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Book Review: Good Boss, Bad Boss

Monday, August 30, 2010

With his previous book, “The No Asshole Rule,” Stanford University Management Professor Bob Sutton struck a powerful chord, resonating strongly with many of us – most of us – struggling mightily to do good, decent work in organizations of all sorts all around the land. In this one, he has picked out an important theme to carry his message effectively and meaningfully forward. It is: bosses matter.

Discussed in the same context of the previous book, “Good Boss, Bad Boss” establishes the case for why bosses are so vital to the establishment of a healthy, personally satisfying, organizationally productive workplace – and why those who are dismissive of this fact for that very reason so often wind up actually being so toxic. In a very strong stage-setting chapter Sutton makes it clear why bosses matter. Quoting a researcher, he points out that “people do not quit organizations, they quit bad bosses.”

The remaining chapters pick up the various elements of this thesis and elaborate them, one by one, explaining why and how each makes for a good or bad boss – and how the consequences of those events unfold throughout an organization. These chapters cover a lot of ground, and survey it from a wide range of perspectives. They offer detailed views of what good bosses do, what constitutes the sort of “wisdom” that they should express, how they should deal with good employees and rotten apples, as well as others explaining how bosses can and should influence the workplace atmosphere, if not the organizational culture.

The diversity of perspectives makes for an engaging and even enthralling read. There is much of value for all of us, whatever our personal inclination, our unique operating philosophy, or even just the issues we find ourselves confronting at any given time.

The diversity, however, isn’t random: you will find two interesting themes unifying the discussion: One  is very clearly a sincerely-felt argument that work ought to be a balanced, decent place where people can experience reward and self-affirmation. It is common enough to see this sort of thing. Indeed, in the hands of less serious observers, it is quickly revealed to be little more than insubstantial “give peace a chance” fluff which exhorts but doesn’t persuade.

But not in Sutton’s hands. Every introduction of this theme, every elaboration of its effect on the physical and mental health of workers, or even just the general pleasantness of a workplace environment, is carefully and specifically linked to how and why these directly and inevitably influence organizational effectiveness.

The result is as strong an argument as I’ve seen for the need for bosses to grow up and manage all the assets at their disposal – even the problematic ones which so many bosses seek to avoid: their people. The workplace is looked at as a whole – not just where work is done, but where workers do it. To be effective, then, bosses must manage not just the work flow, but the work environment. Excellent.

You will find yourself agreeing emphatically with much of what you read in “Good Boss, Bad Boss,” but also, perhaps, disagreeing energetically with some other elements of it. That is precisely what you want in a management book: you want to be engaged and challenged in order to be a more effective reader and, ultimately, a more effective – a good – boss. Indeed, in your reading you will learn that this is a fundamental key to being a good boss: engaging with and seeking to be enlightened – challenged – by your staff.

This one is a must read, wherever you are in your career – even if it doesn’t include any aspiration at all to be a boss. Easily one of the most productive and immediately useful books I’ve read in many years, it is going in the Management Reading list on this site.

Please pick up your own copy of Bob Sutton’s “Good Boss, Bad Boss” now.

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Today’s tips: Speaking of business books, please see this BNET article by Dave Logan about why business books are bad for you. He notes that most contain little enough of value in their key first and last chapters, and in between are filled with illustrations and fluff serving only to demonstrate the paucity of intellectual value on offer. Please also see Logan’s list in the post of his favorite business books; none of them are business books. You should consider developing your own list of non-business business books – you will be surprised how much better at business you will be for it. (But in the meanwhile, please be sure to read “Good Boss, Bad Boss ” – every chapter from beginning to end – it is a powerful exception proving Logan’s rule – pick yours up today.)

And speaking of good and bad bosses, why do so many of the former tend to turn into the latter? Please see this excellent WSJ piece by Jonah Lehrer about the paradox of power, and why some who get too much of it start to “behave like neurological patients with a damaged orbito-frontal lobe, a brain area that’s crucial for empathy and decision-making . . .” Still sure you’re a fan of theories of singular individual leadership?

