Some are born leaders, some become leaders. Some want to be leaders and some don’t wish to be. And there are those who, like it or not, are leaders: we call them parents.
In his book, ‘Everything I Need to Know About Being a Manager, I Learned from My Kids’, Ian Durston sheds light on the perennial challenges of management as both are about people. No surprise that the experience gained in parenting helps manage your corporate people management. Let’s take a closer look!
First time:
- Honey, please, take off your muddy shoes right here in the hall! Let’s take care of not getting the dirt all over the place!
Second time:
- I would like to draw your attention once again that you have missed the opportunity to take off your dirty shoes in the hall, and now there is dirt in the hallway, on the carpet and even on the couch. You have learned nothing from the previous occasion. Please, when you get home, let taking off your dirty shoes be the first thing you do!
Third time:
- I am telling you this for the third time that you shall take off your dirty shoes when you arrive. You seem not to respect the values of this family. I am sorry that we need to go in different ways… Find another family for yourself!
No conversation like this has been seen. I hope so. No matter if providing feedback connected to the specific event, or addressing the reasons behind, it’s not up to this.
As a parent, we keep on repeating aspects with which we are building some kind of scale of values in our child. Noticing these repetitions, we can identify the values. Among which, we can find many that can serve as a compass in our corporate being as well.
- Will you eat your bread?
- No!
- Can I eat it then?
- No!
- Would you like something else to eat?
- No!
- All right, then breakfast is over, you can go play.
- No!
- So you still want to eat?
- No!
- I don’t know what you want, even though I really want to help you. Anyway, I go tidy up.
- No!
- Come on, why? What do you want me to do?
- No, no, nooo!
This is when I say that ‘no’ doesn’t take you forward, you need at least one ‘yes’.
In order to move forward, we need to to say yes to a direction. Until we say no to all of them, we stay where we are. If we stay put, let’s not get surprised that nothing happens.
In the case of companies, a yes like that is needed. At least one. When it comes to big companies, the difficult part is that due to the many contributors, many people’s common wish is to be achieved for a yes. An activity favours the customer, even a competitive advantage can be gained, but finance does not support it because of a certain risk. Finance likes another activity the sales can increase with, but IT is against it, because the solution doesn’t fit into the architecture. A yes should be supported by everyone so that something happens. However, many times there is a veto that stops the progress. In other words, an idea has to fit all the aspects of the areas in order to get it going, and you need to find the overlapping opportunities to do so.
- There is no place left to even step, come and let’s put everything away!
- Aah…
- We put things away quickly and it’s gonna be better, believe me!
- Neeey…
- Help me with just a few things, please…
- No!
- Then, at least, get off of the bear so that I can put it away!
- No! And don’t put the train away either!
- It is not okay! If you don’t help me, let it be, but don’t hinder me!
As stated before, many forces are to be aligned in a big company to get things going. Another obstacle in doing so is to decide what information is to be shared with whom so that every aspect is covered properly. You cannot be 100% sure every time, so it depends on the individual how the information flows. Yes, process descriptions could help, but these cannot be prepared for all the tiny-petty moments of life, you cannot rely on them all the time. And even if you can, common law is stronger: we had an interpretation in the beginning, then we got used to how we did it, and after all we spread it as we do in the whispering game, the message gets changed, filled in or extracted. So sometimes we do it one way, sometimes the other way. It results in cases in which the information is limited or is way too much and has no added value. When it is the latter one, we wrongly wait for the reaction, while in fact, the other party does nothing with it, just sits on the ‘bear’. We could advance without them, but we cannot. We get no help, but we are hindered. Many times unconsciously. Due to the inertia of the system, no matter if you don’t need the other’s help, as it doesn’t get explicit, sitting on the bear gets hindering.
- Come and wash your teeth!
- Okay.
- I’ll be back in a minute.
- Dad, help me get the people out of the car!
- Why are you playing now?
- Not to get bored while washing my teeth.
- But in this way, you are not focusing on washing your teeth and with one hand, you cannot take the people out of the car!
There are a lot of tasks running parallel in big organizations. There are many topics to be taken care of and many people can manage many topics. There are many parties to be involved, and they are not available all the time, because dozens of others have already involved them in other matters or they even initiated something else with other areas.
So we draw our number and we get in the queue. One sign of this is that we can arrange a meeting with the relevant participants only in one and a half week time. We are in the queue. The queue gets shorter and shorter, but without the queue, you could finish the task sooner. We are doing more things parallel, so we are not really doing them, we make only small progress, one at a time. It results in the feeling of slowness. Don’t get me wrong! I know that it takes time to arrange everything and that’s the nature of big companies. If you need the other, you have to wait for them, which is part of the task. Without it, you could not finish it. And if you look back long enough, you get to see the amount of change you carried out. The only problem is that you get the feeling of progression only in the long run, so you have to be conscious to notice it even along the way, because the dominant impression you get is that you are in that queue once again.
Our friends get surprised when our children eat vegetables or help with the laundry and cooking. Although children do what they see from their parents (and from others). If it is natural that these things happen, they will also do it.
Copying is the most fundamental way of learning. Yet, we tend to forget it when it comes to organizational changes. Then we get to name the big recognition: the change starts with the leader. When we realize that the organization should eat more vegetables, we’ll need a leader who eats vegetables. If the leader has not eaten vegetables before and now this is the expected behaviour, don’t get surprised that they don’t start eating vegetables.
During big organizational transformations we hardly learn new behaviours if the same faces represent those all the time. Of course, leaders who performed well in the previous settings have the advantage of being competent. But what about the behaviour? If someone is a leader of authority, they will not be able to provide and represent the authorisation of the colleagues. When someone is more of the old, usual solutions, they will not be authentic in adapting the new ones, or they simply will not be capable of them. No surprise that the child (team) does not copy the parent (leader) and does not start eating the vegetables or help with the household.
Let’s see the dirty shoes again!
As parents, we are there when the child tries, learns and practises something. When the child starts walking, they fall once, they fall five times, they fall a hundred times. At the sixth time, we don’t give up on that they can learn walking. We know that falling is part of learning how to walk. It doesn’t even come up that we consider our child incapable. We help them up at the hundredth time, we encourage them and after a while, they walk steadily.
Remember this thought when something does not happen immediately or the way you wanted, and you get the chance to create a trustworthy atmosphere in your team. An atmosphere in which you can make mistakes, you can try new things, because we know someone will be there to help us up and encourage us.
Improve the existing practise:
Set the new practise:
