The importance of good communication is deeply ingrained in modern management practice.  It is generally accepted that within a well-run business, information will flow smoothly in every direction – up, down and sideways.  But if this goal is so clearly in sight, why do many businesses suffer from bad communication dynamics?  What enables the free movement of knowledge and opinions across organizational boundaries in some companies, while others are plagued by a creepy mix of rampant rumors and information suppression?   In my experience, it has less to do with formal communication plans than with the underlying behavioral principles of the organization’s leaders.  This blog post concerns one high-impact area of conduct: navigating the chain of command.  

This issue is fraught for a number of reasons.  At a fundamental level, our standard hierarchical management structures create a paradox where communication is concerned.  On one hand, the chain of command is integral to the efficient functioning of the organization – and therefore it must be supported.  On the other hand, the hierarchy must sometimes be ignored or circumvented in order to access information that can’t easily flow through the filter of multiple management layers.  Finding the right balance is difficult, and complexity increases with the number of levels in an organization.  Growing businesses therefore struggle with this issue, as do people making the initial move from first-level manager into a ‘manager of managers’ position.

Maintaining chain-of-command equilibrium is one of those complicated, non-linear management responsibilities that require constant thoughtful attention.  There is no magic formula and no specific set of boxes to tick on the ‘To Do’ list, but I believe that respect for the following guidelines will help set the tone for healthy information flow up and down the organization chart. 

Pull vs. Push.    Enabling the flow of information from people at every level in the organization to senior management is one of the basic pillars of modern ‘open communication’ doctrine.  This sounds easy enough to accomplish, but it’s an area where seemingly virtuous managerial instincts can lead to really bad results.  Consider the typical well-meaning starting point.  Most good managers will tend to approach employee communications with a bias toward accessibility and approachability.  We genuinely want to hear what people throughout the company have to say, so we start with an open-door policy.  Anyone can stop by to tell us what they think!  This sounds OK, but in real life it is too simplistic to just throw the door open and let nature take its course.  This passive approach makes it all too easy to get a distorted view of the organization, to create openings for bad behavior, or to disempower those in middle management roles. 

One of the problems with an open-door policy lies in the specific types of people who typically take it upon themselves to come through the door.   The members of staff who make a beeline for their boss’s boss probably don’t represent a cross-section of the employee base, nor are they necessarily the best and the brightest.  In fact, they might be exactly the kinds of people you don’t want to focus on.  There are a couple of standard types.  First of all, there are the eagerly ambitious young people who naturally gravitate toward any random opportunity for visibility and self-promotion.  This group is fairly benign, but not necessarily worth a lot of time.  More concerning are the weaselly individuals who seek to manipulate perceptions and information flow, often through a convoluted serious of subplots known only to themselves.  Engagement with these people will send ‘worry waves’ through the organization – everyone knows who they are – and the data they provide is suspect.  Other profiles and motivations can come into play, but it always comes down to this: self-selected sources don’t provide a balanced view.

The solution lies in actively pulling information from the organization, rather than just passively relying on that which is pushed to you.  The hardest-working, nose-to-the-grindstone employees generally are not lining up outside the offices of senior managers, so they must be sought out.  The mechanisms for doing so are numerous and straightforward.  Orchestrate small-group gatherings (lunch, coffee); these are particularly useful if they include people from different functions.  Broaden the participation in project meetings.  Walk around, eat in the cafeteria, conduct employee surveys, have an online suggestion box.  It’s fine to maintain an open-door policy if you’re so inclined, just be careful to maintain a balance between those who seek you out and those who don’t.

Don’t Talk About Other People.   Once the stage has been set, free-flowing discussions are often the best means of taking the pulse of the organization.  Ideally, get people talking about products, customers, technology, competition, and market trends.  Find out what they’re working on and how the project is going.  Ask for feedback about company programs and initiatives; ask open-ended ‘what can we do better?’ questions.  Give them an opportunity to ask questions on any topic of their choice.  (Admittedly this once led to a question about my hairstyle during an employee forum, but whatever.) 

Only one subject is really out of bounds.  With very few exceptions, don’t engage in conversations about other people in the organization.  Spontaneous praise of someone should of course be acknowledged, but beware the employee who lays out a trail of breadcrumbs to lure you into an unseemly exchange about his or her boss.  What might seem like ‘active listening’ is actually communication in its own right.  A leader who gets drawn into a negative discussion about an individual will telegraph a lack of support for the person in question and an endorsement of political behavior.

Support Your Subordinates.    On a related note, it is critical to actively indicate support for the management team when interacting with the people below them in the hierarchy.  The managers don’t need to be in the room all the time, but they shouldn’t be in the dark about your engagement with the people in their groups.  Make sure they are fully informed about mechanisms for gathering employee input, and share any feedback openly and regularly.  And when speaking with an employee group, consciously make an effort to convey that the leadership team is cohesive and mutually respectful.   Every little nuance will be noted.