Finally, speaking of Management Professor Bob Sutton, he coincidentally read Managing Leadership recently, and published a very generous post about it on his own blog, Work Matters. Perhaps you would be kind enough to click through to view it. And while you’re over there, take a look at his list of 17 things he believes, in the left-side column; you’ll begin by scanning, but you’ll stop to think. Then you’ll subscribe to the blog. See his other books, as well, listed on the right-side column.

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Want to read articles from the Encyclopedia Britannica for free? Take a moment to scroll down the sidebar on the main site a bit: right below my current readings you will see a dynamically renewing box pointing to articles on capitalism from the Britannica. These are typically available only by paid subscription, but if you click through to an article from here, you will be able to read it for free. Try it!

And speaking of subscriptions, ours here are always free! Why not subscribe by email or RSS reader now?

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The Manager’s Stone

Monday, August 16, 2010

We have seen that philosophers of all ages have sought both to understand how the world works, and to discover the key that explains it all – better yet, that unlocks it all; that enables us to manipulate the laws of physics at will. We seek the secret core at the center of all the complexity, the buttons we can push that will  unfailingly produce the results we want, so that we can go back to ignoring all the impossibly convoluted unfolding of events between the pushing of those buttons and the emergence of the consequences we desire.

These instincts run so deep in all of us that we typically either pursue them or cheer on those who do. The truth is, actually, that they run even deeper than that: we are so anxious to believe in the veracity of our world view, so eager to see everywhere evidence of it, that we can sometimes deceive ourselves with the most extraordinarily self-manipulative glibness – often reinforced with subtly oppressive intimidation – for generations or more.

Eventually, the evidence just becomes too much to resist. We are forced to revise our world view. And then we start all over again.

We certainly aren’t immune to that sort of thing in management, are we? We want desperately to see the organizational world one way or another, and we endeavor desperately – even artfully – to interpret or create facts that support our view. Those apparent facts that don’t do that – well, we say dismissively, everyone knows they’re irrelevant; essentially just background noise struggling vainly to obscure the signals only we have the wit and insight to make out.

It surely can easily be said, though, with respect to the physicists, that however much like the rest of us they ultimately are revealed to be, they have done much real, measurable good. They have improved the lot of us all.

How about us in management? As we struggle to understand the world of organizations, even while we sometimes stretch the limits of our conceptual models beyond their capacity to explain what we’re doing, do we not nevertheless manage to do some good after all?

Physicists and philosophers have created enduring systematic changes in our world view – and thus in the way we live our lives – that redound to the benefit of us all. Most of us can count off a number of these that have been developed over recent centuries and decades. For all the silliness that still occurs on the margins of modern science (indeed, for all that those margins sometimes become quite crowded with marginal thinkers), the great bulk of this extraordinarily beneficial work is demonstrably uncontroversial.

Can you do that for management theory – or for that grotesque carbuncle opening up from within it with horrifyingly wide-eyed relentlessness: “leadership theory” – can you count off a number of universally acceded-to, empirically reliable “advances” in organizational practice over the past century or years? What are the books widely accepted as documenting these “facts.” Who are our Newtons and Einsteins, whose insights have revealed the vein of management truth that the rest of us mine today?

Or, for all our arrogant posturing on the topic – and, it must be said, the widespread “physics-envy” plaguing the field – are we still just sending out scouts into the wilderness and receiving wildly confused and unreliable reports from those who find their way back?

Honestly. What do you think?

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Note: The Managing Leadership Blog is very proud to have been selected as one of the top 40 leadership blogs for 2010. The selections were made by the Online MBA, a site dedicated to helping people looking for post-graduate business education locate quality online educational venues. This is a valuable undertaking, one among many that foreshadow an important and much-needed sea change in how education at all levels is conceived and conducted. Please stop by to visit their site – and also view the listing of the top 40 leadership blogs for others well worth your time!

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Today’s Tips: Speaking of sea changes, Bill Gates is at the forefront of those arguing that brick-and-mortar educational institutions are losing their relevancy in the near future. Please see why he thinks the best education will come from the internet within the next five years.

Maybe it already is. Surely many of you have suspected that the quality of “traditional” education has never been quite what it has traditionally been reputed to be. Please see this WSJ book review that explains just why, among other things, the “mediocrity” of the education available at the presumptive flagship of US college education is an “open secret of the Ivy League.”

