Management Reports

Management reports remind me of the peephole in my front door. I seldom see anything I recognize.

Management reports are backward-looking documents, rehashing the recent past. Often used as part of a roll-up, by people charged with repeating others’ reports, usually without understanding them. (See GIGO)

At best, they represent 90 minutes of diversion condensing the last 50 hours/30 days/90 days of work.

Worse is a response of “Let’s discuss,” which turns into hours of the dance of gray fantasy, “Tell me what you want, I’ll agree.” A smart economist told me last month, “You don't torture a dataset until it confesses.”

If the right answers were available, don’t you think I’d have put ’em in there? I wrote one of these reports last week.

Ever notice that when the right answers are available, they are no longer worthy of the report? We’ve already moved to a next stage.

“Just checking, did we get through the next gate when I wasn’t paying attention?” It’s a management fantasy, like being on a cruise ship and waking up in a new port.

If you weren’t going to use management reports to reverify known history again, or trying to change reality to observers’ preconceptions, what might you do?

I’ve always found management reports are light on senior commitments, “When I come down the trail, hotly pursued by the entire population of hostiles, you’re sure you will have that skyhook rented and ready?” 

“I assure you, we’ll really try our best!”

Or what about celebration? The middle of a project can get kind of dreary, or it can be wonderful. That’s up to manglement. Which do you think gets you better work product?

Heck, something good must have happened, otherwise how will we remember what good is?

If you’re just going to roll up your GIGO, how about supplying some top down information that improves strategy, speed, or safety? Best practices are either blindingly obvious or they’re fiction. Best practices are hard work, a lot like blogging, and that’s why we pay the top guys the big bucks.

How would you improve this list?

Tips 4 The Big Chair – Goodness that will curl your toes!

Backhoes and Bureaucracy

We use tools because they make us more efficient, able to get more done, with less effort.

I use tools a lot, for construction, software development, management, leadership, organizing, travel, and I appreciate mechanics who can really use a tool.

I worked a summer with Sterling Guthrie, backhoe artist. He had a totally different way of thinking about work and a more creative relationship with gravity than did men who stood on the ground. He would use his backhoe for up, down, sideways, and twist, saving hundreds of man hours and increasing the production and safety of our crew. Sterling got more completed work out of his backhoe than any man I’ve known.

I was remembering Sterling last week while I was on a Caribbean cruise. Every time we left or came back on the ship we ran a security gauntlet. Ship’s crew, mainly from the Philippines and Eastern Europe, ran us through a scanner at a brisk pace, 100% document check, speaking to each of us by name, actively looking for signs of “not right.” They were smiling, because smiling increased their engagement with each passenger, they were engaged because they were going to be on the ship if anything went wrong, they were establishing personal connections because that is what experience professionals do.

For that cruise, we started from the Port of Baltimore, saving time, complexity, and the security-by-threat of air travel. That was a major bonus.

While I was on the cruise I got to think about why our government had shut down my municipal golf course, memorials, cultural institutions. How had they ever gotten authority to spread that misery?

I remembered a conversation with an in-law a couple of years ago. He was explaining the healthy pay bump he got from carrying a gun to his job, “I’m not a toll collector, I’m a bridge guard!” I couldn’t help myself, “Really? How many get away?”

When we came back, we went through US Customs, after 6 runs through private security screening that week. This time there was no engagement, no encouragement, with a crew who had decided our security was best protected by being unhappy and uninvolved.

Providing negative reinforcement, making no reinforcement the desired state, misses half the available reinforcement response. Our official customs experience was a little less efficient than an open doorway.

I used to accept the occasional government foul up as a part of being a citizen. As business and social groups have gotten more efficient, the government I interact with has lowered their successful completion baseline, while increasing their citizen-threat behavior.

A bureaucracy is a tool, just like a backhoe. If the operator can’t provide value while delighting the customer, it’s time to get another operator.

Sometimes you have to Drop The Other Shoe

Logistics

A Full Bird in the Pentagon said, “All computing is logistics.” Since he was a customer, he wasn’t wrong. The customer may not always be right, but they are never wrong.

Figuring that code is the record of culture, perhaps logistics is more.

Jack and I are watching the crash-and-burn of four organizations. Previously successful efforts, crashing vigorously.

They are each useful, fill a need, and are leaving a lot of anxious customers.

