|  |  |  | INTRODUCTION The Only Leadership Advice You Will Ever Need...
From “The Czar” Gerry Czarnecki Welcome to your first experience with the The Czar Report, and thank you for taking the time to read it. We hope that you enjoy and profit from the thoughts that we share with you. Each edition of the newsletter or “e-zine” will be structured in the same reader-friendly format: Section I – Short Article - Each article will present a topic that we hope will impart useful concepts for you to apply to your work performance, as well as to encourage your response with thoughts and comments of your own. Section II - Story/Case Study - This section is designed to help you think through some of the issues that all leaders must face as they work to achieve peak performance in their units. We will pose the challenge and then ask you to answer some questions about how you analyze the situation, and what you might do to deal with it. There are almost as many right and wrong answers as there are readers, but we hope that these cases will prompt you to think about how to practice quality leadership each day. Section III – Tips from The Czar - Practical ideas and guidance that you can take to the work place immediately. Section IV - “Ask The Czar” - In our Q&A forum, we will answer your questions about the issues that challenge you in the workplace. This space will be only as powerful as the questions you pose, so we hope that you view it as an open opportunity for advice, discussion about previous issues, comments and critiques. We all get better by learning from each other! Please send an email to Gerry: gerry@the-czar.com We sincerely hope that you will give us feedback on this effort. Our goal is simple…we want this to be the most useful tool for your improvement as a leader. |
Volume I, Issue 1
| | • SECTION I – The Law of Administrivia | | • SECTION II – Mini Case - "The Weekend Worker" | | • SECTION III – Tips From The Czar | | • SECTION IV - Ask The Czar |
| | | | | | SECTION I – The Law of Administrivia | | |
The Law of Administrivia - The Greatest Barrier to Leadership Success
One of the long-standing principles in economics is called Gresham’s law. It states that if two currencies are circulating in an economy—one a high-quality currency that everybody trusts and believes in; the other a poor-quality currency that everybody thinks has substantial risk—then “the bad currency will drive out the good currency.” This means that everybody will want to hoard the good currency and give the bad to other people whenever they can.
In leading, the same principle applies. I call it “The Law of Administrivia”. That Law postulates that… Required or less useful activity drives out desirable and useful activity. In other words, people will do the tasks that they think are easy, trivial, and required first, in order to get them out of the way. Then, with the time left over, they will do what is desirable or useful but not required. The amount of trivial administrative tasks (administrivia) tends to grow once the boss concludes you are able to handle what you have already been given to accomplish. Eventually you do less and less of what you want or need to do and much more of the administrative work. Worse still, since administrivia is usually easy work, while being a leader is hard work, you end up spending more time on the easy jobs. After a while, all that gets done is the required, the trivial, and maybe even the useless. Of course, not all administrative work is meaningless or trivial. Indeed, much of the success in an organization rests on process and process controls. However, if they are the only activities a leader has time for, then they will ultimately hamper the leader’s effectiveness. Frequently, bosses forget how much time and energy real leadership really takes. Effective leaders use planning, organization and control as tools to handle the administrative work flow, thus allowing more time for the job of leading. If the administrivia consumes your day, then leadership will be driven out. If the administrative work is effective, then you will be free to lead. Parts of the Law of Administrivia have been recognized for some time. Saul Gellerman wrote in 1968, “The simple fact is that most managerial jobs are already more than full-time jobs. The typical manager has more than enough to worry about. His typical solution is to arrange his problems in order of priority, deal with the ones he has time for, and just ignore the rest. In other words, that which is urgent gets done and that which is merely important frequently doesn’t.” What we are adding to this concept is that the “urgent” is often not essential to the mission, it is just easier to request or to accomplish. Look at the activities that you engage in and determine if they are critical to your efforts to succeed. If your efforts to lead are frustrated because you are preoccupied with administrative tasks, then you need to find a way to break loose from the constraints of those activities. You will learn that if you do the leader work well, you will have plenty of time for administrative tasks. Free yourself from the shackles of administrivia with the realization that leader work is the only way to achieve your goals and objectives. It is the “good work.” You must fight the natural and destructive tendency to be ruled by “The Law of Administrivia.” | | | SECTION II –Mini Case – “The Weekend Worker” | | |
Frank had been working in the office all weekend and he was simply exhausted. His only consolation was that he had finally caught up with all of the work that he had not been able to accomplish during the week. It was now 7 PM Sunday night, and he was grateful for the few hours that he had left to relax and unwind before facing another work week. Just as he put his feet up and reached for the television remote, his wife came into the family room and told him that she wanted to go to the movies. This was not what Frank wanted to hear.
Frank said, “Jan, I’m exhausted and going out to the movies is the last thing I want to do tonight.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he saw from the expression on his wife’s face that he was going to have a problem. “Frank, I’ve been at home with the kids all weekend, and I’m ready for a break,” Jan said with an obvious sense of frustration. “At least you got out of the house when you went to work. I really need to get out too, and weekends used to be our time to go out together. Now, your job is taking over your life. Why did you have to spend the whole weekend at the office?” Frank responded with a growing frustration of his own, “I had to catch up on all the paperwork, plus the month-end report that I have to submit to my boss. Ever since I started working in this new job, it seems like the paper work just keeps growing. If don’t catch up on the weekends, I’m just going to get farther and farther behind. I’m not the only one working long hours; my boss always works late and on the weekends as well.”
