Category Archives: linkedin

We Don’t Need No Stinking Rules–or Lesson 17

Posted on March 9, 2010 | Leave a comment

If you recall my post early on regarding the lessons I learned from 25 years as a CIA manager, I was able to recall 16. (And I also promised to flesh out most of them in individual posts–still planning on it.) But I ran across this useful piece yesterday on how the controls imposed by managers create unnecessary complexity in organizations: http://bit.ly/9FFX60 by Ron Ashkenas over at the Harvard Business Review site. And it reminded me of yet another lesson–#17–Management by rule-making is almost always a mistake.

I wanted to write on this right away because it’s an issue that particularly afflicts the federal government. Most of my adult life the news media have been perched on poles, like vultures in the Texas Hill country, waiting to catch reports of the federal government doing something exquisitely stupid–which unfortunately is not a rare occurence, we are humans after all–so they can publicize it and mock it and therefore jack up advertisement rates. Of course, nothing much works for the news media these days to jack up advertisement rates, but the bloggers and social network outlets have taken up the slack just fine, thank you. Leaving aside for now whether this constant focus on the negative is productive or fair, the fact the federal government is everyone’s favorite GOTCHA doll contributes to its tendency to react to mistakes by making new rules–Ashkenas uses the Transportation Security Administration as his first example in his piece. And as these rules add up, “the accumulation of these “reactive” controls often creates complexity, confusion, and unnecessary cost.”

The public focus on government mistakes and the call from them and from Congress to do something about it  is one of the dynamics that contribute to management by nonproductive rule-making. But there are others.

  • The role of ideology in setting government policies. When a policymaker has an ideological belief that concept X is essential to the survival of the republic and concept Y will only hasten its destruction, the tendency to create a rule is strong. These ideological debates could be settled by the use of data, but often neither side wants to take the risk.
  • The tendency for government functions to have legal and/or authoritative foundations. Much–but not all–of what government does is not suitable for market solutions–i.e. choices. Society functions perfectly well whether you shop at Walmart or Target, but we have yet to figure out how to run a society where individuals can shop for the legal structure  they prefer. So the culture of making rules or authoritative decisions slides over into the process of government itself. Related, many of the appropriate functions of government, like national security, are REALLY important, and organizations that carry out these responsibilities like to ensure absolute conformity in execution.

Conformity in execution is important, but what is even more important is conformity in outcome, and that is where the complexity generated by constant rule-making gets you into trouble. A very smart consultant once told me that if you manage everything like it is an exception, then nothing is an exception. This captures the folly of reacting to every mistake with a new rule. So the next time you are tempted to make a new rule, think hard about the message you’re delivering to your work force. Do you want them to think or do you want them to follow rules? Your choice.

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Posted in Leadership, linkedin, Nature of Federal Workers, Organizational Dynamics

Change is Hard, but how People judge Change is Harder

Posted on March 5, 2010 | 1 comment

The tale of the goddess Athena, springing fully formed (and fully armed!!) from the forehead of Zues is one of the great stories of  Greek mythology, although perhaps it is more accurate to say of Mediterranean basin mythology given that people living there in ancient times shared many of the same myths.  The story is quite colorful, as it actually has Zues swallowing Athena’s mother who busily kept forming Athena inside Zues until she was ready to be launched–a perfect creation. (Here is the Wikipedia version of the tale.)

But unlike the emergence of Athena, everything we have around us in society, in biology, in organizations is the result of a long, often messy, incremental process. (Another word for that is evolution, but I don’t want to get involved in an ideological fracas just yet–although I do hope to tackle the perils of ideology at some point.) None of our current institutions, whether it be the Department of Transportation or the Cable Television System or marriage or astronomy, emerged fully and intelligently formed out of some brilliant individual’s forehead. No, they usually began as half-baked ideas and almost always took turns and detours unanticipated by their originators and early supporters. And, this is the important point, we shouldn’t want it any other way. For only through a process that allows a “thing” to react to the environment around it, change and adapt, can we hope to produce organizations, processes, customs, and institutions that actually work, that deliver most of their promise, that are organically one with their environments.

