Issue No. 223 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting features a magazine, a blog and a classic article—all from the Harvard Business Review. “In times of profound change, the learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists,” wrote Eric Hoffer. (I snatched that quote from The Foster Letter: Religious Market Update, an Executive Marketplace Intelligence Report for Business and Ministry Decision Makers, a labor-of-love newsletter from Gary Foster.)
And this reminder: check out my Management Buckets website with dozens of resources and downloadable worksheets for your staff meetings.
Your Incompetent Boss!
News Flash! Most clients and colleagues think I’m big on books—but books are just the input. I’m actually big on life-long learning and life-long being and doing. So whether you learn it from a book, a magazine, an article, a coach or mentor, an audio recording, a DVD or a movie—it really doesn’t matter much. The point is to learn—and then apply knowledge and wisdom to the stuff that slaps you in the face every day.
So…for a change of pace, take a dip into the Harvard Business Review bucket. The June issue of HBR is on innovation, “How Great Leaders Unleash Innovation.” Their “Big Idea” article featured a guide to making great strategic decisions. The authors warn, “Be aware that dangerous biases can creep into every strategic proposal you review. Identify—and neutralize—the errors in your team’s reasoning, before they lead you astray.” Yikes!
Then there’s this one: “What Makes a Team Smarter? More Women.” And this article on managing yourself, “The Paradox of Excellence.” The experts write, “Many high performers would rather do the wrong thing well than do the right thing poorly.” Huh? (Better read that one too!)
In the “Crucible” column, Kathi Giusti is profiled as “The Reluctant Social Entrepreneur.” Diagnosed with a deadly blood cancer at age 37, she pondered her remaining years—and reluctantly launched and tried to bring “rigor” to the nonprofit world. “She confesses that she hadn’t had much respect for nonprofits, because she thought most were not professionally managed. ‘I wanted people to see that I wasn’t going to run some schlocky nonprofit. I was going to try to do this right.’” The article is therapeutic for all nonprofit leaders when Giusti discovers nonprofit leadership is much harder than it looks!
So…that’s just a taste of one issue of the Harvard Business Review. Newsstand and online prices run $16.95 an issue (about the cost of a new book—and sometimes more valuable), or you can find discount rates at $79 for 12 issues.
There’s another no-cost HBR option: visit their site at www.hbr.org and read the HBR Blog Network, including the June 6, 2011 posting: “Dealing With Your Incompetent Boss.” (Go ahead—leave a copy of the article in the printer and in the break room!) Amy Gallo delivers savvy counsel:
If your boss is incompetent:
--Ask others for help. “Look to peers or people outside the organization for advice and a place to vent.” Gallo quotes Michael Useem, “This is not to conspire against your boss, but to check your point of view.”
--Make it about you, not your boss. “Telling someone who is not self-aware that they aren’t self-aware is generally not helpful,” adds Annie McKee.
--Lead up. “Leadership goes up just as often as it goes down,” says Useem. Do it for the good of the team—even if your boss is a jerk.
--Take care of yourself. “Working for an incompetent boss can be bad for your health.” You may want to exit. McKee comments, “Once you become a victim, you cease to become a leader.”
The blog article is excellent. The blog comments from readers are sad, helpful and entertaining, like the jab from one person who noted that Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert comic strip, popularized the tongue-in-cheek boss matrix: competent/incompetent and benign/evil.
Here’s hoping your boss is competent/affirming!
Gut check: should you ignore this article and hope your direct reports don’t find it? Or…be the first boss to pass it around to re-enforce your lovable, transparent, self-deprecating style? Or…maybe pass around the more positive article, “Managing Your Boss” (see below).
Click here to read the blog article, “Dealing With Your Incompetent Boss.”
Click here to order the June 2011 issue of Harvard Business Review on innovation.
Click here if you’ve never read the HBR classic article, “Managing Your Boss.” It’s well worth the PDF download price of $6.95.
Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
1) Tell us about an incompetent boss you once had (not in this organization, of course)—and how you dealt with this big challenge.
2) In the June issue of HBR, there’s a very helpful matrix in the article, “Competing Against Free.” What’s the threat level when your “competitors” offer something free—and you don’t? The matrix has four boxes: Immediate Threat (launch free product immediately); Minor Threat (monitor situation); Business Model Threat (change business model); and Delayed Threat (coexist or delay launch of free product). Should you be offering something else free?
Quote Drucker and Inspire Your Team! - Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit
One of the big ideas in the Drucker Bucket, Chapter 4, in Mastering the Management Buckets is to inspire your team with a weekly quote from Peter Drucker, the father of modern management. Ask a team member to post a Drucker quotation on your break room bulletin board—or email it once a week.
I have many favorite Druckerisms, including:
--“Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes.”
-- "Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done."
For a link to more Druckerisms and resources from Peter Drucker, visit the Drucker Bucket webpage.
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