Herb Koplowitz_Radio interview on Accountability

Speaker A The Internet's only all business and financial radio network, Voice America business.

Speaker B Welcome to the new Management Network with your hosts Don and Bonie Folk. This program will help you get the competitive upper hand in your organization. Now here are your hosts, Don and Bonie folk.

Speaker C Hello, my name is Don Folk. I'm a management consultant in Toronto and I'm here with my professional and life partner, Bonnie Folk.

Speaker D And I'm Bonnie Folk. Our guest today is Herb Copolowitz, a member of the new Management network and president of Terra Firma Management Consulting in Toronto. Today we will explore the benefits of accountability, why it is so rarely practiced, and what needs to happen for being accountable to organization effectiveness, efficiency and trust. Herb was born in the Bronx, New York, and holds a ba in mathematics and philosophy from Cornell University, a phd in psychology from the University of Massachusetts, and is registered as an organizational psychologist in Toronto, Ontario. He is trained in requisite organization and marketing research. It's good to have you with us today, Herb.

Speaker E Good to be here. Thanks.

Speaker D Great. Our show today is going to be in a conversation with you in three segments. First, we'll be asking you about the kind of work you do. Second, we'll find out about accountability, why it is important and why it is so difficult to establish. And thirdly, we're going to probe what kind of results you get, how accountability is supported in organizations, and what benefits both employers and employees get from clarifying it. So, Don, over to you, Herb, I'd.

Speaker C Be interested in getting you just to tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came to be working in this area, coming from an esoteric background in mathematics, philosophy and psychology.

Speaker E Right. Well, I think some of that goes back longer than we need to go, but let me just start things off. In the late 1980s, and this was a time when empowerment was coming along where team building first really started becoming a big thing to do. And I was involved in working with work groups, primarily doing outdoor team building and a variety of approaches that would build a spirit of customer service among employees, because this was sort of the beginning of the time when customer service really started hitting the big time among business concerns. And after a couple of years of this, it became very clear to me that we would do work, say, in a car dealership, and we'd have everyone from the dealership out for a team building weekend, and everyone got to know and really appreciate each other and appreciate the value of customer service. And we realized after a while you had to come in and visit the client within the next week because then everyone would still be on a high. But if you waited for another two or three weeks, you found that that high had a half life of about a week. And all of this stuff about knowing and appreciating each other, feeling responsible, believing you ought to feel trust, none of it stuck. And as I said, about a year and a half, two years into it, I realized that the missing piece was accountability. And just by coincidence, that was about when I first met Elliot Jacks. I know a number of people in this series are going to be talking about requisite organization, which he's the primary author of. And he grilled me for 3 hours on what I did, and every answer I gave I had to say embarrassed me because he kept bringing it back to accountability and clarity of concepts. And I left that meeting, this would have been in end of 1990. And I said, I cannot continue doing this. I need to learn how to help my clients exercise accountability in their companies, because otherwise nothing sticks. And that's how it started. And since then, I have been working with organizations big and small in just about every sector, helping them get clear on the, first of all, the structure they need to get their strategy implemented. So if your strategy calls for you to be at a certain place in your market in three years, that's very different than needing to get to a place in the market. That would take seven years, and it totally affects your structure. So how do you get a good structure? How do you clarify the roles within it? How do you choose the right people, people who are capable for those roles? And the last piece is accountability. How do you help managers? First of all, be clear in directing their subordinates. Here's what I need you to work on. Here's what I need you to accomplish. Second, supporting them, coaching them, making sure they get the resources they need. And the third part is holding them to account. And that's what I've been doing since the early 1990s.

Speaker C Interesting. I remember hearing Elliot Jacks talk a bit about his early experience when he was with the Tavistock Institute in the UK, and he was sent over to glacier metals to work on a team building type thing. I don't know that they called it that in those days, but it certainly had that touchy feely sense of group dynamics. And he worked with them a little bit. And then he finally, after listening to what the fellows were saying, he said, would it be true if the managing director here had given you clear accountabilities about what you were trying to do, that everything had fallen to place and we wouldn't need to be doing this? And they said, that's right. And it seems to me that he never turned back.

