Leniency
Other names:
Clemency; L. Clementia
Definition:
Not letting anger lead you to injustice to your subordinates
Advice:
Empirical Research:
Case examples:
Gifts of the Holy Spirit
Further reading:
Vices opposed:
Cruelty
Clemency; L. Clementia
Definition:
Not letting anger lead you to injustice to your subordinates
Advice:
Empirical Research:
Case examples:
Gifts of the Holy Spirit
Further reading:
Vices opposed:
Cruelty
Case Study 1
ReplyDeleteAs she explains in her book The Mary Kay Way: Timeless Principles from America’s Greatest Woman Entrepreneur, Mary Kay Ash’s personal experiences of psychological abuse in the workplace led her to appreciate the need for leaders to exercise the virtue of clemency.
"I know what it means to exist in constant fear of being fired. I once worked with dozens of other women in a huge, open office. The space contained many rows of desks, each back-to-back and side-by-side. It was chaotic trying to work while someone on one side talked on the telephone and someone on the other side called across the room. A giant black and white clock hung above the manager’s private office, and every day around 3:30 P.M., the hustle and bustle would come to an abrupt halt. Fear would enter the room. At precisely 4 P.M., ‘Mr. X’ would regularly fire employees. We would all sit around for that last half hour waiting and dreading to see who would ‘get the ax.’ If someone was inadvertently called out of the room near the deadly hour, we would hold our breath until she returned to resume her duties and gave us a sign of relief. Often an employee would return in tears and begin cleaning out her desk. Mr. X’s method was to fire someone angrily (usually with much yelling), give her an hour to clean out her desk, and presume that she would never again darken his door.
"Whenever I encounter an employee who is misplaced in his or her role, I follow a very different procedure. My first move is to counsel this person regarding specific ways he or she could improve. I give suggestions and set reasonable target dates so that he/she may experience an immediate success. But if these efforts fail, I must consider what would be best for both the employee and the company. It has been my experience that when an employee fails, he/she is the most uncomfortable with this fact.
"If, for example, I had a public relations employee who simply could not speak before a large audience—a person who lacked the personal energy necessary to inspire others—I would approach the problem with the Golden Rule. How would I feel if I were this employee? I then might say, ‘‘Jane, you’ve been with us for two years, and each time I see you in a public presentation, I know that you are not comfortable. I’ve watched you suffer through the program as if it were an ordeal. I wish with all my heart that it weren’t true, but Jane, I don’t believe this is the spot for you. We care about you, and we want you to be successful; is there some other position you would like to try?’’ If there is no other challenge for her within our company, we will actively help her in obtaining a position with a firm that will more readily utilize her talents. I will not discard an employee as if she were yesterday’s newspaper. There are, of course, managers who disagree with this point. Like Mr. X, they maintain that once you discharge someone, he should ‘pack his bags and go.’ But on the rare occasion where that situation may be taken advantage of, I would still rather err on the ‘people side’ than err on the ‘hard-core business side’ of this issue." (Mary Kay, The Mary Kay Way, pp. 9-10)
Case Study 2
ReplyDeleteRobert Luddy is president of CaptiveAir and author of Entrepreneurial Life: The Path from Startup to Market Leader. In his book, he explains how the Catholic social principle of subsidiarity, or decentralization, can be applied to the economic as well as the political sphere. Respect for the principle of subsidiarity demands clemency on the part of the leader, moderating one’s desire for control over subordinates.
"We have a unique leadership style at CaptiveAire that allows for enough structure to avoid chaos, but is fluid enough to support rapid change and lightning-fast decisions.
"About twenty years ago, we decentralized as a result of the lessons that I had learned from Ken Iverson (described in Chapter 5). It was a challenge, but it refocused us on customer service rather than on process. We shifted the focus from the corporate office to the regional field offices. They communicate directly with the plants.
"Decentralizing ensured that sales and technical people were brought together on a localized basis in order to fully serve customers, eliminating the need for a large and unproductive central office. Today, out of our approximately 1,200 employees in the company, only eighty or so work out of our headquarters. These corporate office employees are primarily engaged in information technology, finance and accounting, and human resources. A decentralized organization works because centralization often breeds bureaucracy and retards processes. The 'principle of subsidiarity' means that all decisions are made at the lowest level possible and quickly. I could cite many examples but here are a few:
"- Each sales team controls application engineering, pricing, and customer service. Quality and application design standards, automatically generated CAD drawings, and our point-of-sale software support our sales operations.
