The Total Leadership Matrix: A Balanced Approach to Leading an Engineering Team.

Transcription

1 The Total Leadership Matrix: A Balanced Approach to Leading an Engineering Team. George Ellis 2014 Engineers can be amazing. They are among the best and brightest consider how difficult it is just to get through school. The average dropout rate for engineering students is about 50% 1 (compare that to the Marine Core Boot Camp rate at 15% 2!). Because engineers are creative, smart, and hard-working, our primary job as leaders is to unlock their potential. Sounds easy, right? It s not. Without the right leadership, engineers can lose focus, get frustrated, and experience serious relationship conflicts at work teams can become ineffective even when the individuals are extraordinary. So, what is the right leadership? Based on experience and surveying literature, the causes of dissatisfaction in engineering leadership (and probably most other team-based professions) fall into four categories as shown in Table 1: Vision, Connection, Process, and Policy: Vision Connection Process Policy Definition of good Your organization s vision is clear. You have communicated and extended it to your team where it is broadly supported. Support your organization s vision. Interpret and extend it for your team. I know where we are going and I want to be part of it. Your team is set up for success. They work well together. All are inspired to give their best; each is growing. Coach, challenge, inspire, and be a positive role model. Your team works in a complete set of processes. They reliably deliver results on-time and in budget. Ensure process is used well. Never stop improving. Your organization consistently demonstrates values shared by your team and reinforced by you. Reinforce policies and ensure your team enjoys their benefits 3. I am proud to be a part of my organization. Your role as leader Response of a well-led team member We can win, I want to do my part, and I know I can. We know how to get things done around here. Table 1: For example, your organization may be committed to respect for the individual, but if your team members are often subjected to verbal abuse from another manager, they are not benefiting fully from that value. Take action!

2 So let s test these categories using a recent article from the Huffington Post, Top 10 Reasons People Hate their Jobs 4. Notice these all can result from problems in leadership: Reason Likely root causes related to leadership Category A bad boss. Poor relationship with boss/boss is poor role model. Connection The passion is gone. Don t believe in the company s vision or Not inspired to do more than the minimum. Vision Connection Not challenged Boss doesn t provide challenging work. Connection Excessive red tape. Pay is too low. Cannot advance my career Job security I m not valued. Values not aligned with organization. Company processes are inefficient or I/my team are not empowered to make decisions. My company doesn t compensate us at market rate or Boss undervalues the associate or values them correctly but does not communicate it well 5. My boss isn t coaching me or giving me opportunities or My company lacks a consistent approach to career growth. I don t trust my company or My company has an unsure future. My boss undervalues me and/or my team or My organization consistently undervalues associates. My company has poor values. Process Connection Policy Connection Connection Policy Policy Vision Connection Policy Policy Need new job. Could be many root causes. Any category. Table 2. Classifying 10 common reasons professional employees are dissatisfied. You can repeat this exercise easily there are any number of articles addressing employee satisfaction and motivation. In my experience, almost all fit in these four categories reasonably well. Now, to Personal story: Early in my career, a want ad made me think I was underpaid, so I told my boss. He pulled out the IEEE Salary Survey and showed me my compensation was fair. A 10-minute discussion eliminated dissatisfaction. pg. 2

3 further understand these categories, let s contrast the concepts of Transactional and Transformational Leadership. Transactional Leadership 6, commonly called management, is for cases that repeat in a recognized pattern. For example, a task list in any project has a description, an owner, an end date, and so on. This repeated pattern allows you to develop processes and policies so you can measure results and reduce variation. Great transactional leadership makes your team better and better at what they do often. It delivers defined results on time and within budget. Transformational Leadership 7 is for cases where change is needed. For example, you notice that several times this year your project managers are finishing their projects on time, but customers are still unhappy. Recent experiences tell you project managers are executing project steps without understanding customer needs, probably because they don t spend enough time listening to the customer. You start sending project managers to customer sites and it gets results. People get excited when they see transformation. Great transformational leadership lets you do things you didn t think you could. It delivers innovation by inspiring and challenging the team. How it works What it does Transactional Leadership Works within a system. Starts solving by fitting experiences to a known pattern. Asks where s the step-by-step? Minimizes variation of the organization. Expects everyone meet a standard. Can be duplicated and sustained. Best at delivering defined results. Transformational Leadership Works to change a system. Starts solving by finding experiences that show the old pattern doesn t fit. Asks what do we need to change? Maximizes capability of the team. Inspires many people to give their best. Requires minimal structure. Best at delivering innovation. Table 3. Transactional vs. Transformative Leadership pg. 3