Speaker E No. And I have to say I haven't either since the first time I met him, because the Tavistock group was very interested in democracy in the workplace, and that's what I was doing in the late. He kind of cut that short for me.

Speaker C Interesting. I gather from what you were telling me the other day that you're just back from a session in Moscow where you've been probably in one of the great authoritarian capitals of the world helping them with this very topic. Can you tell us a little bit about that experience?

Speaker E Well, this was a whole new, I mean, I've traveled the world quite a bit and worked in a number of areas. This was a whole new, whole new culture, a whole new experience for me. And we have this notion of an authoritarian government. You know, it's, it's, they're over that, you know, in, in terms of the, their politics and so forth, they're going through many changes there. But there was a saying, and I'd heard this repeated when I was there, that in soviet times, in the communist rule, employees would say, well, you pretend to pay me and I pretend to work for you. And because pay was so low, there really wasn't that much you could do. You couldn't really expect much of the people, of the employees. And the difference now, Moscow was now the most expensive city in the world. And what I was told time and time again is people still expect to be able to do whatever they want to do, but now they demand a huge salary for it. And all of the issues I find about holding back accountability in North America, I found in spades in Russia, different flavor, different historical origins. But there, as in here, people believe that relationships are what's important, and it's what's important in the workplace. And I can't really hold someone accountable in any way that might be negative towards them because that could damage our relationship. And it's a huge factor in North America as well. So I found them actually struggling through many of the same issues that we face in North America.

Speaker C That's very interesting. So, Herb, what is accountability?

Speaker E Well, it is one of those terms, like many in the field of management, that has no common mean. Don, you're an engineer. If I were to ask you what force is or acceleration or velocity, you would give me the same definition that any engineer around the world would give. We don't have that luxury in management, so I can't give you the correct definition. There is none. But I'll tell you the definition I find useful and how it differs from some others and some other concepts. To begin with, Jax used to talk about responsibility as being a feeling of obligation. So responsibility is sort of a matter between me and my conscience. The way I use accountability and the way he did is that it's an aspect of a relationship. You cannot ask someone to be accountable. You can ask a manager to hold their subordinates accountable. But accountability is an aspect not of an individual, but of a. So what's the nature of that aspect of the relationship? I've read a number of people who say, well, really, it's just about clarity. And I think that's an important part. You can't have accountability, Don, if you're my manager, I can't have accountability within this unless I'm very clear on what you want me to accomplish, what you want me working on. Second aspect, and I've heard people, many people think of accountability as simply a matter of consequences. They'll say, well, we used to have our salespeople on straight salary, but now they're on commission. And we find sales have improved because there's accountability, meaning that if they sell more, they make more money. And I would agree, too, that consequences are part of accountability. But when I think of you, Don, as my manager, holding me accountable, let's say, for what my subordinates accomplish, because they're my resource. I'm the one who tells them what to do. There are two critical things here. One is that you don't simply count their outputs. You're not counting sales in order to set a commission for that based on some formula. You are judging how well I do this. You are saying, under these circumstances, gee, what kind of output could I expect Herb to get from the people he manages? And there's an aspect of judgment to this. And the second part is that the consequences are judged by you. And you take a look at the situation and you think about it and you say, what needs to happen to improve things. So again, there's not some formula that says, you sold so much, therefore, here's the total commission you get. But you're looking at it and you're saying, herb's done a good job here. I bet I could give him more work and more subordinates, and he could get even more done. That would be a consequence, a positive one. You might recommend me for a raise. You might recommend me for a promotion.

Speaker C Herb, I'm going to need to cut in here for a short break.

Speaker E Okay.

Speaker C But when we come back, let's finish up on accountability and find out, in your estimation, why it's so important.

Speaker E Okay.

Speaker A Money up to date business and financial news money call now and get the financial information you need. 8664-7257-9866-4725-79 Voice America Business.

