CHAPTER 1
Maximize Your Input Force

As Archimedes once said, “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.”

How do you get more power into your lever? Simple. You have to be a stronger leader. But what, precisely, does that mean in today’s world? Not what it once did, that’s for certain. The modern era’s simpler information exchange, better communications, and increased mobility have altered perceptions of leadership in interesting ways.

Motivational expert Ken Blanchard points out, “In the past, a leader was a boss. Today’s leader must be a partner with their people. They can no longer lead solely based on positional power.”

I couldn’t agree more. Modern leaders can’t afford to be autocrats, because by the time they decide on a strategy, it’s usually out of date. No single individual can keep up with everything in real time. Instead of trying to, the intelligent leader delegates his or her authority as effectively and as widely as possible, encouraging both risk-taking and creativity. That allows the team to transform the organization from within.

Think of it this way: as a leader, you work for your team members. They don’t just work for you, although the organizational chart may suggest otherwise. Don’t think of yourself as belonging to a different class than your team members just because the categories seem so clear-cut on paper. You all relate to each other along a continuum rather than as separate boxes. (Rare exceptions occur in high-security situations or during war, when compartmentalization is required.)

So why bother even having a leader? Because you need someone to articulate and guide the team’s mission and vision. The modern leader exists less to tell people what to do than to urge them to do what they already know they should. Rather than controlling every worker’s daily activities, you serve as a nucleus for your team members to rally around. You’re a catalyst triggering ideas and action, allowing people to succeed without getting in their way.

Let’s consider a few of the many ways you can maximize your input force.

GIVE YOURSELF A HAND!

You have a staff for a reason. Ideally, each team member on your staff possesses talents, knowledge, and abilities that combine to form the extra hands Mother Nature didn’t give you.

Speaking of hands, here’s a helping HANDS approach to keeping your team properly aligned with organization strategy—without tipping you over the edge into overwork.

1. Handpick your people. Select each with an eye for the skill set he or she brings to the table, aiming for a little overlap with other team members, but without too much redundancy. Once they’re on board, get to know them well. Determine their weaknesses and strengths, consider how they might work best together, and decide which tasks should go to whom.

2. Assign duties carefully. Meet with your team leads and parcel out the range of tasks they have authority over. Define the limits of their authority carefully to avoid duplication, but make sure there aren’t any cracks for tasks to fall through.

3. Nurture initiative and innovation. In a memorable scene in the 2011 film Captain America, a sergeant tells a group of soldiers out on a run that if one of the men can retrieve the flag from atop a tall flagpole, he’ll get a ride back to the barracks. After several soldiers fail to climb the pole, wimpy Steve Rogers takes a look at it, pulls a pin at the base, and pushes it over with his foot. He retrieves the flag and trades it for his ride back to the barracks. Give your people the opportunity to surprise you with their solutions to tasks you assign.

4. Don’t abdicate! Delegation is not abdication. Carefully consider how much authority to delegate with the responsibilities you parcel out, but never give it all away. Keep a high-level eye on both team and individual workflow. Intervene if someone doesn’t live up to expectations or fouls the works. Do whatever you must to repair an individual’s productivity before the whole team’s productivity falls apart. As the leader, you bear the ultimate responsibility for every team member’s success and failure.

5. Study the results. Has delegation reduced your task list to a manageable length? If not, intensify your efforts. Resolve to handle only the high-value items you do best or must do as part of your job. In addition, determine how your delegating has affected the team’s workflow process. Do you have a well-oiled machine on your hands, or does it move forward in fits and starts? If the latter, rethink who does what and how, and clear the obvious blockages.

Delegating work forms the backbone of any managerial time management strategy, so learn to do it well. You can multiply your hands and extend your brain, thereby accomplishing much more than you ever could alone.

JUST SAY NO TO YOUR INNER CONTROL FREAK

Having a forceful personality provides certain advantages in a competitive workplace. It can help you work your way up the ladder more quickly than you otherwise might. But fair warning: if your favorite management slogan is “my way or the highway,” expect a few delays in your drive to the top.

You can survive with this attitude, but nobody loves a control freak. Your team will never give you 100 percent if you disempower them, hover over their shoulders, or constantly disparage their abilities or judgment. They will either resent you or get so nervous they won’t be able to do their jobs correctly. And if you’re always poking into their business, you won’t get your job done, either.

Control freaks in leadership positions crush creativity, drive depression, and kill camaraderie. All of these weaken your lever’s input force. Worse, they also block the kind of frontline development and immediate execution of strategy that success depends on. So let’s check on your micromanagement tendencies. Read through these questions carefully and answer them honestly.

• Do you often find yourself standing over employees’ shoulders directing their work?

• Do you regularly redo employees’ work, even as a form of “instruction”?

• Do you second-guess your employees’ decisions on a daily basis?

• Do you require an approval or sign-off on every task, even minor ones?

• Are you convinced of the truth of the old saying, “If you want something done right, you’ve got to do it yourself”?

• Do you work twelve-plus hours a day?

• Do you recheck the work of those you’re responsible for?

• Do you have a hard time focusing on the big picture and drown in minutiae instead?