4 Next, let s look at how transactional vs. transformative thinking drives problem solving. Figure 1 shows a schematic for problem solving. Note that you re probably doing these steps every day, though you may not have looked at them formally. Problem solving goes through six steps 8 : Identify the problem. Sometimes identification is as easy as reading the bosses . Other times, it requires insight, starting with a feeling that something isn t quite right. Leadership focuses the team on the right problems. Example: We are getting a lot of returns in Product GTX without an obvious failure mode. Collect and analyze the data. Using relationships, personal experiences, and listening to team members and stakeholders, you collect the data necessary to understand the problem. Example: You review return six months of return records. You discuss returns with four customers. You talk with your team about what you found and listen to their experiences. Identify key data. You pick out the data that allows you to understand and communicate the problem. Example: One customer said a feature was confusing. Another was angry after wasting hours getting something to work. A team member talked about a similar problem 4 months ago; the customer was satisfied in the end, but she had to visit them to explain how it worked. Build a model. You create a concise explanation of the problem that is supported by the key data. Example: We have a good feature that s difficult to use. Transformational or Transactional? You determine if this is similar to problems you have dealt with well in the past. Based on this, you call for either Transactional or Transformational actions. Example: We need transformation. Our designs have poor ease-of-use. We will fill that gap. Develop an Action plan. You create a list of actions to address the problem. The actions must be aligned with the model to enable people to follow you. Example: Send Jim and Jenny to ease-of-use training, read a reference book on interface design, and develop a technique to measure ease-of-use in the design phase. As a leader, it s critical that the model tie the key data to the actions (if you re working alone, it s not). Your role as a leader is to assign meaning to a situation because you need others to execute the actions. If your team doesn t comprehend either the cause of the problem or why the proposed actions will fix it, 8 Steps 3, 4, and 6 are detailed in The remainder are added by the author. pg. 4

5 they won t follow wholeheartedly. A model makes the message comprehensible; solid data makes it credible. Figure 1: Problem Solving with Tranformational and Transactional Leadership Note in Figure 1 is that at the start, it is not known whether transformational or transactional leadership is required. You must understand the nature of the problem first. This shows why the complete leader will have both transactional and transformational skills. Those who cannot lead transformation are forever limited to existing solutions. Those solutions work most of the time, but that s not often enough. The team will view such a leader as rigid, closed minded, and outdated. Conversely, those who cannot master transactional leadership won t lead their teams to excellent in their core competencies. Existing processes and policies can solve a large number of problems with modest effort; relying on a transformational approach for every problem absorbs enormous energy. You won t be able finish what you start. A team can view such a leader as disorganized, undisciplined, and capricious. The Total Leadership Matrix Now, let s divide up our four categories of Vision, Connection, Process, and Policy. First, they can be viewed by whether they are targeted at people (Connection and Policy) or at your organization s objectives (Vision and Process). But they also can be divided according to Leadership type: Transactional (Process and Policy) and Transformational (Vision and Connection). This leads to Figure 2, the Total Leadership Matrix: Vision requires transformational leadership because there is no step-by-step sequence to produce a credible vision. You must map a course based deep understanding of customers, competitors, technology and team capability, all of which change over time. You must ensure the vision you communicate to your team is fully aligned with your organization s larger vision. pg. 5

