In early 2009 at Google, "statisticians . . . embarked on a plan code-named Project Oxygen. The 'people analytics' teams at the company produced what might be called the Eight Habits of Highly Effective Google Managers. 'My first reaction was, that’s it?' says Laszlo Bock, Google’s vice president . . . for human resources. 'The starting point was that our best managers have teams that perform better, are retained better, are happier — they do everything better,' Mr. Bock says. 'So the biggest controllable factor that we could see was the quality of the manager, and how they sort of made things happen. The question we then asked was: What if every manager was that good? And then you start saying: Well, what makes them that good? And how do you do it?' He tells the story of one manager whose employees seemed to despise him. He was driving them too hard. They found him bossy, arrogant, political, secretive. They wanted to quit his team. 'He’s brilliant, but he did everything wrong when it came to leading a team,' Mr. Bock recalls. Because of that heavy hand, this manager was denied a promotion he wanted, and was told that his style was the reason. But Google gave him one-on-one coaching — the company has coaches on staff, rather than hiring from the outside. Six months later, team members were grudgingly acknowledging in surveys that the manager had improved." (1)
Analysis:
"What if every manager were good?" sounds a lot like "What is everyone were above average?" I suppose there will always be the proficient and lacking in any profession. Even then, some organizations would be better managed that others. Corporate culture has a bearing on such differences, even among supervisors. For example, more than one American company probably has a culture in which supervisors view training as the way to correct an employee's bad attitude toward customers. This sense of "bad" is different than "bad" as in incompetent, and even in this sense training may not be sufficient.
For instance, once at a grocery store at night I encountered both a cashier and the customer-service person who did not know how to calculate a "rain check." I was stunned that when I pointed out the most basis of mistake, the two people had blank stares. I politely told them I had to go; I had realized that a transaction would not be likely that evening. The next day, I spoke with the "front line" supervisor, who agreed with me that the incompetence had been "off the charts," and yet she said that during a few hours in the evening, that customer-service employee was in charge in the cashier area. The manager could not do anything about it. Clearly, the management of the store was bad in terms of managerial competence. In fact, as past experience at Walmart stores taught me, incompetence can be so bad, so far removed from that which is customary and thus expected, that horrendous incompetence may itself be unethical. Typically, unethical retail conduct is limited to attitude and related bad conduct toward customers.
To get good managers, including supervisors, we must consider in what sense good. Good-hearted? Good as in having mastered managerial skills? Good as in having a good style that fits the particular corporate culture? The question of what makes a manager good hinges on what is meant by "good." Of course, all of these senses of good are important, and not even incompetence can necessarily be cured with training.
In the case of the bossy and arrogant manager at Google, I contend that what was "bad" was not limited to or sourced in his style; rather, the problem was his personality, which transcends style. Arrogance, for example, is a basic attitude rather than a style. It is no surprise that "coaching" (a misnomer or bad analogy outside of sports) did not turn the guy around. Perhaps the guy needed therapy or counseling. That Google would reduce a "bad" personality to a leadership style and prescribe "coaching" rather than a therapist is no accident.
It is commonly taught in business schools and believed in business settings that the science of management is applicable for virtually any business in any industry. In fact, one can theoretically manage a "team" (another misnomer from sports being used out of context) without having any skill or knowledge particular to the product. The idea, in short, is that anything --and virtually anyone (certainly anyone who has been hired!) be managed by being (re-)trained. Just as it is assumed that a person with a Masters in Business Administration (MBA) can manage organizations in virtually any industry (i.e., without necessarily knowing much about the product coming in or even well into the job of managing), having a bad (in any sense) employee re-trained is often the default route.
It is often assumed, for instance, that training and even re-training can be efficacious with anyone. From my observations of the cashier and the supervisor on duty in the grocery store, I would hope that the store manager would consider that some people, even hired ones!, may not be educated or intelligent enough to comprehend and apply the re-training. It is as if managers conveniently assume that their company's hiring process is so good that training should be all that is necessary for any employee. Alternatively, a short-sighted mentality, especially concerning money, may be behind the view of training as a cure-all, for to fire and re-hire is, or should be, a considerable process.
So, what is actually a psychological problem is thus transmuted into managerial terms such as "style" in need of "coaching." Personality, in other words, is reduced to the extent to which it fits within management. Moreover, reducing managing to behaviors, as if that which is inside the manager is a black box, is to ignore that which separates the mice from the men as managers in terms of getting along with others (i.e., "good" as interpersonal relations), not having a trivial or short-sighted lack of perspective. Improving a manager's "style" by trying to change (manipulate?) her behavior is apt to be insufficient. It is like paddling a row boat without moving the anchor; the boat isn't going to move very far. The anchor must move too, and, well, there are limits to what management, and especially retraining, can do in that respect. Often time in badly managed businesses, the hiring process is flawed such that bad (in any sense) people get in, whether as managers, supervisors or employees.
With this in mind, I turn now to critique the "Eight Good Behaviors" that the good people at Google recommend.