• Do you get involved in little $12-per-hour details?

• Are you insatiably curious, so much so that you just have to know what’s going on behind the scenes?

If you answered “Yes” to more than a couple of these questions, then you have micromanager tendencies. You must fight them! If you answered “Yes” to many or all of them (or pretended you didn’t), then I have bad news for you: you’re already a micromanager.

Micromanaging drives a stake through the heart of employee productivity; it’s as simple as that. It’s as much about fear as it is about control. Micromanagers are not necessarily on a power kick; rather, they mistrust everyone. They’re afraid if they don’t “ride herd” on the team, everyone will make catastrophic errors. Afraid of the consequences of letting go, they hold on to as much of their power as they can.

The result? You create a stifling environment, in which both your time and the employees’ get wasted. Micromanaging fails right up and down the line. Not only does it exhaust everyone involved, it’s ultimately counterproductive and drives away the best workers.

Furthermore, even when done with the best of intentions and the lightest of touches, micromanaging interrupts people. If you poke someone a half-dozen times a day and ask how far they’ve gotten on an assignment, you can’t expect them to get very far. When they have to answer you, it drags them out of their focus. In fact, employees often tell me their manager is their biggest distraction, always swooping in and checking on them, rendering them unable to get anything done.

Given that, where do attention to detail, intelligent oversight, and high professional standards break down and mire you in the trap of micromanagement? It all hinges on trust. When you surround yourself with competent, well-supported people and trust them to do their jobs, micromanaging isn’t a problem. But when trust goes out the window, micromanaging springs up like a weed. When lurking and criticizing happen incessantly, both productivity and employee morale go down the drain.

A REAL-WORLD EXAMPLE

I once did training for the vice president in charge of the call center at a large telecom company. She cited overwork and burnout on her team and called me in to help.

Upon further exploration, she proved to be the biggest culprit. I know this seems like common sense, but many leaders simply can’t see how they’re contributing to crazy-making. It quickly became clear why this vice president felt she had no time to think about strategic issues. She insisted on attending meetings that were also attended by the director and manager of that department. She had employees copy her on every e-mail about issues they were resolving internally with customers, so she’d be “in the know.”

Clearly, it’s unnecessary to have three levels of management represented in each meeting. The vice president should excuse herself, release the appropriate level of authority to her managers, and instruct them to report the results. (Unfortunately, no one was recording action items, because everyone was in attendance.) She should explicitly tell those she trusted to resolve customer escalation issues without copying her on e-mails. She only needed to know about the results in the closeout ticket.

THE BIG T: TRUST

How do you develop the level of trust in your employees that’s required to inspire productivity and empowerment? I believe it starts with self-awareness. If your organization suffers from low productivity, don’t automatically blame your employees; take a look at yourself first. If you don’t trust your people to do their jobs well, ask why. Did you make poor choices when you hired them? Are you still learning how to maximize their skills and abilities? Are you paranoid someone will take your job? Have you failed to provide the proper training? Realize that if your involvement is so crucial to your current role that you’re irreplaceable, then you can’t be promoted. That’s why you should always be grooming a successor.

As the architect of your team, it’s up to you to choose the right materials for the job and put them together in the most structurally sound way. So in ridding yourself of your micromanaging tendencies and bringing your organization up to snuff, your first task (ironically) may be to take an even closer look at your team members and their abilities. Assess how each contributes and what you can do to maximize those contributions. Then develop an action plan to train or coach them to increase their productivity, thus tightening their fit in the general workflow of the organization.

You may find it necessary to replace individuals who aren’t doing well enough, just as you would put aside low-quality tools in favor of better ones. While that may sound cruel, if a few have advanced beyond their competence level, you can’t keep covering for them. After all, that’s what micromanaging is all about—trying to do others’ jobs because you think they can’t.

The truth is, you can’t afford to waste time or energy watching over those who are already supposed to know what they’re doing. If you delegate responsibilities appropriately, prepare your employees for their jobs, and give them everything they need to do them, you won’t need to ride them. Trust that they can do their work, wind them up, and let them go. Show them you have faith in their ability. You won’t be able to execute strategy efficiently if you don’t.

If they’re unworthy of your faith, then, yes, you’ll have to take corrective action, which is for the best. Even if you fear someone might fail when faced with certain job challenges, trust in that person to have the ability to solve those challenges. How else can they ever learn and grow?

When you rely on your employees and prove they can rely on you to back them to the hilt, you’ll establish a high level of loyalty and discretionary effort. At the same time, make sure the organization’s mission, vision, and goals are clear to everyone. Set basic ground rules, determine who reports to whom and how, and then turn your attention to your own tasks. Learn to trust—but verify.

How much do you need to verify? That depends on an employee’s previous performance, experience, and skill level. Basically, though, if you’ve done all you can to bring competent people on board, your role is simple. Believe in them and let them do their jobs, checking in occasionally and correcting course as necessary.

When you hire capable, engaged people and trust in their competence, you’ve got the enviable position of being a hands-off manager. If they know what they’re doing, it doesn’t matter how they do their jobs, as long as they do so legally and ethically. If they need advice, trust that they’ll ask. If certain employees show signs of falling flat on their faces, let them. They’ll either learn quickly or wash themselves out due to incompetence. Be encouraging, yes, but know that you can’t do everything—or even most things—for them. That way can be ruinous for all involved.