Speaker F Technology is changing the way we live our lives and how we do business. On CIO Talk radio, we talk about the benefits of technology and the great things it allows us to do, as well as its risks. Heard every Wednesday at 09:00 a.m.. Central 07:00 a.m. Pacific. Sunzhou Gaul interviews business leaders and other experts that are shaping the way we use technology. To learn more about this show, visit www.ciotalkradio.com. Keep up with the changing world of technology and listen to CIO talk radio with Sunjo Golf. Listen in every Wednesday at 09:00 a.m. Central 07:00 a.m. Pacific right here on Voice America Business.

Speaker B The new Management Network is a distinctive peer group of independent management consultants who share common professional ideas, understand creative innovation and are dedicated to releasing the human spirit in organizations. Members of the network serve clients on issues of corporate purpose, strategic clarity, company wide alignment with direction, teamwork and organizational culture. We support executives to act quickly, directly and profitably on what needs to be done for success. Members practice throughout the world from offices in Beijing, Boulder, Cape Town, Cleveland, Costa Rica, Helsinki, Ottawa, Penticton, St. John's, Surrey, Sydney, Toronto and Vancouver. For details on services and members and articles and newsletters on management topics, visit newmanagementnetwork.com. That web address again for the new management network is www.newmanagementnetwork.com.

Speaker A Stocks, bonds, 401 ks investments refinancing we can help you. Call now toll free 8664-7257-9866-4725-79 Voice America business.

Speaker B You're listening to the new management network, bringing you practical insight into problem solving in a variety of business settings and management situations. Now back to your hosts, Don and Bonnie folk.

Speaker E So just to finish, Don, the consequences that you as my manager might judge might also be I think Herb ought to be able to get more output from his subordinates than he's getting. And the consequences might be you're going to coach me more, or you might send me on a course or ultimate. You might say, herb, this is the fifth time we've been through this. I don't see any improvement. I don't see any hope for improvement. I think you're in the wrong role, and you might remove me from role, but that would be your judgment. So accountability for me is you make it clear what you want me to accomplish. You judge how well I do it and you judge what consequences follow from.

Speaker D That.

Speaker C In this scheme, Herb, where is the role for initiative and self starter and so on? Is that crimped by this definition of accountability?

Speaker E That's wonderful. That's wonderful because. Wonderful question. Because I worry not knowing exactly who's going to be listening in on this when I talk in these terms, and I use a word like subordinate, which is just not politically correct these days, it has that feeling of what's called command and control. Jax firmly believed, and it certainly made sense for me, that as an employee, let's say I am accountable to you, Don, for three things. One of them is to work with full commitment on everything you tell me to do. A second is to stay within policy. And the third, really important, is to always give you my best advice, and you are accountable to your manager, not for accepting the advice. You still need to exercise judgment yourself, but you are accountable to be open to hearing my advice and to considering it. And then you make your judgment.

Speaker C I might say to you, I know you've asked me to do this, and so, Herb, but I think there's a better way.

Speaker E Oh, it's absolutely part of your job as an. I mean, so best advice comes in in a number of situations. One of them is within that task assignment process. And you tell me what you want me to accomplish. And I may say, don, I don't see how I can do that. Or you want me to do 20. I could do 30. Would you like me to do 30? Or I think there's a better way to get to the goal than by working on this stuff. And another context would be just out of the blue, I'm there working with my customers, whatever the situation is, and I get a brainstorm and I come back to you and I say, don, I think there's a new product we ought to be working on, and it's totally part of my job always, to give you my best advice.

Speaker C I'm glad you clarified that, Herb, because I recall a client you and I both worked on where the CEO had set the sort of cultural norm in the company, that he wanted goal clarity at the other end of the field, but he didn't care how you got downfield. And so I think I'm hearing you say this idea of accountability is not inconsistent with that.