This issue becomes particularly critical, and very complicated, when there is a real or perceived performance problem in one of the management layers in the middle.  I once worked as a member of a team whose leader was really flailing.  This individual was a smart and experienced executive, but lacked the operating skills, domain expertise, and personal resilience demanded by the role.  Members of the team genuinely felt that the business was in danger of collapse, and we dutifully filed in to deliver this message to our manager’s boss.  He never gave an inch, and in many cases was dismissive and seemingly angry about the input – but in due course our manager was removed. 

I remember the extreme frustration we felt about being ignored and being unable to do anything while the business suffered.  But over the years I have come to appreciate that the essence of the big boss’s response was correct, even if his execution left a lot to be desired.  He did a lot of things wrong:  he made a bad hire in the first place, didn’t make a change as quickly as he should have, and was clumsy in dealing with our complaints.  But at least he observed the cardinal rule: the person is either in the position or they aren’t.  You should remove subordinates if they can’t do the job, but you simply cannot undermine them while they are still in the chair. 

Some of the most destructive organizational dynamics I have ever witnessed have been a direct result of the leader’s failure to successfully deal with this issue.  It is incredibly destabilizing when people sense that their boss does not enjoy the confidence of his or her superior.  While waiting for the other shoe to drop, even the best teams will be nervous about the future.  At worst, they will stop taking direction, slack off, and gossip.  

Don’t Kid Yourself.     When bosses do fail to support their subordinates, it can be for any number of reasons: insecurity, political maneuvering, or just general cluelessness.  Whatever the reason, it is interesting to note that people who are unsupportive of their teams always seem to justify their behavior in exactly the same way – it’s all about how down-to-earth and unpretentious they are! 

Under the guise of being a ‘man of the people’, managers with this particular blind spot will happily listen to complaints about members of their own team.  They may actively inquire about people or in extreme cases, even engage in disparaging their own subordinates.  When questioned, these are the kinds of things I have always heard from people who are in the process of actively undermining their staff:   “I’m just not a hierarchical person.”  “They came to me.”  “Our organization can’t be rigid.”  “Don’t be paranoid.”  “This isn’t the military, you know.”  “The chain of command is such an 1950’s concept.”

All squid ink, in my view.   It’s a classic diversionary tactic to paint those who challenge the behavior as uptight, but an egalitarian narrative doesn’t change the fact that enormous damage is being done. 

Get Information the Right Way.   This isn’t to say that you should never seek input about your management team from their subordinates – just that there are right ways and wrong ways to do it.  The ideal scenario would involve a structured 360° assessment process, augmented by regular informal data points about the mood of the organization.  A steady flow of information will eliminate the need to suddenly swoop in on a data-gathering mission when there are signs of trouble – a disruptive process that often takes on an unfortunate ‘popularity contest’ flavor. 

In practice, mid-sized companies often don’t have formal processes in place, and it’s a real challenge to find the time for regular informal engagement.  But a discreet and professional approach is still possible.  It’s easy to retain a consultant to conduct a 360° assessment of everyone on the leadership on a one-time basis, and the opinions of a few trusted people can be gathered judiciously.  If input from subordinates is needed, consider an indirect approach.  For example, the boss’s boss from my story above could have engaged with us in this way: “Let’s set the leadership issue aside for the time being.  Why don’t you tell me what your customer/product/market concerns are about the business these days?”  He would have gained some valuable insight and reassured us about his attentiveness to the business issues – without indulging in an inappropriate conversation about our boss. 

Beware the Negativity Snowball.   It’s worth noting that there is a nasty little human nature thing that can come into play when gathering information about an employee whose performance is cause for concern.  Specifically, it’s natural to want validation when closing in on the big qualitative decision to remove or re-assign someone.  It will be much easier to justify the action (to yourself and to others) if there is overwhelming evidence that the employee is performing poorly. 

The problem is that gathering this evidence is a risky and negative endeavor at best, while at worst it can cross the line into actually creating opportunities to demonize the person in question.  It is not unusual to see a manager reach out to various constituencies (subordinates, customers, employees, peers) with subtle or not-so-subtle cues that bad marks are anticipated – often after the decision has actually been made.  The resulting snowball of negative feedback serves no purpose other than making the decision-maker feel better, and it can have a destructive impact on both the individual in question and the larger organization. 

When it comes to personnel decisions, there is a very fine line between responsible validation and starting a witch hunt.  We all fall prey to the basic emotional need for endorsement of our difficult decision; the key is to be aware of it and try to control it.  Once you’ve made the decision, STOP seeking more data points – from subordinates or from anyone else.  No good can come of it. 

In Summary.   When I reflect upon leaders I have known who excel at creating healthy communication dynamics, there is one common thread.  They instinctively realize that just as individuals at every level in the organization need to be acknowledged and respected, so does the hierarchy itself.  Although it’s somewhat counter-intuitive at first, consistent reinforcement and support of the chain of command will actually make the management layers more porous.  A clear organizational framework is reassuring for the best employees.  Secure managers don’t feel the need to run a closed shop.  And a leader who exhibits straightforward, transparent behavior tends to build confidence and inspire others to conduct themselves in the same way.