"- Credit and collection personnel make important decisions every hour but are guided by our customer-centered philosophy, common sense, and good business judgment. It can be a big challenge to collect money and keep customers happy but they execute almost flawless collection for 99.80 percent of all accounts receivable.
"- Quality control engineers must make their own judgments determining whether products meet standards and work in harmony with the pace and stresses of production.
"- Software developers write code, transforming complex products into workable selection software for our users. This process is worked out with the users and engineers, not senior management.
"Today we function much more like a united group of small enterprises including manufacturing, sales, service, product development, finance, and administration, than like a large company. What we have found is that complex management structures impede decision-making and drive customers to competitors, so our flat management structure saves costs and increases performance. (Luddy, Entrepreneurial Life, ch.6)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteCaptain Michael Abrashoff of the U.S. Navy explains why it is essential for leaders to practice the virtue of leniency in his book, It’s Your Ship. "Leaders must be willing to put the ship’s performance ahead of their egos, which for some people is harder than for others. The command-and-control approach is far from the most efficient way to tap people’s intelligence and skills. To the contrary, I found that the more control I gave up, the more command I got. In the beginning, people kept asking my permission to do things. Eventually, I told the crew, 'It’s your ship. You’re responsible for it. Make a decision and see what happens.' Hence the Benfold watchword was 'It’s your ship.' Every sailor felt that Benfold was his or her responsibility. Show me an organization in which employees take ownership, and I will show you one that beats its competitors.
"Captains need to see the ship from the crew’s perspective. They need to make it easy and rewarding for crew members to express themselves and their ideas, and they need to figure out how and when to delegate responsibility." (Abrashoff, It’s Your Ship, p.7)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteCaptain Michael Abrashoff of the U.S. Navy explains the importance of leniency and respect for the principle of subsidiarity in his book, It's Your Ship. "When I took command of Benfold, I realized that no one, including me, is capable of making every decision. I would have to train my people to think and make judgments on their own. Empowering means defining the parameters in which people are allowed to operate, and then setting them free.
"But how free was free? What were the limits?
"I chose my line in the sand. Whenever the consequences of a decision had the potential to kill or injure someone, waste tax-payers’ money, or damage the ship, I had to be consulted. Short of those contingencies, the crew was authorized to make their own decisions. Even if the decisions were wrong, I would stand by them. Hopefully, they would learn from their mistakes. And the more responsibility they were given, the more they learned." (Abrashoff, It’s Your Ship, pp. 32-33)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteIn his book, It's Your Ship, Captain Michael Abrashoff of the U.S. Navy explains how the practice of leniency actually helps to foster responsibility and productivity. "When people saw me opening myself to criticism, they opened themselves up. That’s how we made dramatic improvements. People could get inside one another’s minds. They could work together for the best possible Benfold. The result? We never made the same mistake twice, and everyone involved got to understand the big picture.
"To be honest, when I started my new leadership model, I was pretty anxious about its effect on military discipline. After all, when you let people out of prison, you have no idea how they will respond to their newfound freedom. I kept looking for clues: Was I really just creating anarchy? But quite the opposite happened. To my continued amazement, discipline actually improved under my regime.
"During my last twelve months in command, I had many fewer disciplinary cases than my predecessor. With one exception, I never fired or reassigned anyone. The exception was a sailor who had been caught smoking marijuana before I arrived. When the results of his urinalysis arrived, I had no choice but to throw him out; the sentence was mandatory at the time.