- Be a good coach. Included: provide specific feedback without being too negative and "present" solutions to problems. But isn't this just management? I don't see much substance in the term transferred from sports(i.e., what coaches actually do).
- Empower your team and don't micromanage. Freedom vs. advice. Challenge the "team" with "big" problems. This sounds like something written by a "team" of school teachers to their young students. Empower is a faddish politically-correct term that is rarely adequately defined. With regard to micromanaging, every micro-manager I have encountered has had control issues--meaning psychological problems involving or impacting personality and interpersonal conduct (not rooted in conduct, or style!).
- Express interest in team members' success and personal well-being. Get to know about their lives outside of work and make new team members feel welcome. Helping new people to feel welcome is laudable; it is perhaps the area where a manager can truly be most human. Success, however, is a vague term implying an ending (e.g., Did you succeed in getting the kids to sleep last night?), whereas business typically is ongoing and thus not like a race or contest after which contestants can know if they won. Furthermore, when used more broadly than in regard to a specific project or plan, success is too vague. With regard to getting to know things about subordinates outside of work, including their personal well-being, some subordinates may feel pressured to say more than they would like, given the power differential. Also, the "authentic" questions may come with a hidden agenda--namely, to manipulate the subordinates so they will want to stay at the company and be more productive.
- Don't be a sissy: Be productive and results-oriented. Focus on the "team" setting achievement goals and priorities. We are back to elementary-school language (e.g., sissy) and to what is essentially management itself (producing results, not visions). A business is a results-oriented enterprise. A focus "on what employees want the team to achieve" belies a manager's true intention to set goals for his or her subordinates so they will pay more attention to results and thus be more productive. Having "the team" set its own goals and priorities can itself be understood as a motivating tool as long as the goals and priorities are approved by the manager. The patina of democracy or decentralized decision-making is often a manipulative sham designed to get more production.
- Be a good communicator and listen to the team. Two-way communication. "Hold all-hands meetings and be straightforward" in communicating . . . Encourage open dialogue and listen." All-hands? At any rate, should we really be encouraging managers to have more meetings? Being straightforward is laudable, however, as is open dialogue. The question is perhaps whether this is even possible where managers view their subordinates as lower. In other words, can there be straightforward dialogue where there is a power relation between boss and employee?
- Help your employees with career development. Here too, the difficult matter of being able to be straightforward is relevant, given how organizational politics (i.e. collusion or friendship) and a manager's own career interests can all too easily relate to others' career development, possibly resulting in problems for the friend or ally once he or she has been elevated to more difficult tasks.
- Have a clear vision and strategy for the firm even in the midst of turmoil. Involve the team in setting the vision. Grouping together strategy and vision ignores the vital distinction between management and leadership. My dissertation presents a model by which integrity (i.e., ethical principles) can moderate between the interests of strategic management and leadership vision. The latter is not the same as long-term strategy; rather, vision is an ideal, for which strategy is a means to. The leadership vision of large companies like Google includes the company's place or role at a societal level, such that the vision extends to the societal level. Hence the vision is set at the top, typically by the CEO and perhaps even the chairman of the board, so the notion that a "team" lower down sets the vision is simply wrong; it is a consequence of obfuscating management and leadership, an epidemic in American business. It also follows that vision is not the same as long-term strategic goals; this conflation is also a result of fusing management and leadership. Strategic leadership has two main components, which are distinct. In fact, they can be in tension. Reconciling a credible societal vision with pressing strategic interests can be difficult because upholding the integrity of a vision can involve short- and medium-term costs that are at odds with budgets ensuing from corporate strategy. Google's grouping of vision and strategy ignores this tension. Just in using the term "vision," Google is using yet another vague analogy that has been a fad since the 1980's. How does a vision differ from coming up with a goal? Has anyone in the study of leadership defined vision? Regarding faddish words used as weak analogies, people can use them without knowing what they mean! Lastly, the use of the word turmoil, as if it were only occasional rather than the typical condition of the business environment, over-dramatizes the need for someone at the helm. Even a turbulent business environment pales in comparison with havoc in and following the protests in the Middle East and the Japanese earthquake in 2011. Lest it be assumed that turmoil has increased over the decades, plenty of oil refiners and producers were going out of business amid the destructive competition of the 1860's. This was Rockefeller's rationale for creating a refining monopoly--a justification he used to act in contradiction to even his own vision of himself as a Christian "helping" competitors from going under. Turbulence can be used an excuse.
- Have key technical skills so you can help advise the team. Work side by side with your subordinates when and understand the work they are doing. This principle, or "habit," challenges the notion that a person can learn management skills and apply them to virtually any business--knowledge of how to make the particular product being unnecessary. I suspect this is an American view of management. The Japanese have traditionally hired managers from the factory floor precisely because they are familiar with the technical skills being used to make the particular products. Even so, Japan has not been without cases of horrendously incompetent management. A good manager, I contend, is one who is already proficient with most of the tasks of his or her subordinates and can therefore help out when needed. So it would appear that Google got one right.