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The Philosopher’s Stone

Friday, June 25, 2010

The first alchemists sought the now legendary “philosopher’s stone” – a special material that could be used to turn common metals into gold. In time, it came to be believed that this magic substance could solve other intractable problems in life as well, not least among them the conquering of death itself.

And serious philosophers really searched for this material, believing that such a key compound might actually be able to accomplish one or another of the vital purposes posited for it. Even the father of modern science, Isaac Newton, gave the matter serious consideration.

Indeed, contemporary scientists might be viewed as doing something like that – seeking a comprehensive theory that explains the physical universe, unifying the insights of Newtonian science operating in our everyday lives with, at one end of the scale, the relativity theories describing universal space-time and, at the other, the quantum mechanics of the sub-atomic world.

There is an interesting – even endearing – combination of earnestness, intelligence, and innocence in the scientists who pursue it. They mean to accomplish their end, they are driven by their curiosity, and marshal fascinating measures of ingenuity in pursuit of their task. And along the way they have done immense good for the rest of us. The applications to which their discoveries have been put have wrought wondrous improvements in the nature and quality of all our lives around the world.

Key to all of this is their development of theoretical models to explain the world. These are conceptual frameworks into which can be fit the known facts about how it works, that offer perspectives for interpreting and examining new ones. They add up. They make sense. They resolve cognitive dissonance.

So much so, in fact, that when new observations are made that do not appear to be reconcilable with current models, these scientists’ first instinct is typically to posit new entities, new forms of energy, or new relationships between them which offer a means of understanding these otherwise disruptive observations within the existing models. That is, they do not seem normally to review or question their models to try to see if wholly new ones are necessary. Rather, they work desperately to preserve them with what can seem to the rest of us as oddly jury-rigged postulates.

That’s of interest to us here. Physicists with one breath will create a postulate – an entirely theoretical entity imagined almost literally out of the blue – the sole purpose of which is to restore order to a model disturbed by an observation it wouldn’t ordinarily explain or predict. The thing is, though, that with the next breath they will speak of that brand-new postulate essentially as an established scientific fact – even as they discuss their efforts to design experiments to prove its existence. They seem to see no irony in this. They pass insensibly, seamlessly from imagining a solution to the disruption of their settled view of the world to adopting a comforting, unchallengeable faith in its veracity, its existence.

Perhaps that is the real philosopher’s stone at work – turning hope into faith. Perhaps, even, it does that while distorting our appreciation of which is the base, and which the precious, metal. Who knows?

But it’s worth asking about us, in management, as well. We’ll do that next. See you then.

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Today’s Tip: Please see this item by Michael Wade about, if you will, putting some zen in your coffee. One of our chores in life, if we are to navigate through it rather than simply be carried along by it, is to try to be sure we have fuel for the fire – that we have grounds for percolating. Do you? Do you find yourself surprised and delighted by the insights that leap out at you sometimes, or perpetually puzzled by what seems to always be happening to you? Not sure? Then see this item by Michael as well. After that, pour yourself a cup of coffee and think it over.

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If you look at the contents section on the sidebar of the main page of this site, you will see a listing of the article series that have been published here. You can click through to view summaries of the pieces, and then read the full series or selections that are of most interest to you. Enjoy!

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The alchemists

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

An astronomer concluded a discussion of the likelihood of life elsewhere in the universe by enthusing about how fulfilling it would be to find it, because it would help us learn more about who we are.

But the quantum physicists argue that the question is, at bottom, irrelevant because, not to put too fine a point on it, so are we. We – and any other life there may be out there – are merely the entirely coincidental consequences of incalculably innumerable – and perfectly pointless – interactions of mass and energy.

There is no meaning. There is trajectory, but there is no aim.

It is from this dross, this inexpressibly valueless detritus from which we rise, that we struggle to identify a precious meaning to our lives – an end toward which we ascend purposefully – rather than a blunt extinction to which we hurtle heedfully but helplessly, bereft of reference points, with no traction, no leverage, no starting point, no ending point. No control over our fate. Indeed, with no fate, really.

