Things Change, Things Stay the Same

I was reflecting on a variety of things on my way back from my MFA residency yesterday. As I crossed the Sound on the ferry, I thought about business and change.

So much is changing, yet so much is the same when it comes to management. I remember Gary Hamel challenging us to come up with new models for management when he spoke at last year's Global Institute for Leadership Development. Yes, some new models would be nice.

• For dealing with global teams, perhaps.
• For dealing with virtual workplaces, perhaps.
• For developing nimbleness, perhaps.
• For better using technology as part of your managerial practice, perhaps.

But when it comes to managing and leading people, I think less has changed. The gold standards are the gold standards. I don't think we need another management book to tell us these things. Perhaps new books allow us to reinvent our management and give us new energy for what we already know are the best practices. New books certainly allow for different voices, which is always a good thing.

So much is changing, but so much is still the same.

We love working for people who bring out our best talents.
We love working for likable people.
We love working for people we feel we can trust.
We love working for people who demonstrate the courage to do what's needed and right.
We love working for people who reduce hassle and increase opportunities to work on challenging tasks.
We love working for people who can plan and get results. We want to be members of winning teams.
We love working for people who are great coaches and catalysts.
We love working for people who fill our teams with rock stars.
We love working for people who clarify and share a compelling vision. And we love it when we get to provide our input - put our thumbprint on the vision.

Perhaps it's the context of management and leadership that has changed and through which we need to produce excellence - but not management and leadership itself. Logic then, would suggest that management education and writing ought to focus on the contextual issues. Yes, that would be logical.

One problem - this logic assumes that because the best practices of management and leadership are enduring, that most managers and leaders have incorporated these practices into their regimens. Of course, we know this is not true. There are still many managers and leaders who would not be described by their employees as the people I have listed above.

So the management and leadership classes and books are still needed for these folks. But I wonder if these ineffective managers are more or less likely to attend classes and seek out reading. Alas, I suspect that the ineffective managers are not the ones seeking improvement - seeking to understand the best practices and apply them.

Ah, perhaps the management and leadership classes are needed for new managers. Yes, I can see that we will have thousands of new managers each year who need to learn the best practices. So yes, good management and leadership training is needed and it should focus on transition points - new management, going from supervision to middle management, middle management to senior management, and so on.

But what about books, don't we already have lots of great books? We still want people to read Peter Drucker, Peter Block, Eli Goldratt, and Warren Bennis, right? Yes, these are important reads. New voices are nice, too, but how many is enough? I think that fads and programs du jour arise because people are trying to say the same thing - the best practices - in new ways. Some of the enduring ways are just fine.

I am likely guilty of this too, although I hope that my writing clearly acknowledges what we know to be the best practices and does not impose unnecessary fads to the task just so that I can feel original. Actually, I don't feel very original at all - not in content, anyway. Perhaps my original mark is my voice and how the writing addresses the ever changing contexts.

This post has gotten a bit longer than I intended - I know that our (my) attention spans are not so tolerant of large blocks of text. Another contextual change....

I am just musing, here, because I wonder what I can do next that will be of greatest help to managers and leaders. No fads, no programs du jour. I find that most of my readers and clients - you - are already more enlightened. You value continuous growth and are open and coachable. You want to scale the next mountain, even if you have been there, done that, and gotten the shirt already. I really like that about you.

Your context - the conditions under which you manage and lead - is always changing. This keeps things interesting, no? And stressful, and overwhelming at times. But the gold standards of management and leadership are the gold standards.

Our active brains seek rejuvenation and reinvention in our changing and not changing worlds.

Comments

[Mike]

Hi Lisa,

You've hit on two of my favorite themes: that great management principles are timeless, and that the key to success is applying them in YOUR context. Management books continue to proliferate because context does keep changing and people have wildly varying abilities to apply concepts to context. People search for the book that resonates with their own context. An example I use often are the books "The Prayer of Jabez" and "The Luck Factor". Stripped down to their essential concepts, they're the same book, centered around the notion that luck is where preparation meets opportunity. There's more detail in each, but the prescription for living is remarkably similar! The difference is that one will resonate with a Bible-believing Christian and the other will resonate with someone who puts stock in experimental social science. If you believe in both, you'll like both books. If neither, you're still waiting for that wisdom to come to your context.