First there was Dilbert.  The Pointy-Haired Boss and Catbert brought bad managers out of the closet, and the characters resonated with millions.  Most of us are pretty sure that we personally worked with the individuals upon whom those characters were based. 

Since there’s clearly so much material to be mined, a whole sub-genre of business books on how to deal with bad managers has emerged.  The best among them can be quite helpful in providing a toolkit for surviving a reporting relationship to someone with a specific incompetence profile.  And these books are generally full of real-life stories with something of a one-upsmanship flavor – my boss is much worse than yours.  In addition to the entertainment value, there is something oddly comforting about knowing that yours is not the only crackpot boss out there. 

Another useful, although admittedly painful, application of these ‘bad boss’ books is to use them as a mirror on our own leadership shortcomings.  A thoughtful journey through one of these books will make most self-aware managers cringe – and then hopefully resolve to do better next time. 

Check out this lovely little slide show published recently on BusinessWeek.com: Bad Bosses: What Kind Are You? .  It’s short and focused, without anecdotes, and intended precisely for the purpose of personal reflection.  We could probably all benefit from a quick flip through these slides to start each week on the right note. 

This default roundtable structure seemed to work pretty well when the pace of business was slower, and when key managers all worked together at the same headquarters location.  It was fairly standard practice for the people responsible for running a business (whether a company or a division) to meet in person for two or three hours every week.  After a financial review, we would then cycle through an individual update from each attendee.  These collegial gatherings served to keep the business on track, maintain information flow, and keep the team bonded together.

There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with this meeting style, but it may not be the best possible approach.  In the era of fast-paced global businesses, I have found that round-robin staff meetings often don’t provide the necessary level of focus and efficiency.  These are some of the constraints:

• In the conventional meeting style, the leader plays a passive role.  The CEO/COO/GM can basically sit there and have information delivered, perhaps occasionally digging deeper or facilitating a decision.  It’s tempting to convince oneself that this is a virtuous model: surely a participative, non-hierarchical, crowd-sourcing approach will tap into the real issues in the business.  But is that really what happens, or is it just the easiest approach?  When it comes to driving operational and financial performance, I think it’s incumbent upon the leader to set the agenda – for the staff meeting and therefore for the business.  This doesn’t suggest that he or she has all the answers, only that a proactive approach is taken to gathering specific information from the group and establishing priorities.
• Another challenge with the roundtable format is the implicit presumption that everyone has something to say, and that it is of roughly equivalent importance.  Attendees feel the need to claim their air-time, regardless of whether anything in their department is actually business-critical in a given week.  While there is a certain egalitarian appeal to letting every voice be heard, diluting the staff meeting in this manner sometimes isn’t in the best interest of a business that needs to focus on some key issues.  And frankly, people tune out – so this model doesn’t necessarily facilitate a real exchange of information. 
• A contemporary business is likely to be global, with key managers geographically dispersed around the world or at least travelling extensively.  It used to be OK to relegate people who aren’t at headquarters to some kind of second-class status, but that doesn’t really work anymore.  They must figuratively have a seat at the table.  Practically speaking, this means they need to be on the phone during the staff meeting – and sitting on a conference call for several hours every week is pretty painful.  International participation in staff meetings increases the imperative for a higher level of focus and structure.                 

The design of a staff meeting format for a given enterprise is obviously very situational; there is no single right answer.  But if my notes on roundtable exhaustion ring true for you, it may be worth investigating some other models.  This is the general framework that I have found to be most effective in running my own staff meetings:

• Meeting frequency and duration depend on the velocity, complexity, and health of the business, but I don’t think it necessarily needs to be every week.  It can often be sufficient to allocate 1 ½ hours every two weeks for high-level operational review. 
• The best basic mechanism is a dial-in conference call.  Time zone differences will make it inconvenient for someone (usually the person in Asia), but it is doable.  Participants gather in a conference room and participate together by speaker phone if they happen to be in the same physical location, so there often is critical mass in one place – but the meeting structure does not depend on it.  (Practical Tip: No cell phone participation!  It just isn’t worth the aggravation.) 
• I prepare a detailed agenda for distribution prior the meeting, with team members dropping me brief emails about items for inclusion.  The exact format of the agenda document will be different for each business, and a lot of thought needs to go into structuring the information.  I generally use either a Powerpoint or a Word document, always starting with a high-level financial update, and then moving into whatever issues are driving the business and deserve attention from the leadership team.  For some businesses this might lean heavily toward metrics and numeric information, in which case the data is included in the agenda document.  Other businesses will be better served by a project-based format with an emphasis on dates and deliverables.  The agenda document obviously provides structure for the meeting, but also serves to help unite the dispersed participants by keeping common visual elements in front of us as the meeting progresses.  In addition, it is a general record of the meeting for absent team members and can be used to share information across and upward in the organization.   (A copy to the Board on a regular basis might be an easy way to help them stay in touch with the issues.) 
• The meeting itself consists of a pretty snappy progression through the issues in the agenda document.  A quick update from the responsible party will suffice for most items, and when it’s clear that further discussion is required we make a note to convene the appropriate people at another time.  The combination of a written guide and a fast pace will help keep all attendees focused on the meeting rather than their email.  (Practically speaking, you know that people on conference calls have their computers open in front of them.)
• There is no roundtable element to the meeting, although it always concludes with an ‘any other business’ inquiry so people have an opportunity to raise critical issues that may not have made it onto the agenda. 
• No minutes are taken.  I realize this is counter to conventional meeting advice, and I agree that certain types of meetings (e.g. board meetings) must be minuted.  However, I don’t think it’s worth the effort for regular agenda-driven operational staff meetings.  As an added benefit, the lack of minutes helps clearly establish that the leader isn’t going to function in ‘babysitter’ mode.  If someone takes an action item in the meeting, it should be assumed that they will take responsibility for following up.  I’ll make a note on my agenda for my own reference, but it’s basically up to them to make sure it happens.
• I prefer not to have a secretary or administrative assistant in the meeting, and the ‘no minutes’ model eliminates one of the reasons they are sometimes included.  Even very capable, trusted support staff seem to shift the dynamics a bit.

