Here’s where we are, after a year of thinking, planning, surveying, and introducing the idea as the foundation of what it means to manage people.

Every manager created a simple plan.  It records the climate dimensions that they want to influence: clarity, standards, responsibility, recognition, teamwork/support, and commitment.  What’s in the plan?  One or more practices – an activity that will influence, say clarity of work and roles – the concrete action the manager will take, and the results or evidence that will indicate that the practice is having an effect.  Simple, descriptive, and entirely within the control of managers.

Managers reported this plan to their managers, whose role is to monitor, coach, and insist on accountability.  It’s straightforward and designed not to be too time consuming.  The biggest bit of work lay in developing a plan and satisfying our managers – I’m one of the managers with a climate improvement plan.  We have had it for three months.

Even though I may be the exception because I have very two very new hires, I’m working on providing, above all, clarity, standards, and responsibility.  As well, I’m working to bring teamwork to a team that isn’t one yet, at least by insisting on a systems perspective to our work together:  If I’m a seaside town in Indonesia, you are creating a tidal wave by flapping your wings here in Boston.

Maybe the most important thing I’ve learned is that it takes practice and preparation to set clear expectations and to communicate in ways that ensure you’re heard.  Few of us want to hear bad news about our work; there are always reasons and explanations.  As a manager, it can be difficult to imagine and anticipate, before you see the performance, all of the important aspects of it.   So I’m working on the assumption that I will not always be perfectly clear, that folks will fail a little, and that if I’m coaching folks well, they’ll come to learn that learning from mistakes is even more important than perfect execution.

In that reflection, you see the dynamic of being a manager and the strength of the climate model. Climate provides objectives, not prescriptions.  It is my responsibility and role to strive for high measures on all of the strategically aligned climate model dimensions.  That’s the social science, though.  Practically speaking, I want folks to feel motivated, have a sense of agency, and a portfolio against which to execute their skills and effort.  With feedback from my manager and my people, I hope to cut a pretty straight path to achieving our goals and measurable success.  I’ll let you know how it’s going.

This is the leader-manager’s dilemma.

John Kotter makes a distinction between leaders’ and managers’ focus. Leaders’ domain is complexity, identifying opportunity, scanning the environment and spurring change to address it. They’re focusing on answering, “What’s right for this organization?”

Managers (paraphrasing Kotter) are focused on answering, “How do we do this right?” They stand out as the ones who can make the most of the system or develop new systems to get the most out of people and processes in ways that are repeatable and motivating. I’ve met a few of these geniuses of consistency and operational clarity. They always open my eyes to the profound value of managing.

You can disagree with Kotter if you like, but practically speaking, every manager needs to be an operational genius all day long and still provide leadership. The ambiguity that comes with steady change means that there is no steady state or equilibrium that we can call rest. The chances that we’re going to end up back in that comfortable position again are nil.

Every one of us have to be leaning forward and sniffing the air for change. Stay loose, be clear is my advice to myself as we begin to hire folks and create a training SWAT team, so to speak.

What do you tell yourself to keep your eyes on being a both a leader and manager every day?

I had dinner with an old friend a couple days ago and he told me this story.

My son – he’s four – has been going to a great daycare this summer.  They organize some kind of learning around theme days.  Last week they chose pirate days.  I’m not sure what they learned, but he brought home a little plastic compass.  Apparently you need compass on the bounding main.  I was leaving for work the next day.  I said goodbye and he offered me the compass.

“Here, Daddy,” he said.  “Take this with you so you always know which way is North.”  You know how that turns your heart to loving mush.  But he didn’t want me to get lost and knew that pirates use a compass to find their way on the open sea.  I was delivering training to new managers that day.  I started class by assuring them, “Thanks to my son, we can”t get lost, no matter what happens, because I have a compass and I know where I’m going.”

Not a verbatim account, but that’s what I heard.

We are all our own leaders

Every day the demands on the job threaten to distract us from the few simple good things we’re aiming at.  Thanks to a four year old, I’m reminded of the two most important principles to live and work by, no matter what you do or what level you’ve achieved in the organization.

Principles for being your own leader (Thanks to Cap’n Jack)

• Stick to the heading the leads to your destination.

• Be a pirate!

Once you start talking about climate in an organization, people want to know what this “climate idea” is good for.  Because if you turn it over a couple of times, it may just look like a theory.  What is climate thinking good for?

Climate is not really about happiness

Climate…

• Objectively reflects what people experience at work.  So first, it’s information you can only guess at today.  And you really do want to know what’s inside your team’s heads.
• Measures six dimensions of work that directly relate to people’s motivation and performance.  You don’t need a decoder ring to figure out what to do next.
• Measures the way leaders and managers are creating “the experience of work here.”  You don’t need to look somewhere else.  You can change climate.

Side note about leadership and managing

While managers should lead and most leaders also manage, they’re not the same capabilities.  I’m cribbing from John Kotter.  Leaders address and chart a course through complexity to achieve a set of objectives.  That means adapting to constant change.  Managers bring order and consistency to work so that it achieves those objectives.  That also means adapting to constant change.  This is not a caste distinction.  The organization needs as much of both as it can get.  But when we talk about climate, I’ll say “managers” and mean everyone who leads and manages.  Because they’re the ones who create climate, change climate, and are responsible for what it’s like to work around here.

Climate dimensions make sense

The power of climate lies in the way it readily makes sense.  People tend to be motivated by their work along these six dimensions (6D):

• Structure and clarity
• Standards
• Responsibility
• Recognition
• Teamwork or support
• Commitment

Even before I describe what these might mean, it’s not hard to see that giving people the right degree of responsibility for their work could be motivating, especially if you’ve recruited people who are motivated by a sense of autonomy.  Right away, ideas about how to give people still more responsibility as a reward for their growing expertise come to mind.  That leads to envisoning ways to make sure the standards for greater responsibility are clear, stated objectively, and then offered to anyone who will strive to meet higher standards of performance.

Remember that the first use of climate is to measure what it’s like “around here” today.  Low scores aren’t indicators that people aren’t happy.  (You’ve read survey results like those.  Do you really want to spend your time on making people happy?)  Climate scores show what to focus on.

But it is managers’ responsibility to exercise expertise and judgment to determine the right tactics.  They decide how much is enough of, say, teamwork and pressure to achieve high standards.  The objective is not to make people happy, but to help them be effective, and ensure that they can expect to be effective.  You may make them happy as well.

If you were given the list above and told to manage your people using only these six dimensions as tools, what would be left out?

So for example, focus on responsibility.  Where would the work and the experience of work improve if your people could exercise more autonomy and take responsibility for it?