Tag Archives: Management

Hey Boss, I Am Managing You

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Recently I was sorting through old documents from my Human Resources / Training Days. I found some writings from Dee Hock. Mr. Hock was the founder of Visa Credit Cards and its CEO back in the day. He eventually left Visa to focus on the future of business. He is a visionary guy and I am excited to re-read his work.

Here is a great quote about leadership from Dee Hock.

Here is the very heart and soul of the matter.

If you look to lead, invest at least 40% of your time managing yourself – your ethics, character, principles, purpose, motivation, and conduct.

Invest at least 30% managing those with authority over you, and 15% managing your peers.

Use the remainder to induce those you “work for” to understand and practice the theory. I use the terms “work for” advisedly, for if you don’t understand that you should be working for your mislabeled “subordinates,” you haven’t understood anything.

Lead yourself, lead your superiors, lead your peers, and free your people to do the same.

All else is trivia.

If you manage people, how are they at managing upward? I would say my direct reports do indeed spend time leading me and that is how I want it. I work to nurture this with them. I then expect them to do the same for their staff.

However the percentages break down, it is important to manage up and sideways. Certainly your relationship with your boss is important and deserves the time you spend on the relationship. Yet do not forget the relationships with your peers. Business processes do not have stop signs (or should not). You need to work effectively with peers to assure the work flows.

Dee Hock’s quote begins with managing yourself and stresses it over the other relationships. Leadership development need not be complex. Good leaders are good people first. As started above, “It is about your ethics, character, principles, purpose, motivation and conduct”. If you can speak to these elements and have a good story to tell – one that you are proud of – you are on your way as a leader. If and when your direct staff are doing the same – excellent. If you help your boss to do the same … WeMoveTogether.

Different Sides of the Same Coin

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Singidunum coin

Today I was thinking about management.  As in how well am I managing my group and related work processes.  As someone, through this blog, demonstrating a focus on leadership I find that I do not want to lose hold of my focus on management practices.

I have read many times about leadership and management as two different and almost competing approaches.  I too have taught others with a focus on the differences between the two and alas, showed a bias toward leadership as the winning approach.  Yet, I find this thinking to be wrong and I now see leadership and management as two sides of the same coin.

I looked up the definition of this well used term today and found, “different but closely related features of one idea”.  Very nice – this works for me and explains for me the connection between leadership and management.  Read it again:

Different but …

Closely Related features …

of one idea.

As a leader you follow a process of influence to gather folks together to focus on the right things and through your effective leadership you get the most and then some from your team.  Management skills allow that same leader to establish the goals with detailed milestones, measure progress, identifying issues timely, and also end up with the goal met.

While I may dream of leadership related topics (writing a blog plays with your mind), I wake up each day and my first act is that of a manager.  As I do each business morning, I log in from home to run several production reports concerning my work processes.  I previously set up the right measurements and helped design production reports that detail the current state of my business operation.  These reports point to my department’s successes and where I need to look closer to improve production. These management practices are part of my leadership practices.

A leader without a solid base of management skills is disconnected and will make poor decisions. The leader is simply lacking information needed to make decisions.  Yet a manager with poor to nonexistent leadership ability is well … someone with a title only.

I want to be and grow both as a leader and a manager.  Yes, I will admit the leadership side of the coin has the beautiful artwork and draws us in, but if the management side of the coin is rubbed down to nothing, the coin is worthless.