This, we are told, is it. The inexpressibly elegant equations of quantum physics, describing a brilliantly blind reality, frothy with exquisite design, undesigned, expressing no moral or even existential substance, existing for no reason, ultimately to expire to no purpose.

This is the common metal we work – the foundation, but the roof and crown too, of our lives. It is no wonder we seek to transform it into something more grand.

So the alchemists turn to their work. In our daily lives, and in the various endeavors into which we divide them, including management. How are they getting along?

We will continue looking at that next, in our seemingly unending efforts to conclude the current discussion of the “new” sciences and modern management. See you soon!

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Today’s Tips: Please pay a visit to Online MBA, a business education blog aiming to make intelligible order of the chaotic flow of information that might otherwise overwhelm and discourage us. Good alchemy.

You’ve always suspected this, and now the BBC reports on a study suggesting that “creativity is akin to insanity.” Watch out for this and other items on those lists of leadership characteristics you are encouraged to develop. Scary alchemy.

As long as the subject has turned in that general direction, please do also see The Onion‘s report on the recent closing of America’s national parks for their annual “remajestification.” Lot’s of metaphor in this, actually; as the report mourns, “many Americans take their country’s natural beauty for granted and imagine that it is somehow self-maintaining.” But if you’ve no time for that, there’s lots of fun, too. Whimsical alchemy.

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Obtuse expertise

Monday, May 10, 2010

And obnoxious. The introductory sections to the latest book by the quite literally world-renowned management thinker are filled with notes of thanks that actually serve to highlight his own prominence; each name dropped both to dazzle the reader and, it sometimes seems, to simultaneously equate the author with their company and imply his superiority to them.

Moreover, the author patronizingly suggests that the reader may have something to contribute to his or her own success, although he also understands that it may simply be too much to ask of them to fail to attribute it to the author. His very protestations of humility – cloaked as they are in strained denials of his own greatness – are the essence of unreflective arrogance.

Actually, though, that’s pretty much par for the course for these sorts, and can even be forgiven in the presence of substance. But what a shame when even that isn’t to be found, when it becomes clear that the declarations of revolutionary, game-changing insight and guidance are merely chaff serving to blind not just you – but perhaps even the author – from the vacuity within. There is no target worth seeking. There is nothing there.

Consider the opening words from one such expert, venturing to set up, as is so often done, the presumably fundamental, but typically false, dichotomy between the “old” way of doing things – the way you do them – and the cutting-edge way he will show you. He illustrates this by telling the story of a mission-manager‘s son asking his father who is controlling a spacecraft returning from a trip to the moon. The father responded that it could be argued that Newton was doing that.

The author evidently understood that to be a wry indictment of the way that space mission was organized and run, a pioneering modern endeavor still clasped in the grasping arms of centuries-old thinking. He then went on to ask if you manged your business by similarly out-dated fashion.

But what the father was really saying is that Newton’s thinking was so profoundly true as to be inevitably, vitally relevant today – impossible, dangerous to neglect. That space mission was successful not despite old thinking, but because of brilliant thinking that (the most current revolutions in physics notwithstanding) had survived the ages due to it ongoing veracity.

Is that how you manage your business – according to fundamental truths that endure the passage of time, and that survive the superficial assaults of obtuse experts? If not, are you mistaking the chaff for the wheat?

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Today’s Tips: Speaking of truths that survive the test of time, but that nevertheless get lost in all the chatter, please see how Fred H. Schlegel, at the FrogBlog, cuts through to the center of the issue of understanding your customers. And speaking of superficial understanding of what makes things happen, please be sure to see how Cultural Offering exposes that tendency in the very thinking of – not just management thinkers – but practitioners.

To take the matter over to the corporate governance side, please see this piece at ben’s blog about why founding CEOs are preferable for his investment firm. Then consider this in light of this WSJ column by John J. Brennan about the state of corporate governance today; see in particular his suggestion about an owner relations committee.

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Roundup: Lessons from every quarter

Saturday, February 6, 2010

Advice for effective management has been showing up in some of the most unlikely places over the past several weeks, or in unexpected guises. Let’s take a look at some of these, leavened with some real advice from some of the best management trainers around.