Speaker E No. And of course, once you have delegated the task to me, you may have set some boundaries. As a simple example, you may have said you've got to use this software because everyone's using it, and the only way we're going to stay in communication. But once you've set the limits and told me what you want me to accomplish, it's then up to me to get the job done in the best way that I can figure out, because if you start telling me that, then you're doing my job, and that's where micromanagement comes in.

Speaker C Why is this so important to get right, Herb?

Speaker E Yeah, for four reasons, I think. The first is effectiveness. Again, if you're my manager, Don, then you've got certain strategic goals to reach. You have got to be holding me accountable for playing my part in reaching them, or else we may not get there. If you just count on my goodwill. I was just talking half an hour ago with a client who said, I started out in this, it was a small company business. He's now got about 180 employees, said, but when we started out, it's a small business, and we all just sort of pitched in. And you can do that in the startup phase of a company. You start getting, certainly beyond 50 employees, and you need to formalize things. And so you need to make clear to me what piece of the strategy you want me working on. Otherwise we won't reach strategic goals. Second part is efficiency. So if you're not holding me accountable for working as effectively as I can, and also holding me accountable to give you my best advice, there's bound to be waste, there's bound to be duplication. Third part is trust, and you alluded to that a little bit. In terms of the glasser metal story, I need to be clear on what it is you want me to do so that I have the security of knowing. As long as I do that well, I'm okay here. When we leave things fuzzy, ambiguous, that's when there's room for doubt, and that's where mistrust comes in. The other place where mistrust comes in is you're holding me accountable to get this done. But I'm dependent on someone in another department to help me out, let's say, by doing analyses. If they're not held accountable, I'm now left without resources. So actually, when you do this stuff well, and it's quite straightforward how to do it, when you do it well, it really builds up trust and respect. People fear that it's disrespectful, that it's, again, command and control or demeaning, but the clarity is what actually keeps people feeling safe, secure, and respected. The fourth part of this got an effective achievement of strategic targets doing that efficiently, doing that with trust and respect. And the fourth piece is this. If you're not holding me accountable, how do you know how good I am? If you're not holding me accountable to work effectively on the tasks you've assigned me, you don't actually know my full capability, and you don't know when the results aren't coming. Is the problem me? Is it you? Is it the process we use? So accountability is a key aspect in organizational improvement. So those, to me, are the major reasons why we need accountability and why.

Speaker C Is it so difficult to establish?

Speaker E All right, now I go back to a term I learned a number of years ago from Jerry Harvey, who's best known as the author of the Abilene Paradox. And he wrote a piece called musings on the elephant in the parlor, or who the devil is Elliot Jacks? And he introduced there a term called anaclesis, greek for lean on. We lean on concepts, and we lean on the ability to form relationships, to make sense of the world as a place where we can get our needs met and a place that's somewhat safe for us. I think managers today are analytically challenged, both in terms of relationship and in terms of concept, and that's what keeps them from holding people accountable. And I'll address these one at a time. Most managers, in my experience, when I talk with them, and as I said, accountability means that you've told me what you want me to accomplish. You're clear about that. Some managers are reluctant to do that, and they feel there's something impolite about telling someone what to do. And I think there's a lot of that feeling in North America. The other part is this. When you judge that I'm not doing this well, and you judge that this is the consequence that ought to come from it, you've got a fear that people will not like you or will not trust you because you're having the hard conversation with herb. And we all like Herb. And that fear of sitting alone at the office Christmas party, I think, is a major thing. I've talked many managers about this, and they all have this reluctance to have the hard conversation because they're afraid they'll be judged as a hard person, an untrustworthy person, someone you don't want as a manager. In reality, at the office Christmas party, when you have fired me because I have proven time after time that I'm really not the right person for this job, people will come up to you, Don, and know about Herb it was about time you did that. We've been waiting for you to get rid of him for a long time. Really, when managers, I think it's a myth that managers hold that they'll be judged harshly for holding subordinates to account. But I think the reality is quite the other way. But the other part is the concepts part, and I'm puzzling through this. Lately I was thinking about this radio show and trying to get my head around how do most managers, how do most executives think of the relationship of pay to what people actually do? Because it's funny when you look at even how we talk about it in the last few years, increasingly I see human resource departments having no longer someone in charge of comp and benefits, but a total rewards program. Or we'll talk about incentives. Now. When I think of the word reward, I think of a poster on a telephone pole with a photograph of a kitten and someone saying, $50 is a reward if you find and return my kitten to me, or one of those posters from the wild west of $100 reward for capture of an outlaw. A reward is something that you do that's sort of above and beyond. And yet we're talking about how do we reward people? When I believe the core concept of being an employee is I work with full commitment on everything you tell me to do. And again, I give you my best advice. And the same thing with the word incentives. An incentive is an encouragement to do something, and we go beyond that. In terms of encouragement, I mean, probably don, as management consultants, we're probably in the wrong field. We'd probably make more money as motivational speakers.

