Organizational Structure - Need for a flatter structure

Startups have a great advantage in how they are laid out since hierarchies are not established in the initial days. The top management is placed very close to everyone else and they are in the know-how of all that is happening within the company. This creates information symmetry that benefits the entire organization. Decisions are quicker and more holistic with the incorporation of multiple viewpoints.

However, as an organization grows, it is believed that the number of people that can be effectively managed by a manager is limited to around 7. This results in a tall pyramid structure with multiple layers of management. Though a formal structure is introduced through which highly structured processes can be introduced, it creates a hindrance in communication. The biggest drawback is the detachment of senior managers from daily operations. In my view, this is where most large companies begin to stumble and make mistakes, especially on the operational and compliance side. The recent example of StanChart, that was fined millions of dollars in succession shows that the top management is aware of specific compliance requirements but is unable to manage the follow through in its implementation. They are so detached from the actual implementation that regulators hear a different story from top management as compared to what is actually implemented.

In conclusion, the need for hierarchy is unavoidable but one of the ways to increase communication and engage senior management in the daily operations is to break larger companies into smaller manageable units. Each unit then resembles a small company whose pyramid is still flat and the advantages of initial structure still exist.

How to energize your team

Managers want teams that are energized and willing to produce peak performance and ready to run that extra mile. However, most of them do not put in the effort to produce this energy and performance.

Contrary to popular belief, energizing employees takes very little effort on the part of the manager. Most managers tend to think that a salary raise or a bonus are the only means of energizing employees but that is a misconception. Since the effect of a bonus quickly wears off and you are back to square one. Focus on the upper pyramid of Maslow's needs hierarchy when you as a manager needs to keep your employees at peak performance.

Dont spend unnecessary time in your office, get out of ur office and walk around, be visible. In the process,  you will learn a lot about your team and facilitate open communication. It doesnt take much to bring out the best in your team. Keep the following in mind constantly:

1.  Solicit opinions from your employees. You can make the final decision but always solicit opinions to guage the trend and make your employees feel important. They will feel that you are involving them in the decision making process and in return will feel proud to be part of your team and will strive to give their
very best.

2.  Instead of just focusing on assigning work and expecting status updates, provide timely info to your employees on what is happening around the organization and what major decisions are being worked on by senior management.

3.  Walk around the work area telling your employees how much you appreciate them. Be genuine and look for real, however small accomplishments that are worthy of appreciation. This will show your interest in them and provide feedback on their contributions leading to greater performance.

In these tough economic times it is difficult to reward good performance with money, so come up with creative ways to show their contributions are being appreciated. For example, give out humourous certificates of recognition to acknowledge individual accomplishments. When possible allow flexible working hours, this will be well appreciated and will signal to the employee that you focus on the results and not the mere presense of the employee in the office.

As you do these simple things, you will better connect with your employees and they will in return give you that extra degree of performance you will need on critical projects. At 211 degrees you only have very hot water, but with the addition of 1 extra degree you have steam that is powerful enough to move heavy locomotives.

How to Deal with a Difficult Employee

In the very first week after taking over a new job, more than one person whispered in my ear “you have to get rid of Melissa, she is very difficult to work with”. Apparently, the previous manager in my position had tried to get this employee terminated for quite sometime. It turned out that the employee was a long-timer and a member of the local union, hence, a lengthy documentation process was required to justify dismissal. The previous manager had bungled the paperwork which necessitated the process to start from scratch. So, when I arrived on the scene, one of my first assigned tasks was to dismiss Melissa in such a way as to satisfy the union requirements.

Occasionally, a difficult employee has no idea that his/her behavior is a problem or that others react negatively to his/her actions. This is because most people tend to put up with the annoying behavior and “go along to get along.” At the same time, some employees just consider it a “job frustration.” Just like some managers, employees want to be liked by colleagues and subordinates and are therefore reluctant to speak up when a problem arises.

During my career, I have had my share of difficult people at the office. I had dealt with many in the usual way of ignoring the problem by working around it. However, this time
I decided to try a different approach. I had recently obtained an MBA from Columbia and had learnt quite a few skills about human behavior and motivation. I had been taught that most of the time it is not the people that are the problem but processes. Unless the process is changed, a different person in the same situation would behave similarly begetting the same result. I learnt about Maslow's needs hierarchy and employee motivation. I realized now was the time to put all this theory into practice.