In each case, management got bored with logistics, the blocking and tackling of doing the business. They started focusing on something grander.

A couple of years ago, United had a commercial, black and white, about a manager saying business was down. And they were going to come back. So he started handing out airline tickets to go see the customers. And things were going to get better.

I liked that commercial. I see too many people with an intense internal focus.

Reports aren’t work. Reports are reports of work.

How much of your day adds value? Do you even have a working definition of value?
“Um, good coffee. Tasty!”

Perfecting logistics can make a healthy organization.

What Happened To The Management Pyramid?

Trustworthy

I was reading Reagan In His Own Hand, a collection of drafts Ronald Reagan wrote for his radio show and other presentations. The premise of the 550 page book is that since the talking heads knew Reagan was a dolt, it might be interesting to see what he actually wrote.

I never heard his radio show, and even today I would rather read a transcript than listen to a podcast, so this was fun for me.

I saw how Reagan developed a strong sense of what worked and what didn’t in this world interviewing and analyzing people who were making things happen. How he adjusted his views as he discovered new data.

When he later had an off-the-cuff observation (or “soundbite” as the talking heads say), it wasn’t a first time thought, it was the result of years of study.

Can’t Get A Break Department:

From Praise for Reagan, In His Own Hand (blurbs in the front of the book),

“These speeches certainly show what the (book) editors contend: ‘The wide reading and deep research self-evident here suggest a mind constantly at work.’ How come I – and my colleagues – never discovered these Reagan depths? To use another response that sounds like Reagan: ‘It beats me.’”

- Godfrey Sperling, The Christian Science Monitor

No shame, no embarrassment, no outrage at revealing yourself as a lightweight. My spiritual counselor calls it “surface thinking.”

Back in the late ’60’s, I was a journalist, and the only way I could get accurate reporting on Vietnam was Nat Hentoff in the Village Voice. A jazz columnist, fer cryin’ out loud, who was angry enough to wade through the disinformation to get pieces of the story.

Knowing more didn’t make me popular, kinda made me sad, and greatly reduced the surprises. Same way I felt reading Reagan In His Own Hand.

Today the trustworthy news I find comes largely from bloggers. Solution oriented thinking comes mostly from bloggers. Examples of good behavior comes from bloggers.

But if you want to have a simple solution that exercises your emotions, without getting the details right, try a news outlet. They are in the business of selling hope and pills.

The Internet makes everything available, Finding trustworthy information takes work. Why would you want the right stuff?

WordPictures – Phrases That Lit The Bulb

Thank Goodness for Customers

We truly appreciate our customers for buying our goods and services – without them we would merely have a hobby instead of a business.

However, customers provide us with several valuable resources and contributions which may not be as obvious...less top-of-the-head mindfulness on our part.

• Customers keep us sharp and competitive – they have an expectations of us for providing value, quality, and service
• Customers tell others about our goods and services – bragging on our behalf when we exceed their expectations; warning others when we don't
• Customers give us feedback and suggestions – good, bad, or indifferent, they periodically have something to say and share it with us
• Customers like value, but expect fairness – when something goes wrong they expect a fair, hassle-free solution
• Customers demonstrate affiliation and loyalty by alerting us of problems or situations – often they are the first to report a problem with our on-line presence or alert us early about things like an emerging trend in slow delivery
• Customers realize we're not always perfect but expect us to strive toward practical perfection – how quickly do we identify and correct problems; are we innovating by adopting proven new technology
• Customers want to be treated with respect and consideration – they expect to us to follow up on commitments – like a promised return call or sending additional information
• Customers like simple and easy transactions – simple items like recognizing a returning customer so we can complete routine and contact information from stored data
• Customers return to buy again where they have a relationship and receive value, quality, and service – we can control all these variables.

Organizations that recognize the value of the customer beyond just today’s sale have a precious resource to aid in their success – like the 12^th player on the field for some football teams – the fans – which have a huge influence on the outcome of the game by being engaged and enthusiastic.

Organizations with no direct customers, or who do not recognize the contributions by the customers, will have a harder time achieving success. Know of any?

Philosopher George Santayana said: those who do not learn from history are obliged to repeat it mistakes – a business corollary of today is: organizations who do not recognize the value of listening to their customers are bound to make the same mistakes repeatedly, but not to the same customers (they have moved on).

Sales Lab Posts – a fresh outlook