"There was a corresponding dramatic drop in workmen’s compensation cases, which can be an easy way for disgruntled sailors to be reassigned to a hospital; safety-related mishaps almost disappeared (we went from thirty-one to only two). When people feel they own an organization, they perform with greater care and devotion. They want to do things right the first time, and they don’t have accidents by taking shortcuts for the sake of expedience. Previously, people were fighting to get off the ship. Now they were fighting to stay aboard. That kind of desire translates into performance. I am absolutely convinced that with good leadership, freedom does not weaken discipline—it strengthens it. Free people have a powerful incentive not to screw up." (Abrashoff, It’s Your Ship, pp. 84-85)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteIn his book, It's Your Ship, Captain Michael Abrashoff warns against the lack of communication that results from failure to practice leniency within one's organization, and the serious consequences that can follow. "I wish I could say that the need to improve listening skills and less-than-perfect coordination happened only in the past. But the tragic sinking of a Japanese fishing boat off Honolulu by the submarine USS Greeneville suggests otherwise. The moment I heard about it, I was reminded that, as is often the case with accidents, someone senses possible danger but doesn’t necessarily speak up. As the Greeneville investigation unfolded, I read in a New York Times article that the submarine’s crew 'respected the commanding officer too much to question his judgment.' If that’s respect, then I want none of it. You need to have people in your organization that can tap you on your shoulder and say, 'Is this the best way?' or 'Slow down,' or 'Think about this,' or 'Is what we are doing worth killing or injuring somebody?'
"History records countless incidents in which ship captains or organization managers permitted a climate of intimidation to pervade the workplace, silencing subordinates whose warnings could have prevented disaster. Even when the reluctance to speak up stems from admiration for the commanding officer’s skill and experience, a climate to question decisions must be created in order to foster double-checking.
"Make your people feel they can speak freely, no matter what they want to say. If they see that the captain wears no clothes, let them say so; facts are facts and deserve attention, not retribution. Yes, I’m pushing you to work harder at leading your organization. Yes, the climate I prescribe is tough to create. But in my view, had someone been comfortable tapping that commanding officer and saying, 'Sticking to a schedule isn’t important enough to justify taking safety shortcuts,' that accident on Greeneville might have been avoided. How they all must wish they had that day to live over.
"When leaders and managers behave as though they are above their people, when they announce decisions after little or no consultation, when they make it clear that their orders aren’t to be questioned, then conditions are ripe for disaster. The good news is that every leader has the power to prevent this. Once leadership opportunities are squandered, you can never get them back. Don’t live your life with regrets." (Abrashoff, It’s Your Ship, pp. 120-21)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteIn his book, It's Your Ship, Captain Michael Abarshoff describes an early experience in command of the U.S.S. Benfold that inspired him to manage his ship in accordance with the virtue of leniency. "I remember sitting in my captain’s chair on the bridge, watching some sailors screw up a simple operation on the deck below, gripping the chair arms until my knuckles turned white. My sailors were painting some fittings on the fire stations bright red. The only problem was, they weren’t using a drop cloth, and red paint was dripping all over the gray deck that they had painted only a week before. Now they would have to go back and repaint the deck gray. What was wrong with those people? Why couldn’t they see that they were creating more work for themselves? But instead of flaring up like Captain Bligh, threatening to draw and quarter every dummy who disgraced my ship, I bit my tongue.
"The incident induced a memory from my childhood. Every summer, I had to paint the trim—on our brick house one year, the garage the next. One time I, too, failed to use a drop cloth and dripped white paint on the red brick. My mother tore a huge chunk from my behind (she hadn’t yet learned the art of grass-roots leadership either), which taught me the lesson, but left me mad and resentful. So I explained to my sailors how using a drop cloth would directly benefit their free time, and they got the message.
"And slowly, as they warmed to the new approach, the crew began to take responsibility for their mistakes.
"I wanted them to 'own' Benfold, to feel that it was their ship, and to turn it into the fittest ship in the Pacific Fleet." (Abrashoff, It’s Your Ship, pp. 122-23)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteIn her autobiography, Tough Choices, Carly Fiorina explains how she sought to practice subsidiarity by instilling a sense of purpose and self-motivation in her employees as director of International Strategy and Business Development for AT&T. "As human beings, we need both purpose to motivate us and confidence to move us forward. Both are necessary to gain self-respect and the respect of others. Organizations are made up of human beings, so it’s not surprising that organizations need exactly the same things. A leader’s job is to build an organization’s skills and capabilities and to develop its capacity for producing quality results. A leader’s job is also to define a worthy purpose and to build the confidence to perform.