The first task was to understand the issue at hand. I reviewed Melissa's resume and was surprised to see that she had a Phd degree, and was well qualified for the position. This was surprising since I was told by the others that she was not good at her job and was not qualified for the position. Her current task list did not reflect her potential skills.

Next I decided to talk to the employee to evaluate her skills and interests. I setup a one on one session and explained to her that the purpose of the meeting was to get to know each other. From the beginning it was apparent that she was very frustrated with her job and began venting her frustrations. I calmly listened to her without interrupting. During this tirade I gathered that Melissa felt that her previous manager had tried to get rid of her and did not value her contributions to the organization. She felt she was being excluded from being a part of the team by her manager and her ideas and suggestions were always ignored.

In the next few weeks, I kept listening to her ideas and suggestions about how things should be done. Some of the ideas were valuable but most were without merit. However, I felt that this employee needed to be heard and because management was ignoring her she was demoralized which was leading to her poor performance and causing difficulties to everyone around her.

Melissa's problems were not about salary or promotion. Her problems were more basic, she wanted to do her job and wanted to be recognized and treated with respect. So my initial actions were to give her the same respect as the other members of the team and include her in relevant discussions and solicit her ideas. I gave her tasks that better reflected her skills, she completed them on time and this further bolstered her confidence and her attitude and demeanor began to change. I also took care of  minor issues like getting her a new phone, a better computer etc. These minor things cost the company nothing but the returns were huge. She began to take ownership of her tasks and began to communicate and reciprocate better with her colleagues. Today, she is one of the most productive members of the team.

These are the three things I keep in mind when dealing with difficult employees at the office:

1.  Spend time with the employee and dont focus on the issue at first. Wait till the employee opens up and is more receptive to your suggestions. Use self-deprecating humor. This is very disarming, particularly to difficult personality types. The ability to laugh at oneself is a key indicator of emotional intelligence, or the ability to connect well with other people. Connecting and listening are the two key skills of good communicators. And being a good communicator is even more critical when you're managing a high-demand employee.

2. Don't take it personally if the conversation heats up. Recognize that this person is likely having difficulties with similar themes in many other professional and personal relationships. Remember that it's not about you -- it's about this person's prickly personality style; this will help buffer you from becoming emotionally reactive or stressed.

3. Say your message in as few words as possible. The less you say, the more likely you are to be heard. In a stalemate, rely on the old standby, "We don't have to decide this today." Or, "Let's sleep on it and get back to this later." Or, "Hmm. Let me give that some thought and revisit the issue next week."

4. Have an Open Door Policy. When people, and particularly difficult personality types, feel that you are approachable, they are more likely to keep the lines of communication flowing and less likely to let things simmer to crisis / boiling point.

How self-talk can influence you and your team

Did you ever realize there is a constant voice in your head that keeps up a steady, involuntary chatter. And it never seems to go away. We all talk to ourselves, though this may sound narcissistic, this is the way we are all wired. And more importantly we tend to listen to what we have to say to ourselves - whether it is positive or negative.

Which means we need to be conscious of how we talk to ourselves to ensure that we are not engaged in self-destructive talk. We need to talk to ourselves differently based on the circumstance and what we want to accomplish at any given moment.
Why not use this self-talk to pump ourselves up and keep us full of energy - through the use of positive self-talk. For example when I need to start a new project which I believe is difficult I use the mantra:
"when the going gets tough, the tough get going". This allows me to refocus on the difficult task and propels me forward.

In my experience I have realized that we can influence the self-talk of others towards positivity and productivity in the way we direct our talk towards them. Once I pump myself up through the use of positive self-talk, I tend to pump others up unconciously. At the end of certain meetings, to leave my team members with a sense of purpose, I close the meeting with a positive "lets go kick ass". I believe their own self-talk will turn positive based on how I close the meeting.

Through out your day, talk to your self in a positive manner and see yourself achieving your objectives, this would keep your enthusiasm high and make the journey towards success a lot easier.

So "talk to yourself in a positive way" to remind yourself of your goals everyday. You will be half-way towards achieving them.

