Management Secrets by Mary Elston

The odometer in my car casually rolled to the 90,000 mile mark and winked at me. Maybe it was more of a cold stare. I had logged another 90,000 miles of my life behind the wheel, robotically driving to wherever I needed to go. Let’s do the math. At an overall average of 40 miles per hour, that’s 2,250 hours of driving or 281 eight hour days. Oh my aching … never mind. It was time for another tire rotation and alignment. When I went to the tire shop near my home I was surprised to learn the place had changed owners. The new folks in charge didn’t know me, didn’t know I had bought my tires there, or that I had been a customer for years. Most of the “guys I knew” were gone. I felt mildly let down and wondered if they would provide the same good service I enjoyed before. Although only minor work was involved, uncertainty permeated the transaction.

Translate the above to an even bigger sense of uncertainty when a CEO, VP or other person in a leadership position leaves a company and now you’re getting a feel for what I’ll be covering in this latest Management Secrets blog series. I have lived through the exiting executive scenario a few times in my career and I’m sure you have too. In one instance, I could have sworn I saw someone dancing down the hall when they heard a nasty boss was leaving. I know that sounds tacky but its reality. Just as real, in fact, is how many employees can be saddened when they hear a great boss is departing. Every industry is periodically impacted by executive turnover.

But hold on there! The job market is still uncertain in several sectors, are executives actually leaving companies again? Yes, they are. Believe it or not, it’s beginning to happen in industries where earnings are looking shiny and startups are peeking out from around the corner of free enterprise U.S.A. Think about it. Business recovery tends to start on the American coasts – east and west – where major financial activity and trends take shape. From the coast, the recovery typically works its way inward to the rest of the nation. This is where exiting executives are starting to pop up – in the west and Silicon Valley where startup fever is starting to heat up again too. As well as in the east where companies are moving executives around and making room for the new regime.

What does this mean to you, the manager? Whether it’s a CEO or other high level executive; the departure of a leader means one thing for sure — change. Change can be good, bad, or barely recognizable. It’s critical that new leaders and managers effectively manage both the internal and external impact caused by exiting executives. In my next installment in this series, we’ll take a look at a few of the most pressing factors this brings to mind. In the meantime, send me your comments on changes which affected you – both positive and negative — when an executive departed. I always value hearing what the real world is serving up to hard working managers like you. *

*excerpted in part and reprinted from Mary Elston management column with permission from Soundings Publications, LLC.

How have things been going at work lately? Great or not so great? For many people the quality of their work environment is strongly tied to the caliber of their manager and the executives leading the organization. If you’re fortunate enough to toil away the day with superlative management you feel it in nearly everything you do — it’s simply a better place to be employed. But what if you’re not fortunate in this regard? What are the habits of those executives who make our existence miserable?

That’s what we’ve been discussing over the last few weeks in my Management Secrets blog as I’ve walked you through a January 2012 article by Eric Jackson at Forbes: “The Seven Habits of Spectacularly Unsuccessful Executives.” The article covered research conducted in 2004 by Sydney Finkelstein, Steve Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. With this blog installment we’re going to look at the final two habits in the seven habit line up. Review the first five covered earlier in my blog entries immediately preceding this one. Let’s dive in …

Habit #6: They underestimate obstacles –Part of the allure of being a CEO is the opportunity to share a vision. Yet, when CEOs become so enamored with their vision, they often overlook or underestimate the difficulty of actually getting there. And when it turns out the obstacles they casually waved aside are more challenging than they anticipated, these CEO have a habit of plunging full-steam into the abyss. An example of this scenario would be when a company’s business is racking up huge losses, yet they are busy expanding operations at an amazing rate.

Why don’t CEOs in this situation re-evaluate their course of action, or at least hold back for a while until it becomes clearer whether their latest programs will pan out? Some feel an enormous need to be right in every important decision they make, because if they admit to being fallible, their position as CEO might seem tainted or precarious. Once a CEO admits he or she made the wrong call, there will always be people who say the CEO wasn’t up to the job. These unrealistic expectations make it exceedingly hard for a CEO to pull back from any chosen course of action, which not surprisingly causes them to push that much harder. That’s why leaders at Iridium and Motorola (MMI) kept investing billions of dollars to launch satellites even after it had become apparent that land-based cellphones were a better alternative.

Warning Sign of #6: Excessive hype Side note – A manager can become sucked into “believing their own press releases” just as easily as a CEO. A few accolades too many from the corner office or lack of oversight and some managers begin to think they can do no wrong even if they don’t really know what they are doing in the first place. If a new policy or idea has merit excess hype isn’t needed because the idea generates its own validity by virtue of its success.

Habit #7: They stubbornly rely on what worked for them in the past — Many CEOs on their way to becoming spectacularly unsuccessful accelerate their company’s decline by reverting to what they regard as tried-and-true methods. In their desire to make the most of what they regard as their core strengths, they cling to a static business model. Guess what? Doing the same thing every time usually doesn’t work every time! The dynamic and ever-changing nature of products and markets makes this a given. These CEOs may insist on providing a product to a market that no longer exists, or they fail to consider innovations in areas other than those that made the company successful in the past.

Instead of considering a range of options that fit new circumstances, they use their own careers as the only point of reference and do the things that made them previously successful. For example, when Jill Barad was trying to promote educational software at Mattel, she used the promotional techniques that had been effective for her when she was promoting Barbie dolls, despite the fact that software is not distributed or bought the way dolls are.