Speaker C I'm going to have to cut in here because we've got to take a short break. Okay, we'll come back and finish this segment up.

Speaker E Thank you. All right.

Speaker A From the stock market floor to your laptop, we are voice America business.

Speaker B The new management network is a distinctive peer group of independent management consultants who share common professional ideas, understand creative innovation, and are dedicated to releasing the human spirit in organizations. Members of the network serve clients on issues of corporate purpose, strategic clarity, company wide alignment with direction, teamwork, and organizational culture. We support executives to act quickly, directly, and profitably on what needs to be done for success. Members practice throughout the world from offices in Beijing, Boulder, Cape Town, Cleveland, Costa Rica, Helsinki, Ottawa, Penticton, St. John's, Surrey, Sydney, Toronto, and Vancouver. For details on services and members and articles and newsletters on management topics, visit. New management network that web address again for the new management network is www. New manageagement Network.

Speaker G From the vantage point, Mafatu saw six war canoes drawn upon the beach. But what held the boy's eyes in awful trance were the figures springing and leaping about, the flames, darting, shifting, pounding toward the sky, the eaters of men, cannibals. Firelight glistened on their oiled bodies, on flashing spears and bristling decorations. Mafatu watched the strange scene, powerless to move, and he felt doom itself breathing chill upon his neck. In that very instant, he heard a crashing in the undergrowth. Four figures were tearing toward him through the jungle. He could see them now. He turned and ran blindly down the trail, slipping, sliding, stumbling, his breath all but choking in his throat. Only one thought gave him courage as he ran his canoe, ready and waiting. If only he could reach it before.

Speaker E The savages overtook him.

Speaker G Explore new worlds. Find out what happens next by reading the book. Call it courage by Armstrong Sperry. For other great book ideas, visit literacy Gov. A message from the Library of Congress and the yard council.

Speaker A All we talk about is money. Call us toll free 866-47-2579 and talk to the experts. We talk money all the time. Voice America Business.

Speaker B You'Re listening to the new management network, bringing you practical insight into problem solving in a variety of business settings and management situations. Now back to your hosts, Don and Bonnie folk.

Speaker E So there's a lot in the field, in the literature of management and in management consulting on motivation. And this is one of the things Elliot Jax was very clear about and very vocal about, that motivation is the employee's job. One of the problems I encounter in having met him is that questions that used to make sense to me no longer make sense. In other words, I have a hard time picturing what do employees and what do managers think compensation accomplishes. In other words, if I'm an employee and I accept a salary, do I not expect that in exchange for that, I've given up certain freedoms and certain rights? Do I not understand that because I have this salary, I actually do have to do something that maybe isn't what I would choose to do on a Saturday afternoon. So the notion that I have to be motivated as an employee, that someone has to motivate me, it no longer makes sense to me. But I appreciate that. For the managers in the trenches, they're faced with subordinates who simply do not do their best. And there isn't a way of thinking, the whole way of thinking about things currently, and this is the conceptual end of the concept that Jerry Harvey was talking about, is my way of thinking about the workplace. My paradigm if you will, is something about people come to work, and as their manager, it's my job to motivate them to what I need them to do, to encourage them to do that, and really hope that they'll do it and that I won't break too many relationships when I tell them what I want them to do. There's either that or I get way on the other end and I'm very blustery and threatening. I think there are those two mindsets, neither of which really works for accountability. So there's a whole way of thinking that I think managers have to unlearn before they can actually learn how to do hold people to account. It may be worth giving you some of my recent experiences with this.

