En nyligen genomförd studie visar att chefer tycks ha synnerligen svårt att koppla bort arbetet på sin lediga tid. 92 procent av cheferna uppger att de arbetar på semestern och åtta av tio kan inte låta bli att vara uppkopplade på sin lediga tid.
‘
Siffrorna kommer från en undersökning bland drygt 1.700 ledare som branschorganisationen Ledarna inom privat tjänstesektor (LPT) har gjort. 46 procent av de svarande är kvinnor och 54 procent är män, och de företräder ett brett urval av branscher med en viss övervikt på IT-sektorn, uppger LPT i ett pressmeddelande.
Av studien framgår att en majoritet av svenska chefer jobbar oftare efter arbetstid i dag än vad det man gjorde förr. 98 procent av cheferna jobbar över och nästan hälften av cheferna jobbar över flera dagar i veckan.
Bara 27 procent känner sig helt lediga efter arbetstid och en majoritet av de tillfrågade jobbar minst ett par gånger i veckan på ledig tid. 92 procent jobbar någon gång på semestern, medan 60 procent uppger att de gör det minst någon gång per vecka.
Den oklara gränsdragningen mellan arbetstid och fritid riskerar att leda till ohälsa. Även chefer måste få chans till återhämtning, säger Magdalena Stadin, doktorand i hälsa- och vårdvetenskap, som forskar om digital stress i arbetslivet.
”Den som inte får distans till jobbet och möjlighet till vila och återhämtning kan i längden lätt drabbas av utmattningssymptom som exempelvis sömn- och koncentrationssvårigheter, vilket i sin tur ökar risken för sjukskrivning på sikt”, säger hon.
Stressen av att ständigt vara uppkopplad på mejl och sociala medier ser ut som ett växande problem. 82 procent kan inte låta bli att vara uppkopplade på ledig tid och 95 procent scannar mejlkorgen när de egentligen ska vara lediga. Var fjärde chef uppger att de förväntas ha koll på mejlen även utanför arbetstid.
”Digitala verktyg ska vara en tillgång och möjlighet men de gör oss också mer tillgängliga. Det gör att allt fler chefer har svårt att släppa arbetet vilket i sin tur bidrar till en ökad stress och andra problem. I dagens samhälle finns det en märklig förväntning på omedelbar bekräftelse, lite som att chefer är 112:s motsvarighet och alltid ska rycka ut. Alla till mans bör kanske fundera över vilka förväntningar man har och ska ha. Våra chefer ska hålla länge”, säger LPT:s ordförande Lorri Mortensen Mates i en kommentar.
Nästan samtliga chefer upplever att de är stressade, visar LPT:s undersökning. Var tredje chef stress flera gånger dagligen. Det som stressar cheferna mest är en hög arbetsbelastning på grund av ledningens krav och att försöka få ihop livspusslet.
Effective meetings produce better business decisions. Yet too many decision meetings are doomed from the get-go. You can do better.
Decisions are the lifeblood of organizations, and meetings are where important business decisions often happen. Yet many executives are nonplussed—at best—when describing their own experience of meetings. Some business leaders we know wonder openly how they can dedicate so much time (commonly six to seven hours a day and often more) to an activity that feels so unproductive. “I spend nearly all of my time in meetings,” admitted one top-team member to us recently, “and I don’t get to sit down to think on my own until after 6:00 p.m.”
“I spend nearly all of my time in meetings,” admitted one top-team member to us recently, “and I don’t get to sit down to think on my own until after 6:00 p.m.”
Many leaders will empathize. In a recent McKinsey survey, 61 percent of executives said that at least half the time they spent making decisions, much of it surely spent in meetings, was ineffective. And just 37 percent of respondents said their organizations’ decisions were both high-quality and timely.
How can senior managers get better, faster business decisions from the meetings they attend or lead? Certainly, getting steeped in best practices is wise, as there is a wealth of good thinking available on the topic of decision making (see sidebar, “Read me: Quick-hit recommendations for decision makers”). In the meantime, we recommend looking closer to home, namely at the preparation that should happen (but perhaps doesn’t) before your own meetings. SidebarTry this exercise: take out your phone, open your calendar, and review today’s remaining meetings against the three questions below to see if you can spot any of the interrelated “fatal flaws” that most commonly sabotage meeting effectiveness. Besides improving the quality and speed of your team’s decisions and helping you make better use of your time, we hope the exercise helps you shed light on the underlying organizational dynamics and mind-sets that may be seeding dysfunction in the first place.
Question 1
Should we even be meeting at all?