Three Common Managerial Decision making Mistakes

Our mind works faster than any computer on earth, especially when it comes to cognitive functions. We can see a new face and instantly compare it to all the previous faces that we have ever glanced at and within a fraction of a second determine whether it is indeed a new face or not. Our mind does not stop there, it goes further by instantly recalling all other faces that have commonalities to this new face and brings back any associated memories that go with those faces. This extremely complicated function can never be matched by any computer. And yet, we make simple, common mistakes that would make a computer laugh at our primitiveness.

As managers we perform complex tasks everyday, often juggling multiple tasks as part of our daily managerial duties. However, most managers are not aware of how their minds accomplish these complex activities. Sadly, experience offers little guidance in this respect. To most managers it might not seem important to know how they make decisions, but this lack of understanding the decision making process has profound consequences. It could lead us into making minor mistakes such as assigning a task to a wrong team member or major mistakes such as choosing Madoff to manage our life savings.

Rational Decision Making Process

The rational way to go about making an optimal decision would follow these steps:

Define the problem – understand and state the problem clearly. This would avoid in solving the wrong problem or confusing the symptoms for the problem.

Identify the evaluation criteria – when selecting one project over another, define what criteria will used since in some cases the project that might be chosen based on cost savings versus another that might be based on generating new business.

Generate alternatives – in this stage we generate as many possible solutions as possible

Rate each alternative – the rating should be based objectively on the evaluation criteria

Finally, choose the alternative that has the best rating as the optimal decision.



Satisficing

However in reality, most of us do not have the time or energy or the information to deliberate on each step. Instead, we operate on an instinctual level. Preferring to choose the best alternative based on our experience and instinct. In order to deal with complex situations and not be bogged down due to constraints of time and costs, we devise ‘thumb-rules’ or heuristics to quickly make decisions. Therefore, we forgo the optimal solution to choose the solution that seems reasonable, thus we seek to satisfice.



Three Common Mistakes

Anchoring-

Anchoring is a powerful concept that makes our mind cling to any initial number that is thrown at us. It prevents us from adjusting this number as new information becomes available. It is so powerful that we are unaware that we are not adjusting far enough away from this initial anchor and end up in its neighborhood. For example, when buying a used car, if the dealer first states the asking price as $ 5000, then after the usual negotiations between the buyer and seller, if a deal is struck, research has shown that invariably the deal price tends to be closer to the initial asking price of $ 5000. Whereas, in this same transaction, if the dealer had initially asked for say $ 6000 as the starting price, then the deal price would end up higher than in the first instance. That is because in the buyer’s mind, the initial anchor has been set, and this anchor makes it harder for the buyer to move away from that initial value, so the final value ends up closer to the anchor value than the buyer would want to believe. As a manager, we need to be aware of this anchoring effect, so as not to unconsciously err in everyday decision making: whether we are determining the return on an investment or assessing the capabilities of a new team member or deciding on the time it takes to complete a task.

Over confidence-

Overconfidence has been identified as a common judgmental pattern and demonstrated in a wide variety of settings. Most of us are overconfident in the precision of our beliefs and do not acknowledge our true uncertainty. If we are asked to estimate the number of fatalities due to road accidents in a given year or estimate the revenues of Microsoft, most of us will come up with a number and are fairly confident that our guess is very close to the actual number. While confidence in our abilities is necessary for achievement in life, overconfidence can be a barrier to effective professional decision making. With overconfidence one becomes impervious to new evidence or alternative perspectives. For example, you developed a new marketing plan for a new product and you are so confident in your plan that you have not developed any contingencies. When the plan starts to falter during implementation, will you make changes to this plan or will your overconfidence blind you to its flaws and make you continue with the plan as is. As a manager we need to be aware of overconfidence and think about why we might be wrong before making important decisions.

Representative heuristic-

When making decisions we tend to look for patterns that correspond to our previous experiences. Unfortunately this leads to stereotyping and bad judgments. When a manager thinks that the best sales people are likely to be extroverts or white people then the manager will unconsciously focus only on those sorts of people when hiring new salespeople. This could lead to discrimination and bad judgment calls. So as a manager we need to question our assumptions before making a decision.