It’s a new course, a new semester and the beginning of the end of my MBA. It’s at this time I start to contemplate in earnest what I need to change about my life and career that will lead to happiness, fulfilment and ultimately using the skills that I enjoy using and take away from this qualification. What journey shall I take next? Should I worry about it now or wait until the last assignment is handed in and my grades are cast to the whims of the powers that be?
Anywho, enough setting of the scene and to the matter at hand! As required, I will now discuss what 2-3 issues raise in class and how these may help me be more effective in future work situations. I’ll take this as meaning 2-3 issues that interest me and I can immediately relate to something that’s happened to me in the past or I’ve seen happening to someone else.
In his presentation Professor Meeks raised a point that immediately resonated with me because it seemed to be mentioned only briefly and then was largely ignored for the rest of the discussion. The point was this, the discussion introduced the generational differences between “baby boomer’s”, “generation x” and “millennials” which is a useful frame to provide insight on how people behave and how to motivate them. I felt the gap that was left unfilled was how one motivates and manages generation x. Please don’t think that the rant that follows is motivated by the fact that I am a member of generation x . I am concerned by the idea that our generation may become some sort of historical footnote in between the social enlightenment that accompanied the baby boomers and the over pampered the millennials. Maybe generation x are so few in number that we have not had any real impact of Western culture, relegating us to being a bridging generation between periods of social upheaval. It’s not a comforting thought! I remember being a young adult watching the Berlin wall, the horrors of Yugoslavia, the rediscovery of Eastern Europe, dancing to techno music in the Berlin love Parade and the rise of the anti-globalisation movement where “No Logo” was our bible and we protested in front of the British houses of parliament in May 1999. We were united and we were a movement, then 9/11 changed the world and we thought we could make happen in the new millennium was laid bare by the winds of fear, anger and hate. All that being said I took away from the discussion that the motivation and behaviour of the millennial generation needs to be understood if I am to be an effective manager in the future. This ties in nicely with Meeks summary of his talk, “think forward and have empathy” which I agree are essential elements of leading the millennial generation. I’ll finish with another perl of wisdom that was passed down to me by a baby boomer, he said that there is a golden time in your life when you are on of the young, cool people and the future is a ocean of possibilities with an unknowable horizon. Then without warning you suddenly realise that the cool people are all younger than you and your life is a good sized sea. The one satisfaction that can be gleaned from this is that you realise that those young cool people are all going to be in the same predicament eventually. If Meek’s is right in saying that millennials are by and large pampered children who demand respect without thinking they need to earn it, I can only hope that they develop the mental faculties to deal with that day when they realise that they are not the young cool people anymore because it comes sooner than they think.
A few things leapt out at me immediately when I read Eli Cohen & Noel Tichy paper.
Firstly, there is a great quote from a middle manager at Intel:
When I see a chain of email messages, I know people aren’t confronting. When I see an e-mail with a big long tail floating across my screen, I tell people, ‘I’ll stay for the whole time in the meeting you need to have but we’ve got to confront this.’
In my previous life as a computer geek I saw this precise behaviour several times each day. Maybe that was an indication of the organisational culture I was in. Every time a problem arose that required some leadership from someone an endless email would float around the group waiting form someone to make a decision. The reasons for this were twofold, people didn’t really know why they were doing a particular thing and no one would step up to fill the role of defining the problem and the process to fix it. Going forward in my future roles I would like to be the kind of person that steps up and takes ownership of the problem through to resolution or I would like to be the person who brings it to the attention of the person whose role it is to step up to the task. If the person is happy to teach me how to step up to the role and deal with it myself then I’m happy to learn from that kind of leader.
The second thing I found interesting in the article was the story about leaders under fire in the Special Operations Forces where a simulation exercise is designed to go wrong at every point. The kind of situations that lead to the endless emails referred too above could often occur when things were going badly. The point of the simulation exercise is to develop leaders who have a bold, aggressive leadership style. I think the same kind of leadership style can be applied to solving complex problems in the IT industry a person can step into the role of the problem manager and lead the resources through to the resolution of the issue. I would like to adjust my management style so that I can fulfil this leadership role, providing the sanity when things are going wrong.
The third thing that interested me was the quote from E. Cohen et al:
“The most powerful experience is when leaders teach their own points of view. You can’t just hand them a deck of slides and tell them to go forth”
I’m trying to think of a time in the corporate life I have lead to date where I have listened to the company song and read the company values every day when I started work. There has not been one occasion for it. Usually the orientation is the only opportunity to read the values statement after which they are thrown in the bin as the pragmatic activities of day to day operations trundle along. I’ve never seen a real attempt to sell the values of a company to the IT workers. In the future I want to be the kind of leader that can integrate the values of the company into practical day to day activities, not just use the company logo and slogan as a graphic for the signature in my emails.
The forth thing that I thought was a great idea from E. Cohen et al was the format of leadership stories.
- A case for change
- An idea of where the organisation is headed
- How it will get there
I have always enjoyed developing and designing plans and then watching as they unfold and start to deliver on their goals. I haven’t really used leadership stories in the way they are shown in the examples however I see how they could be a powerful tool. I like the example of when the Shell Oil executives had to write their resignation letters because I think it’s a really effective way of getting a story out of people as to what they think is wrong with the organisation the role that fulfil within it. Resignation or obituary exercises also reveal what motivates people and get’s they to think about what they would like to try and change within an organisation. I think that’s a powerful tool for brain storming ideas of where to take an organisation, regardless of how well it is doing.
I guess I could summarise all this stuff by the simple statement:
I want to be a leader, telling stories that make people want to follow on the journey of organisational life.
If I can master that then I have a skill that will make any organisation I touch be a better one.
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