"Briefly put, we decided that ISBD’s purpose was to analyze, propose, advocate and ensure implementation of a strategic framework for evaluating and pursuing our international opportunities. In other words, our value-add would be to get everyone on the same page. Any organization is stronger when people are aligned to act together, instead of working at cross-purposes. I say “we” decided because our mission was designed as a team. This kind of collaboration was required if our mission was to be more than a nice slogan on the wall. A purpose which directs people’s behavior must be fully understood and embraced. Specific tactics—'execute this specific action in this specific way'—can be imposed on an organization from above. Indeed, sometimes they need to be if speed and precision are important, and if the action is controversial. A mission or purpose or strategy is designed to guide decision making for the longer term. It channels people’s energies so the boss doesn’t have to direct every action. An organization that requires the boss’s involvement in every decision can’t function effectively over the long term; it’s simply too complex and time-consuming. Besides, smart people want to contribute their talents—they don’t always want to be told what to do." (Fiorina, Tough Choices, ch. 13)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteHobby Lobby founder David Green explains how he importance of leniency to true leadership in his book, More Than a Hobby. " When you’re in leadership, you have to give up some of your authority in order to make people’s jobs a fun experience. If they don’t feel empowered, they’re going to dread coming to work in the morning. They need a certain degree of freedom in order to feel that they’re making a difference.
"I remember going to a craft show years ago and watching the grand entrance of a man who had been recently featured on the trade magazine covers as 'Mr. Craft.' He swept through the aisles with an entourage of perhaps a dozen underlings. Clearly, he decided everything; they were just along for the effect. He generated a lot of buzz on the exhibit floor by placing an order for forty-two trailerloads of a single product. Wow! Everyone was impressed.
"Today that man is out of the business. When you concentrate authority in a single set of hands, it raises the possibility of making big blunders. Far better to spread out the say-so, and grow your people as a result.
"Our real estate department, for example, has tremendous latitude in choosing and leasing properties. When our director comes to me with a deal, I almost always say yes; because he’s done his homework, he has the numbers to back up his recommendation—and we’re ready to go. He’s already calculated how good the location is, how much 'TI money' (tenant improvement) we’re going to need, and all the rest." (David Green, More Than a Hobby, ch. 8)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteMaverick businessman Robert Townsend discusses the practice of subsidiarity in his iconoclastic classic, Up the Organization. "Many give lip service, but few delegate authority in important matters.” Which means that they tend to just delegate the grunt work. Real leaders should take care of as much of the grunt work for their people as possible, because they can “do it, or see a way to do without it, ten times as fast.” And they delegate as many of the important matters as they can, because “that creates a climate in which people grow.”
"Example: An important contract with a supplier comes up for renewal. There is your present supplier and a major competitor. How many managers would delegate that decision? You’re right: none. But you should. Here’s one way:
"1. Find the person in your organization to whom a good contract will mean the most. (Can’t be more than two levels below you—there’s that bloody organization chart getting in the way.)
"2. Take the pains to write out on one sheet of paper the optimum and the minimum that you expect from each area of the contract.
"3. Give your organization (including John—the person you’ve picked to negotiate) a couple of days to discuss your outline, edit, subtract, delete, add, and modify. Then rewrite it, call John into the office (with his boss if there is one between him and you—I assume he’s in favor of this or forget it).
"4. With John on an extension, you phone the top person involved at each supplier, and after the amenities, you say: 'This is John. I’ve asked him to negotiate this contract. Whatever he recommends, we’ll do. There is no appeal over his head. I want a signed contract within thirty days.'