Speaker C That would be very good to hear that.

Speaker E Okay. And I'm going to start with a less than recent experience a few years ago where I would train managers in how to manage. In other words, if we talk about assigning a task to a subordinate, there's a very clear way of doing it that comes from requisite organization, from Jax's work, you set context, you tell the subordinate, here's the current situation, and you explain that in whatever detail is needed. Second part is you assign the task, and by which I mean you tell them the quantity you want produced, the quality standard, the time by which you want it done, and the resources the subordinate will have. And the third part is dialogue, where you get the subordinate's best advice. So there are eleven of these managerial leadership practices, like task assignment. And I would train managers over three days in all of these practices and was disappointed to find how little people put this into practice when I would check back later. And what I've come to realize lately, and this would be in the last two years probably, is that if you're a manager and you're thinking that you're sitting in the audience and here's herb training you, and your mindset is that it is impolite to tell someone what to do. It threatens your relationships for you to hold someone accountable for working. Well, what your experience of me in the front of the room is, I'm training you in how to be more specifically impolite. If you think that it's wrong to tell someone what to do, and I'm telling you how to be more precise in telling people what to do, you're not going to assimilate it very well, and you're certainly not going to put it into practice. And what some colleagues and I realized was what's required to use an overused phrase, but to use it in the context, in the meaning it was intended, what's required is a change of paradigm. And when that term paradigm change, which has been in the vocabulary for, I don't know, ten or 15 years, came out of a book written by Thomas Kuhn called the structure of scientific revolutions. And he talked about how a whole way of understanding something gets changed in a revolution periodically in science. Well, managers need a revolutionary change in how they hold and understand their role as a manager. And Kuhn said that two things are required. Yes, you need to give someone a new paradigm, a new understanding of, a new way of understanding things, to say, for example, in this case, that if herb is Don's subordinate, I really am a resource for you. And Don, it's up to you to figure how you're going to use me as a resource. By paying me a salary, you are essentially renting my capability to get work done. And that's a very different way of thinking about things than most managers have. So Kuhn said, you've got to lay out your new paradigm, show how it solves problems. But before that's going to stick, you also need to collapse the current paradigm. And that's a step that I had never done until about a year and a half ago. I started working with this and have had very different results as a result of that. And I find it takes minimum of two, but more likely three days to have managers in a room. And we now start with 1 hour on just brainstorming right at the opening of this two or three day workshop. Question is, tell me, what gets in the way of you doing your best work? And we get all kinds. Well, we starting to notice patterns in this. And people talk about, I'm not clear what I need to do. The resources aren't given. People make commitments and they break them. And what I find in the clients I've been working with in North America, when you ask them once they've done the know, what's the leverage you have? How do you get things done here? Pretty consistently, the answer is through relationships. I use the informal network, and the rest of the three days is used in really two ways. One of them is to say, to make it absolutely clear to people, and it's using their words and just asking them questions that the problems that they experience now will not be solved by improving how they work with relationships. As a matter of fact, it's this very foundation of personal relationships that's causing the problems. Just one example, Don. Maybe we're peers in an organization and there's a process, and you have the first piece of it. You do a draft of an Advertisement, and you're supposed to deliver it to me on Wednesday afternoon by 02:00 so I can start editing it and passed it off 09:00 the next morning. And very often you're late delivering your piece to me. But we're good friends, and I say, don, that's okay. And your being late makes me late. And it goes all the way down the chain until we get to the person who has to get it to the paper on newspaper on time or the magazine on time. And there's no forgiveness at their end. And they will work sometimes two days straight without sleeping so they can meet the deadline. So we start out at one end of the process being very nice to each other. And the end, we find out we're being horrible to someone, to another one of our peers. So this focus on being nice, this focus on relationship, actually ends up having a very nasty result at the end. And what we do for three days is introduce pieces of requisite organization one piece at a time, with two focuses on each part. One is, do you see how accountability exercised in this way solves the problems that you can't solve now? And the other piece is, can you see that being nice, that being focused on the interpersonal relationships will not solve this problem? And at the end of three days, people look at the list they had generated on the beginning of the first day, and they say, well, this is easy. These are easy problems to solve. We just need to get clear on who needs to do what, and we have to make sure people do it. It's like they start seeing the world in a new way, and at that point, they can start taking training in how to be more clear in task assignment, be more clear in constructing roles. And I just want to be clear that when I talk about not being nice, I don't mean that you're nasty.