6 Connection describes the ways your team members interact with you, their colleagues, and the organization in general. It is also transformational. Your role is to align the abilities and desires of your team to the needs of the organization. You must understand what each person wants against what they can do today and what they can grow to do in the future. It requires strong relationships, careful listening, and good judgment. Figure 2. The Total Leadership Matrix Processes are transactional. They include measurement and reporting systems; they allow you to do repetitive tasks, supporting continuous improvement. Processes for Engineering span wide range: how you release and maintain drawings, how you conduct design reviews, and how you prioritize projects. They allow you to build excellence at the execution level things can be done well with minimal attention from you. And processes are sustainable results don t vary so much between individuals. Policies (the equivalent of process for how you deal with people) are also transactional. Examples include annual performance evaluations, definition of a full work week, and ethical requirements. They build a structure for dealing with people and, because they are the same for everyone, they set a clear standard for behavioral requirements and give a sense of fairness to the team. Which is Better? Transformation or Transaction? People or Objectives? So, which is more important: transactional or transformational leadership? What about people orientation or objective orientation? Of course, the answer is, all are required. Today, most popular business writers prefer Transformative Leadership and people orientation. It s common to read management (generally, transactional leadership with focus on objectives) isn t leadership at all, that Managers manage things, but leaders lead people and Managers think execution while leaders think ideas. At some point it starts to get silly: Managers blame, but leaders inspire. Don t believe that. Management is an important part of leadership. True, overused it produces results-driven, impersonal managers few want to follow. But without management skills you ll never finish complicated initiatives. The fact is you may have great vision, but you re not going to inspire anyone that doesn t beleive you have the discipline to finish what you start. And, they may think you re a great listener and very personable, but without policies your team will feel a lack of fairness (Joe doesn t have to work as hard as the rest of us), or worse, you may experience serious ethical breaches in your team. Similarly, if your focus is wholly on objectives, your team will find you cold and impersonal. They may do what you tell them, but they won t be inspired to perform at their maximum. Conversely, if you are so focused on people that you can t accomplish objectives, you re probably not going to be around long pg. 6

7 enough to build the kinds of relationships that really make a difference. For Vision, Connection, Process, and Policy, the question is not which is more important, but how to keep balance. Root Cause The ability to divide management into these four areas implies that we can also categorize root cause of problems in a similar pattern. The root cause for any given problem can broadly be categorized as: What was needed is missing. What was needed was present, but is incorrect, incomplete, or misleading. What was needed was there all along, but we didn t use it properly. If we divide this thinking according to each of the four categories, it leads to 12 basic types of root cause as shown in Table 4: Root cause type Vision Connection Process Policy Not present for this problem No vision for this problem. No resources for this problem. No process for this problem. No policy for this problem. Incorrect for the problem at hand. Our vision here is misleading or not credible. The resources here are not competent. The process here doesn t work. The policy here doesn t work. Poorly executed for the problem at hand. The vision here is solid, but not followed. We have the capability, but it was not engaged. The process is good, but was not followed. The policy is good but was not followed. Table 4. Root Cause According to the Total Leadership Matrix. Taking Action So, how does any of this make a difference for you and your team? The largest benefit may be simply a more open-minded approach when you understand that four different kinds of thinking are needed. But, if you re looking something more concrete, here are a few suggestions: 1. When seeking root cause, keep digging until you are in one of the 12 categories above. 2. Consistently bring meaning to the experiences that are confusing others. Build a model and communicate that model and how your key data supports it. And build action lists from the model. Most engineers want to follow, but they need the model to understand. 3. When you find a problem that is Transactional, structure the solution according to a step-bystep process, either modifying something that already exists in your organization or adding something new. pg. 7