"Now, I know that ninety-nine out of a hundred managers won’t take this risk. But is it a risk? John is closer to the point of use. He will be most affected by a bad contract. He knows how much the company gains or loses by a concession in each area (and they know he does). And he’ll spend full time on it for the next thirty days. Would you? I maintain the company will get a more favorable contract every time. Note that you’ve given maximum authority and accountability to John. And you’ve been fair to (and put great pressure on) your suppliers by telling them the rules in advance." (Robert Townsend, Up the Organization, language slightly edited)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteIn Made in America, Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton explains his practice of "pushing down responsibility" or delegating authority to the lowest possible level. "Our most famous technique for doing this is a textbook example of thinking small. We call it Store Within a Store, and it's the simplest idea in the world. Again, in many big retail companies the department head is just an hourly employee going through the motions, somebody who punches a clock, then rips open boxes and stacks whatever's in them onto shelves. But we give our department heads the opportunity to become real merchants at a very early stage of the game. They can have the pride of proprietorship even if they weren't fortunate enough to go to college or be formally trained in business. They only have to want it bad enough, pay close attention, and work very hard at developing merchandising skills. We've had many cases where the experience has fired people up with ambition, and they've gone on to work their way through college and move on up in the company, and I hope we have many more cases like that." (Walton, Made in America, pp. 289-90)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteIn his autobiography, Beyond the Norm, former Interstate Batteries CEO Norman Miller describes a personal revelation he once experienced about the power of group creativity. Early on, Miller recalls, he tended to run the company in an excessively centralized way. "I had key people and their people sitting and stymied, waiting on a decision from me. As you can well imagine, problems were the result. I realized that things couldn't continue like this, but I was somewhat confused, being in the stress (sic)." One day, Miller happened to be reading the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel, and was especially struck by a verse where God exclaims, "Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them." (Gen. 11:6)
Miller took this as a reflection on what can be achieved when several individuals are committed in common to a plan that has been clearly communicated and understood. "A light went on in my head as I took that illustration to heart. I'd always thought I was reasonably intelligent, but I couldn't understand how some individuals could come up with inventions like laser beams, televisions, jet engines - things that were totally incomprehensible to me. Then I got to thinking that most of these kinds of discoveries were the end result of group creativity - understanding and unity in strategy and planning of like minds, working together in commitment for years and years, personally and through writings often handed down.
...
"The realization finally swept over me that I'd been limiting the company because I had been relying on myself too much. With my brother, Len Ruby, and Gene Wooldridge, we decided who the top eight management people in the company were, and I met with them to share my thinking.
"We brought in a management consultant, Jim Brewer, and together we all developed a new company mission statement, including a set of goals, priorities, and plans. We structured new developments and budget practices, giving others more authority, autonomy, and responsibility.
"Plain and simple, I had seen that I was bogging everything down, because I insisted that everything clear through me. I wasn't able to cope with it all, and I was limiting the creativity and power of the company." (Miller, Beyond the Norm, pp. 99-101)
J. C. Penney founder James Cash Penney walked the fine line between supervision and micromanagement in both his retail business and his philanthropic agricultural endeavors, as David Delbert Kruger explains in J. C. Penney: The Man, the Store and American Agriculture. “James Cash Penney did not micromanage his farming partners, but he certainly offered agricultural advice and direction as he saw fit. After all, the purpose of each farm was to benefit two agribusiness partners, the farmer and James Cash Penney, and it was in the mutual interest of both partners that any benefit, financial or otherwise, be maximized. Besides utilizing [his associate] Bill Rhea as a hands-on field agent, Penney regularly dispensed his own respectable advice out of New York City for any agricultural dilemma a farmer faced, typically addressing these issues through correspondence from his office at the J. C. Penney Company headquarters. Even the young children of his farming partners were often in awe of Penney’s agricultural knowledge, with its scope and depth perpetually increasing from his incessant reading. ‘He was always sending my dad article clippings from magazines like Successful Farming and certainly any research publications from the agricultural colleges,’ [partner] Marshal [Meservey]’s son Ralph recalled in 2013. ‘If Mr. Penney read about a breakthrough in farming or livestock methods, you can bet he pushed my dad to try it. I remember him often telling my dad, “I don’t mind if you’re not the first farmer to try it – just make sure you’re not the last.”’ Penney’s scholarly approach to agriculture was consistent on both [Meservey] brothers’ farms. ‘He studied things in such a detailed way,’ reflected Elden [Meservey]’s son Larry. ‘I don’t know how many newspapers he read that were local. He always seemed to know what was going on around here, even when he was spending his time away from Missouri, in New York City.’” (Kruger, J. C. Penney, pp. 180-81)
ReplyDeleteCase Study
ReplyDeleteWhen future EWTN founder Mother Angelica began her life as a nun at the monastery of Sancta Clara in Canton, Ohio, she and the other sisters lived under a regimen of public penances and humiliations designed to break their rebel wills. When Angelica founded her own monastery of Our Lady of the Angels in Birmingham, Alabama, she took a different approach, as biographer Raymond Arroyo explains. “On the surface, the religious life at Our Lady of the Angels was as rigorous as that at Sancta Clara. Much of the day was reserved for prayer, and the imposed silence remained intact. What had changed was the approach to monastic living.
“Sister Assumpta believed Mother was ‘more concerned with the contemplative’ dimension in Birmingham. ‘We got rid of penances; we played Monopoly for recreation. She was trying to make a more relaxed foundation.’