Remember, when you trust, you’re not abdicating your responsibilities; you’re simply using other people’s talents to get things done. Trust is the heart of delegation. As a leader, you don’t just represent another layer between consumer and product. Rather, you direct and expedite the workflow, while providing the resources necessary to stimulate performance.

BARKING ORDERS IS NOT COMMUNICATION

Once trust becomes a permanent part of your methodology, your biggest challenge will be how to communicate priorities to those on your team. This may require different levels and types of communication for each person; again, it’s up to you to determine what’s best.

Sometimes leaders get so busy running around, dashing off e-mails, and barking directions that they completely fail to communicate. If you don’t get the need for communication, let me assure you, your employees do. And here’s what they’d like to say to you about it.

1. Listen. Start taking the opinions of your teammates seriously. Don’t assume you always know better than they do. Success comes more easily when you leverage other people’s experience, skill sets, relationships, and creativity. Don’t expect to have all the right answers.

2. Talk. Get to know your team members on a personal level, so you can better understand their motivations. Speak to them openly and show that you value their roles in achieving the organization’s strategic goals. Be sure to overcommunicate priorities: you can’t tell them what you expect of them too often or too much.

3. Let go. Leadership isn’t about retaining every bit of power. You may be loaded down with responsibilities, but your leaders expect you to pass on most of your assignments to others, so do so. Then, within the limits of their authority, let your subordinates delegate some of their duties. That helps make everyone accountable for the success of the team.

4. Get back to work. As a leader, you have a duty to provide direction, set priorities, and work toward goal alignment along with the rest of your organization. If you try to do that along with everything else, you won’t be able to do any of it well. So start trusting people to do their jobs while focusing on your own strategic priorities. Measure your personal progress by the movement of the team itself, not a to-do list of firefighting tasks that someone else should take care of anyway.

What’s your true talent as a leader? It lies in your ability to recognize what to do to encourage, support, and motivate your employees so they can execute effectively and efficiently—without strangling their initiative or engagement in the process.

SHOW THEM THE WAY (EVERY DAY)

As a leader, you’re also a teacher—both in the leadership-by-example sense and in the instructive sense. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “What you are speaks so loudly, I cannot hear what you are saying.” Employees learn partly by watching you and partly by receiving instruction. Unless you’re a spymaster or a military commander, never ask anyone to do what you aren’t willing to do yourself. That includes behaviors such as:

1. Arriving late and leaving early. Ever had a boss who rolled in at 10:00 A.M. and then left at 4:00 P.M., after telling everyone to stay late to hit the big deadline? I suspect you didn’t find that inspiring. Don’t demand excessive hours on key deadlines if you won’t put them in yourself. But on the opposite end of the scale, if you regularly work twelve-hour days, don’t expect people to work as long as you do unless there’s a valid reason. Long hours do not contribute to greater productivity.

2. Sitting back during emergencies. Sometimes you’ll need to lend a hand to prevent the team from being overwhelmed. So rather than hang back when your people are floundering, offer to help. When an unexpected challenge emerges, rise to it. Put your back into it until you meet the deadline. Obviously, don’t make a habit of pitching in; save it for crunch-time and emergencies, or you’re back to micromanaging.

3. Playing favorites. You’ll inevitably like some employees more than others, but you can’t let favoritism sway you. Dole out discipline and rewards when people deserve them, whoever they may be.

4. Not practicing the Golden Rule. Treat others with respect and dignity, the way you’d like to be treated. The leader who builds buy-in through polite direction engages the workforce more effectively than the one who bullies people.

As a leader, you set the gold standard and must remain above reproach—not just most of the time but all the time. Otherwise, why should anyone listen to a thing you say? While we’re all fallible human beings, leaders are held to a higher standard and must work hard to achieve a decent balance. Still, some leaders go off track, so keep a good head on your shoulders and be willing to roll up your sleeves whenever the circumstances warrant.

THE FINAL WORD

I recently heard a word used I’d never heard before and had to look it up: “defenestrate.” (In general, I recommend eliminating words from your vernacular that people have to look up. It’s not impressive; it’s annoying.) Defenestrate means to throw a person or an object out the window. Now that you know the meaning, it’s appropriate to apply it to what you have to do with many long-term business strategies as they grow stale.

In some industries, any strategy more than a few months old is outdated by the time it reaches the people who actually make things happen. That means you have to move rapidly from idea to execution or risk eating the competition’s dust.

As the leader, you shape the overall vision for your team, communicate and agree on tactics, and let your team take it from there. Don’t adopt a purely hands-off approach, but don’t micromanage either; that’s a recipe for catastrophe. Your people need the freedom to do their jobs as they see fit. Trust them to tell you what they need to do to achieve your vision. That’s where true leadership lies—not in strait-jacketing your people with inflexible rules and hidebound strategies.

Now that you’ve maximized your leadership input force using the methods described here, let’s move to the next part of the leverage equation: strengthening and lengthening the beam—your team members.