“Well, maybe your boss doesn’t have a wife and children at home,” Jan replied in exasperation. “What I don’t understand is why you have so much paperwork. You’re not the CEO of the company, you’re a senior systems analyst in the information technology department.” Frank knew that a big argument was brewing. Jan had never really liked the idea that he took this new job, and she has been talking more and more often about the fact that they didn’t go out enough anymore. To avoid fighting with Jan, Frank decided to go with her to the movies even though it meant that he was going to be tired when he got up in the morning. He knew that he needed to talk to his boss about the problem, but he didn’t know the right way to broach the subject. He was worried that his boss might think he was a complainer, or worse, that he wasn’t capable of getting the job done. Despite his exhaustion, Frank spent much of the night tossing and turning, and was even more tired than he had expected when he went to work the next morning. Question: What do you think is Frank’s problem? Is he actually getting overwhelmed with administrivia, or is he just inefficient? We have no way of really knowing if the problem is administrivia or inefficiency but it is clear that Frank has a serious problem. He is not keeping up and it will eventually cause a serious problem at the job and at home. The tell-tale sign is his use of the word…paperwork. That probably means that he hates pushing paper and does not see the relevance to his job. He may be right, but he may also be lost in his new job. If you were his boss, you would need to be very alert to the symptoms. This is a guy who is most likely going to fail or burn out if you do not do something. When you have a staff member who is constantly working long hours and not getting ahead of the work, or performing far above your expectations, then you have a person in crisis. That person may be misplaced, may need better training, or may actually have too much to do.
As the boss, you need to recognize the signs of somebody who is working too hard, just as much as you look for or see the signs of those who are slacking off. Whatever the reason, Frank needs attention from his boss. We owe our staff the recognition of, and the sensitivity to, their frustrations. We should always set the bar high, but we also need to be certain it is not so high that our staff can never reasonably achieve it. As a leader, this is not just their problem, it is yours as well. Their failure is your failure. You need to see the problem developing, and address it early. It may be that you are giving them too much administrivia, or it may be that they are not dealing with a performance problem caused by a misstep on your part or a lack of ability, knowledge, skill or even attitude on the part of your staff member. If you have a Frank working for you right now, you must take the proactive step of addressing the is! sue directly so that you can provide help to what may be a drowning member of your team.
| | | SECTION III – Tips From The Czar | | |
When you have that conversation with your “Frank,” make certain that you do not threaten him when you open the subject. There are a great many reasons that could be causing his dilemma. There could be a serious personal problem that is consuming him and making him inefficient; there could be a serious administrivia problem for him; you could be simply asking too much of him. In short, a failure of a staff member may be his weakness, but it could also be your fault. If you really know how to love your associate, you will not make assumptions or judgments; instead, you will approach the discussion with an open mind and a demeanor that conveys your openness. If you start out with an accusatory manner, you will get defensive responses that may prevent you from making a fair and insightful assessment of the situation. It is important to r! emember that you are the person with the organizational power, but you want to avoid using it. You are seeking answers to the problem, not an affirmation of your authority or power.
| | | SECTION IV – Ask The Czaer | | |
Julie: I have a staff member who left the office today without telling me where she was going, and she hasn’t come back. It’s Friday and I know I need to do something on Monday, but what?
The Czar: Julie, it will probably be too late to help you, but if any other readers ever have this happen, my advice is…do not wait until Monday. Your employee’s behavior indicates a serious problem, and you need to find out what caused it. There are a great many possible explanations. She may have gotten a call that a family member has just died, in which case, you want to know that so you can offer your support. It could be that she had a huge confrontation with a fellow staff member, who failed to explain to you what happened. In that case, you need to get to the bottom of the conflict for the unit’s sake. Perhaps you and she had a confrontation that went over the emotional line that she could handle. You might not even have recognized that you caused the event. In any, in fact in all cases, immediate action is called for. What should you do…My answer is…call her. Martha: I have a staff member who never shows up to work on time. What should I do? The Czar: Well, depending on how long this has been going on, you might consider giving yourself a lecture about how you have failed yourself and the rest of the staff. The way you asked the question makes it sound as though this is a chronic problem, and that you have gotten angry about it, but taken little or no action. Whenever we allow a single staff member to get away with breaking the rules, we are hurting the entire team. If you have allowed this to happen for an extended period of time, you have in essence told that person it is ok to be late. I guarantee you that she will never be punctual, because she has learned that you don’t require it. Worse still, you have sent the rest of the staff the message that 1) you do not care about punctuality (hence they will all start showing up late) or 2) there are two standards, one for them and one for the “late one.” A double standard, even whe! n it’s merely implied as in this case, will cause the “good guys” to get angry with both you and the “late one.” You must immediately change your own behavior and initiate a conversation with that staff member. Be sure to use the previous lesson, and ask that person to explain why she is late. There may be a very logical reason which you need to know. Once you determine the reason, then you need to tell her that from now on, being on time is required and that whatever the reason, you want to help her figure out a way to deal with that reason. That shows you care, and at the same time starts the process to establish new rules. Rules that apply for the entire staff. Mark: I am lost at my job. I hate my boss, I hate the work I do and I have been living with this for four years. What can I do? The Czar: Mark, I feel sorry for you. That is a sad tale, and one that I hear so often when I talk to leaders. My first answer is: you must change your job. That may mean that you need to “change jobs” or it may be that you need to change things about your current job. Whatever the case, I want you to do one of those two things. There are scores of reasons why we dislike our work, some are our fault, some are the organization’s fault. The most important thing you need to do is to honestly determine all of the reasons why you do not like your job. I can not answer that for you, but I can tell you that once you have come to your own conclusions, then you need to do something to eliminate that pain. In fact, once you sort through the question that I have asked of you, I hope you that will write again so we can work together on the ways in which you can move forward towards a positive work exper! ience.
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