Leaders, bosses, managers, blowhards...

Presumption of Success based on "Experience"

2010-03-12T09:59:00.000-08:00

Experience is a great thing. Oscar Wilde said, "Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes." I don't always agree with that, since sometimes a success teaches as well. However, among blowhards and non-blowhards alike, I often see over-reliance on experience even though the current situation is not truly analogous to the already "experienced" situation. Managers often miss nuances in the current situation that make the current situation different than the old one.

It is good to look at a situation and say, "Well, this worked for me before," but that analysis is often too shallow. As a result, managers make the same decision as last time, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't work. Now managers start second guessing themselves, and they don't really understand the problem before them and therefore the solution to the problem. The real problem is that new factors should have been part of the new decision, and the decision tweaked for those factors. I meet and even advise so few managers that look for nuance, or as Eli Goldratt might say, they don't look for the new hidden constraints in the system. The decision should still incorporate experience, but that experience should help you understand nuance, not ignore it.

I'll give you an oversimplified example. Say a development manager, Andy Friese, (love that name) has two developers who can contribute 40 hours per week, and he needs roughly 100 hours per week of development time. Just about every manager I know has hired people before in those situations, so their default action is to say, "If resource time is the problem, then resource time is the solution." So Andy hires a developer. He now has a 20 hour need at 40 hour cost.

Side bar: Managers love to hire people. Many think that managing more people makes them better managers, but I submit the following to you for your consideration. The managers that do the most with the fewest human resources are the best managers. Corallary: That doesn't mean kill people by working too few people to their death.

Back to my example: The solution of hiring assumes that all variables are roughly the same as the last time. Andy has the same project management practices, the same revision control, or QA practices, etc. Blowhards (myself included) often get too busy to look at the nuanced differences in the system, and go with old easy. But Andy has not really looked at what the real constraint is that is causing the problem.

Lesson: Andy needs to look for, and understand the constraints in his system. If he looks openly enough without presumptive bias, he might find that his revision control, or QA practices, or project management practices are wasting developer time.

So let's say Andy doesn't Friese up, and discovers that revision control is wasting huge amounts of time. He changes the system to a more efficient system, and discovers that he's now got more time in the system from existing developers.

If he had hired another developer without understanding the original problem he might solve the issue of getting 100 hours of work, but Andy has extended the marginal cost problem of his system on a per person basis. He now has three people wasting time and using an inefficient process. He's also paying a whole extra salary. He's not fixed anything except the topical problem of needing 100 hours. In the long run, he's probably making things worse.

Instead of using experience to understand nuance in order to make better decisions, managers often use experience to make the same decisions over and over.

One of the worst phrases in management, "We do it this way because we did it that way before."

Any employee's response should be (a la Rule 6), "Are you sure that the variables in this instance are the same as before?"

Some tips for leadership mentoring

2010-02-24T13:43:00.000-08:00

People ask me for all sorts of tips on leadership mentoring. How do you get someone to magically make good organizational leadership decisions because you think they have management/leadership potential? Many managers simply hand the person a management job and see what they can do. I've found that that works in very few cases. There are some alternatives. Here are some of mine:

1) Force potential managers to make tough decisions when they don't have to and when the pressure is off. If they can start to see how to make good decisions in this way, they'll make good decisions when the pressure is on.

Here's something I like to do (straw man example): The CEO or COO asks me for advice on a thorny personnel issue or operating decision. The COO sends me an email with some background and the question. I read it, think about it and come to my own conclusion/decision. Then I call in someone that I'm "mentoring" to be a tech leader and say, "Read this and tell me what you think and what you'd do." If I think they're a little off, I say, "Well what about x-factor? How does that impact your thinking?" And push on them. In this way they begin to see management level information, and understand how decisions get made at that level and what orthogonal things they need to look at to make good decisions.

Caveat a) Make sure that your management peers or bosses (COO/CEO in the example) know that you're mentoring these people and that you have complete confidence that the information will remain in confidence. I suspect you shouldn't be mentoring them if that's not the case.

Caveat b) Be prepared to change your own mind. Occasionally someone comes up with an answer out of left field that I hadn't thought of, and it's better than what I had come up with. Get over your ego, discuss that with the mentee, tell them good job and that his/her idea will be the one to run with. If you feel comfortable with it, get your mentee exposure for the idea. I have on occasion told the original asker, "Well, I decided to discuss it with Josh, and he came up with X. I think it's a great idea and concur."

