today.

  The change was very disruptive to the group, as expected. However, Sanjay was able to use his decisive move to make it clear that he had a high level of expectation for the entire organization. There were many other actions taken that helped the organization be successful.