Clues to communication. The range begins at The Boston Globe, for an excellent piece on “cognitive fluency” and what it means for anyone – from managers to marketers and beyond – trying to make a message connect. It then moves on to Steve Roesler‘s piece on getting your ideas heard – note point numbers one and two, in particular. Then we complete the journey to clarity with a classic memo, courtesy of John Phillips.

Obvious places. Start with this WSJ editorial on the dangers of believing your own PR. It’s a political piece, but the lesson is there to be had, whatever you may think of the choice of this particular object for the lesson. In the same vein, next view this by Steve Tobak at BNET, about key lies managers deceive themselves with.

Now, let’s return to the WSJ for this Fouad Ajami column; again, a political piece, same target. But leaving that aside, consider this sentence from it: “A charismatic leader had risen in a manner akin to the way politics plays out in distressed and Third World societies.” How does that insight, and what follows in the essay, translate to what we see in business? But to return to the subject of communication for a moment, please see this item from The Economist about how some politicians aren’t getting – don’t want to get – this increasingly strongly felt and urgently delivered message from the electorate.

Staying motivated. You will definitely want to see this terrific book review by Aubrey Daniels – and why it’s key message drives him crazy. And speaking of insufferably irritating, please see why forced fun can be much more damaging for a company than you might think, in this essay by Grant McCracken.

Unlikely places. Much has been made, of course, of the late-night host debacle of recent weeks in the US. One WSJ piece argues that it is a rich source of management lessons. Another insists that our very effort to find these in it is a condemnation of our individual and cultural common sense. What’s your view?

Here and there. Before leaving the WSJ, you will want to see this column about how the drive to diversity on boards can actually be quite destructive. Next, please be sure to see what management coach Katy Tynan has to say about handling conflict – well worth your time. Subscribe to her blog while you’re there.

You will surely want to see this from Miki Saxon about the real message in the failure of a football team. This is definitely a transferable lesson.

And finally, please do see this BBC piece about why you might want to be slimed – and what unexpected lessons you can learn even from that.

Enjoy your reading, and have a great weekend – see you soon!

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The Management Uncertainty Principle

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

We’ve seen how physicists have discovered the limitations on their ability to attain precise and comprehensive knowledge about the characteristics of an object at a given moment in time. How certain, in the face of this from physics, are we in our own field that we can even identify precisely the vital components of management – or, even more implausibly, of individual leadership – much less take them on in our own persons or teach others to do so? If the physicists are having such a hard time with what most of us would acknowledge are at least legitimately testable scientific models and material, how reasonable is it for us in so soft a field as management and leadership to assert our certainty in these regards?

As it happens, there are researchers who adopt something very much like the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle with respect to management. Perhaps the best known of them is Henry Mintzberg, who argues in his most recent book, Management (see review here), that there is so wide a range of factors impinging on what effective management actually winds up looking like – across industries, levels of management, business structure, geographic location, social and corporate culture, not to mention individual personality – that it is really unhelpful to insist on reducing it to a specific list of features or characteristics. Rather, he argues, it should be formulated and developed into specific practice according to an assessment of what he calls the three planes of information, action, and people.

Sounds rather mystical doesn’t it? But the interesting thing is that when you analyze the demands of your work on the basis of the information necessary and available, the actions you and others must take to advance it, and the qualities, abilities, and even locations of the people with whom you collaborate in so doing, it begins to make a lot of sense that the result for each of us in our varied circumstances would fall quite variously across a broader range of possibilities than the gurus, surely, would allow. Indeed, we become more certain about the veracity of our specific solutions, just as we become more doubtful about the more popular generalizations.

So, perhaps there is something to be said for uncertainty, after all. If we are willing to acknowledge its inherent influence in the world of work, we may wind up developing a personally more precise and effective appreciation of how it influences the form of effective management from where we stand at any given time and place. What’s more, we might be better prepared to more effectively develop anew that appreciation when our personal times and places change.

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Today’s tip: Speaking of professors, we all know that they have generally a bias to the left – that is at last widely acknowledged. But there remains some controversy as to why that should be. Perhaps we’ve been asking the wrong questions about it from the outset. Please see this NYT piece for an intriguing explanation.

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