2) Push on people in odd leadership positions. One of my favorite things to do is to tell a development team (that I've recently begun managing) that we're going to have rotating team leads. Maybe one person per quarter, or more usually I have one developer as team lead for the duration of a project.

Developers invariably ask me for a well defined set of guidelines clearly defining "team lead." Don't be tempted here. I generally drive them nuts by giving them a very loose definition: "Manages x, coordinates with me, etc." I do this on purpose. I understand that it's a little frustrating, but I want to see what the individual team leaders come up with. I want to see how expansive they'll be in the role. Most people are somewhat smart (if not, then why are they working for you?). Given that, they often come to me with issues to work out before deciding them, and I can help them figure it out rather than correct a bad decision after. Of course I encourage them to do this before they start. Also of course, I watch carefully and nudge when someone needs nudging.

Give people an out. Not everyone is cut out for organizational leadership roles. Tell them that they don't have to do it and that there are no penalties for declining. I've had very few of these, but some people want to be high quality contributors, and some people want to be "field" leaders rather than organizational ones. Ye olde square peg...

More to the point, I almost always learn a great deal about each person. I've found that few people when thrust into a team lead position, operate exactly as I had expected. I've had team leads that were the quietest, most shy people turn into big time jokesters. People I thought were probably worthy of being fired were suddenly stars. More importantly, we all see new valuable leadership skills come from nowhere. The team members see these from their peers and sometimes incorporate or reject these styles and ideas. Almost everyone becomes either a better team member or team leader in this process.

3) Get odd with exercise: One thing I've found works great with younger organizations is do some mental stuff that gets people out of what they perceive is their job. At the Open Source Lab, we had weekly brain teasers and exercises that I put together just to see what happens. One week it was, "Explain Hemi engine type and its valve setup to the team." Another was, "Debate the pros and cons of outsourcing from organizational and economic perspectives." Stuff like that. Some people I thought were sub par employees turned out great and I learned that they were probably in the wrong place and also had real leadership potential.

Anyway, this list is by no means exhaustive. I've seen lots of things that other managers have done with varying success. Find ways to get people leadership skills before you give them leadership jobs. If they are already there, then mentor them. But usually just throwing someone in the pool is a bad recipe.

And for all of us blowhards out there: No campy stuff. Skip the trust falls.

Rules 3, 4, and 5

2010-01-11T15:21:00.000-08:00

Rules 3, 4, and 5 are a block.

3) Take care of the people who work for you. The Team comes first.
4) Take care of the user/customer.
5) Take care of the people you work for. Rules 3 and 4 will do most of the work on rule 5, but the boss always comes last.

They sound mostly self-explanatory. They are. But the order is important.

3) Take care of your team: This goes equally for members of the team as for blowhards. Team members must look out for each other, and sometimes to the exclusion of other important things. Most managers hate this, but if you want team cohesion, taking care of a teammate is more important than taking care of something the boss wants. This one can be tough for even the most magnanimous managers. But if you really want to have a great team, get over yourself. If a team wants to take a half day to help a team member move when the manager wants to do something else like have some stupid trust falls, or read Steven Covey in a circle while quietly saying, "Namaste," your best bet is on the moving. And then go burn your Steven Covey books. I'm just kidding. Sort of.

4) Take care of the customer: Again it's obvious, but also the order is messaging in itself. The team comes first. You need a good team to take care of the customer. A cohesive team works together to nail customer needs. Period. Some blowhards' first instinct is that "the customer always comes first." Well, if you haven't got a good team, the customer gets crap.

5) Take care of the people you work for. Rules 3 and 4 will do most of the work on rule 5, but the boss always comes last: At the end of the day, you are an organization that needs the team's skills, and the cohesiveness of the team. Usually executing well on 3 and 4 require little execution for rule 5. But sometimes you have to do rule 5 stuff too. But it's last. We'll call it Jason's Heirarchy of Corporate Needs. Except instead of that really important stuff like Physiology, Safety, Love, it's Team, Customer, Blowhards. And no, just reading Steven Covey and doing trust falls to please your boss doesn't count.

Distinction: "The people you work for" is not just about the blowhards/bosses. It's also about the company as a whole. The fuzziness is intentional to be broad enough to cover both.

