The Manager as Leader Walkthrough – a summary of the content Kai Petersen Sebastian Stein Jan...

The Manager as Leader

Walkthrough – a summary of the content

Kai Petersen <[email protected]>Sebastian Stein <[email protected]>Jan Dielewicz <[email protected]>

Blekinge Institute of Technology

SE-371 79 Karlskrona

+46 455 38 50 00

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Agenda

1. Technical Leadership

2. The Commitment Ethic

3. Interpretation Task

4. The Importance of Professionalism

5. Respect for the Individual

6. Interpretation Task

7. Conclusions



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Some impressions of the books

Humphrey:

• If Humphrey was my manager I‘d quit.

• This is a great book for someone who's looking for cases and practical ideas. It doesn't give any numerical analyses or "magical" formulas.

• Most of his advice is not practical, or even possible in the employment situations I've seen (and heard about) over the last ten years or so

De Marco:

• Read this book, learn from it, and enjoy it (it's an easy, entertaining read) -- even if your managers are too stupid to profit from it.

• If I hadn't read this book back when I was promoted, I probably would have made far more mistakes!

Sources: amazon.com / amazon.co.uk



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Technical Leadership (1/4)

The leader

• Defines goals and

• The leader has to stick with his defined goals

• He has to defend it against all obstacles

• Every leader needs a few loyal troops who risk themselves for the leader’s goals

• Leaders are on every stage of the hierarchy (leading from below)

• Leader needs a lot of soft skills

Every leader has a vision:

• More important is the vision on what the company should do rather than a focus on financial growth.



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Manager Transactional Leadership:

• control, plan, schedules, budgeting

• good organisation

• everything you normally learn in business administration

Leader Transformational Leadership:

• has a vision

• can convince his followers

• motivates people

• creates creativity and innovation

• soft skills



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Problems with Leadership vs. Managers:

• Leaders are not better than managers, for different tasks you need different people

• A leader-manager is not possible

Both positions contradict with each other

A team of leader and managers would be ideal

• Leaders don’t have to be charismatic

leading is normal strategic work

visions don't have to be brilliant and new; they must fit to the organisation

vision is not phantasm



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How to lead technical professionals:

• If a fast decision is needed, the leader has to focus on a few important aspects (there is no time to run a study).

• To make the right decisions a clearly understood goal is needed.

• The performance of the team depends on the performance of the manager, if he sleeps, then his team sleeps, too.

• If the leader cares about his followers then they will follow him.

• If team-members want to give up, the leader has to rally them for another try.

• If a project gets late, then the team has to work harder to stay within the deadline, even if this means working on weekends.



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Discussion Points Technical Leadership

• The leader has to stick with his defined goals.

• When team members are on the way to give up, the leader should remember them to measure up their own standards and to try harder.

• Leaders don’t have to be charismatic.

• The performance of the team depends on the performance of the manager, if he sleeps, then his team sleeps, too.

• If a project gets late, then the team has to work harder to stay within the deadline, even if this means working on weekends.



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The Commitment Ethic (1/7)

The elements of commitment:

• A commitment is a pact between two persons which must be kept

• Both persons involved in the commitment must support each other, based on the commitment discipline

• For the working of commitment; motivation for keeping it is needed, this can be reached as follows:

Commitment must be assumed freely and willingly, else one person feels not bounded

The commitment must be visible to others because otherwise the professional would keep his trust-ability when he breaks the commitment



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Other definitions and aspects of commitment:

• Possible definition: "the act of binding yourself (intellectually or emotionally) to a course of action"

• Conditions according to Ron Ruble:

you must be free to reject the responsibility or the objective (also partly in Humphrey page 15)

you need authority equal to the responsibility

the objective must be measure-able

must be a faithfully statement between at least 2 parties (also partly in Humphrey page 14)



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The components of commitment according to Scott Kinney:

• commitment = intent + decision + purposeful action

• intent: "Increase sales by 15%"

• decision: "cross-selling to existing customers"

• purposeful action: "start with our 10 best customers and select complementary products"

"I'm going to increase sales 15% by cross-selling to existing customers. I'll start with our 10 best customers and select complementary products for each of them."

• without purposeful action it is just a wish



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Commitments or Crusades?

• Teams often lose sight of the original goal

• This is caused by commitment hypnosis; what the people want to happen must happen

• If a design does not work engineers frequently double their efforts

Overcommitment

• Get people so committed that they can’t cancel

• Not all technical projects can succeed, therefore it is not always appropriate to drive the project to the end against all obstacles

• Involved engineers often don’t face this reality. At this point research help or a leading consultant is needed



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Managing Commitments:

• Sometimes it is complicated for managers to know, how hard to push their people

• This depends on the commitment discipline, if its high, then the people already have done everything in their power

Changing Commitments:

• If the plan is unrealistic, a change in commitments will be necessary because otherwise people will be unmotivated and performance suffers

• A project in trouble needs a clear understanding of the situation to make an appropriate new plan

• Another problem: Often nobody wants to be the first one who speaks out the problem, therefore this is the task of the manager



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Building the commitment ethic:

• A commitment is an mutual agreement, based on trust

• Understanding the working-relationships is the basement of open and free communication what leads to trust within a team

Commitment Ownership:

• Requirement: Persons should feel responsible for the commitment

• If people are expected to do something faster than they think they could, then it will be necessary to place emphasis on the importance of the job and why it is so important to succeed

• As a consequence the people feel committed to do their best.