Cheers,

Mike

[Lisa Haneberg]

Mike - great points. Yes, and this relates to one of those timeless management principles - we need to communicate so that people can hear given their context. I guess in that way, it's nice to have new books saying the same things that might connect with a particular audience more effectively.

[Randy]

An insightful post, Lisa. I think you nailed it; the fundamentals of good leadership rarely change but context does. Which is not to say that it's easy to keep everyone aligned and moving in the same direction. Even if Company X's employees consistently demonstrate the positive attributes you describe, it has to create a winning market strategy and then execute better than its competitors. As you know, it's hard to do. Might this difficulty be the simple reason that many grasp for any "fresh" insight into the challenge?

[Wally Bock]

That rhythmic sound you hear is me riding one of my hobby horses. Yes, the fundamentals of leadership are enduring. We can learn a lot from Julius Caesar about the leader's imperatives to both accomplish the mission and care for the troops. And, yes, the big gap is between understanding those timeless principles in some intellectual way and incarnating them with action and example. BUT a good deal of the gap derives from the fact that we stay at the 20000 foot level. We tell managers to "motivate" without describing what tools they can use and how. We tell managers to be fair, but hardly ever discuss what that means and how, sometimes, fairness and justice can be in tension. We tell managers that "we need more leaders and less managers" and similar rubbish without addressing the reality of a workplace that demands that someone in charge of a group be both. What I love about Lisa's work and many of those who post here is that we're about closing the gap, but I sometimes feel like we're trying to fill the Great Meteor crater a teaspoonful at a time.

[Lisa Haneberg]

Randy - I think you are right, we are always looking for fresh, even when aged is better.

Wally - I love the "filling the crater one teaspoon at a time" metaphor and can relate to it. The specifics are often not very sexy - like floss yoour teeth - and so I think people gravitate to reading yet another big vision that's really the same instead of seeking the sources for learning the nitty gritty.

[Ellen Weber]

Lisa, this is a real keeper - and it fits with how the brain works best too! What a great picture of life - the parts that stay the same and offer satisfaction and stability (basal ganglia) and the parts that change and challenge rejuvenation (working memory).

Love the way your posts balance both sides and that balance of permanence and flexibility - keeps readers' feet on the ground and their gaze on the peaks! Cool.

Thanks for sharing your ferry ride thought through the Sound. Felt like I was there!

[Lisa Haneberg]

Ellen - basal ganglia - I have always thought that an odd name, it does not conjure up good things! Why the name?

I used to ride the ferry every day, twice a day. Now I just do it every once in a while and it's very fun. Like most things - management techniques too - when we do it every day, we allow the experience to lose its luster.

[laurence haughton]

I asked a group of managers "what do you want in a leader." They gave me a long list of the kinds of things (communication, charisma, coaching) that you see in books.
So then I said imagine time is tight and results are critical. "Now what do you want from your leader?" "Someone who really knows what to do," was the consensus.
I think a lot of leaders don't know and they don't find out before they try to tell others what to do.

[Lisa Haneberg]

Laurence - that's interesting, isn't it. At the core, we DO want someone who will take care of things, manage, and ensure the group is doing the right work.

[Ellen Weber]

Lisa - you showed "basal ganglia" better than I could when you wrote " when we do it every day, we allow the experience to lose its luster."

Take a ferry every day, twice a day and you get comfortable and can often miss the wonder you described in this post:-).

Take that same ferry every once in a while and it's fun, because the mind draws new magic from the journey.

Remove the basal ganglia and all the stuff we do as habit goes with it... rely on it too much and the magic that comes with working memory challenges gets erased. Yikes - no worry of that around here! Thanks Lisa - I learn so much from your site:-)

[Wally Bock]

I dont' think we necessarily want someone who will "take care of things," but I do think we want someone who will be the last resort on issues. That works out very differently for a police sergeant than it does for someone who supervises research scientists.

[laurence haughton]

I agree. Don't "take care" of everything. Just give me useful feedback (timely, specific, and helpful). I can take it from there.
One tactic I was taught was to get feedback on my feedback. (Did things change for the better? How timely, specific, and helpful was my input?)

[Lisa Haneberg]

Agreed - I think taking care is relative based on the situation, the people, and the time. what it really comes down to is managers need to be the person needed and do what's needed with an eye to improving capacity, satisfaction, and results.