Tag Archives: Conflict

Did Your Board Order a Proposal or a Discussion?

Posted on September 7, 2022 | 2 comments

[Restructured.  See notes.]

I think board meetings should have more discussions and fewer proposals.  Why?

  • The hardest questions often don’t lend themselves well to proposals. Think:  global warming, cultural divisiveness.  Or, in business:  investor alignment, exit strategy, or a flawed corporate strategy.  You’re not going to solve those issues in 45 minutes by quickly reviewing three options.
  • Proposals can result in a myopic focus on approval.  Approving an operating plan can be a strategic exercise where a strategy is proposed and translated into an organizational structure and expense budget.  But it’s too often an 11th-hour exercise driven by financial constraints where everybody just wants approval.
  • Proposals usually feature limited discussion.  Both because of the format and the approval focus, discussions during proposal sessions tend to be hasty and shallow.  If everyone knows they need to leave at 5pm and that three other items are slated before the end of the meeting, you’re strongly disincenting discussion.
  • Boards know less about your business than you think. Management spends 60 hours a week at the company, while board members might spend 60 hours a year.  If you want to leverage your board’s knowledge, first spend 20 minutes simply baselining them.  It’s a great introduction to a discussion and only rarely happens in proposals.  The more they know, the more they can help.
  • Sometimes, people just need to talk.  Think of recent hard times, like the start of Covid.  Just talking about the problem with the board leveraged the knowledge of those in the room (e.g., if only to know what other companies were doing), made everyone feel better, and helped the board determine if management were taking the situation seriously and asking the right questions — even if nobody had all the answers.  The board getting together to “just talk” isn’t just a touchy-feely concept; it’s a legal one, too [1].

For clarity’s sake, I think board meeting sessions fall into one of three types:

  • A review (or, “deep dive”) where, e.g., the CRO reviews the previous quarter’s results, metrics, win/loss, lessons learned, and plans to address to key issues.  Or maybe it’s a review of the partner program.  Or the product roadmap.  The goal is deep inspection and learning.
  • A proposal, where, e.g., the CEO and CFO present next year’s operating plan, seeking board approval at the end of the session.  Or a stock option refresh.  Or executive compensation.  Management presents either one or three options and seeks an approval of their choice. Usually there is some discussion, but the goal is ultimately procedural:  getting formal approval on a proposed decision.
  • A discussion, where, e.g., the CEO leads a discussion on strategy, the CRO a discussion on sales models, or the CFO a discussion on an upcoming new financial standard.  The purpose of a discussion is educational:  to leverage the knowledge of everyone in the room so they all leave smarter on the issue than when they came in.  Discussions are also useful for consensus building.

So my advice is to look at your last few board agendas, classify the session topics by type, and analyze your mix.  Odds are, you’re having lots of reviews and proposals, but few or no discussions.  I’d say everyone would be better off if you changed that going forward.

For example, here’s a hard problem that many startups face today:

How are we going to make our cash last, while growing fast enough, so that — despite multiple compression — our next round will be an up-round?

Sure, you can run a proposal session on this topic.  You can build a spreadsheet to model a few macro scenarios (e.g., mild vs. modest recession), financing options (e.g., extension round, venture debt), and cost-cutting options (e.g., a 10% RIF).  You can make a decision on what, if anything, to do right now.  But, invariably, there will remain a ton of, “we’ll have to wait and see how things develop going forward.”

In this case, especially if no immediate actions are indicated, a discussion might be much more effective than a proposal.  I think what most boards care about right now are the answers to questions like these:

  • Is the CEO in touch or in denial when it comes to the changing business reality?
  • Does the CEO understand the new fundraising environment (e.g., multiples, constraints)?
  • Is the CEO too optimistic or pessimistic about the expected fundraising environment in 18-24 months?  What future environment assumptions are driving their point of view?
  • Is the CFO on top of cash planning and forecasting?
  • Is the CEO ready and willing to make cuts if indicated by the needs of the business?
  • Does the company have good leading indicators and are they tracking them so they can act early, if indicated?
  • What do my fellow board members think and what are they seeing in the market and with their other companies?

I think most boards would instinctively order a proposal, added to the next board meeting’s agenda.  I think smart CEOs might well convince them to order a discussion, instead.

# # #

Notes
I had planned to restructure this post in response to feedback on the draft, but failed to do so before it auto-posted earlier today.  Hence, I’ve restructured it largely in accordance with a rule from my grandmother, a high school english teacher:  most essays are improved by simply deleting the first paragraph.  I did a bit more than that, but the world’s most Irish grandmother (Margaret Mary Magadalene O’Keefe Downing Gardiner) was proven right yet again.

[1] If you ever wondered why unanimous written consent resolutions needed to be unanimous:  the idea is that if there is any dissent (i.e., if even one director opposes a motion), that the board must convene to discuss it.