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Discussion Points Commitment

• Sometimes it is complicated for managers to know, how hard to push their people (referring to the degree of commitment)

• The commitment must be visible to others because otherwise the professional would keep his trust-ability when he breaks the commitment

• Not all technical projects can succeed, therefore it is not always appropriate to drive the project to the end against all obstacles

• Often nobody wants to be the first one who speaks out the problem, therefore this is the task of the manager



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Interpretation Task

Which figure do you associate with De Marco and which figure with Humphrey? Motivate why.

Figure 1 Figure 2



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The Importance of Professionalism (1/4)

Elements and Advantages of professionalism:

• Professionalism consists of two key elements

Knowledge within the technical field

Discipline to built on this knowledge

• Using existing knowledge and insights improves product liability and reduces risk.

• If professionals are not kept up to date, they will not be able to construct competitive products.

• Awareness is the only chance to be protected against competitors.

• Technical awareness can be achieved by reading technical literature, conferences etc.

• Role of managers: Emphasize on the value of technical awareness and explain why this is so important.



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Knowledge - Only the beginning:

• Knowledge is only valuable with the will to use it

• Only few people do their jobs as well as they could

• A lot of employees make excuses like “too busy”

Doing the job the right way:

• Planning-Paradox

The best way to start software development is to make a good plan, otherwise it’s complicated to meet commitments

Nobody does it because there is no time

• Often engineers don’t know how to make a good plan



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The discipline of visibility:

• Visibility in form of teaching and publishing gives an extra motivation

• Teaching and publishing is a lot of work, but it should have a top position on the priority list

• Everyone likes to be recognized, it’s a thrill to see the own name in print

• Visibility generates self confidence, because it needs conviction to publish the own ideas

• A group acknowledged as professionally is more attractive to stay with



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Professionalism and performance:

• IEEE Spectrum survey: 81 % felt that it is essential to be up to date within the technical field

• There is also a strong connection between job performance and visibility in form of presentations, patents, awards etc.



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Discussion Points Professionalism

• How do you define professionalism?

• How can learning be ensured within a company?

• There is also a strong connection between job performance and visibility in form of presentations, patents, awards etc.

• Visibility in form of teaching and publishing gives an extra motivation



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Respect the Individual (1/3)

The standard of respect:

• To be successful professionals have to be:

Interested in his job, Motivated to succeed, Confident with their role in the organization well informed

• The manager’s behaviour is the most important work-related factor

• To gain the worker’s trust the manager must respect his people and their needs

• Respect is based on attitude and fairness, e. g promotions should granted referring to performance

• Keep in mind that every person has his own needs, wants and values

• The managers must be convinced that their people are the organisation’s most important asset.



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The open door policy:

• Open door policy means that every worker can talk to top management

• This communication channel is independent of the direct supervisor

• The aim is to ensure protection against occasional management mistakes and to ensure communication

• Every worker’s complaint is important

• Before using the door, try to solve the problems with the immediate manager

• An independent investigator is involved in the process of problem solving



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Establishing a peaceful environment:

• Nobody in an organization should get away with something, because that’s unfair to the other employees

• Four important steps are necessary to achieve a peaceful environment

Explain your decisions to your employees

Demonstrate interest in your employees

Give your people the possibility to communicate their concerns to senior management

Use open doors and thank your people to speak out what is going wrong



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Discussion Points Respect the Individual

The manager’s behaviour is the most important work-related factor

Open door policy or peer review programs lead to improved management behaviour and more aggressive problem solving on the part of the local managers

• Nobody in an organization should get away with something, because that’s unfair to the other employees – “If everybody is suffering equally, you can move a mountain” (Citation Lee Lacocca)



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Interpretation Task

How does the book’s cover relate

to the content?



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Conclusions?

Your audience reports!



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References [Hegele2004]: Hegele, Cornelia: Leadership?, in

Harvard Business Manager, issue 04, 2004, http://www.harvardbusinessmanager.de/$3Scc8MMkXW7qxvGNZ8pl/go/see!_DIG30317817

[Guiliani2003]: Guiliani, Rudolph: “Leadership”, Chivers Large print, 2003

[Kinney2004]: Kinney, Scott in comp.software.extreme-programming posting to thread "Definition of commitment" at 2004-07-08 07:10:17 PST http://groups.google.de/groups?hl=de&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=7MydnWNq19RUyHDdRVn-hA%40comcast.com

[Slater2002]: Slater, Robert(Author). “29 Leadership Secrets From Jack Welch.” Blacklick, OH, USA: McGraw-Hill Professional, 2002. p 13.

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