“Eliminating public talk of faults and humiliating penances, Mother Angelica pioneered a monastery where there was ‘no longer an isolated individual, seeking self alone, but a togetherness…one in will, in purpose, in love.’
“To encourage total participation in the life of the monastery, Mother freely shared blessings and setbacks with her entire family. There were no secrets. Community decisions were arrived at in a similar fashion. Angelica would first consult with her sisters, collecting their views on a given matter. She then would consider her options alone before the Blessed Sacrament. Once she selected a course of action, the sisters would unify behind it and pray for a positive outcome.” (Arroyo, Mother Angelica, pp. 108-09)
Advice
ReplyDelete“Don’t ‘overcontrol’ like a novice pilot. Stay loose enough from the flow that you can observe and calibrate.” (Rumsfeld, Rumsfeld's Rules, 131)
Advice
ReplyDelete“It helps to try to see your organization through the eyes of those who make it work. One of the best ways to do that is to make yourself available to those who you don’t work with on a daily basis. Chances are that if people have concerns and complaints, they have them for a reason. Their concerns may have previously been ignored by those above them. Find out what people are working on, what their worries are, what they are wondering about, and what ideas they might have.” (Rumsfeld, Rumsfeld's Rules, 200-01)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteIn Rumsfeld’s Rules: Leadership Lessons in Business, Politics, War and Life, Donald Rumsfeld explains the importance of creating a culture of flexibility, which often requires bucking entrenched bureaucracies. He offers an example from his decades-long career in national defense. “The RAND Corporation, a nonprofit think tank that assesses and analyzes various national and international issues, once commissioned a report on what went wrong in the Vietnam War. This was of interest to me, as I had been in Congress when the Johnson administration escalated the conflict, became troubled by its costly and inconclusive trajectory, and witnessed the antiwar protests that consumed Washington, D.C., in the mid- to late 1960s.
“The report…concluded that institutional inertia and a business-as-usual attitude afflicted the diplomatic and defense institutions of the U.S. government. The report faulted national security bureaucracies – particularly the Departments of State and Defense – for an unwillingness or inability to adapt to the requirements of an unconventional guerilla war in the jungles of Southeast Asia…”
“Some of these challenges arose three decades later when the Department of Defense needed to be reoriented to deal with unconventional and ‘asymmetric’ twenty-first-century security challenges after the attacks of 9/11 [and the Afghan and Iraq wars that followed].
…
“The military procurement system, for example, typically took years to produce a new weapon or piece of equipment, a pace that was clearly inadequate to the changing needs of an asymmetrical battlefield. Our forces were largely organized, trained, and equipped for a conventional battlefield, with well-delineated front lines and relatively safe rear areas. The biggest killers of U.S. troops in Iraq were improvised explosive devices (IEDs) – crude, home-made roadside bombs. The Army and the Marine Corps ground forces were accustomed to moving around behind the leading edge of the battlefield in thin-skinned HUMVEEs – a descendent of the jeep. Once IEDs emerged as a lethal threat the Army scrambled to rush new ‘up-armored’ HUMVEES to the war zone, going from fifteen produced per month to several hundred per month by 2004.