One of the biggest challenges with this approach is the regular investment of time required for meeting preparation.  Some of the mechanics (like dropping updated financials into a template) can be handled by an assistant or a junior staffer, but the heavy lifting must be handled by the business leader – so don’t implement a model like this if the time commitment isn’t practical.  On the positive side, I think it’s good to force oneself to regularly step back and take a big-picture view of the business.  It’s easy to get caught up in the crisis of the moment, so it can be beneficial to have a routine that includes dedicated time for reflection and review of what really matters.            

Another implication of structured operational meetings is the need to be vigilant about gathering information in other ways.   Without a flow of round-robin information, it’s important to employ other means of keeping a finger on the pulse of the business.  I find that the quality of the information can actually be better, since direct reports may be more forthcoming in a one-on-one situation and it’s possible to reach more broadly into the organization for data.  But it does take some effort to consciously make time, seek information, and ensure that each week’s calendar contains a lot of varied touchpoints.

One interesting benefit of implementing a more structured approach to regular operational meetings is an improvement in the quality of participation in other meetings.  If people aren’t worn out by perpetual roundtable rituals, the notion of hearing every voice is fresher when the group really does need to collaborate – such as strategy discussions and deep dives into specific issues.  Most teams are better at sharing ideas, really listening to each other, and solving problems together when they don’t pretend to do it by rote once a week.  It’s far better to save that particular kind of time and energy for those times when it can be employed for the biggest business impact. 

Longfellow presumably wasn’t thinking about metrics when he wrote this line, but it is particularly apt: “And when she was good, she was very good indeed, but when she was bad she was horrid”.  Metrics are necessary, useful, and sometimes transformational – but a mismanaged metrics initiative can go horribly wrong and end up harming the enterprise.  In the ‘very good indeed’ case, metrics are woven into the fabric of running the business.  The information is used on a day-to-day basis, in an integrated manner, by line managers who understand what the graphs are telling them.  They use the data to tweak performance on an ongoing basis, and the same information can help other stakeholders assess progress.  This is in stark contrast to a ‘horrid’ metrics scenario, in which the organization is whipsawed from one extreme to another as it attempts to optimize various parameters.  And if the culture leans toward blame and punitive behaviors, metrics become the new stick with which to beat people.    

So what can be done to maximize the chances of success when designing and implementing a metrics program?  The choice of specific metrics is highly situational – there is no magic formula on that front.  However, there are some broad practical principles that can help guide the process.  Here are a dozen points to consider. 

