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Heeding
Warning Signs
serves as the leader by flying the “No. 1” position. This indi-
vidual sets the pace and largely influences whether a mission
will succeed. Pilots of the second, third, and fourth jets are
trained to “fly the leader’s wing,” meaning they must follow
closely the No. 1 jet’s maneuvers.
On rare occasions, all four planes will crash. Say the leader
flies into a fog bank and rams the side of a mountain. Odds are
the other three will do the same.
As James A. Autry writes in
Life and Work
(New York:
William Morrow & Co., 1994), leaders must adopt a “think for
No. 4” mindset: before they make any move, they must weigh
how it’ll affect the other jets behind them.
The same goes with managers. When facing problems, they
must consider how their response will influence not only them-
selves, but everyone around them.
When you face roadblocks at work, a spotlight shines on
you, whether you like it or not. Your boss wants to see if you can
1
J
et fighters often fly in fours. Within these clusters, one pilot
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The Manager’s Survival Guide
pass this test of your mettle. Your employees might look to you
for guidance. Your colleagues wait and watch how you handle it.
Like the leader of a jet formation, your actions will have a
ripple effect. By charting the right course and making smart
decisions, you ensure your survival and reassure bystanders that
you can withstand whatever obstacles threaten your flight path.
Planning for Worst Case
When you’re driving along a highway, you might notice road-
side markers proclaiming, “Points of Interest Ahead” or
“Historical Site Ahead.” These signs are usually positioned
about a quarter of a mile before the attraction so that you can
slow and stop in time.
If you’re driving too fast, these signs can zip by you in a
blur. That’s no big loss if you didn’t care about the historical
sites you missed. But if you skip a yellow “Warning” or “Speed
Bump” sign and continue racing obliviously down the road,
you can wind up losing control of your vehicle and getting into
an accident.
Problems at work crop up the same way. There are almost
always signs of what’s to come. But the question is whether
you’re observant enough to recognize those signs and take
appropriate action while there’s still time.
Clues of impending trouble often appear in the behavior of
those around you and the topics they bring up. If a normally
sunny employee begins to look forlorn and sickly, an attentive
manager will inquire and offer to help. If your most prized cus-
tomer’s purchases start to tail off or you find yourself having to
send second or third billing notices to a client who previously
paid within 30 days, that may signal a dissatisfied or ailing
account.
If you’re the kind of driver or bus rider who habitually misses
your exit, you may also find yourself ignoring early trouble
signs. Daydreaming or maintaining tunnel vision can prevent
you from noticing trouble afoot.
Many managers detect incipient problems and respond with
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Heeding Warning Signs
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Set the Dial
If you miss trouble signs at their earliest point, they can
soon balloon into huge hassles. Here’s an exercise to get a
head start on solving problems. As soon as you notice something’s
awry, think of three possible explanations:
1. The most innocent, harmless possibility
2. A relatively mild problem that’s somewhat easy to manage
3. The worst-case scenario
By identifying the best and worst cases and what falls in between,
you create a Richter scale that registers everything from the most
minor tremor to the dreaded Big One.This helps you wrap your mind
around the potential severity of the problem and forces you to con-
sider the full range of outcomes.
a wait-and-see attitude. That’s understandable, but it’s risky. A
situation that seems seemingly insignificant can, if left untend-
ed, fester and intensify. For instance, a vendor who jokes that
your organization’s bureaucracy “drives me crazy” may not find
the matter so funny a few weeks later when more serious foul-
ups occur.
By taking trouble signs seriously, you can attempt to bring
about a speedy resolution while planning for the worst. That
way no matter what happens next, you’re covered.
Battling the Three D’s
You’re on a roll. You’re making headway on an important proj-
ect, you’ve motivated your team to deliver exceptional results,
and you’re finalizing negotiations with a key vendor on a service
contract. Everything’s clicking.
That’s precisely when you want to confront conflicts head on
and nip them in the bud.