For the aspiring blowhards: Team rule three is critical. Make sure your team feels truly taken care of from their peers (no backbiting, politics, etc) and from their managers (no backbiting, politics, etc). Keep your teams from getting depth charged. If customers are unruly, ask the customers to deal with you directly. This isn't that hard, but it seems to be one of the leadership functions most massively missed in today's corporate culture.

This is directly in support of Rules 1 and 2. Content and effective.

Rules 1 and 2 explained

2009-11-24T16:27:00.000-08:00

The first two rules are more important than people think and are, at least in my mind, less facile and glib than they sound.

Rule 1) Have Fun: It sounds obvious but fun is important. I don't mean fun in the sense of playing Halo on your XBOX. I really mean content. It's important to be content in your career if possible.

But "have fun" is also more expansive than implied in the statement. When people start working an organization for which I am the blowhard, I give them my 13 Rules spiel. With Rule 1, I tell them that it IS important to have fun in the content sense. But it is also important for ME, as the blowhard, to ENSURE that they have an environment where they can be content. If they aren't or can't be content, but are legitimately good and intelligent people, then it's my job to find them a place in my organization where they can be. If they can't do that, then I promise to help them find a job elsewhere in the company or even outside of the company, where they can be content.

Of course, I also have to believe that these are quality people. If they're lamers, then they shouldn't be in the company in the first place.

2) Do good work and make some money. This also sounds facile, but doing good work and making some money are probably important in the private sector. But this is really about being effective. It is my and the employee's job to do everything we can to help them be effective. If I can't setup the environment where it is possible to be effective, then it's first and foremost my fault for their lack of effectiveness.

If I can do that, and they aren't effective, then I have effectively eliminated myself as part of the problem when they aren't effective (Rule 8, There are only bad team leaders). Of course that's easy to say in a black and white statement, and it's never such. But it is important that management is confident that they are NOT the cause when they accuse employees of being ineffective. That just happens so often in corporate America today.

Content and effective. Those are two critical ideas encompassed in Rules 1 and 2. If people are content and effective, you generally have groups of people that can accomplish real things, and build great companies. In that vein, I believe Rules 1, 2, and 13 are just about the most important of all 13. In fact, for really good leaders and employees, they probably obviate the need for the other rules. But that is maybe too subtle in business, when leadership so often lacks that level of nuance.

What are you getting paid for? Cognitive shift for new leaders and managers

2009-11-12T10:05:00.001-08:00

Something that I have a hard time teaching to new managers and leaders is getting them to understand one of the most critical changes that you must make when you become the latest promoted blowhard.

You worked your butt off, putting in 80 hour weeks to reach the director/VP/C-level management. But let's start with this important premise: YOU ARE NO LONGER GETTING PAID TO WORK HARD. Don't get me wrong, you may still have to work hard. But it is emphatically NOT what you are getting paid for.

Corollary: You ARE getting paid to make good decisions.

So many new managers just get right back on the treadmill. The visceral and even cerebral assumption that new managers make is that continuing to do what got them promoted will continue to make them successful. So they start running again. It's a bad assumption. They're trying to do it all, instead of trying to get it all done with good decisions and a group of people. That is now what you are paid for.

You've now got to use decision making to get a group of people to get it all done and be effective and content. Those two things are the crux. You're brilliant decisions have to get a group of people to deliver/be effective, while keeping them happy or content. I might even reverse it. Content first, then effective (a la the 13 rules).

The unspoken rule, HAVE SOME RULES

2009-05-13T11:03:00.001-07:00

The evolution of the rules started with my first real management and leadership job. I was probably too young, and definitely too inexperienced, but I gave it a shot anyway. The only problem was, there was no framework for how my organization would operate. I'll give you an example. I realized very early on that if there isn't a framework for decision-making, then how could I, the Pointy-Haired-Bosscon (some years later it's Bald-Headed Bosscon in my case) possibly be annoyed at someone who made a bad decision. They probably made the best decision that they could. But with no touchstone, it's a decision made in a vacuum.

In fact, if I haven't set the framework, and the bad decision is made, then it is not only not the decision maker's fault but it is surely my fault that a bad decision was made (see Team Rule 8).

So, to keep this entry short, the number and composition of the rules is probably important, but the very existence of the rules is just as important as the rules themselves. I originally started with 10 rules (The first 9 from below and #13). Now we've got a framework. That framework is as binding upon me as it is on everyone else on the team.