1. Prioritize and pare down.  The word ‘dashboard’ has been appropriated to describe displays of metrics information, and it’s a nice analogy:  a few key pieces of information, graphically displayed, to aid in navigation.  Bizarrely, however, many ‘metrics dashboards’ seem to consist of multiple pages jam-packed with numbers printed in a 4-point font.  Modern ERP systems make it easy to generate reports, but they also make it easy to add extraneous data – and this information overload can obscure the most meaningful numbers.  The key to an effective metrics initiative is to focus on a limited number of judiciously selected measures, with a hierarchy of supporting detail available for deeper dives.  You can always add things later, but keep it lean to start with. 
2. Align data reporting with data velocity.  There is also a time dimension to information overload.  Consider the following example.  In a product business that relies on non-recurring revenue, it is probably important to generate a flash report every morning to provide orders and sales information.  But what is gross margin doing in there?  Daily GM fluctuations probably aren’t meaningful, even if they are measureable.  Carefully considering the frequency with which things are reported is a critical aspect of achieving focus and de-cluttering reports.
3. Paint a holistic business picture.  Financial metrics from both the income statement and the balance sheet, as well as classic operations metrics (quality, throughput, labor utilization, etc.), are obvious components of a metrics program.  In order to maintain balance, consider also including quantifiable views of human factors, such as results of employee satisfaction and/or customer satisfaction surveys.  Things like percentage of revenue from new products, although always a bit imprecise, can serve as a useful leading business indicator.  And external data, such as market evolution as measured by new technology adoption, might also be included if it represents an important driver of the business. 
4. Consistency is key.   The basic idea of metrics is to observe and manage performance over time.  While the need to focus on trends is readily grasped, the importance of looking at exactly the same thing over a period of time can sometimes get lost.   It can be tempting to present slightly different information during each review cycle, perhaps because a more relevant calculation has been genuinely identified, or perhaps in an instinctive attempt to present good results.  (Something is always going up and to the right.)  Review and make adjustments periodically, but do it in full view and not too often. 
5. Use external benchmarking thoughtfully.  If you can be fairly sure of an apples-to-apples comparison, benchmarking to your direct competitors or industry averages can be an important part of a good metrics program.  For example, I’m a big fan of knowing exactly where you stand with respect to expense ratios for various functions.  There may be a good reason that you are spending a lot more (as a percentage of revenue) on engineering than your main competitor, but you should be very aware that this is the case.  A counterpoint is the once-popular ‘revenue per employee’, now rendered fairly meaningless by widespread outsourcing.  Choose carefully and try to avoid fads.
6. Proceed cautiously with formal metrics methodologies (e.g. Balanced Scorecard).   In a highly structured environment with dedicated resources, these academic approaches can presumably be effective.  However, it has been my experience that they don’t work well in smaller companies.  I have seen metrics initiatives simply collapse under the load of excessive complexity and administrative overhead.  Reading up on BSC to glean some of the underlying principles isn’t a bad idea, but in general I recommend avoiding gimmicks.  Likewise don’t put a huge amount of energy into selecting and implementing a visual dashboard package.  Devote your resources to choosing a good set of metrics, and then proceed with a very basic regimen of regular reporting and review.   
7. Also use caution with financial metrics based on calculations (ROIC, EVA).  These measures of financial performance, which typically strive to incorporate both profit and capital deployment considerations, can be very useful in measuring a business.  However, unless people can really understand the formula and develop an intuitive feel for the factors that impact it, a focus on one of these measures won’t produce tangible results.  If you decide to go this route, limit yourself to one key measure – and be sure to explain it thoroughly and often throughout the organization. 
8. Involve the whole organization in the design phase.  A purely top-down or finance-driven exercise is unlikely to be successful, simply because an intimate knowledge of the business is needed for good metrics design.  While executive sponsorship and coordination are of course critical, a bottom-up metrics design is more likely to focus on factors that can really have an impact.  It’s also an important means of establishing shared goals and achieving buy-in. 
9. Foster a culture that supports continuous improvement.   Within a troubled business culture, it is probably possible to use metrics to achieve some marginal operational gains. The net impact is likely to be negative, however, since a dysfunctional culture will become even more so with the implementation of metrics.  More weaponry for assigning blame!  And don’t kid yourself that it’s possible to design a metrics system that can’t be gamed.  In an environment with serious behavioral problems, my recommendation is to work on the cultural underpinnings before implementing a metrics program.   Utopia isn’t necessary, but people need to believe that the tools are intended for collective business improvement and not for punishment.  This requires some modicum of trust, open communication, and management skill.
10. Develop an internal metrics communication plan.   In order to make incremental improvements, metrics need to be looked at regularly and understood by the people who can affect the inputs to the equation.  Old-school manufacturing leaders understood this well, and they addressed the issue by hanging big quality graphs on factory walls.  It’s a bit harder to achieve in today’s fragmented companies, so be sure to carefully consider how, when, and where the information will be disseminated into the organization.   It’s going to take more than an occasional email attachment.              
11. Remember the observer effect.  When selecting metrics, keep in mind that the act of collecting data may affect behavior.  For example, my experience suggests that an attempt to compile won/lost data from sales is likely to reduce the visibility of sales opportunities.   Even in a healthy culture, no one wants to be a loser—so why report a pending deal if it has the potential to result in a black mark?  Worse yet, the sales team might actually shy away from pursuing long-shot opportunities at all.  In the final analysis, it’s probably more useful for the business to maintain unfettered information flow about potential deals than to have won/lost data.  (Also note that many metrics have no such backfire effect.  For example, sales linearity can often be improved by a metrics initiative.) 
12. Reject metrics that don’t help you run the business better.  This one is self-explanatory, and perhaps the most important point of all. 

Well, yes and no.  I do believe that efficient operations depend upon a disciplined approach: clear goal-setting, regular review, and good follow through.  Systems and processes can provide the framework, but the key to success is consistency of individual and collective behavior.  Someone has to be the focal point for keeping those behaviors aligned, and the role of taskmaster falls to the operational leader.  On the other hand, instilling discipline can be compatible with a positive leadership style – no brutality is required.  Here are some things to consider as you look for the sweet spot.   

Focus on the Flywheel  Let’s assume that we’re dealing with a situation in which growth and increased complexity have necessitated the introduction of an operating executive.  In order to get things under control, you are initially going to have to micromanage, nag, and push to get things done.  But in the long run, that’s no fun for you or for anyone else.  Always keep in mind that the objective is to not to foster dependence upon you as an individual taskmaster, but rather to get the flywheel turning by itself.