In my management seminars, experienced managers often
warn of the dangers of overconfidence. They’ll cite instances
when they’re in the midst of intense work and they “don’t want
to lose the momentum,” so they shove aside evidence of prob-
lems and charge ahead. The result: minor obstacles escalate
into major crises.
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The Manager’s Survival Guide
The time to address problems is when they first arise. That
may mean doing something as simple as clarifying a rule with
an employee, apologizing for an error, or resending an errant e-
mail. Otherwise, you’re vulnerable to the three D’s of problem
mismanagement: downplaying, distorting, or dismissing signs
of trouble.
Downplaying.
It’s tempting to downplay evidence of a problem
when you’re focusing on other matters. But once you start down-
playing signs of trouble, you can rationalize almost any mishap
as a “cost of doing business” or a “blip on the radar screen.”
Say you’re concentrating on internal staffing issues. You’re
aware of a key supplier’s lateness and shoddy product, but it’s
not at the top of your list of concerns right now so you downplay
it by thinking, “It’s no big deal. They’ll improve.” Yet when a sup-
plier’s service starts to crumble, it’s likely that it will continue on
a slippery slope and worsen. Speaking up now and expressing
your displeasure can forestall a further erosion of service.
Distorting.
Recognizing a conflict for what it is sounds easy. But
some managers distort reality and perceive a problem as they
see fit. They might exaggerate the importance of good news
and view bad news as “a blessing in disguise.” While it’s often
wise to maintain a positive attitude, you can go overboard if you
twist genuinely troubling indicators into “good omens.”
A marketing manager confessed to me how she distorted
the facts about a misguided and ultimately abortive new-prod-
uct rollout at her company. She orchestrated an ambitious
advertising and direct mail campaign. But the early response
fell far below her projections. Rather than make adjustments,
she admits that she “kept wanting to believe we were on the
right track” so she attributed the poor response to “a post-Sept.
11 malaise.” Yet her industry’s sales were soaring and her com-
petitors were launching wildly successful new products even as
hers was fizzling. Her distortion made the disappointment more
palatable at the time, but it kept her from grasping the true
source of the problem and learning from it.
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Heeding Warning Signs
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Dismissing.
If you wave
away evidence of a prob-
lem, you don’t have to
confront it. Denial can help
you cope in the short term.
But it spreads. Your fellow
managers and employees
might follow your lead and
dismiss brewing crises
right under their noses.
Soon you can have an
entire organization that
shrugs off alarming trends
or refuses to listen when
outsiders warn or complain
of irregularities.
Come On,
Out with It!
Robert Rodin, chief execu-
tive of eConnections Inc., defines lead-
ership in part as the ability to sift
through the muck in order to uncover
the facts that really matter. His employ-
ees know he craves the truth and will
not shoot the messenger who brings it
to him. “I want to know the truth
about where we stand, what potential
problems we face, and what we can do
about them,” he told me recently. “An
effective leader gets people to disclose
what they know—and what concerns
they have—while there’s still time to
do something constructive.”
Setting Fair Expectations
When you acknowledge an obstacle in your path and take stock
of it with levelheaded clarity, you’re already well on your way to
conquering it. The next step is setting realistic expectations so
that you assign the appropriate significance to the problem.
Here’s where your attitude kicks in.
If you’re gloomy or fretful by nature, you might expect a
problem to intensify or explode in your face any minute now
and you probably won’t bother to hide your fear. Others will
notice you cursing, shaking your head in dismay, or sighing
repeatedly. As the minutes turn to hours, you might wince in
pain, lament your lot in life, and accost colleagues with “Why
me?” bellyaching.
At the other extreme, unrelenting optimists often expect too
much. When faced with a barrier that impedes their progress,
they may look ahead with false hope that the problem will not
only go away, but will never return
and
that tackling it will make
them—and everyone around them—stronger as a result. That’s
a tall order.
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