The Effective Manager

by Mark Horstman

The ideal place for your directs to be for maximum output/results is right on the line between distress and eustress, almost over the line into fear, but not quite there. They should have lots of energy but not panic. The only way to know where that line is, for each direct, is to push each direct into moments of distress and pay attention to when they start to lose effectiveness. Everyone has his or her own point of diminishing returns.

As managers, we're responsible not just for the status quo, but for improving the performance of the whole team. The best way a team's performance improves is if each individual's performance improves.

To be an effective manager means encouraging and inspiring all of your directs to higher performance even when they say they don't want to—because you know the organization needs that to stay competitive.

Asking for more accounts for roughly 15 percent of the total value created by engaging in the four critical behaviors.

The reason “pushing work down” is the fourth part of our “Management Trinity” is that, while the first three parts of the “Management Trinity” create value for the team, “pushing work down” creates capacity for the organization. Managers are the ones who have to push work down, but the organization is the one that benefits. Put differently, you can produce results from your team with only the first three parts of the “Management Trinity,” but pushing work down creates growth potential for your entire organization.

The direct should do the job and not the manager, because the direct is cheaper labor. If we can achieve an acceptable quality level with less cost, for all but the most important things we do, we should do so.

The question becomes, in a world in which everyone is busy with too much to do, “What work is most valuable to the organization?” That's the work we have to get done, right? And, in a general sense, the more important work of the organization is being done at higher levels.

Pushing work down accounts for roughly 15 percent of the total value created by engaging in the four critical behaviors.

That's the “Management Trinity”: The four most critical behaviors a manager can engage in, to produce results and retain team members: Get to Know Your People. Communicate about Performance. Ask for More. Push Work Down.

However you manage, your techniques, behavior, and philosophy must be both teachable to others and sustainable.

We expect people in finance, say, to be able to explain the functions they put into a spreadsheet and why. We expect engineers to be able to walk us through why they chose a particular design or a material. We expect developers to comment their code so that someone else can debug it. We expect marketing people to explain their rationale for why they chose a certain data-gathering campaign. But somehow we don't hold managers to this standard. Somehow, with all the work being done about people, systems, motivation, pay, benefits, rewards, and culture, “management” is some sort of inexplicable “black art.”

What does it say about the most important systemic behavior in every organization that the majority of us learned how to do it from others who were never taught it and who privately worried that others would discover that they didn't truly know what they were doing?

The way an effective manager manages is visible to others and is teachable to others. And the effective manager can repeat the core behaviors in any situation, nearly anywhere.

The reasons for this are fundamental to any organization. If we can't teach others how to manage, it's much harder for the organization to grow. We can't teach “personality,” and we can't teach “I don't know.”

When your organization's business or service grows, at some point more managers are going to be needed. If the people who are considered for promotion to a newly created managerial role haven't learned how to manage well from their own manager, they're not going to be any good at it. And just when the organization needs a...

To sustain organizational growth, new managers must be created, and the way to create new managers is to teach them before they move into the role. Otherwise, they will learn the hard way—when they're already in the role. And that means learning from their own mistakes, at a time when the organization doesn't need new, weak managers but, rather, managers as good as the ones they already have—and better—before the growth. The newer managers have to be better because, as organizations grow, gro...

The study was scheduled to run for 30 months. Unfortunately, and frustratingly, we had to stop the test after only 19 months. The reason was that because 18 months into our test, unrelated to the test, a corporate document was distributed, showing which managers had been promoted to which roles in the past 12 months. Of the 43 managers promoted, 42 of them came from the test group, and only one came from the control group. Although you might think this was a validation of our effort and justification for continuing or even expanding the effort, a month later we had to shut down the study. Why? Because the managers in the control group, who also wanted to get promoted, started doing O3s as well, which ruined the science involved in our study. However, 18 months was long enough to capture some of the outcomes we had hoped to track. Results and retention among managers in the test group rose by 9 percent and 8 percent, respectively. Results and retention among the control group rose slightly, by 1 percent.

Weekly—Biggest improvement in both results and retention Biweekly—Slightly less than half the improvement seen by weekly O3s No One On Ones—Slight improvement in results and retention Monthly—Slight decrease in results and retention

What is a Manager Tools One On One? It is a meeting That is scheduled That is held weekly That lasts for 30 minutes That is held with each of your directs In which the direct's issues are primary In which the manager takes notes

The value of having One On Ones is that by doing this you are saying to your directs, “You're always going to have time with me. I'm always going to be investing in the relationship.” If you don't schedule your One On Ones, you're saying to your directs, “This might be important in a given week. You might be important, and the time with me might be valuable to me. I don't know. Let's play it by ear. We'll see how things go.”

(Our data show that if you conduct O3s 85 percent of the time, you get the kinds of results and retention you expect. Fall below 85 percent, and outcomes decline.)

Table 4.1 Scheduled O3s vs. Unscheduled O3s Scheduled Unscheduled Managers Surveyed 119 520 Managers Tested ≈100 ≈100 Improvement ≈8 percent ≈2 percent

Why is scheduling so important? Directs whose managers have started O3s tell us two key things: (1) “My boss is saying I'm important,” and (2) “I have time to prepare.”

