How to do more than we think we can is a puzzle we all struggle with. Other than working harder for longer hours, there are three ways to fix the problems: 1) having fewer things to do by prioritizing and saying no, 2) finding the right people to delegate to, and 3) improving your productivity.
Some people spend a lot of time and effort accomplishing very little while others do a lot in the same amount of time. What differentiates people who can do a lot from those who can’t is creativity, character, and wisdom. Those with more creativity invent ways to do things more effectively (for instance by finding good people, good technologies, and/or good designs). Those with more character are better able to wrestle with their challenges and demands. And those with more wisdom can maintain their equanimity by going to the higher level and looking down on themselves and their challenges to properly prioritize, realistically design, and make sensible choices.
14.1 Work for goals that you and your organization are excited about … and think about how your tasks connect to those goals.
If you’re focused on the goal, excited about achieving it, and recognize that doing some undesirable tasks to achieve the goal is required, you will have the right perspective and will be appropriately motivated. If you’re not excited about the goal that you’re working for, stop working for it. Personally, I like visualizing exciting new and beautiful things that I want to make into realities. The excitement of visualizing these ideas and my desire to build them out is what pulls me through the thorny realities of life to make my dreams happen.
a. Be coordinated and consistent in motivating others.
Managing groups to push through to results can be done emotionally or intellectually, and by carrots or by sticks. While we each have our own reasons for working, there are unique challenges and advantages to motivating a community. The main challenge is the need to coordinate, i.e., to get in sync on the reasons for pursuing a goal and the best way to do it. For example, you wouldn’t want one group to be motivated and compensated so differently from another (one gets big bonuses for example, and another doesn’t under the same set of circumstances) that the differences cause problems. The main advantage of working in groups is that it’s easier to design a group to include all the qualities needed to be successful than to find all those qualities in one person. As with the steps in the 5-Step Process, some people are great at one step and some are terrible at that step. But it doesn’t matter which is the case when everyone is clear on each other’s strengths and weaknesses and the group is designed to deal with those realities.
13.11 Remember that almost everything will take more time and cost more money than you expect.
Virtually nothing goes according to plan because one doesn’t plan for the things that go wrong. I personally assume things will take about one and a half times as long and cost about one and a half times as much because that’s what I’ve typically experienced. How well you and the people working with you manage will determine your expectations.
13.10 Have the clearest possible reporting lines and delineations of responsibilities.
This applies both within and between departments. Dual reporting causes confusion, complicates prioritization, diminishes focus on clear goals, and muddies the lines of supervision and accuntability—especially when the supervisors are in two different departments. When situations require dual reporting, managers need to be informed. Asking someone from another department to do a task without consulting with his or her manager is strictly prohibited (unless the request will take less than an hour or so). However, appointing co-heads of a department or a sub-department can work well if the managers are in sync and combine complementary and essential strengths; dual reporting in that case can work well if properly coordinated.
a. Assign responsibilites based on workflow design and people’s abilities, not job titles.
Just because someone is responsible for “Human Resoures,” “Recruiting,” “Legal,” “Programming,” and so forth, doesn’t necessarily mean they are the appropriate person to do everything associated with those functions. For example, though HR people help with hiring, firing, and providing benefits, it would be a mistake to give them the responsibility of determining who gets hired and fired and what benefits are provided to employees.
13.9 Have good controls so that you are not exposed to the dishoesty of others.
Don’t assume that people are operating in your interest rather than their own. A higher percentage of the population than you might imagine will cheat if given the opportunity. When offered the choie of being fair with you or taking more for themselves, most people will take more for themselves. Even a tiny amount of cheating is intolerable, so your happiness and success will depend on your controls. I have repeatedly learned this lesson the hard way.
a. Investigate and let people know you are going to investigate.
Investigate and explain to people that you are going to investigate so there are no surprises. Security controls should not be taken personally by the people being checked, just like a teller shouldn’t view the bank counting the money in the drawer (rather than just accepting the teller’s count) as an indication that the bank thinks the teller is dishonest. Explain that concept to employees so that they understand it.
But even the best controls will never be foolproof. For that reason (among many others), trustworthiness is a quality that would be appreciated.
13.8 Keep your strategic vision the same while making appropriate tactical changes as circumstances dictate.
Bridgewater‘s values and strategic goals have been the same since the beginning (to produce excellent results, meaningful work, and meaningful relationships through radical truth and transparency) but its people, systems, and tools have changed over forty-plus years as we have grown from a one-person company to a 1,500-person organization—and they can continue to change while maintaining values and strategic goals as newer generations replace older ones. That can happen for organizations in much the same way as it happens for families and communities. To help nurture that, it is desirable to reinforce the traditions and reasons for them, as well as to make sure the values and strategic goals are imbued in the successive leaders and the population as a whole.
a. Don’t put the expedient ahead of the strategic.
People often tell me they can’t deal with the longer-term strategic issues because they have too many pressing issues they need to solve right away. But rushing into ad hoc solutions while kicking the proverbial can down the road is a “path to slaughter.” Effective managers pay attention both to imminent problems and to problems that haven’t hit them yet. They constantly feel the tug of the strategic path because they worry about not getting to their ultimate goal and they are determined to continue their process of discovery until they do. While they might not have the answer right away, and they might not be able to come up with it by themselves, through a combination of creativity and character they eventually make all the necessary upward loops.
13.7 Create guardrails when needed—and remember it’s better not to guardrail at all.
Even when you find people who are great clicks for your design, there will be times when you’ll want to build guardrails around them. No one is perfect, everyone has strengths and weaknesses, and as hard as you look, you won’t always be able to find everything you want in one person. So look down on your machine and the people you choose for your roles, and think about where you might need to supplement your design by adding people or processes to ensure that each job is done excellently.
Remember, guardrailing is meant to help people who can by and large do their jobs well—it’s intended to help good people perform better, not to help failing people reach the bar. If you’re trying to guardrail someone who is missing the core abilities required for their job, you should probably just fire them and look for someone else who will be a better click.
A good guardrail typically takes the form of a team member whose strengths compensate for the weaknesss of the team member who needs to be guardrailed. A good guardrailing relationship should be firm without being overly rigid. Ideally, it should work like two people dancing—they’re literally pushing against each other, but with a lot of mutual give-and-take. Of course, having someone in a job who needs to be guardrailed is not as good as having someone in a job who will naturally do the righ things. Strive for that.
13.6 Create an organizational chart to look like a pyramid, with straight lines down that don’t cross.
The whole organization should look like a series of descending pyramids, but the number of layers should be limited to minimize hierarchy.
a. Involve the person who is the point of the pyramid when encountering cross-departmental or cross-sub-departmental issues.
Imagine an organizational chart as a pyramid that consists of numberous pyramids.
When issues involve parties not in the same part of the pyramid, it is generally desirable to involve the person who is at the point of the pyramid, and thus has the perspective and knowledge to weigh the trade-offs and make informed decisions.
b. Don’t do work for people in another department or grab people from another department to do work for you unless you speak to the person responsible for overseeing the other department.