Often CEOs who fall prey to this habit owe their careers to some “defining moment,” a critical decision or policy choice that resulted in their most notable success. It’s usually the one thing that they’re most known for and the key achievement that gets them all of their subsequent jobs. The problem is that after people have had the experience of that defining moment, if they become the CEO of a large company, they allow their defining moment to define the company as well – no matter how outdated or unrealistic it has become.

Warning Sign of #7: Constantly referring to what worked in the past Side note – particularly for managers, this can be a crushing fault that is exhibited with painful frequency. Consider the individual contributor who is promoted to manager due to their outstanding independent achievements but those achievements don’t translate into outstanding management decisions or contributions. The result is incredibly frustrating for the team who works for the unqualified manager who is a “one hit wonder” with no other ideas in their briefcase.

The bottom line: If you exhibit several of these traits, now is the time to dump them from your repertoire. If your boss or several senior executives at your company exhibit several of these traits, now is the time to start looking for a new job.
I would sum up these seven undesirable habits of highly unsuccessful executives by describing them as: leaders who believe they are better than they really are, have big egos which need to be regularly stroked, don’t stay in touch with reality and don’t engage the skills of their team to make their business continuously successful. Now you know. These are management traits to avoid as well.

What’s the opposite of this? The successful executive or manager who has people who are excited to be working for them and knows how to inspire and keep talented employees. Sounds like a much better formula to which we can all aspire as we continue to pursue improving our own management skills. How are you doing this now? Write to me and let me know! That wraps this blog series …. I’ll be back in a couple of weeks with a new Management Secrets series topic. See you then.

If your boss has you feeling excruciatingly ready for the weekend it must be Friday. If you’re bracing yourself for another stressful work week it must be Monday. If this isn’t your reality — wonderful — if it is, major bummer. As managers, providing great guidance and support for your team and making them feel appreciated and valued allows these work stress extremes to be avoided most of the time. What about the executive leaders and managers who aren’t so great? That’s what we’re exploring in my current Management Secrets blog series — a January 2012 article by Eric Jackson at Forbes: “The Seven Habits of Spectacularly Unsuccessful Executives.” The article covered research conducted in 2004 by Sydney Finkelstein, Steve Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College.

Last time around we covered bad habits one and two – leaders who think they dominate their environment, and leaders who cannot delineate boundaries between personal and corporate interests. Read the details in my blog entry immediately below this one. With this blog installment we’ll look at a few more.

Habit #3: They think they have all the answers Here’s the image of executive competence that we’ve seen admired throughout history: a dynamic leader making dozens of quick decisions, dealing with multiple crises, and taking only seconds to size up the situation and provide a solution. Big problem with this picture – it’s a total fake. Crisp and decisive leaders tend to move so quickly they don’t grasp the ramifications of fast decisions. Worse, these leaders often have huge egos which won’t let them learn new answers. These leaders who know it all shut down other points of view and often make a series of bad decisions that take the company down the tubes.

Warning Sign for #3: A leader without followers — the executive or manager who has no team members who are allowed to follow him is hogging the glory and all the decision making – bad formula. Side note – at the management level the person with this habit often refuses to recognize his team’s accomplishments in front of upper management – they hog all the glory and keep their team from having any visibility with leadership. This charade can only last so long before their true lack of skill comes out –or worse – they’re being protected by someone higher up and they hang on for years.

Habit #4: They ruthlessly eliminate anyone who isn’t completely behind themCEOs who think their job is to instill belief in their vision also think it’s their job to get everyone to buy into it. If you don’t rally to the cause you’re considered to be against it. Hesitant managers have a choice: Get with the plan or get out. This approach is unnecessary and destructive. CEOs don’t need to have everyone unanimously endorse their vision, in fact, eliminating contrasting points of view cuts them off from seeing problems and correcting them. Eventually those executives being stifled decide to leave and no one is left to warn the CEO when disaster is in hovering in the wings.

Warning Sign for #4: Executive departures Side note – at the management level, departures can take the form of leaving the company or moving to other departments to get away from destructive leaders — from another perspective, employees who seek other jobs to get away from bad managers are sending the same message. If you’re a manager with this kind of negative track record, stop and think about what you’re doing to your team.

Habit #5: They are consummate spokespersons, obsessed with the company imageYou know these CEOs: high-profile executives, constantly in the public eye. The problem is that amid all the media frenzy these leaders’ management efforts become shallow and ineffective. Instead of actually accomplishing things, they often settle for the appearance of accomplishing things. When CEOs are obsessed with their image, they have little time for operational details. As a final negative twist, when CEOs make the company’s image their top priority, they run the risk of using financial-reporting practices to promote that image. In their eyes, everything that the company does is public relations.

Warning Sign of #5: Blatant attention-seeking Side note – for a manager, the same dangers are apparent; managers constantly seeking attention are simply doing a lousy job being a manager and may be faking results, eventually it bites them in the back end.

When have you worked in an environment where leaders or managers exhibited habits 3, 4, or 5? How did you deal with it? As a manager, have you ever fallen into these negative behavior habits? Or better yet, risen above them? Drop me a line and let me know your experiences, good and bad, with these challenging, potentially stress-packed issues. I’ll see you in a couple of weeks with the final two habits in this blog series. Till then, take care.