It can be a long slog, but in my experience this is indeed what happens when a logical framework is consistently applied.  Friction is reduced and the wheel becomes easier to turn as repeated behaviors become ingrained.  It’s just how human nature works.  Little kids have to be reminded to brush their teeth, but in due course it becomes a regular habit.   

Why are we doing this?  A good reason for doing something (teeth won’t fall out) will always resonate more than arbitrary control (because I said so).  I think it’s worthwhile to put real effort into reviewing the underlying rationale for operational initiatives.  If engineering projects are always late, it might be obvious why the development process is getting a revamp.  However, everyone on your team won’t necessarily understand that reducing inventory will free up working capital that can be deployed elsewhere in the business.  Take time to review why various activities are being undertaken, with a particular emphasis on benefits to the business and its employees. 

Choose Your Battles    The military approach to instilling discipline involves complete control over every aspect of life, from professional activities to posture and personal grooming.   In the workplace, where creativity and innovation have high value, I think it makes more sense to focus primarily on those areas that are truly business-critical.   If you want to wear pajama bottoms to work, that’s fine – I just need you to participate in the project review every Friday.   

In summary, Fascism isn’t necessary in the sense that you must become a feared and hated tyrant.  But you are going to have to exercise a lot of control and be relentlessly consistent in order to get results.   Benevolent dictatorship can be a pretty good form of government, particularly in times of change.

Maybe your company has a deep tradition of tardiness, or perhaps the team has just gotten a little sloppy.  Either way, this is a very simple problem to solve if you’re the boss.  Just be extremely vigilant about your own timliness for awhile and operate in a mode of hyper-promptness.  Arrive for every meeting a minute or two early, and start it on the dot if you’re running it.  Don’t wait for everyone to wander into the room, and don’t make an effort to chase down missing attendees.  Likewise, be sure to end your meetings at or before the scheduled end time. 

It’s not necessary to make any kind of pronouncement.  Within a week or two at most, your team will be turning up for meetings on time.  It’s interesting to observe that even in very collegial organizations, hierarchy cues don’t get ignored when it comes to group gatherings – presumably some kind of wolf pack artifact.  If the boss is in the room, and especially if he or she is speaking, people will be loath to slink in late.   

Since time management habits trickle down from the top, the problem is much harder to solve if you work for an executive who is chronically late. Unless the individual in question is self-aware enough to want to change, your best bet is probably to collude with his or her assistant on a basic workflow solution.  Try this: ask the assistant to schedule the meetings with the most attendees into the earliest time slots in each day.  Since delays pile up as the day wears on, this will at least mathematically reduce the amount of time people spend standing around and the amount of re-scheduling required.

Other dining decisions also fall disproportionately to women.  One course or two?  Dessert?  It’s important to remember that your choices are not simply a matter of personal preference – there is also a hospitality imperative.  Presumably you share the business objective of using this dinner to build social bonds, so you need to help set a tone that will optimize the enjoyment and comfort of as many members of the party as possible.  Given the highly orchestrated nature of conventional dining, it’s a simple fact that things go more smoothly if major choices are roughly aligned and there aren’t any outliers.  It therefore falls to the woman in the group to serve as a facilitator.  Your best bet is not to hide behind neutral or benign choices, but rather to develop the confidence to engage your fellow diners in collective decision-making and to provide clear direction to the restaurant staff.

Specific circumstances can dictate different approaches:

• As a host:  If you’re a member of the hosting party, regardless of whether you’re the senior person in the group, your focus should be on the preferences of your guests.  In the case of pre-dinner drinks, it’s fine to direct the waiter to “Please see what our guests would like and then come back to me”.  Just don’t let things devolve into one of those ‘after-you-no-after-you’ loops.  If this starts to happen, move on to the recommendation below. 
• As a guest:   Even though the waiter may be discreetly whispering in your ear, turn back to the table and engage the group in making a decision.  “What do you think, guys?  Are we going to start with a drink?”  After a bit of hesitancy, and perhaps deferral to the senior person, a consensus view usually forms.  If “Not for me, but please go ahead” develops critical mass, there’s your cue to decline.  Likewise enthusiastic embracing of an opportunity for a drink will set the tone for you to order one, while a split decision means you can revert to personal preference.  Take your time in allowing the group to arrive at a decision.  The waiter can … wait. 
• In a bar:   It’s fairly routine to meet for dinner in the bar associated with a restaurant.  If you arrive first (as you should if you’re the host), go ahead and order something.  Sparkling water is fine; you can always get a glass of wine once the others arrive if it seems appropriate.  And likewise, it’s a bar … so it’s OK to order a drink.  Don’t let the consensus factor paralyze you in this case.  It’s weird to sit in a bar without a beverage of some sort. 
• Outside the US:     Interestingly, America is one of the few places where the pre-dinner drink inquiry is particularly challenging.  In those countries with legal or social prohibitions on alcohol, it’s obviously a moot point.  In most mainstream business centers in Asia, I recommend proceeding to order an alcoholic beverage.   (Remember, you don’t have to actually drink it.)  Extreme politeness might otherwise cause your colleagues to follow your lead, and that would interfere with the very standard practice of making toasts, etc.  In Europe, I also suggest just ordering a drink – it’s very much the social norm. 