When I start a new management job or hire a new person, every person on the team reads the rules. I require that they look me in the eye and tell me that they understand the rules and that they are O.K. with the rules.

Now, for example, if a team member calls me a jackass in front of a customer (thus violating Team Rule 6), the framework is set. I sit down with the person and say, "You recall that you read, understand, and agreed to the rules. So why the hell did you do that?" Now, let's be careful here. I'm not implying that calling your boss a jackass is a bad thing. Sometimes the boss needs to hear it. I often need to hear it. Rule 6 specifically says that team members CAN challenge the boss. Just do it in private. So I say, "How does calling me a jackass in front of the customer help our team?" Do it in private, convince me, and often you'll find that you were right. I was a jackass. But doing it publicly showed divisiveness within the team, and that's bad for the team (it therefore also violates Team Rule 3).

I have set expectations upfront, and the rules were violated. For the purpose of this exercise I have eliminated myself as the problem (there not being rules about the issue), and can fairly apply correction in saying, "You agreed to the rules, you clearly broke the rules, you're in trouble." Although, I've found that usually noone's in trouble. I just want to be told how and why it won't happen again. I don't enforce the rules so much as reinforce the rules in this manner.

So, have some rules. You are welcome to mine. There are lots of others out there. But remember the existence of the rules is important as the rules themselves.

Sidenote: The scientists and engineers love to point out the recursive nature of Rule 13. Great! Rules 1 and 13 are absolutely the two most important rules on the list.

The 13 Rules

2009-05-13T10:46:00.000-07:00

The primary reason that people started asking me to write this blog is because of a set of "rules" that I have developed over the years. I call them "Jason's 13 Rules for Team Leaders and Team Members." The evolution of the rules, according to my...ahem...supporters is as important as the rules themselves. So, what I'm going to do is write a few entries that cover both the rules and how they evolved. First is discussion about the application of the "rules." The rules apply to everyone, including me. In effect, the rules are more of a "Bill of Rights" for team leaders and members. They are a framework for how, as a group, we can interoperate, make decisions, and support each other.

Here are the rules, and after that I'll discuss why the very existence of the rules is a critical organisational leadership and management function. In separate entries, I'll discuss the individual rules, why the order of the rules is important, and the evolution of the rules.

1) Have fun.
2) Do good work. Make some money.
3) Take care of the people who work for you. The Team comes first.
4) Take care of the user/customer.
5) Take care of the people you work for. Rules 3 and 4 will do most of the work on rule 5, but the boss always comes last.
6) It is the team's obligation to challenge its leader. You won't get smacked down, you'll get MORE respect. However, do it appropriately. In private.
7) Once the team lead has made up his mind, even if a team member disagreed before, it is now his/her responsibility to push that decision to the outside world as though it was his or her own.
8) THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS A BAD TEAM, ONLY BAD TEAM LEADERS! If the team is bad, it's still the leader's responsibility to make it good.
9) It is the team leader's job to insulate the team from the outside, so that they can do their jobs.
10) Don't ever say, "that's not my job."
11) It is a core component of every leader's job on this team to pass their knowledge on to others in the team. So pass it on...
12) It is a team leader's job to push power and loyalty down, not up.
13) See Rule 1.

MBA, What is It good for?

2009-04-01T09:50:00.000-07:00

Some people claim MBA's are worthless, and some overstate their value, putting too much stock in a piece of paper.

My claim today is that the problem is one of expectations both from the MBA-seeking or MBA-owning person and from people hiring or talking to MBA's.

Caveat: I got my MBA at Oregon State University. I admit, I would have preferred to go back to Boston College, but I was working at the Open Source Lab at the time, so my MBA was Faculty/Staff; effectively free.

I learned some interesting things in MBA school. But I learned nothing about leadership, unless you consider "what not to do" a learning experience.

What I learned though, was management mechanics. Nothing about leadership. I learned about marketing mechanics, financial mechanics, accounting and cost accounting, etc. Those are management topics. For this context, I'm defining management as "dealing with complexity." That's what they teach you at business school (B-School, if you want to sound cool). It's NOT leadership.

Those are good mechanics, although certainly more theoretical than operational.

I've talked to scores of other MBA's from higher and lower ranked schools (all the way up to Harvard) who've had the same experience.

