I originally put this together for a Moonshot at the Management Innovation Exchange....
Moonshots
Summary
Three rounds of layoffs, just off-shored our software dev. to Eastern Europe and got acquired by our competitor. The management team and I figured some sort of management development program might help, but we had no time, no money, and needed immediate and glaringly obvious results from whatever we did. I asked Professor Henry Mintzberg for advice, and this is the story of what happened.
Context
I was a Montreal based software engineering director in one division of a medium sized software firm during the tail end of the dot com crash in 2002-2003. As with everyone in the high tech industry at the time, we went through several rounds of layoffs. All of us in R&D were struggling through the fundamental cultural shift that occurs when you go from having nearly unlimited budgets to develop loads of highly innovative software, to being a very expensive cost center that needs to downsize and continuously focus on lowering costs.
We had almost no time and no money, terrible morale, and immense pressure to change quickly.
Triggers
- No time and no money, which means we had to innovate.
- Enormous external and internal pressure to change, which means we had to do something.
- The feeling that it is better to do something rather than just keep my head low and try not to get canned in the next round of layoffs.
- A strong bent towards the practical, down to earth, just get on with the job of managing, solving problems and making things happen. We were a team of engineering managers.... we didn't know much about the theories of learning and development but we certainly knew when something was making an immediate difference and helping us do our jobs as managers. And we had a good sense of agile methodology so we knew how to quickly iterate and adapt our way into a solution.
- And of course, the opportunity to have long conversations with Professor Henry Mintzberg.
Key Innovations & Timeline
I was very lucky to be able to talk to Professor Henry Mintzberg, who has many ideas on management development and about my management challenge: "No time, no money, and I need management development that really works. What can I do?"
He suggested I start by reading his book; Managers not MBAs, which I did. In the book he says "Thoughtful reflection on natural experience, in the light of conceptual ideas, is the most powerful tool we have for management learning.”
I figured that the team and I don't need to be in a classroom to reflect on our own experiences, we can probably do that just fine in my office. We also don't really need a professor to give us a lecture or anything, we just need their "conceptual ideas" in some sort of format that we could use to run our own learning meetings. As managers we had loads of experience with meetings... we run crisis meetings, planning meetings, status meetings... so why not a learning meeting?
I figured that the team and I don't need to be in a classroom to reflect on our own experiences, we can probably do that just fine in my office. We also don't really need a professor to give us a lecture or anything, we just need their "conceptual ideas" in some sort of format that we could use to run our own learning meetings. As managers we had loads of experience with meetings... we run crisis meetings, planning meetings, status meetings... so why not a learning meeting?
And that is exactly what we did.
I opened up my Microsoft Outlook, found the next available 90 minute time slot and invited my team to a learning meeting. The stated objective was to "learn something new about management to make things better around here". We would do this by "spending some time reflecting on our own experience in light of conceptual ideas". In others words, we would talk about what's going on around here stimulated by the different perspectives, concepts, or frameworks articulated by the professors, and then figure out what little things each of us could do to make things better. And if we thought it was useful then we would do it again in a week or two.
It was completely up to each one of us, individually, to decide if we wanted to follow through on anything or not. I simply said that if you come to these learning meetings, and talk, and talk, and then come up with some simple, practical ideas on how to improve things without doing anything about it, then don't bother showing up next time because you are wasting your time and might as well go to another status meeting or something.
During the weekend prior to each learning meeting, I spent my time madly editing and crafting the stuff Henry and his colleagues provided from their Masters level management courses into a type of workbook we called "the topic". It had the content, agenda and challenging questions and exercises for our learning meetings.
To make a long story short... it worked. This became the space in which our team made many of our most important management decisions. We bonded as a team and began helping one another with loads of pretty personal management stuff.
And other, unexpectedly interesting, things happened.
Within a couple of these sessions we stopped relating to each other like "the head of engineering talking to the head of QA, talking to the head of tech support", and became what we really were, which was "Phil talking to Hakan, talking to Eric and Sam etc..." Just plain human beings doing the best they can to get on with the job of managing, solving problems and making things happen.