“I created a special IED task force to coordinate all the new technologies being developed to better protect our troops from those deadly devices. I brought back to duty a retired general, Montgomery Meigs, to head the new task force. Not worried about promotion or rocking the boat, Meigs could go head-to-head with the forces that were wedded to the status quo, which he did successfully. The existing bureaucracies in the Pentagon and military services were not set up to respond rapidly to urgent battlefield needs, so we had to create new mechanisms to accomplish what we needed to get done and at a faster pace.” (Rumsfeld, Rumsfeld’s Rules, pp. 188-90)
Case Study
ReplyDelete“You must delegate responsibility even if you could cover all of the ground yourself. It isn’t wise to have so much depend upon one person, and it’s unfair to your staff…The most common excuse for hogging the whole job is that employees are too young or inexperienced. It’s part of your job to develop your staff, which includes developing initiative, resourcefulness, and judgment. The best way to do this is to load them up with all the responsibility they can carry without danger of serious embarrassment to any person or group. Self-respecting people resent being babied to an extent they cannot act on even the most trivial detail without express approval of their manager." (King, The Unwritten Laws of Business, 38-39)
Advice
ReplyDelete“It is natural, on occasion, for a manager to want to exercise managerial authority directly in order to dispose of a matter promptly without regard to the person assigned to the job. To be sure, it’s your prerogative, but it can be very demoralizing to the subordinate involved, and should be resorted to only in real emergencies. Once you assign jobs to your people, let them do those jobs, even at the cost of some inconvenience to yourself. Finally, you can do irreparable damage by exercising authority without sufficient knowledge of the details of the matter.” (King, The Unwritten Laws of Business, 65)
Advice
ReplyDelete“Be particularly careful to be fair on all occasions…Whenever you enjoy some natural advantage, or whenever you are in a position to mistreat someone seriously, it is especially incumbent upon you to ‘lean over backwards’ to be fair and square.” (King, The Unwritten Laws of Business, 77)
Advice
ReplyDelete“Give people the benefit of the doubt if you are inclined to suspect their motives, especially when you can afford to do so. Mutual distrust and suspicion breed a great deal of absolutely unnecessary friction and trouble, frequently of a very serious nature…Do not fear being taken as naïve or gullible; you’ll gain more than you lose by this practice with anything more than casual attention to the actual odds in each case.” (King, The Unwritten Laws of Business, 78-79)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteIn his book, It’s Your Ship, Captain Michael Abrashoff explains how he carried out an early experiment in the practice of leniency shortly after taking command of the U.S.S Benfold. Although the effort went unrecognized by his own superiors at the time, it helped to set the pace for the rest of his captaincy. “On our way from San Diego to the Persian Gulf…our first stop was Honolulu. Benfold accompanied two other ships, USS Gary and USS Harry W. Hill, both skippered by officers senior to me. The operational commander of all three ships was a commodore aboard Hill.
“During the seven-day voyage, we performed exercises and drills. On the sixth day, we were supposed to detect and avoid a U.S. submarine that was posing as an enemy. The submarine’s task was to find and sink the ship carrying the commodore. Though the commanding officer of Gary was in charge of this particular exercise, because of his seniority, three days prior to the exercise no plan had yet been announced, and I sensed an opportunity. In business lingo, you could say Benfold’s crew had a chance to boost the ship’s market share.
“I called my junior sonarmen into my stateroom, along with the appropriate officers to serve as witnesses, and assigned them the task of coming up with an innovative plan. I told them to put themselves in the shoes of the submarine’s CO, to figure out what he was going to do, and then to develop a strategy to scupper it.
“To everyone’s surprise—including mine—they devised the most imaginative plan I had ever seen. We submitted it, but both the commodore and Gary’s CO shot it down in favor of a last-minute plan based on the same tactics the Navy has been using since World War II. Now more than ever, we must stop preparing for past battles and prepare for new ones.
“When I heard their decision, I went ballistic. Forcefully, almost disrespectfully, I argued with them on the ship-to-ship radio. The radio is a secure circuit, but also a party line that any sailor can listen to by punching the right button, which all of my sailors had done. They heard me challenge my bosses to try something new and bold. I was told in no uncertain terms that we would use Gary’s plan. I asked for an NFL instant replay, appealing the decision. Nope. Tradition, plus outmoded business practices, carried the day.
“As a result, the submarine sank all three of us—without its crew breaking a sweat. Talk about dejection. But my sailors knew that I had gone to bat for them. I could not do less: They had done the same for me by designing such innovative solutions.” (Abrashoff, It’s Your Ship, Ch. 1)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteIn his book, It’s Your Ship, Captain Michael Abrashoff of the U.S.S. Benfold explains how his hands-off command style of making room for individual initiative actually helped to save the ship money. “In fiscal 1998, we operated on 75 percent of our budget, not because we consciously tried to save money, but because my sailors were free to question conventional wisdom and dream up better ways to do their jobs. For example, we reduced “mission-degrading” equipment failures from seventy-five in 1997 to twenty-four in 1998. As a result, we returned $600,000 of the ship’s $2.4 million maintenance budget and $800,000 of its $3 million repair budget. Of course, our reward was to have the Navy’s budgeters slash exactly $600,000 and $800,000 from our allotment the following year. Then we saved another 10 percent from that reduced figure, and duly returned it, too.” (Abrashoff, It’s Your Ship, Ch. 1)