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Posted in Boards, CEO, Management, Startups

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Two Natural Reactions That Great Managers Suppress

Posted on January 15, 2019 | 1 comment

Most employees tolerate their managers more than love them.  According to a year-old survey in Forbes:

  • Only about 50% of employees say the boss values their opinion.
  • Only 35% of employees feel inspired by their boss.
  • Some 25% say they can do a better job than their boss does.
  • Almost 20% say that their boss takes credit for their work.

Given this, there should be no surprise that employee-manager relations sometimes flare up and that when they do employees often feel uncomfortable bringing the problem to their manager.  According to a different survey, 68% of employees are afraid to complain about their boss, fearing retaliation for so doing.

Great companies recognize these, perhaps sad, facts and try to manage around them.  For example, when I ran Host Analytics I would end virtually every piece of employee communications with the following:

If you have a problem with your boss and feel comfortable raising it with them, then please do so.  If you are not comfortable raising it with your boss, then please tell someone.  Talk to HR.  Talk to your manager’s manager.  Talk to any e-staff member.  Talk to me.  Talk to our coach.  I know that when employee-manager relations are the issue, it’s often impossible to raise the problem with your boss.  So please tell someone else.

In addition, beyond setting that as a policy, you can use other mechanisms to detect these issues.  Periodic, ideally anonymous, employee surveys do a great job of finding “hot spots” where an entire team is having problems with its manager.  (We used Culture Amp for employee surveys and its slicing-and-dicing lit up hot spots right away.)  Open-ended questions and comment fields also often reveal troubles on a more individual basis.  So does just walking around and asking people how they’re doing.

The goal from the company’s perspective is to surface these problems so they can be addressed.  Some managers, however, often react in a way that defeats that intent.  When a problem is surfaced via an indirect channel, many managers first instinct is say two things to the employee:

  1. “Why didn’t you bring this to me directly?”
  2. “Why didn’t you bring this to me sooner?”

Both are wrong.  Both not so subtly blame the employee — the first indirectly calling them a coward and the second indirectly accusing them of perpetuating the problem because you can’t fix an issue you don’t know about.   Both show that you care more about yourself and your reputation than you do about the employee.  Banish them from your management vocabulary.

Great managers don’t react this way.  They replace the above two reactions with two far superior ones:

  1. “Thank you for raising the problem to someone.”
  2. “Please tell me more about the problem so we can work on it.”

Maybe three months in the future, once and if the problem is clearly fixed, then the manager can safely say, “by the way, why didn’t you feel comfortable raising that problem to me anyway?”  In that context, the question will sound like genuine interest in the feedback.  In the heat of the moment, all it sounds like is “blame.”

Assume that, regardless of channel used, raising a working relationship issue is very hard for the employee and was probably preceded by some combination of sleepless nights and tears.  So thank them for doing the difficult thing and raising the issue — regardless of how — and respect their courage by jumping in immediately to learn more about it.

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Posted in Leadership, Management, Startups, Uncategorized

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Blocking the End Run: Eleven Words to Reduce Politics in Your Organization

Posted on June 10, 2017 | 4 comments

People are people.  Sometimes they’re conflict averse and just not comfortable saying certain things to their peers.  Sometimes they don’t like them and are actively trying to undermine them. Sometimes they’re in a completely functional relationship, but have been too darn busy to talk.

So when this happens, how do you — as a manager — respond?  What should you do?

“Hey Dave, I wanted to say that Sarah’s folks really messed up on the Acme call this morning.  They weren’t ready with the proposal and were completely not in line with my sales team.”

Do you pile on?

“Again?  Sarah’s folks are out of control, I’m going to go blast her.”  (The “Young Dave” response.)

Do you investigate?

“You know my friend Marcy always said there are three sides to every story:  yours, mine, and what actually happened.  So let me give Sarah a call and look into this.”

Do you defend?

“Well, that doesn’t sound like Sarah.  Her team’s usually buttoned up.”

In the first case, you’re going off half-cocked without sufficient information which, while emotionally satisfying in the short-term, often leads to a mess followed by several apologies in the mid-term.  In the second case, you’re being manipulated into investigating something when perhaps you were planning a better use of your time that day.  In the third case, you’re going off half-cocked again, but in the other direction.

In all three cases, you’re getting sucked into politics.  Politics?  Is it really politics?  Well, how do you think Sarah is going to feel in when you show up asking a dozen questions about the Acme call?  She’ll certainly consider it politics and, among other things, there’s about a 98% chance that she will say:

“Gosh, I wish Bill came and talked to me first.”

At which point, if you’re like me, you’re going to say:

“No, no, no.  I know what you’re thinking.  Don’t worry, this isn’t political.  It’s not like Bill was avoiding you on this one.  He just happened to be talking to me about another issue and he brought this up at the end.  It’s not political, no.”