When you tell your directs that they're going to have scheduled time with you every week, no matter what, you elevate their importance to that of the rest of the items on your calendar; that is, you are making them also “important.”

moving an already scheduled One On One to a different time because of a conflict has no statistically significant effect on the manager's results and retention improvements.

You don't have time now—that's understood—but the solution is easy. Don't start your O3s for three to four weeks, when you can easily fit them into a calendar that is almost empty.

If you implement Manager Tools One On Ones, we guarantee that you will get more time back in your calendar than you spend in having them.

You think about deadlines that are coming up this week. You tend to put off things that are due next week, even if they will take you several hours of work. You probably know what your schedule is this week, and maybe you know a bit of what your schedule is next week, but for the week after next, you have little sense of what your week will be like, in most cases.

roughly 25 percent of what you would get if you held them weekly. Why would you save only 50 percent of time by going biweekly and then lose 75 percent of its value? That doesn't make sense.

Directs tell us over and over again that they prefer having weekly O3s. It matches the rhythm of their work. They say that biweekly O3s end up being too general and less relevant.

If you have your One On Ones biweekly, you will lose the benefit of seeing interruptions notably decrease. Directs can't wait over a week to meet with you in order to have their problems resolved.

A caveat: if you have more than ten directs, it's okay to start with biweekly O3s. Trying to find, say, 8 hours (16 half hours for 16 directs) in your week may be a bridge too far. Spend 8 to 12 weeks allowing your schedule to absorb the 4 hours a week, and then try moving to weekly. (This habit of stressing your calendar will prepare you well for executive life, if you aspire to it.)

I would argue that with a team that big, you have an organizational structure problem and not a managerial behavior problem.

We have never seen an outcome where monthly O3s have improved performance.

Managers who conduct at least 85 percent of their O3s over a period of months achieve much of the results and retention improvement that managers get if they have 100 percent of their One On Ones. Once they fall below 85 percent, though, results and retention improvements are less likely. When they fall below 50 percent, it's better just to stop having O3s, in terms of the benefit (more like cost) and the time you're spending.

By studying meeting behavior, we've also learned that it's better to have a jam-packed meeting that lasts 30 minutes than to have a relaxed meeting that is scheduled for an hour but for which you only have 40 to 45 minutes' worth of content. If you overschedule a meeting, your directs will gradually begin to underprepare for them and will lose interest. Shorter, more compact, and busier 30-minute meetings will cause you and your directs to use them fully and to not miss them. Who wants another hour-long meeting that starts late and/or finishes late, which causes you to be late to your next back-to-back-to-back, hour-long meeting march?

If you're going to do O3s, you've got to do them with all of your directs.

You should not hold One On Ones with anyone other than your direct reports. This means that you don't do One On Ones with people who report to your directs.

For the record, “direct” means someone who reports directly to you. It doesn't mean anyone in your organization.

(“Skips” is a large organization's term for someone who reports to one of your directs. “Directs” are the people who report directly to you. And “skip level” is used if you have to skip a level in the organizational chart to get to them.)

Your immediate subordinate managers are responsible for their relationships with their directs. The way you maintain your relationship with your skips (and even levels below that, if it applies to you) is by keeping a strong relationship with your directs and relying on them to maintain relationships with theirs. Any other model for this just doesn't scale.

Build an organization of effective managers under you. This is how organizations stay healthy and effective as they grow.

The lack of note taking added to the chance that managers and directs would talk less about work. While in some cases that was appreciated, in the majority of the cases, there was a general dislike about the lack of note taking. It made the O3 feel like a personal meeting, as opposed to a business meeting. The fact is, O3s are business meetings about results, and sometimes personal matters are discussed.

The problem with a One On One in which the manager does not take notes isn't the lack of note taking; it's the lack of accountability that no note taking implies.

Circle what you promise to do, underline what you promise to do, or put asterisks next to what you promise to do, but be able to see your deliverables—your promises—at a glance.

Rather than mixing your coaching notes with the rest of your One-On-One notes, write them on the back of the previous One-On-One form.

Don't do a One On One in public. One On Ones are like feedback in the sense that they are for the private use of one individual. The One On One you're having with one of your directs is for you and that one direct.

Please, don't go to the direct's office. Don't go from your office to the direct's cubicle, because one person going to 6 or 7 or 10 different places doesn't make any sense. It's much smarter to have six or seven or 10 people come to one place, and, frankly, it makes it much easier on you.

If an initiative is important to you, it's worth thinking through the possible rejoinders and being prepared to address them. If you're not willing to verbally joust through some turbulence when you introduce a new idea, it's probably not worth doing.

First, let's be clear about pushback in general. Don't ever be surprised by it. Just because you think what you're going to try is a good idea doesn't mean that your directs will go along with it. Quite the contrary: when you change how you manage, then fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) about the change are always part of the response. Don't assume it's just you; it happens to all of us.