Boomerang Management

Boomerang Kids are adult children who move back into the family home, usually a sign of a weak economy. I loved Terry Bradshaw parading around nekkid in the Fish Room in Failure to Launch.

So here’s a new term, Boomerang Management, for when a former management team comes back and takes over because the current team isn’t getting the results desired. The beatings will continue until morale improves.

Often these “boomers” still have significant equity tied up in their former venture.

Frequency? I’m seeing better than one a month.

Outcome? Generally worse than existing. Times have changed, most groups have undergone a radical transformation, most of all the environment these organizations operate in has changed forever.

I was working with a group that got thrown back earlier this year. The former CEO came back from a long retirement with a secret sauce – outbound cold call phone solicitation to businesses! Enough of this social web nonsense! This was the core of the organization!

It took five weeks to hire four and fire six. They hadn’t counted on voicemail.

It’s an executive-centric business view, that the economy rotates around a prime mover with sufficient strength, knowledge, and skills. There’s some kind of echo from when the Pope arrested Galileo for saying the Earth orbits around the Sun.

No matter how hard the Pope protested, solar-centric was the only way the math worked.

Your Boomerang Management sightings?

Pirate, Executive, or Administrator?

I see three solutions for many positions. I first noticed this model when we were bringing up the cellular industry, for CEO positions, but have since seen it for many positions in many industries.

The Pirate

A leader in starts and turnarounds, keeps the tribe together with vision, hacks, and personal examples. Budgets are theoretical, because we’re working new situations. There is never enough resource, so we have to apply whatever we’ve got to what we need to get to the next step. Kara Swisher’s AOL.COM: how Steve Case beat Bill Gates,nailed the netheads, and made millions in the war for the Web is a great book showing this type of leadership

The Executive

Makes the most of an existing operation, bringing economical systems and delegation. Has the advantage of historical performance to improve against, often scaling is a major accomplishment. Jack Welch in his heyday defines this behavior for me.

The Administrator

Doing more with less has been the mantra for over a decade. Occasionally I’ve seen fat organizations, but more often I’ve watched poorly defined missions exited. I’ve also seen how this mindset causes organizations to disregard achievable, mission saving strategies. The Administrator often leads to entropy, and is followed by ceasing operations or transferring assets to someone who can create more value with them.

I was explaining this to one of my favorite Pirates last week. Times are hard, and he was trying to sell himself into an Administrator position. Had he grown the company, he would have created havoc. The owners had an emotional attachment to tanking.

After I explained the model and what was expected, he said, “Now why would I want to do that?”

What do your people expect?

Guarding The Fort

I was working with the management team of a regional company. Their major assets are their facilities, and they work hard to make sure that each facility is the best in its market.

I knew I was in for a treat when the CEO opened the meeting, saying, “We’re doing very well right now, but if we don’t stop doing what we’re doing we’re going to go out of business.” Yow!

As the team spent a couple of hours defining their individual and collective strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, a common theme emerged. This team had worked so hard to perfect their operations, the next step was going to be to make that better known in their communities.

“My people think I have an easy job, I just get in my truck and go out a couple of times a week,” one manager (the first to embrace outside responsibilities) said. “I don’t think my people have the stamina to do what I do every week.”

Maintaining “The Fort” could easily fill all time available. Yet maintaining is not be the same as building their fort. They began putting a change plan together to maintain their existing superiority, while bringing their people out into the community on a managed basis.

Do you have an important activity that is keeping you from being successful?

Moving Forward Is Bottom Up

Jesse asked, “How do I get my best performers to take on new tasks? They are my best performers because they are fully engaged. By definition, they don’t have extra time for anything new.”

Fair enough. We can’t get anything more from them without dropping something. And without adopting new capabilities, the organization dies. Recognize the ol’ horns of the dilemma?

But wait! Adopting new skills is not just done by the fortunate, the favored few! Adopting new skills is the target culture. Culture eats strategy for breakfast.

So adopting new skills starts on the bottom, and giving up skills, which means teaching all you know, starts at the next level up. Which means one reason you want to learn it is because you expect to teach it. Again and again. Now that’s a kickin’ culture!

Learn, do, teach has re-entered the building.

Frank Herbert writes, “Delegate heavily to only the same people and you fell into bureaucracy.” and also, “Remember: Bureaucracy elevates conformity... Make that elevates 'fatal stupidity' to the status of religion.” And that was written during the somnolent sixties (current prequels excepted).

In order to have room to expand, make a habit of giving away the safe, secure activities to people who are new to them, who have a fresh view to improve them, and go grow some funk of your own.

Moving forward is bottom up.

October 9^th is the next Capital Technology Management Hub featuring Sales Lab's Rainmaker 16 LinkedIn – Your Personal Publicist - 300 seconds of pure profit. The main speaker will be Phil Smith of Voltage Security, Inc., presenting The Payments Ecosystem Security Challenges in the 21st Century.