But can you be sure?  Maybe it just did pop into Bill’s mind during the last minute of the other call.  Or maybe it didn’t.  Maybe the reason Bill called you was a masterfully political pretext.  Can you know the difference?

So what do you say to Bill when he drops the comment about Sarah’s team into your call?  The eleven words that reduce politics in any organization:

“What did Sarah say when you talked to her about this?”

[Mike Drop.]

# # #

(Props to Martin Cooke for teaching me the eleven words.)

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Posted in Communications, Entrepreneurship, Management, People

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10 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Moving into Management

Posted on March 6, 2017 | 8 comments

I went looking for a post to help someone decide if they should move into management, but couldn’t find one that I really loved.  These three posts aren’t bad.  Nor is this HBR article.  But since I couldn’t find a post that I thought nails the spirit of the question, I thought I’d write one myself.

So here are the ten questions you should consider before making a move into management.

 1. Do you genuinely care about people?  

Far and away this is the most important question because management is all about people.  If you don’t enjoy working with people, if you don’t enjoy helping people, or if you’d prefer to be left alone to work on tasks or projects, then do not go into management.  If you do not genuinely care about people, then do not go into management.

2. Are you organized?

While a small number of organizational leaders and founders can get away with being unstructured and disorganized, the rest of us in management need to be organized.  If you are naturally disorganized, management will be hard for you — and the people who work for you — because your job is to make the plan and coordinate work on it.

This is why one of my managment interview questions is:  “if I opened up your kitchen cabinets what would I see?”

3.  Are you willing to continuously overcommunicate?

In a world filled with information pollution, constant distractions, and employees who think that they can pay continuous partial attention, you’d be amazed how clearly you need to state things and how often you need to repeat them in order to minimize confusion.  A big part of management is communication, so if you don’t like communicating, aren’t good at it, or don’t relish the idea of deliberately and continuously overcommunicating, then don’t go into management.

4.  Can you say “No” when you need to do?

Everybody loves yes-people managers except, of course, the people who work for them.  While saying yes to the boss and internal customers feels good, you will run your team ragged if you lack the backbone to say no when you need to.  If you can’t say no to a bad idea or offer up reprioritization options when the team is red-lining, then don’t go into management.  Saying no is an important part of the job.

5. Are you conflict averse?

Several decades I read the book Tough-Minded Management:  A Guide for Managers Too Nice for Their Own Good, and it taught me the importance of toughness in management.  Management is a tough job.  You need to layout objectives and hold people accountable for achieving them.  You need to hold peers accountable for delivering on dependencies.  You need to give people feedback that they may not want to hear.  If you’re conflict averse and loathe the idea of doing these things, don’t go into management.  Sadly, conflict averse managers actually generate far more conflict than then non-conflict-averse peers.

6. Do you care more about being liked than being effective?

If you are someone who desperately needs to be liked, then don’t go into management.  Managers need to focus on effectiveness.  The best way to be liked in management is to not care about being liked.  Employees want to be on a winning team that is managed fairly and drives results.  Focus on that and your team will like you.  If you focus on being liked and want to be everyone’s buddy, you will fail as both buddy and manager.

7. Are you willing to let go?  

Everybody knows a micromanager who can’t let go.  Nobody likes working for one.  Good managers aim to specify what needs to be done without detailing precisely how to do it.  Bad managers either over-specify or simply jump in and do it themselves.  This causes two problems:  they anger the employee whose job it was to perform the task and they abdicate their responsibility to manage the team.  If the manager’s doing the employee’s job then whose doing the manager’s?  All too often, no one.

8.  Do you have thick skin?

Managers make mistakes and managers get criticized.  If you can’t handle either, then don’t go into management.  Put differently, how many times in your career have your run into your boss’s office and said, “I just want to thank you for the wonderful job you do managing me.”  For me, that answer is zero.  (I have,  however, years later thanked past managers for putting up with my flaws.)

People generally don’t complement their managers; they criticize them.  You probably have criticized most of yours.  Don’t expect things to be any different once you become the manager.

9.  Do you enjoy teaching and coaching?

A huge positive of management is the joy you get from helping people develop their skills and advance in their careers.  That joy results from your investment in them with teaching and coaching.  Great employees want to be mentored.  If you don’t enjoy teaching and coaching, you’ll be cheating your employees out of learning opportunities and cheating yourself out of a valuable part of the management experience.

10.  Are you willing to lead?

Managers need not just to manage, but to lead.  If stepping up, definining a plan, proposing a solution, or taking an unpopular position scares you, well, part of that is normal, but if you’re not willing to do it anyway, then don’t go into management.  Management requires the courage to lead.  Remember the Peter Drucker quote that differentiates leadership and management.

“Management is doing things right, leadership is doing the right things.”

As a good manager, you’ll need to do both.

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Posted in Culture, Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Management, Startups

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