8 4. When you find a problem that is Transformational, structure a solution that changes the way you do things. Don t try to shoehorn a step-by-step into a problem that needs relationships, listening, judgment, and character. Do you Favor Transactional or Transformational Leadership? If those suggestions don t fit, start with self-evaluation. List the last problems you solved working with your team. Write these in the 2x2 Total Leadership Matrix in green. Now add 5 lingering unsolved problems in red. Review with a trusted colleague or senior team member. Where is the red collecting? This should give you an idea of where you need to focus. Remember that we all like to work where we re strongest, but there is often more benefit in working where you re weaker. Since you think about your strengths a lot, there is probably more low-hanging fruit in your weaknesses. If you re still not sure where to start, here s another suggestion: pull your team together, review this article and ask them. When you Enthusiastically Seek Feedback (see the last example of Connection below), you re already improving Connection for your team! Besides, you can be sure that if you re open and welcome their input, they know a few things that you could work on! Appendix: 28 Example Actions Finally, to provide examples, seven common steps for each of the four quadrants are listed below: Seven Examples of Actions to Improve Vision o Align your vision with the vision of the organization. Ensure you fully understand and can support that vision or work with your leadership to make changes. o Expand the organization s vision to add initiatives your team so they can support that vision. o Communicate the vision to the team in multiple ways sit-down meetings, lunch time discussions, and hallway chats. Ensure they understand and find it credible. o Listen to your customers so you know that vision is viable. o Understand the competition, especially where they might inhibit your team s success. o Understand the capability of your team and recognize the gaps that must be filled o Identify the technologies your team needs to acquire competence in. Seven Examples of Actions to Improve Connection o Create effective teams, able to achieve all of their goals. Place people properly, hire to fill gaps, and remove team members that can t contribute. Ensure the team has the tools and training they need to be successful. Resolve conflicts when necessary. Coach on soft skills (communication, time management ) as you see gaps. o Empower your team members so they have the influence they need to succeed. And back them when they ruffle a few feathers exercising that empowerment. o Develop every career in your team. Hire from within whenever possible, and delegate as soon as possible so individuals can grow rapidly. Ensure each team member is in the right place, a place where they can be successful and that contributes to their career plans. pg. 8

9 o Honor contributions. Say thanks a lot. Recognize unique contributions publicly. Provide perks where you can such as gifts and travel to conferences. This differs from Policy-driven Recognition Programs (below) in that these are special reactions for special successes. o Manage the effects of external change to improve morale. Put the brightest face possible on a lost opportunity or a leadership change. When it s difficult to support a specific decision fully (and that will happen), focus on positives about the company track record. o Lead through the example of your good character. This is universal for leadership: keep a positive attitude be forward thinking and open to change be passionate about your work be consistent the same leader every day focus on the critical control your temper make decisions based on facts avoid politics be organized and manage your time well follow your leaders as well as you want your team to follow you be humble be fair work hard, but balance work and home o Enthusiastically seek feedback. Pay attention to surveys. Give out 360-degree surveys 9 when you see need. Ask for personal feedback in team meetings and individually. Listen. When you ve made a change because of your team s feedback, tell them about it. Seven Examples of Actions to Improve Process: o Manage systematically. Find standard work where possible. When in a crisis, search for the process that wasn t followed or the process that needs to be added/fixed to avoid this crisis next time. This will reduce firefighting, something that dilutes satisfaction for your team. o Prescribe process tools. When creating new process, create supporting tools to reduce variation and improve efficiency. Send a PowerPoint process to 10 engineers and you ll get measurements back in 10 different Excel sheets with 10 different sets of problems. Provide the Excel sheet as a part of the process and you ll help everyone (especially yourself!). o Consistently get to root cause so solutions can be sustained after the crisis has passed. o Measure results provide simple displays and use intuitive measurement systems. o Review with discipline. Whether it s a project or follow-up to a meeting, less experienced associates benefit greatly from regular review before something goes wrong. Avoid the trap of waiting for something to go wrong and then blaming the individual. o Report measurements regularly, clearly, and to all stakeholders. o Update process continually. Process is never complete there are always gaps and outdated procedures. Fill the gaps and update the outdated. 9 pg. 9

10 Seven Examples of Actions to Improve Policy o Be ethical and welcome diversity in every context. o Respect all associates. Speak to them with respect, speak about them with respect. o Ensure that you are consistent in your rewards and disciplinary actions. Your team will view you as a fair boss. o Value associates focus most of your energy on what people do correctly. Avoid the trap of Management by Exception where you notice only what they do wrong. o Dedicate yourself to satisfying the customer. o Create recognition program that are fair and reward achievement. These programs can go from pleasant surprise to that s expected quickly, so update them regularly. o Keep an attitude that everyone on the team can and should improve, especially you! Here are these examples laid out in the Engineering Leadership Matrix: Figure A1. Seven examples for each quadrant of the Leadership Matrix pg. 10