In the last five years I’ve run well over 6000 miles in marathon training. Over that period I’ve been completely sidelined with injuries for over 30 weeks and have run with niggling problems for maybe a third of the time.

There are two things I should point out about that last paragraph: motivation is not a problem, I run every day it’s remotely possible; and, these kind of stats are not unusual for a marathon runner.

Over those five years I’ve used 16 pairs of running shoes and a set of specially made orthotic insoles. Without going in to the glorious marketing-speak of individual running shoe models it’s a fair assumption that my equipment choices have made running easier and less stressful on my body. Right? Or, without all those shoes I’d be injured even more. Right?

Maybe not.

Over the summer I read Christopher McDougall’s book, Born to Run, which promotes the idea that humans have evolved to run, and running shoes aren’t good for us. Apparently:

“there’s no evidence that running shoes are any help at all in injury prevention. In a 2008 research paper for the British Journal of Sports Medicine, Dr Craig Richards, a researcher at the University of Newcastle in Australia, revealed that there are no evidence-based studies — not one — that demonstrate that running shoes make you less prone to injury.”

My assumption: I need running shoes. The reality: I don’t need running shoes.

Everything I thought I knew is wrong.

What assumptions do you have, impacting your organisational life every day, that stand on no evidence?

The Science of Motivation

Here’s a possible example. In his recent TED Talk on the Surprising Science of Motivation Dan Pink highlighted the ineffectiveness of extrinsic motivators, such as bonuses, most of the time. Despite much of this research being 50 years old, many (most?) managers still rely on the wrong headed ideas of how to get things done.

The key lesson:

“There’s a mismatch between what science knows and what business does […] If we get past this lazy, dangerous, ideology of carrots and sticks we can strengthen our businesses […] and maybe, maybe, maybe we can change the world.”

What to do when everything you know is wrong

So much for running shoes and extrinsic motivators. What do you do when something comes along that challenges your assumptions? Instinct may be to turn away and go back to the devil you know. Try this instead:

Stop – just think about it for a moment, is it even remotely possible that what has always seemed true, is maybe not the whole truth? Does this new thing nudge up against problem that just seems a part of the woodwork? Be open to possibility.

Look – dig into the the data. Strip away all the personality of the issue, what does the cold steel of a few facts show you?

Listen – who else is talking about this? Can you trust them? Ignore the doomsayers, trolls, the collapsoconomists and anyone with a vested interest in the status quo. Somebody, somewhere is looking at the edges of this thing. Find them.

Listen again – this time to your gut.

If you do all this and the world looks different … act.

My running world looks different. I’ve ditched the shoes for now. I’m not running marathons barefoot yet (although some people do) and I’ve had to make friends with a my blisters, but I am running again. And funnily enough … I feel stronger.

Neatly filed under Managing, Skippiness
Tags: beliefs, Dan Pink, doing, herzberg, Marathon, motivation

Every manager has to deal with uncomfortable situations from time to time.

From giving constructive feedback to letting people go, difficult conversations are part of life.

If you’re not sitting down with a troublesome member of your team, and dealing with the stuff that’s so troubling, then you’re not managing — you’re ignoring/avoiding/ evading/bailing/hiding/running-away-from and not living up to your responsibilities.

Some of the most difficult conversations involve key players who aren’t living up to their responsibilities or your expectations; worse still if the problem is a fellow founder.

• Deal with problems early — don’t wait for a mythical right time. Give feedback (good and bad) as near to the source as possible. Immediate and direct is better than delayed and fudged.
• Use direct language — “you’re not pulling your weight” isn’t very helpful; “I’m really frustrated that each new feature takes much longer than your original estimate,” is.
• Write it down — the more difficult the conversation or the more likely you are to chew over your words, the better it is to use notes. I make sure I can stay on track by looking at my crib sheet and saying “Let me make sure we’ve dealt with everything. Oh yes, …”

No amount of experience or preparation ever makes these situations easy, but leadership means entering the discomfort and dealing with the issue.

One final point — don’t tell them how difficult it is to say this stuff. You may think it helps to get them on your side. It doesn’t. If it’s hard for you to say, it’s even harder to hear – so stop thinking about yourself and try to empathise; this conversation is not about you.

Neatly filed under Leading, Managing
Tags: meetings, responsibility, values

1. Listen
2. Take heed of
3. Pay attention
4. Lend an ear
5. Take note of
6. Tune in to
7. Attend
8. Hear
9. Understand
10. Act on what you learn

Neatly filed under Managing
Tags: listen

Image copyright: geishaboy500 via Flickr

No. Na. Nope. Nya. Ummm … no. No siree. Not me. Oh, maybe, hang on a second, er, sorry, no.

I have no idea what should be in your budget and it’s a simple truth that no one else does either. They may have a first clue about what they want to be in there and what it should all add up to, but beyond that … they know nothing.

You do.

A play in three acts

In theory, budget setting is a simple play of three acts.

Act 1 — Setting — What happened last time, in words and numbers?

Act 2 — Thinking — What will change next time? Including anything that’s different inside the company, like targets and constraints, or outside the company, such as market conditions, competitor movements and new technologies making headway.

If you aren’t given objectives, set them yourself. If you don’t know what’s happening in the market, go find out.

The better you understand the variables the easier the planning will be (and the more robustly you can justify your choices during review meetings).

Act 3 — Planning — What do you plan to do, in words and numbers?

After discussion, comes decision. What will you spend in order to achieve the objectives? How is that different from last time? Why have you made those choices?

Give yourself a budget and a target. The budget is a promise, so don’t make promises you can’t keep. The target is a stretch motivator, something to shoot for, to achieve if … if … if, but not a fantasy. Pinning everything to a fantasy is the surest way to demotivate everyone and guarantee failure.

That’s the theory. What’s the reality?

Budget meetings can be bloody. Turn up with a low ball, last year +/- 10%, no thinking, generous pay rise, doubled marketing spend, steady state budget and you probably deserve to get juiced.

Budgets are all about numbers but like so much else, they’re really all about preparation. Get set, have a strong and reasoned argument for every change, be ready to walk through every penny — you’ll skip out of the meeting with a firm budget, a warm glow and a polished reputation.

Sadly, some review meetings are an ego trip for the finance team; they think it’s their job to beat you up. You owe it to your team to deal with them like any other bully — look ‘em in the eye and stand firm.

Ruined by game playing and phoney smiles, managing in the pursuit of skippiness means taking budget sessions as a brilliant opportunity to align your whole team behind a coherent plan.

Neatly filed under Keeping Promises, Making Promises
Tags: budgets, finance, meetings, motivation, planning