But if you’re an advocate of a Change Initiative for an organization or a group, the first thing you hear from anyone you brief is: “Well, how is the whole thing going to work?” The only honest answer to that question is “I don’t really know. We’ll have to monitor that carefully.” although by so admitting you might as well just slink back to the advanced methods lab from whence you came. The status quo may have had a 50-year development process with abundant beautiful messiness, but if you as the Change Advocate can’t present the future operating environment as a beautiful schematic in a series of Powerpoint slides, with some vaguely inspirational and symmetrical logo in the corner, then you’re as doomed as doomed can be.

This then becomes a real leadership moment for a Federal Government or any other senior executive. Don’t be the senior executive whose expectations for neat and orderly change are so…well..delusionary that you force your enthusiastic future-thinkers to become hypocrites and to package their proposals in Power-pointless slide decks. Because if you demand certainty, you not only will buy into intellectual fraud, you will also eventually tear the heart out of your change champions.

Approach change for what it is–the normal course adjustment process that keeps your organization alive.

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Posted in Change, Leadership, linkedin

Lessons from a CIA Manager (U)

Posted on March 1, 2010 | 6 comments

OK…..I know…this is a cheap, manipulative title, because in fact my lessons from almost 25 years as a federal manager, almost ten of them as a member of the senior executive service, really have very little in particular to do with the CIA, even though that’s where I was for the duration. So I’ll be curious if putting that word in the Blog Title will drive up  visits. The (U) is an homage to my CIA past; it stands for unclassified. We would have to place such little classification markings after every paragraph we wrote.

So over the years I collected many aphorisms and other concise insights about being a manager and a leader in the government.  Some I’m sure I read somewhere, but can no longer identify the source. Others just came to me, usually in the context of a conversation with others. Again, many if not most of them probably aren’t that unique to government either; I think they have broad application to a wide range of organizations. Because I want to keep my blog postings on the short side, what I will do in this post is list them with a short description when necessary, with the plan to return to most of them individually as subjects of individual posts.

In no particular order:

  1. Executives are individuals who are held accountable for things they cannot control in detail.
  2. Remember, your decisions are going to have much less staying power than you’re expecting them to have. Decisions are not committed relationships; they are more like one-night stands.
  3. Consensus decision-making is an oxymoron. By definition, processes that drive to consensus are actually ways to avoid decisions, except in those very rare cases where everyone in the room is in violent agreement. So really you have two dynamics–you can have a consensus, or, much more likely, you will have to make a decision, i.e. a choice.
  4. Conflict-free meetings should NEVER be your goal, particularly if the issue is at all important. Organize your meetings so  they are argumentative and crunchy–those will always be more productive.
  5. Perfection is never the goal. Progress is the goal.
  6. Leadership is an optimistic activity. Optimism is always the greatest act of rebellion.
  7. Leadership is an emotional activity.
  8. Leadership is, at times, a corny activity.
  9. Leaders must be willing to change their minds, which is another way of saying that leaders must be eager to learn. If you have never changed your mind about some fundamental aspects of your business, then you have not learned.
  10. Your calendar reflects your priorities. You can talk about x or y issue being important to you, but if it never makes your calendar you’re lying to yourself and, worse, lying to others.
  11. Listen to yourself when you’re arguing a  point. Are you arguing to achieve clarity or are you arguing to win? Do the former, not the latter.
  12. Successful leaders are able to disappoint their followers at a rate they can tolerate. This is probably my most important learning and I know where I learned this one, from Ronald Heifetz, who is at the JFK School at Harvard.  Check this link to hear him talk about the difference between technical problems and adaptive challenges.
  13. Heroism is not a leadership strategy.
  14. Breaking through bureaucratic resistance requires the skills of an all-pro running back in American Football. If a hole opens, you have to hit it as quickly and as hard as you can. If you dawdle or hesitate, the hole will close.
  15. A great process is the manager’s best and, I would argue, only true friend.
  16. All excellence in groups derives from individuals providing the group mission with their discretionary energy. But the difficult truth is that managers/leaders can never demand an employee’s discretionary energy. It can only be freely given. At best, the manager/leader can co-create the environment, along with the other group members, that encourages the commitment of discretionary energy.

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Posted in Leadership, linkedin