Back to the original point: It's not worthless. It's just not what people expect in the business community and it's not what MBA's expect. Both of those communities expect people to come out of school able to manage people, as opposed to the complexities of Cost Accounting (or whatever). What's more is that "B-schools" perpetuate this. Go look at their websites. It's all about "building great leaders" or shaping the business leadership of tomorrow.

But my message:

Hiring managers: Don't expect MBA's to have leadership or organizational management knowledge out of an MBA.

MBA's: Don't expect to be a good organizational manager or leader out of business school. Especially if you don't have prior work-management experience.

Business schools: Either stop pretending to be something you are not, or develop real leadership programs. And group projects don't teach you anything about real teamwork. Blegh.

Fear or like: The dumbest question in business.

2008-10-06T08:47:00.000-07:00

"Would you rather be feared or liked?"

I have heard this question asked a number of times in interviews, and I've heard of others being asked the question in interviews. To use hyperbole: It's just about the most stupid question you can be asked.

My experience is that, overwhelmingly, the people who ask that question think that the answer is "Fear."

My advice is that you not work for people who believe fear is a great way to be a bosscon.

You need neither fear nor like to be a great leader/manager. You need respect. If you can't understand the difference cerebrally, then you shouldn't be managing people.

I believe that the people who work in my department respect me. Some may not like me, some may like me. As for friendships, I have some, but I also maintain a healthy distance from people. It's tough, but that's what works for me. The people I drink with on weekends are almost never the people I work with. But even the people who don't like me know that I will be fair and make good hard decisions when I can.

A leader that I was mentoring once called me up on a Saturday morning to ask for my advice. He had been a very social person with his peers before he effectively became their leader/manager. He said, "I feel isolated from my friends, and honestly pretty lonely." I said (with a little snark in my voice), "Good, if you're not feeling at least a little lonely, you're probably not doing it right." Now, I'm joking a little. I know some pretty good bosses who also maintain close friendships with their employees, but for the most part (or most people), a little distance is a good thing.

I myself once had to be party to letting go one of my closest friends, and I found that I couldn't be objective during the whole thing. Over two or three days, I didn't sleep, I ate about 3 bottles of Tums, and I worried myself sick. If you can do it fine, then go for Respect then Like. But respect is the key, not like. And leave fear out of it. No one's performance review should read, "works well when cornered like a rat."

Categories of leadership

2008-09-25T10:22:00.001-07:00

Besides defining leadership and management in the general sense, people need to think about categories of leadership and management. Here's what I mean:

Field leadership: This is basically being a leader in your field as opposed to being an organization leader. For example, many scientists are known for being leaders within their respective area of expertise, and that's what they're good at. This is a very different beast than leading a group of people.
Organizational leader: Well, that's a little bit defined above, but it's less about being a leader in your field and more about being a leader of people. It's about setting a goal and getting a group of people to not just get there, but want to get there communally.
Technical management: This is similar to "being a leader in your field" but slightly different. It may be field specific, but it's more about dealing with complexity than advancing the nature of a field (i.e. science). Finance and accounting are good examples of this. They are managers who deal well with the complexities of their field: Logistics, accounting, finance, HR, legal, administrative, whatever.
Organizational management: These are managers who deal with complexity on a personnel or human level. They're good at making sure a group of people have all the details nailed down. This is different than organizational leader.

So again, know yourself. Know which of these you are. I fit best (in order of skill from greatest to least) as "Organizational leader," "Organizational Manager," "Technical Manager," "Leader in a field." Well, I'm not really a leader in my field at all. Bill gates isn't exactly calling me up to ask about technology trends.

It constantly amazes me that people have rarely done the critical thinking about these things, yet are in extraordinary positions of leadership and management. My experience at Oregon State University really woke me up to this. PhD's who are often extraordinary leaders in their fields often get promoted (or apply for) organizational leadership or management jobs and are consistently bad at those jobs! The (wrong) assumption is that you're a leader of some kind, so you can do it. But field leadership often doesn't translate to organizational leadership or management. So you get these brilliant scientists, writers, sociologists and whatever in positions of leadership and these people couldn't get 3 people to figure out how to breath.

We also see it often enough in corporate America. People get promoted into positions of management and leadership because they've done well at something else, and then we fail to train or mentor these people. I was once helping a CIO understand why his best team went to hell in three months. His Team Manager left for another job, and he felt that the Lead Architect was ready to take over, so he made that guy Team Manager. And he didn't understand why his team was operating so poorly. I basically pointed out to him that in one swoop, he eliminated two important positions. He had an inexperienced (read no experience) organizational leader/manager and he no longer had a field-leader in the true sense. It was the CIO's fault for not training the guy on organizational stuff and just assuming that field-leadership is the same! The guy managed not to strangle me for pointing out his problems to him so bluntly.