Soon, some other managers in the office picked up on this concept and started it with their teams.
And so several years later Henry and I founded a company called CoachingOurselves. It is a concept for practical management learning in a team meeting setting. No facilitators, no trainers and no consultants. The only requirement is a print out of the management topics, and a pen -- no laptops.
And so several years later Henry and I founded a company called CoachingOurselves. It is a concept for practical management learning in a team meeting setting. No facilitators, no trainers and no consultants. The only requirement is a print out of the management topics, and a pen -- no laptops.
There are now thousands of managers around the world using our growing catalogue of over 60 management "topics" specifically written for CoachingOurselves by over 40 different management thinkers such as Henry Mintzberg, Philip Kotler, Marshall Goldsmith, David Ulrich, and Edgar Schein. We support managers by periodically asking for their top 2-3 management issues and suggesting topics that may stimulate productive discussions around their issues. Through these discussions the management teams do whatever they need to do to make things better for themselves, their teams and their organization.
It's still only just starting, but is already being used in 8 different languages by over 50 organizations around the world. With lots of hard work and a bit of luck, through CoachingOurselves we hope to help as many managers around the world as possible do a better job at managing, solving problems and making things happen.
Challenges & Solutions
We have had, and likely will continue to have loads of interesting challenges as CoachingOurselves spreads around the world.
My very first challenge was simply convincing my original team of engineering managers that I hadn't fallen off the deep end with this crazy "learning meeting" idea. After all, we were a group of engineering managers, we did things. We didn't spend our time reflecting!
I remember suggesting to the team that we think of it like this: "Right now we all spend some 50+ hours a week running around making things happen, doing things etc..... Now imagine if we spent 1 hour a week talking about what's going on, reflecting on some recent experiences around current management challenges, and discussing what we could do to make things better all stimulated by some really cool management topics developed by some of the best thinkers in the world. Then we could work with more focus, making things happen for the other 49 hours. Do you think we might get more done during the 49 hours then the original 50 hours?"
Off course, since we always tended to talk about current management challenges, issues or subjects of interest in ways that never happened during other meetings because of the content the professor prepared for us, most everyone wanted to have these discussions now rather than later.
Benefits & Metrics
Things continue to evolve rapidly as this spreads. At the moment we hear lots of personal stories from individuals and teams, but in organizations where 15% or more of the management population is involved, there are stories of broader cultural changes occurring, and as Henry says in his HBR article, the organization is (perhaps!) being rebuilt as a community.
We have many testimonials of obvious, tangible changes such as teams:
- Coming up with and following through on a change to a filing system in a satellite office to make it easier for people to get what they need,
- Enhancing the telephone script for how an admin worker answers incoming calls resulting in an increase in the number of sales,
- Developing large impact business changes such as coming up with and agreeing to a radical new production process that speeds up a major production cycle by 30%.
We also have numerous stories about personal changes that come from self realization, with results such as having loud people becoming less loud, and quiet people beginnng to speak up. There are also lots of stories of how the new ideas that came from the discussions, based on the professors' perspectives of different aspects of management were immediately used in different business contexts.
And off course, lots of people just plain love it, and thank us enormously for the sense of well being, community, strength, empowerment etc... that comes from simply having a space to talk with your colleagues about what you are really thinking about oneself, one another, the organization, the situation, and how you can help each other make things better for everyone.
Lessons
Many times you just have to try something to see if it will work. And always be flexible and reflective.. then you can pretty much learn your way into anything.
Credits
This idea was developed between myself, Phil LeNir, and Professor Henry Mintzberg.
Materials
- Business Week article "Management Education on the Fly", introduces CoachingOurselves
- Business Week article "The best leadership is good management", though it does not discuss CoachingOurselves directly, this article helps explain why I think CoachingOurselves is a story of "redefining the work of leadership"
- Article in strategy+business "Management by Reflection" telling the story of CoachingOurselves through an interview between Art Kleiner and Henry Mintzberg. (Registration required but it is free)
- Recent article in the Economist discussing CoachingOurselves (Registration required but it is free)
Videos