Speaker C I appreciate what you're saying. And this leads us, I think, into consideration of how we need to structure roles properly so that we get away from this business of subordinates really being overseen by people who aren't competent. And we need to take a break right now.

Speaker E Okay, you sell.

Speaker A Buy. Buy. Sell. All we talk about is money. Talk to an expert. Call now toll free. 8664-7257-9866-4725-79 Voice America Business.

Speaker B The new Management Network is a distinctive peer group of independent management consultants who share common professional ideas, understand creative innovation, and are dedicated to releasing the human spirit in organizations. Members of the network serve clients on issues of corporate purpose, strategic clarity, company wide alignment with direction, teamwork and organizational culture. We support executives to act quickly, directly and profitably on what needs to be done for success. Members practice throughout the world from offices in Beijing, Boulder, Cape Town, Cleveland, Costa Rica, Helsinki, Ottawa, Penticton, St. John's, Surrey, Sydney, Toronto and Vancouver. For details on services and members, and articles and newsletters on management topics, visit new management network that web address again for the new management network is WW new Manageagement network.

Speaker A All we talk about is money. Call us toll free 866-47-2579 and talk to the experts. We talked money all the time. Voice America Business.

Speaker B You're listening to the new management network, bringing you practical insight into problem solving in a variety of business settings and management situations. Now back to your hosts, Don and Bonnie folk.

Speaker C So, Herb, we were at the point, I think, of talking about how to properly structure the managerial subordinate relationship to facilitate accountability. And the issues here I think go to stratification and how it's supported. Can you speak to this?

Speaker E Yeah. Let me take it from two angles. One, that word subordinate. The reason why I use it, even though it's out of popularity nowadays, is because I think it's critically important that an employee and their role be an order below that of their manager. In other words, my role, the complexity of the work in it, and the capability in me that's required ought to be of a lower order than that which is required from my manager. And there are very precise ways of assessing complexity of work in a role, very precise ways of assessing a person's ability to handle complexity. And by the way, managers can judge this anyway. But if you're my manager and you are to be holding me to account, yes, it helps that I sign an agreement. As an employee, I will work with full commitment on everything that you tell me to do. But I've got to say, it feels a whole lot better if you are a notch brighter than I am, a notch more capable than I am, because that's what allows you a broader context, a way of giving me context, a way of seeing my if you are more or less at the same level that I'm at, and you may be more experienced than I am, you can judge my work, but you don't have a perspective on me. If you are what we call a stratum, higher than I am, and these are a stratum being a natural managerial level. Again, there are some precise definitions around this, but if you are a stratum, more capable than I am. You can give me a perspective not only on what I accomplish, but also on me. And there's a certain level of respect I feel as long as you treat me well as a manager, I really want to emphasize the importance of trust and respect and simple, decent human behavior. But your being a level above me allows you to give me insights I wouldn't get otherwise. That make me actually appreciative of having you directing me, because there you are. You're able to solve the problems I can't solve. They're too complex for me. And I have a subordinate to whom I can delegate the work that I now experience as simple. Ten years ago was challenging, but I've matured past that. And so I get to work on things that challenge me, that I need to think about, but I can actually experience some success. So that notion of stratification giving me work that's all of a level, as much as possible, is all of a level of challenge that is just right for me. And we have very variety of tools for bringing that kind of structure about in a workplace.