So do some thinking. Play to your type. I don't go looking for jobs where the primary need for the job is field leadership. I go looking for jobs that really need Organizational Leadership/Management in technology-related areas. You (and your organization) are setting yourself up for failure otherwise.

Define leadership and management

2008-09-17T09:58:00.000-07:00

One thing that constantly amazes me is a corollary to the Peter Principle. It is that most people who become leaders or managers have rarely thought through what leadership and management are, and where they fit into their own definitions of these ideas. I'm constantly amazed as I hire managers ranging from junior to senior that haven't thought about these things. I often ask the simple questions, "What is leadership?" and "What is management?" and "What is the difference?" My anecdotal experience tells me that one or two out of ten have done some or lots of this type of thinking. Let's call it the Bloviator Principle! People talk about their style of leadership or management when they have often defined neither, and they don't even understand or believe that the two might be different things!

Anyway, in this post I'm going to offer some simple definitions for leadership and management that are my own and not comprehensive. My goal isn't to have broad definitions for these, but to lay the groundwork for what I really want to talk about.

Let's start with management. I tend to think of management as "dealing with complexity" or "the ability to deal with complexity." I tend to think of leadership as the "ability to plant a flag on a mountain(metaphorical mountain), and get a bunch of people to go after whatever that flag represents." Sometimes I define it more loosely as "follow me."

I'm in no way saying that these are definitive, or broad, or should be read into Webster's or that they should be adopted as the definitions by corporate America or the Marines.

What I am saying is, if you want to be a good leader or manager, define these things. More clearly, define them for yourself. Have some thought about what the differences between the two are. Evolve them as you learn to be a better manager or leader. Express them in interviews, but more importantly express them to the people who you are supposed to lead or manage!

Book: Steel My Soldiers Hearts

2008-09-10T09:22:00.000-07:00

Many people that I work with have heard me bloviate on the subject of Colonel David Hackworth. Every manager or leader who works for me is unceremoniously forced to read his book titled, "Steel My Soldiers' Hearts." If you're really brave, you could read his full book which is sort of a combined biography/autobiography called "About Face."

Besides that, "Steel My Soldiers' Hearts" is one of the finest books about leadership that I've ever read that isn't a book about leadership. Hackworth was basically a young punk who joined up in the Army with false papers before he was 18. If I remember right, he made company commander in Korea when he was in his early twenties, meaning that at the old age of 21, he had some 150 people working for him. How many of us so-called pointy-haired bosses can say that? I'll tell you what: In my early twenties, I was mostly partying my way through Boston College. Take that Hackworth. He got the Purple Heart, I got the green beer.

Jokes aside, Hackworth is considered by many in the military to be one of the finest battlefield leaders of the twentieth century. His book is about the turnaround of a screwy battalion in Vietnam. It's not even intended to be a book on leadership. It's just a story about a battalion getting beaten up in wartime. And yet, when I read it, I found it to be one of the finest books on leadership that I'd ever read. I read the book thinking, "I want to work for someone like that," and, "I want to be able to lead like that." It was one of the early, seminal moments that really got me thinking about what good leaders can be in business today. Certainly miles ahead of anything on leadership I got in business school.

Some people say, "well, it's different in the military." Well, the scorched earth tactics and strategy of war are NOT inherent to the ideas and execution of leadership that someone can learn from reading the book.

So check it out. If you're looking for just a good story, the book certainly qualifies. But more to the point, I think there is a lot to learn about how to be a good corporate leader from this book.

By the way, while Hackworth was not without controversy (what good leader's life doesn't have some controversy?), he died in 2005. When he died as a Colonel(retired) he had an astounding record including two DSC's (the nations second highest honor), 10(!) Silver Stars, 7 Bronze Stars, 8 Purple Hearts and a bunch of other awards. That's just amazing.

First! Evolution of leadership.

