Schlagwort-Archive: Micro-managers

The kick in the so-called – the ideal metaphor for a disturbance

The outcome of decades of standardization is bureaucracy in all areas. This is manifested in regulations that are supposed to prevent the misconduct of a vanishing minority. However, all employees and decision-makers are affected and are thus deprived of any scope for action. The result is an even distribution of inactivity within the area. This organizational rigidity is only prevented by disturbances – such as a kick in the so-called.

Preposterously, those responsible avert/-void disruptions like the devil the holy water. In doing so, they overlook that they thereby create an equilibrium of immovableness by punishing the one who moves first. The only way to escape this vicious circle is to stir up the action, for example, through disruptions.

  • It takes more than one
    People are driven by their motives. The result is several, often different interests in one group. The whole expands thereby its possibilities – as long as the individual interests are not held back. This is an important reason to always include several people in the team, even if one nevertheless takes the lead – responsibility is not sharable according to the Highlander principle.
  • Ensure diversity
    The more diverse the participants, the more varying are the suggestions. Exclusion no longer offers those die-hards the self-protection that like-minded people provided. On the contrary, it is business suicide to strive for homogeneity of opinions because mutual backslapping increases entropy. Other views are not seen, and the opportunities for diversity are not exploited, leading to homemade failure. Ensure your employees cover diverse genders, ages, worldviews, and operational functions, and take advantage of diverse perspectives.
  • Appreciate surprises
    In the past, one of the worst misconducts was not having avoided surprises. The extent to which an unexpected circumstance was foreseeable or not, did not matter. You were accused of covering up bad news, of not having confidence, or at least of not enough covering up your bets to be able to report changes early on. For you, it is critical to build an open-minded error culture that forgives mistakes and perceives them as learning opportunities and build the skills to see trouble coming – e.g., through proactive stakeholder management.
  • Rethink feedback
    Avoiding the exchange of ideas, sketches, concepts, and results is natural self-protection to safeguard oneself from criticism. This stumbling block is a crazy mindset that assumes that others are opponents, complaints are meant to harm you, and that your fulfillment of tasks will be disrupted as a result. You should do everything to be able to use these opportunities easier. Values and rules help thereby for exchanging good feedback. Feedback from others should be clear, factual, non-judgmental, exchanged promptly and privately without toxic feedback on feedback.
  • Disorder is the intermediate goal
    Remember, the goal is to maintain creative chaos that prevents participants from sinking into inertia. The ultimate results should be as free of clutter as possible and deliver customers the output that they paid for – not excessively more, certainly not less. The intermediate goal is a work product that serves to ameliorate. As a leader, you are the deciding factor. On the one hand, you must ensure fruitful disorder by assuming the role of Advocatus Diaboli, if necessary, to disrupt fatigue among those involved. Above all, you must endure the created disorder and resist the impulse of a micromanager to interfere in the employee’s activities.

Bottom line: Contrary to the preconception that disorder is a bad thing, leaders should learn to harness the power of other, sometimes contradictory, opinions. Power seekers suppress any engagement from people who think differently than they do. This no longer fits into an age in which everything is in rapid motion. It is better to uncover and react to counterarguments within the team than to be accused for them later when everything is already moving in the wrong direction. For this reason, it always takes more than one to solve tasks. Work teams should be as diverse as possible in every respect, as this allows different views and weaknesses to be grasped more quickly. If surprises still happen, then this is the earliest time to locate difficulty and take countermeasures. To exchange opinions smoothly, an open feedback culture is needed. The many intermediate results become mature for discourse through the above measures. Eventually, the customer deliverable should be shaped at best and backed by all. A disturbance shakes up the lethargy of a harmony-cluttered workgroup like a kick in the so-called. This makes it the ideal metaphor for a disturbance.

BMX – the ideal metaphor for agility

Bicycles are a good example of how everything is becoming more and more fragmented. Here a small change and there a new principle and I already have a recumbent that connects a relaxed seating position with even therapeutic effects, increases safety and lowers the effects of accidents. The so-called track bicycle is designed to turn consistently fast laps – without brakes and gear shift. Due to the support of an electric drive, more and more people have rediscovered the bicycle, the e-bike. The technical possibilities are brought to the limits with the BMX bike – special materials and everything that increases the stability of axles, fork, crank and pedals.
The BMX bike shows its strengths in any terrain, in the city and in the hall. The riders master their bikes in all imaginable situations – halfpipes, stairs, and mountain tops and in the forest. This makes BMX (Bicycle Motocross) the ideal metaphor for agility.

However, the benefits of the BMX bike do not automatically make it the best bike for all applications. The same applies to agility in the company. Agility is hard to get working in the following cases.

  • Governance is binding
    The corset of rules and standards take companies the creative breath away. There is no room for agility, as innumerable external and internal regulations must be followed. The agile employees run the risk to break one or the other law out of ignorance – which of course constitutes misbehavior of the employee. Imagine a BMX rider worrying about compliance – and agility is nipped in the bud.
  • Processes set a stable framework
    The procedures are the determined steps for the most effectual action. Doing the right thing right is the corresponding mantra. After many years, these processes have been buried deep into a company. Always the same procedure can be handled in the shortest possible time with the least effort. Special cases bounce off the crash barriers and are therefore made impossible. Let’s imagine a BMX rider on a highway – and his willingness to bring in agility evaporates.
  • Hierarchs will not let go
    Big companies have a natural tendency to build a hierarchy. The officials receive special privileges – selected rewards and insignia of power (e.g., company cars, assistants, bonuses). They should make decisions, lead others and be responsible for the results. If you leave the task, the authority, and responsibility to the employees, it leads to fear of loss of the bosses, because they do not recognize what would continue to justify their status. Imagine a BMX rider who has to get permission to change direction – and all the manifestations of agility disappear.
  • Micro managers strive for total control
    A more complicated special case are the micro managers, who interpret their task in such a way that they have to influence everything down to the smallest detail (see also here). Cutting a long story short: Imagine the BMX rider with someone who constantly grabs the wheel – and already the agility lies on the ground.
  • Who doesn’t act at all makes no mistakes
    It is clear that the big companies counteract the image of the business servant. The path of least resistance is the result of our natural anxiety that is deeply rooted in our brain stem. There are many arguments to avoid acting and thereby making no mistakes – except perhaps the mistake of doing nothing. If one is then required by superiors to act in a certain way, they have the responsibility. Imagine a BMX rider who is afraid to fall – and immediately any potential for agility freezes.

Bottom line: Of course, everybody wants the autonomous, self-employed, risk-taking employee, who would not be much different than a BMX rider. At the same time, the path in which the riders should move is cemented with regulations. On the flag is written agility. However, the conditions are against this approach. Strict governance limits the leeway. Processes and their IT implementations determine every step. The leaders are not ready to let go and involve themselves at all levels. The employees have found their workaround – around the work. Agility can not function with these conditions. Just as a BMX rider can not act properly in a straitjacket. Since BMX clarifies the boundaries of the entrepreneurial actions of individual employees, BMX is the ideal metaphor for agility.