Speaker C You were talking earlier about paradigm shifts, and there seems also to be kind of a popular paradigm out there that we're all kind of colleagues and one's as smart as the other, yet you're saying that's not so, and people actually can see that, and they appreciate that if the system recognizes that. Can you elaborate on that idea?

Speaker E Both parts of that? I think that is a very common myth, that we are all, what is it that anyone with enough effort and enough opportunity can accomplish anything. And when I raised that in my first meeting with Elliot, he know, well, Herb, do you think with enough effort and opportunity, you could do what Einstein did or what Mozart did? And it just was blindingly obvious to me that there are some people who are just a whole lot brighter than I am. They can handle a level of complexity that I'll never be able to grasp. And there's something very impolite about talking about who is brighter than whom. But I'll tell you this. I have done this exercise a dozen times, at least. I've said to people, write down the initials of four adults that, you know, friends, neighbors, coworkers, whatever, rank, order them brightest to least bright. And I don't mean how much schooling they've had. I don't mean how skilled they are. I mean, put them in a new situation. Can they figure their way through it? Who's brightest and who's the least bright? And I give them about five minutes to do it, and then I ask, has anyone here been unable to do it? And they all can do it. And I say, have any of you given an IQ test or anything to any of those four people? No, I haven't. Well, what that shows to me, and it shows to them, is that we have a sense that we exercise all the time. We're always judging how bright people are. Anyone listening unto this show is trying to figure out, how bright is Herb, how bright is don? And if someone asked by the end of this show to compare me to one of your colleagues, they'd have an opinion about that. So not only is it, I consider it fact that some people are brighter than others, but I consider it something that all of us use all the time. You cannot help but notice which of two people is taller. And as soon as you've worked with both of them, you cannot help but have an opinion about which of two people is.

Speaker C You know, because Elliot's term for this approach to organization and management was requisite organization and requisite means required by the nature of things.

Speaker E Yeah.

Speaker C What you're really saying is that this approach recognizes what's actually there. And if it's done competently, people will see that this works.

Speaker E Yeah, that's right. And what is needed is a whole system, as you're hinting about, let's get the roles right, let's get the management processes right. Let's get the systems right. Because without that, it's very hard for a manager to imagine holding someone accountable and actually accomplishing anything good from it.

Speaker C We're coming to the end of our time here. I just wanted to say what a pleasure it's been to listen to you on this. Since Elliot Jack's death in 2003, you've become the guru that all of us who are practicing consulting in this field turn to when we need a technical answer or we need an interpretation. And once again, I think you've given us a lot of really important insights, and I hope we get a chance to take this a little further because there's lots more here to explore. And with that, I need to turn it back to my partner, Bonnie folk.

Speaker D Thanks, Herb. I've really enjoyed listening to you talk about what you do about accountability in organizations, why everybody wants accountability, but no one wants to hold anyone to account. I think that, as Don does, your insights have been very valuable. And Don and I are looking forward to seeing you at the next new management network meeting. You'll be there?

Speaker E I will forward to it.

Speaker D Good. We encourage you, the listener, to explore this subject further with Herb and you can reach him by email at Herb at TFMC, ca. Let me just give you that again. Herb at t for Tom, F for Frank, M for Mary Ccharles, CA or to reach Don and I you can email us at folk fowke at Vayonet, Ca. Or each of us would be available by phone at 1800 416-387-2165 and next Tuesday at 11:00 a.m. Pacific or 02:00 p.m.. Eastern. Don and I will be in conversation about talent management, exploring how a talent management program ensures companies have succession in place to support growth strategies and how it assists employees to achieve career ambitions. And I need to correct I gave you a wrong number. The number is toll free at 1803 872165. I hope you can join us next week. Bye bye friendship.

Speaker B Thank you again for joining us as an important part of the new management network. We hope you picked up some tips and plans to help you improve your management technique. Remember, for more information, visit new hyphen Mag.