Managers' Dilemma: Task-Immature People?
As a manager, it's great when your people do more than just good substantive work. Think of entrepreneurial activities like maintaining their network, for example, or identifying opportunities. But that doesn't exactly happen automatically.
This brings you to a dilemma: do you (or do you continue to) carry out those entrepreneurial activities yourself, or do you get your people to do so?
We discuss this in Chapter 1.7 of our book “Why Don't They Just Do It?”
In terms of content, your people are task-mature, but ...
Most content junkies are task-oriented when it comes to their billable hours. With a clearly defined goal, they can usually manage. Otherwise, they'll get back to you. Don't tell them exactly what to do; they might know better than you and it'll lead to frustration.
This is less true for non-billable hours and the more entrepreneurial aspects of work. Think of the 3Ds we described a few pages ago (Dare, Do, Discipline). In that respect, your people are not task-mature. What does that mean for your management?
As people taskadult then you can direct them to output. You tell what you want as an outcome. For example, you could tell a professional musician: in October you have to finish the 2e Playing Chopin's Piano Concerto. Then they'll know what they need to do to learn that piece. But a beginner won't find much use for this. Even though they might understand the goal, they won't quite know how to achieve it. Someone who's still learning is taskedimmature. And you have to direct that towards input: what should you do at what time and how.
So your people are both taskadult (on the content of their subject) as a taskimmature (on the entrepreneurial side). This makes it logical to manage your people in two ways.
That feels strange. One moment you're talking to a highly competent engineer with an academic background and years of experience. The next, that same person is suddenly a novice when it comes to discussing additional work. And what's tricky: managing someone who isn't highly competent can quickly feel childish. What do you choose? Highly competent or immature?
Your billable hours determine this year's turnover.
Your non-billable hours determine next year's turnover.
David Maister
A catchy title for a management book is “Managing professionals, not doing them.” We agree with that. Provided the professional is task-mature in the relevant subject.
A different style of guidance is appropriate for the part that is not task-mature.
The good news is that most professionals are perfectly fine with this different style, especially if you address this dilemma. And you don't veer into childish behavior. The slightly less positive news is that managers are often still somewhat immature when it comes to coaching immature people. They can usually coach mature people just fine.
If your super task-mature Java programmer is going to learn to play the piano, we don't guide him as if he were task-mature, do we? “Let's start with Chopin's Second Piano Concerto in F minor.” No, then you're going to tell him what those pedals on the bottom of the piano are for, where the C key is, and how to hold his hands. "Farmer-There-Lies-A-Chicken-in-the-Water" is a more appropriate song for the beginning pianist.
Another dilemma we face: The content professional feels like they have their “real work.” They do it for a significant number of (billable) hours each week. But Actually is there anything else to it?
He really understands: Actually I should do something about networking. Or post something on LinkedIn. Or just have more casual client meetings. Bring up extra work sooner.
But do you remember the three D's from the previous chapter? In short: Some fear of cold feet + Not knowing exactly which input will lead to the best result + Full schedule = Tendency to actually.
En actually It means: we should do it, but in practice, we don't. We postpone it for a while, usually until the end of the year.
You can represent it like this:
The program Actually Part is important, but not urgent. That makes you keep postponing it. What we would like is for at least part of that Actually part of the real work.
So that it will look more like this:
We have now developed a "real" alarm. As soon as we hear a manager say "actually we should do it more often …” we sit up and ask further questions. Because with “actually,” the manager is saying that it should be done, but also that we shouldn't do it. We would like to…Actually we should" nasty "What we always do is…"
We do this in practice with our WCCC checklist. But before we present it, let's first look at some practical stories about how it works. NOT ALLOWED It worked. Because we also like to bump our noses in between the success stories...
This article was written by Maarten van Os and Jan Willem van den Brink from DreamfactoryIt's based on a chapter from our book Why don't they just do it? – Make sure your consultants and technicians find and keep clients happy.
If you wish to use it, we would greatly appreciate attribution.
Want to know more about this topic or how we can help your organization? Email or call us at 0348-741670.