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Experiences of Management Coaching (Part 2)
In our experience, we have found that there are several reasons managers fail to get employees to see and acknowledge that they have a problem. They assume. Many managers bypass the step of getting agreement because they assume that an employee...
Finding the right business management software
Finding the right business management software There are
several things to consider when looking for a good business
management software title, such as the classification of the
software, the system it is going to be used in, the platform...
Managing your website development - eight easy steps to project management
Managing your website development need not cause you sleepless
nights providing you learn the secrets of successful project
management. Perform the best practices in project management and
give your project the best chance of success.
...
The Key to High Productivity is Energy Management
One of the issues most often raised by my clients is better time management. People have tried prioritizing tasks, blocking out parts of their day for certain tasks, implementing new systems and getting better at delegation. While all of those...
Time Management and Money
I remember how intrigued I was when years ago, and long before I
had heard of time management, I recognised the link between time
and money - we say that we 'spend' both time and money, and also
talk about 'saving' time and money.
Moreover...
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The Myth of the Management Team
Every business has problems. That is why the average life span of a large industrial company is 40 years. Some are learning disabilities where companies are not prepared to learn from their mistakes. They insist on doing the same thing every time. Even when problems occur no one examines the cause of the problem. The problem is an embarrassment that should be swept under the rug and forgotten rather than be used as an opportunity to learn. Handling these dilemmas and disabilities is the Management Team. Below is a quote from Peter Senge’s book “The Fifth Discipline – the Art & Practice of the Learning Organization.” Does this sound like your company? If it does start worrying!
The Myth of the Management Team
Standing forward to do battle with these dilemmas and disabilities is “the management team,” the collection of savvy, experienced managers who represent the organization’s different functions and areas of expertise. Together, they are supposed to sort out the complex cross-functional issues that are critical to the organization. What confidence do we have, really, that typical management teams can surmount these learning disabilities?
All too often, teams in business tend to spend their time fighting for turf, avoiding anything that will make them look bad personally, and pretending that everyone is behind the team’s collective strategy – maintaining the appearance of a cohesive team. To keep up the image, they seek to squelch disagreement; people with serious reservations avoid stating them publicly, and joint decisions are watered-down compromises reflecting what everyone can live with, or else reflecting one person’s view foisted on the group. If there is disagreement, it’s usually expressed in a manner that lays blame, polarizes opinion, and fails to reveal the underlying differences in assumptions and experience in a way that the team as a whole could learn.
“Most management teams break down under pressure,” writes Harvard’s Chris Argyris – a long time student of learning in management teams. “The team may function quite well with routine issues. But when they confront complex issues that may be embarrassing or threatening, the ‘teamness’ seems to go to pot.”
Argyris argues that most managers find
collective inquiry inherently threatening. School trains us never to admit that we do not know the answer, and most corporations reinforce that lesson by rewarding the people who excel in advocating their views, not inquiring into complex issues. (When was the last time someone was rewarded in your organization for raising difficult questions about the company’s current policies rather than solving urgent problems?) Even if we feel uncertain or ignorant, we learn to protect ourselves from the pain of appearing uncertain or ignorant. That very process blocks out any new understandings which might threaten us. The consequence is what Argyris calls “skilled incompetence” – teams full of people who are incredibly proficient at keeping themselves from learning.
So how does your company stack up? If your company is what Senge describes as a ‘Learning Organization’ then there is no need to protect your turf, no need to accept compromise, no need for management to know everything. In a Learning Organization the knowledge that employees have is used and each member of the management team is there to support the other. They realize that everyone wins if the team does well and they also know that a failure is just another term for a learning opportunity.
Wouldn’t you like to work in an organization where your opinion counts and where you CAN make a difference in the companies success? Where you don’t have to pretend to be busy, or pretend to know everything. So how do you create a learning organization? It starts with creating learning individuals in learning teams which then cascade into a learning organization.
The only process that we know of that comes close to achieving the goal of a learning team is the Best Year Yet system (http://www.arcturusadvisors.com/partners.htm). Through this facilitated process team members learn to work collaboratively, learn from their mistakes and continually challenge their assumptions about reality. Above all they work together as a team to solve problems and improve results.
A Learning Organization is possible!
About the Author
Graeme has worked on four continents, over the past 20 years, with large global companies and small enterprises that want to improve their businesses.
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