When former managers were an executive coach, they talked about success, methodology and career questions. Today, one of the most frequently asked questions in coaching is: “How do I prevent the all-important bockmist who breaks my neck?” A brutal but correct question. Not just for the executive. It benefits all of them when managers stop building crap: businesses, shareholders, customers, taxpayers. That should not be so easy? After all, in the course of a normal working day, do numerous, even countless, opportunities arise to swing the dung fork? I thought so for a long time – and I was deceived.
Five species manure
The deception occurred to me when I was so excited about the absolutely avoidable bockmist of a client's superiors - by the way, with the client - that I activated my not insignificant distributor at the moment of anger and asked several hundred executives: "Get the crap In the management not also on the lace, tell times! " My IT technician still shudders to remember the day "the shoemaker with his damn mail-avalanche slammed half the Internet". To this day the horror stories are running. So many that they could fill a whole book - which they do now. The good thing about this Grusellawine from the management: It made a robust factor analysis possible. This resulted in a surprise: not countless traps lurk on the manager. There are only five
Practice example PM software
Consider the example of a larger company that wants to put an end to the piece of paperwork and the system chaos in its project management (PM) and therefore commission a tailor-made PM software. For software and hardware, the contracting entity together produces a substantial six-digit amount.
Stop talking now!
Five months after the introduction of the new software, the use of the 70 project managers resulted in a utilization rate of 30 percent. Most prefer to continue with Word, Excel or even their elaborate piece of paperwork. The IT leader is raging. Not long. Then he has to go and with him the head of the project. Because the managing director also rages and lets wild cursing indiscriminately competence bearers: "Such a crap we can not afford!" What happened? What are you typing?
Just do it!
I'm sorry: that was a catch question. Many executives see it at first sight: acceptance problem after implementation? Those concerned were not sufficiently brought into the boat. Why do some of them look straight away? Because they can see. Namely the complete process chain of an implementation.
The IT manager saw only the prestige value of the project, the internal project manager the figures and the system supplier, of course, the technical implementation. And each of them thought, "I have everything in view." This is not an overview. This is hubris, a perceptual distortion caused by negligent self-surrogation.
In the meantime, the managing director has appointed a new IT manager for the sling center. This is thanks to a short acquaintance with the action management significantly more mistresistenter than its predecessor. When he discovered the "Working Group for the Integration of Internal End Users", which was set up by the CEO in the meantime, he said at the first meeting: "With how many end users have you spoken to this day? Is the galloping logorrhea, the pure chatter!
You have to trust that first! That arouses the mind, which is why one of the participants is angry: "At least we have invested in the problem for over a hundred person-hours!" To which the new IT leader replies: "And that is inputitis: You have reedesteckt, but what has come out?" Is not that a bit trivial? No.
This is not trivial. This is ultratrivial in the sense of: Everyone looks at it immediately afterwards - and still makes hardly any in advance. Why this is so, is a mystery to me - that is what the organizational psychologists should take. I only know: Who can count to five and also does, becomes mistresistent. The simple solution to the problem is called Action Management. It works with the five-finger method
So the new IT leader points three fingers in turn and says, "We see (thumbs) what is still missing, so let us finally (Showfinger) talk to all the project leaders." That's the only thing that makes sense (Mittelfinger)! Because this is the case, the contradiction comes immediately: "But we did that at the very beginning of the project!" This is true - but obviously not sufficient. And much too complicated, as it turns out. So here are the ring and the little finger in the game.
At the very beginning of the project, all the project managers received a questionnaire on the requirements for the new PM software, "for which an additional study and three hours are needed", as the project manager's word leader bitterly notes. The old IT leader said, "So much time should be worth the new software!" The project leaders said: "We have not!
The working group discusses a wolf how to make the questionnaire easier. The new IT manager is tapping into his ringfinger: "People, you make that much too complicated." We do not like to fill in questionnaires for hours, let's make it easy for us to talk to people directly and personally Just 70! "
Together with three em- ployees in the empirical field survey, he is doing this within two weeks. And when the programmers can not meet some of the end-users' wishes within the cost line, the IT leader goes into a second round of talks to get the project leaders on the road anyway: he is consistently pursuing his partnership-based communication strategy until the end. The old did not consider it necessary to carry out it in all its respects.
The Goethe principle
Since the paradigm-forming e-mail avalanche have gone months. In the meantime, there is enough training, coaching and consulting experience with Action Management. Best of all, it works. The best thing about it: it takes only seconds. Just recently, a division manager told me: "We've always done W-meetings: who does what, what, when, with what end result?" Now we're taking the five fingers. "
These are cut down over and over again in all discussions: What are we overlooking now? What prevents us from immediate action? What makes sense? How can we make it even easier? And what loose ends do we cap or lead them to?
The dangerous thing about the five principles of action management is that they are too simple. As Goethe said, "It is annoying people that the genius is so simple. They forget that they have to implement it first." People with a high level of awareness of the status and status, with a strong inclination to impression management and the urge to constantly talk about the increasing complexity and dynamics of the growing dynaxity (the newest fashion word) in the business are experiencing difficulties with something that is so simple, That it works always and everywhere. All others benefit from this.
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