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Are You Over-Committed?
Posted by: Timm J. Esque | Posted on: April 9th, 2012 | 0 Comments
The economy has been picking up in a variety of consumer sectors for awhile now. Even hiring (and indicators of more hiring) is ticking up. But as is always the case, actually getting new people in the door and productive will take time. We are seeing strong signs of another common phenomenon which is the people already on board being expected to hold things together until the hiring catches up, which will probably take longer after such a deep recession.
When human resources have been properly loaded at about 80% of capacity, it is quite feasible for everyone to take on a little heavier load for a reasonable transition period. But that does not seem to be what is occurring in this cycle. People in many organizations have been carrying the extra load for too long already, and as opportunities for growth pop up, organizations are expecting people to figure out a way to take on even more, but may be asking too much.
To be a bit more specific, we keep hearing from client managers that they are booked in meetings 6-9 hours per day, often double or triple booked. They, and everyone else, are trying to multitask in each of these meetings — stay aware of the meeting topic, but also get some email done and keep information flowing, because there is no “office time” for getting to email. Meanwhile, everyone is being asked to represent their function in more and more projects, all on top of their “day job.”
In our opinion, there is no manager (not even the most talented micro-managers) and there is no software that can keep track of everything people are being asked to do, keep all the competing and changing priorities clear, and give people the sense that they are in control of their own time and their own success. Each individual has to take responsibility for managing themselves in alignment with those changing priorities. This requires managing what and how much is committed to, and it requires the ability for individuals to safely say “No, I can’t commit to do that in that timeframe and meet the commitments I’ve already made.” Because without these signals of overload flowing up to the decision makers, they will have no reason to consider pushing out that exciting opportunity until next quarter, or choosing a project to take off the list, if a better one needs to be added.
Being willing to say “No” rather than over-commit, taking the initiative to create a climate where it is safe to say “No”, this is the leadership that is going to be needed to get things back into balance. Another solution is for everyone to “get creative” and figure out how to accomplish more with less, but this type of creativity does not occur when everyone is over-committed. Organizations are going to need the following to come out of this current business cycle and stay on top of their game: operating from commitments; each individual managing commitments really well; team members holding each other accountable for their commitments; and creative solutions to breakdowns. Who is going to lead?
Davos 2012: The Ultimate Stakeholder Analysis
Posted by: Timm J. Esque | Posted on: March 20th, 2012 | 0 Comments
I had the opportunity to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland at the end of January. I had decided I wasn’t going to blog about it, after all, I was there as a “spouse,” it was my wife who was invited. Having made this disclosure, I will say that unlike any other conference I’ve ever been to, spouses are not only allowed, but encouraged to participate fully in the sessions and evening soirees. So I had the Davos experience, and when I saw this article in the New Yorker Magazine this week, I was inspired to put in my two cents. Take a look at that article first if you have few minutes.
Let me begin by admitting that mixing in the circles of the famous and powerful is not my comfort zone. Since my wife is an Executive at a well known Fortune 100 company, I am thrown into those circles periodically and I’ve learned to hold my own. I am much more drawn to the “Magic Mountain” side of Davos – the one referred to in the New Yorker article title. The Magic Mountain is a reference to Thomas Mann’s novel of the same name. It is one of my favorite books and I read it every few years. The critics insist the book is an allegory for pre-WWI Germany. But to me it is a 700 plus page exploration of the contrast between fully engaging in society vs. living the secluded life of the mind. I occasionally wish I could withdraw, live in the mountains, and simply research and write about human organizing. Technology is making it easier to do that. The problem is that you don’t really learn anything by simply generating and espousing ideas, you have to put them in play.
So I was destined to mesh with “society on steroids,” but first I made a pilgrimage to the Berghotel Schatzalp, The former respiratory sanatorium (now a hotel) up above the valley of Davos that inspired the setting for Mann’s novel. The place was fittingly huddled in snow and practically deserted. We had a wonderful lunch overlooking the narrow mountain valley with the “model train set” town below and the ski slopes on the other side. Then it was time to take the funicular down to fully engage with the society’s upper crust.
Upon my return, friends and colleagues wanted to know what it was like. For me, it was reading about world events in the Herald Tribune at breakfast each morning, and then seeing and sometimes meeting both the people you read about and the people who wrote the articles. It was similar to being at other educational conferences in the daytime, except when you realized after the fact that the leader of your breakout group was Chairman and CEO of some household name company. It was a competition of evening parties. Yes, we were at that party where Mick Jagger was dancing, but not when he was there. We did meet Fareed Zakaria at that party and found him to be as sincere and down to earth as he is in his global reporting. There was some excess – they were serving 25-year old single malt scotch over fist-sized chunks of glacial ice at that party. I’ve been driving a compressed natural gas Civic for over 10 years in order to save those glaciers, so I figured the glaciers owed me one fist-sized chunk.
What does any of this have to do with stakeholder analysis? The New Yorker article credits Klaus Schwab with founding WEF but neglects to describe where his credibility came from and why he started it. Schwab made his name by pointing out the value of understanding who our stakeholders are for getting things done in organizations and in the world. Not a trivial contribution. And he put his theory into practice by creating a meeting place for people with large stakes in the global economy (back in the ‘70’s when not many people thought about it as a global economy). Interestingly, as the economy has turned truly global, Klaus realized that everybody has a stake, and he has slowly been making WEF much more inclusive. In amongst the world leaders, conglomerate CEOs, financiers, pundits and academics are representatives of NGOs, charitable foundations, emerging technologies, educators, youth entrepreneurs, social entrepreneurs, etc.
The New Yorker article cautions that a person cannot possibly fathom what WEF is from only one visit. But I’ll take a stab anyway. The world economic forum is a market. It is a market where money meets ideas and in this case large amounts of money meeting potentially very impactful ideas. Money is an integral part of what puts ideas into play, so without markets like WEF more good ideas will go unimplemented. And as long as all the stakeholders have a voice (representation), better ideas should bubble up to the top. And we all have a stake in that.