When you do order an alcoholic beverage, remember that you’re not trying to precisely mirror the choices of others.  In my view, there’s never really a need to order ‘big boy drinks’ in a business setting.  I lean toward things like Campari & soda, a champagne cocktail, or a glass of Sancerre – sufficiently sophisticated but non-toxic.

Other dining decisions can be handled in a manner similar to the ordering of drinks.  If you’re at an establishment where the choice of one course or two could go either way, engage the group in making a collective decision before you place your order.  Meals can be particularly awkward if some members of the group are eating an appetizer while others watch.  A lack of consensus on dessert usually isn’t too uncomfortable, so I think it’s fine to just go ahead and decline.  (If you’re thinking of ordering an extravagant sweet, you might want to first confirm that at least one other person will also be indulging.)  As a host, it is gracious to explicitly encourage your guests to have dessert even if you have declined. 

These notes might seem a bit prescriptive, but they are really just intended as food for thought.  As with most situations, the guiding principles of common sense and good karma will serve you well. 

Bonus Etiquette Tip:  I’m sure most people have witnessed the following scene at a round restaurant table.  The first person to take a piece of bread from the basket is seized with uncertainty about which plate to use – to the left or to the right?  Awkwardness then occurs when this individual either (a) hovers a bread roll uncertainly over the table for an extended period of time, or (b) makes the wrong choice. 

This is another area where women are obliged to take the lead; courteous fellow diners will tend to offer the bread to us first.  I urge people of both genders to devote a couple of brain cells to latching this piece of information: the bread plate is on the left.  If you need to go first, just confidently place the bun on the left so everyone can relax.

Keep a ‘Some Day’ list.   It can be useful to make sure that the organization has an official repository for legitimate projects that just can’t be a priority right now. This provides a soft landing for the member of the management team who originated the idea, and the act of placing the item on this list helps make the decision stick. Plus, you really do want to keep track of activities that may bear consideration as bandwidth becomes available.

Eliminate the common culprits.   Pay attention when proposed initiatives cause the more grizzled members of your management team to roll their eyes. They’re doing this because of the amazing regularity with which managers initiate exactly the same set of projects – which then just as consistently hit the wall. All are perfectly legitimate activities in the abstract, it’s just that they usually can’t be handled within the management bandwidth constraints of busy small/medium-sized companies. For example:

• Employee and/or customer newsletters – Nice idea, but it’s incredibly difficult to sustain focus and dedicate resources to something like this month after month. The result is invariably either very lame output, an embarrassingly dead initiative after two issues, or both. I defy you to find a seasoned manager who has not lived to regret at least one doomed newsletter project.
• Corporate logo re-design – Nice idea, but unless your logo is genuinely offensive to your constituents, you can’t afford it. There are cost tentacles everywhere in the business and it will take more management time than you expect. Accusations of superficiality are likely to surface, and really … how are you going to argue against that?
• Customer council – Nice idea, and a fabulous tool for larger companies. But can you dedicate the resources required to politically maneuver a critical mass of high-level customers into attending, attract top-tier outside speakers, and prepare high-quality materials?

And the list goes on. The key is to look carefully for the eye-rolls to help you avoid the most blatant recurring themes. You probably won’t be led astray: no one is going to argue against holding a worldwide sales meeting, even though it will take a lot of time and resources.

Not everything worth doing is worth doing well.   Some of the ‘common culprits’ can be dealt with, at least on an interim basis, by occupying a somewhat uncomfortable middle ground. Consider the subject of website re-design. Websites do matter to contemporary businesses, and smaller companies sometimes have really bad ones. A discussion about strategic imperatives to support the growth of the business is likely include an impassioned plea for a complete renovation of the website look and feel.  Ans this is one of those cases where you will probably pick up some of those negative signals from people who recall mammoth web re-design projects.

One approach is to resist the ‘all or nothing’ argument from your marketing team and make only enough improvements to render the website serviceable. Does the home page clearly explain what the company does, and is it easy to figure out how to contact you? If not, fix the home page now.  But don’t try to win any design awards, and defer the complete re-design until time and resources allow.

When you’re in the thick of determining strategic imperatives and prioritizing projects, the desire for clear black or white decisions can sometimes be carried too far.  It’s a good idea to step back periodically and remind yourself that intentionally doing a less-than-stellar job of something can be a legitimate means of managing time/resource overload.

Identify the underlying objectives and act on them.  This probably falls into the Management 101 category, but it’s worth a reminder. When you kill one of the ‘common culprits’, be sure to work with your team to dig into the underlying objectives and see if you can identify a less resource-intensive means of achieving approximately the same goals. For example, is the monthly employee newsletter being proposed because employees are genuinely concerned about insufficient information flow? If so, an all-hands meeting (with dial-in from remote locations) is much easier to set up and can seem more natural. And rather than announcing monthly meetings, why not set the expectation to ‘as needed’? You’ll reduce the risk of under-delivering and the associated employee disillusionment – and frankly you might not have anything to say every month.

