McGraw-Hill - Briefcase Books - The Manager's Survival Guide.pdf - Mcgraw-Hill [Briefcase Books] - motywacja007

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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

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

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

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.

McGraw-Hill - Briefcase Books - The Manager's Survival Guide.pdf

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