2008-09-04T14:06:00.000-07:00

Over the years I've developed a leadership style that some find to be at odds with a great deal of public-sector and private-sector America (I've worked in both). However, thanks to some minor success, my style has worked for me, and it's even been adopted by some managers, leaders, and bloviators far better than I. A number of these people, friends, colleagues, mentors, and a few bloviators have encouraged me to write about leadership. I've resisted for some years simply because there are better leaders all over the place. Simply go to a bookstore and you can find them, especially in the section on military history. Guys like Colonel David Hackworth or Chesty Puller. If I succeed in getting anyone other than myself to read this page, you may hear me mention Hackworth's name again.

In my first post, I'm going to simply talk about how my thinking on leadership and management evolved. The evolution is, I think, an interesting one especially for younger managers and people with business degrees from schools that "prepare the leaders of tomorrow."

So here we go.

Some time ago I graduated from Boston College's Carroll School of Management(often called CSOM(pronounced "see-sawm")) with degrees in Economics and Finance. I was, of course, convinced that I was prepared to be this inspirational manager who would take over the world. Like so many business schools, they spoke of preparing me for these great positions in management and leadership. Even today, CSOM's website says: "The Carroll School of Management's faculty is committed to instilling in students a love of lifelong learning so that they develop into knowledge professionals who will assume leadership roles in business and society." I later did my MBA at OSU. Same kind of stuff.

Whew, was I ready. I even got the sweetheart job of all times. I got a "Management Trainee" job at a massive maritime and shipping conglomerate where as a straight-out-of-college-know-it-all I had direct access to all sort of VP's and Directors, a ridiculous salary and lots of cool travel. I was going to really take over the world. I got to go to Florida, California, Washington, and Japan for a while. It was fun. I was absolutely useless. While I thought I was impressing people at the company, I was probably just impressing myself.

However, it started to unravel in just that first year. While in San Francisco for the same company, I had dinner with my Uncle Tom. Tom had been a Coast Guard officer for most of his career including serving in a patrol boat in Vietnam and later as a cutter captain (rank of Commander). I didn't even know the Coast Guard had been in Vietnam.

We had an interesting talk. I was probably holding forth about BC, and my job and what a fantastic leader/manager/boss/bloviator-trainee I was. And Tom basically told me how full of crap I was. Of course I was hurt. And of course Tom was right.

I remember the gist of his argument.

Tom: "You business school types have the latest-greatest theory of management of leadership every couple of years. Ever since McNamara was at Ford right up to Covey's highly effective whatevers. But it's mostly crap. Most of you fail to even remotely define leadership OR management. So what are your definitions of leadership and management?"

Jason: "Uhh...Tom...Waiter can I have a shot of Jaegermeister?"

Tom: "The military guys largely had it figured out about 5,000 years ago."

Jason: "Whatever."

Tom: "Here, go read some books."

So Tom gave me a reading list of books that were written by and about exceptional leaders and exceptional acts of leadership. They were mostly books in military-history, or military biographies/autobiographies. I read them and realized largely that he was right. Business schools don't teach you leadership. They don't even really teach management. They mostly teach technicians in business arts such as accounting, finance, human resources, etc. Some do that better than others.

As a side note: I'll make a poor attempt to give you my belief as to what is distinctly different between technical management, general management, organizational leadership, and field leadership in a future post.

Interestingly, in the 1990's, when I was a "Management Trainee," Inc. Magazine rated the United States Marine Corps to be the best management trainee program in the US. I scoffed at the time. Since then I've learned to know better. I have since worked with numerous combat-unit leaders who left the military to be business leaders. With a few exceptions, they are of a caliber and training level for leadership not to be found in our business academies. Or, for that matter, in most of corporate America. They may not be accounting technicians, but my sense is that if you can get a guy to win medals by charging a machine gun nest, you can plant the flag of organizational leadership equally in business without scorched earth. It's not even in the same league. It's just good leadership, learned in a manner where bad leadership has real repercussions. Something we so often fail to see today in business (no, I'm not advocating shooting bad managers).

Over the years, I've done an informal and very unscientific poll on business schools asking "good managers" whether they thought business undergrad or grad school taught them anything about managing or leading. With one or two exceptions, all of them said roughly , "No. I learned nothing." The ex-military people who had gone on to get MBA's often had more colorful responses. p.s. I know what informal polls are worth. I work at a market research company now.

So what did I do about it then? Well, I read a lot and thought a lot. Then I quit my job and went backpacking through Europe with my best childhood bud. I partied too much. I got mugged. I decided management was for boneheads. I became a software developer. Go figure.