Is the logo re-design being proposed because the company’s image has negative connotations and a fresh start is indicated? An energetic one-day training course for all the customer service and inside sales personnel with a ‘delight the customer’ theme might get far better results with a much lower investment of resources. The employees will feel that you’re making an investment in them, and customers will have tangible evidence of a more positive direction for the company.

Here are some of the things you are likely to observe when an organization has lost its grip operationally:

• Everyone is crazy-busy.    Activity level is at fever pitch.  Email flow is sky-high, back-to-back meetings are continuously booked, and extremely long hours are the norm.  Senior managers are inaccessible, even to each other.  But why is it that nothing ever seems to get crossed off the list and few projects of substance are completed? 
• I’ve been in this meeting before.   The same people, sitting in the same room, discussing the same issue … over and over again.  Critical issues may well need to be re-visited, but a consistent pattern can indicate an organizational inability to bring anything to closure. 
• Making a list and checking it twice.  Lists of action items, projects, and ‘priorities’ multiply within the organization, and the lists get longer and longer.  “Put it on the list” becomes the standard answer to every issue, whether critical or trivial.  Well-managed lists are, of course, an important management tool.  The distinction here is that the list-making process gets out of control and becomes an end unto itself – an easy form of fake action-taking and deferred decision-making.      
• Oh what a beautiful … irrelevant document.   In a corollary to list-making, administrative tasks related to operational matters – rather than the underlying operational issues themselves – seem to consume the business.  There might be a project underway to neatly re-draw all organizational charts, those ubiquitous lists will be well structured and regularly re-typed, and more and more metrics will be presented in increasingly elaborate formats.  Powerpoint decks get bigger and more ornate, and the specificity of the template increases.  Don’t even think about omitting Slide #87, ‘Year-on-Year Comparison of Top Five Market Trends in Decreasing Order of Impact’.   
• Hamsters behaving badly.   Everyone in the organization is cranky and tired, and they sense that something is wrong.  Bad behavior escalates, with an emphasis on political maneuvering. 

This situation can occur in mature businesses, generally because of new management with insufficient operating experience, or because of an overall leadership vacuum.  More often, however, it happens as a result of growth or M&A activity, and it’s part of a natural evolution.  In a small business, an organic, somewhat chaotic approach to management works just fine.  Critical information can be retained in the heads of one or two people, and systems and processes are simply unnecessary.   But growth (in size and/or complexity) eventually pushes the business across a critical threshold where the original mechanisms start to fall apart.  Management panic can then exacerbate the situation, particularly when the founders are entrepreneurs with little interest or experience in running a scaled-up enterprise. 

While an operational meltdown is clearly a call to action, there are some good-news aspects to being in this situation.  First of all, it’s fixable.  Not instantaneously and not easily, but operational issues are nominally within our control as managers.  External drivers such as macroeconomic crisis, major market shifts, or technological obsolescence are much, much scarier.

Secondly, in growth scenarios it is likely that a business will hit the wall operationally before a real business/financial crisis occurs.  If you see all of the indicators noted above and the business is cooking along financially, you’re in luck!  Business performance will eventually suffer if things aren’t brought under control operationally, but you have been blessed with a leading indicator.  There is an opportunity to take action before serious damage can occur. 

Instead, the focus here is on the more prosaic subject of OPERATIONAL EXECUTION – tools and ideas for getting things done, driving efficiency, and building a scalable enterprise.  These topics may not be as enticing as the more high-concept aspects of leadership, but they are crucial to business success.  And because of the detail and complexity involved in achieving operational excellence, experience does matter.  I have benefitted enormously from the mentorship of managers and colleagues who generously shared their wisdom with me over the years.  This blog is my attempt to help pass on this accumulated business knowledge, and to broadly address the kinds of inquiries I’m getting from people in my network these days: ‘Can I have a copy of your staff meeting model?’, ‘Can you help me think through this org chart?’, ‘How can I get my global team working more effectively together?’

My notes are most relevant to mid-sized tech companies with annual revenues in the range of $50M to $500M or so.  Start-up companies can operate organically, and larger firms probably have an established operating infrastructure.  During the middle stages, however, significant effort is required in order to create an operational framework to support the growing business.  My focus is on companies where the leadership team is actively engaged in building an operating infrastructure for their company, and where they are taking a hands-on approach to putting systems in place and assessing their effectiveness. 

I’m not an academic, and there is no statistical data to support my theories.  These are simply my observations from 20 years of high-tech general management experience, during which I have often been asked to help bring some order to chaotic (or completely out of control) situations.  I genuinely enjoy operational challenges, and I know that building a well-oiled machine requires real creativity and leadership in addition to discipline and hard work.  This is what I have learned, and I hope some of these ideas will be useful to you and your business.