Removing superfluous meetings is perhaps the single biggest gift to an executive’s productivity. Start by examining your recurring meetings, as these are a fertile place for otherwise useful and timely decision topics to mutate in unproductive ways.
Consider the case of the healthcare company that held a recurring “growth committee” meeting that in principle should have been making decisions about strategic partnerships, M&A, and new lines of business but in practice rarely did. Meanwhile, the company’s executive committee (which included several of the growth-committee members, along with the CEO) also met routinely to cover the same ground—and was making the decisions.
Why the disconnect? Left unexamined, the growth-committee meeting had evolved over several years into a discussion forum and holding pen for topics to be decided by the executive committee. Moreover, the range of subjects the growth committee covered had widened considerably beyond its original remit. The meeting was, in effect, not only redundant but also confusing to managers further down in the organization about what decisions were being made and where.
Poor clarity around decision rights encouraged wide-ranging discussions but not decisions, and over time this behavior became a habit in meetings—a habit that exacerbated a general lack of accountability among some executives.
While the company went on to remedy the situation and successfully streamline where decisions about growth priorities were made, the issues the CEO and top team had to confront went well beyond eliminating redundant meetings. For example, poor clarity around decision rights encouraged wide-ranging discussions but not decisions, and over time this behavior became a habit in meetings—a habit that exacerbated a general lack of accountability among some executives. Moreover, the team lacked the psychological safety to take interpersonal risks and thus feared making the “wrong” decision. Together, these intertwined factors encouraged leaders to escalate decisions up the chain of command, as the growth committee had done. Had the CEO attacked the symptoms by only announcing fixes from on high (say, blanket restrictions on the number of meetings allowed, or introducing meeting-free blackout days—both actions we have seen frustrated leaders take), the problems would have continued.
This is not to say that time management isn’t part of the solution. It is, and if ingrained habits or cultural expectations encourage meetings as your company’s default mode, then soul searching is in order. If you are one of those leaders who reflexively accepts meeting invitations as they appear in your calendar, then you should hit pause. Your goal should be to treat your leadership capacity—a finite resource—as seriously as your company treats financial capital (an equally finite one).
When recurring meetings are needed, check with the other decision makers to ensure the frequency is right (can weekly become monthly?). Look also to see if the decision might be best made by an individual. Remember: Delegating a decision to someone doesn’t mean that the person can’t still consult others for guidance. It just probably doesn’t require an entire committee to do so.
Finally, it’s tough to spot problems when no one is looking. At the healthcare company, like at many organizations, it wasn’t anyone’s responsibility to ensure that senior-management meetings had clear, non-overlapping purposes. A chief of staff can be invaluable here, as we will see next.
Question 2
What is this meeting for anyway?
At a broad level, we naturally associate the meetings we lead with the topics they cover (think “branch network review” or “China strategy”). But how often do we go further and clarify whether the meeting is meant to share information, discuss it, or decide something? It may seem rudimentary, but we can all recall meetings (and large-group meetings in particular) where the lines between sharing, discussing, and deciding were blurred or absent—or where the very purpose of the meeting is unclear, as was true of the healthcare company’s growth committee and its ever-expanding list of discussion topics. In such situations, meetings may begin to seem frustrating and even futile.
This was the dynamic that product-development leaders were struggling with at an advanced industrial company. The team attended a monthly meeting where they were meant to make decisions about whether to advance or kill products in the middle stages of development (the company had similar meetings for early- and late-stage products). But instead, the meetings involved hours of discussion and few decisions.
Your goal: treat your leadership capacity as seriously as your company treats financial capital.
In part, this was because of the complexity of the topic; the success of the products in question wasn’t a foregone conclusion, but the products were all far enough along to show real promise. Any decisions would therefore be difficult to make. Another challenge was that each product had a group of backers at the meeting who didn’t want to see their work torpedoed. The mix of interests and motivations in the room, combined with the lack of organization and role clarity (a factor we will explore next) spelled trouble. The result was a freewheeling mix of provocative, meandering, inconclusive discussions. At times, important questions would get raised that couldn’t be answered, in part because participants didn’t have the information they needed beforehand. In one meeting, for example, the team didn’t know the status of a major customer’s own product-development efforts. This was vital because the customer’s products would rely on the ones being developed by the industrial company. In other cases, meeting attendees were expected to review the relevant material as the meeting took place around them.
To tackle the problems, the company tapped a leader to serve in a chief-of-staff capacity for the effort. This colleague coordinated the materials before the meeting, ensured that they were distributed in advance, and along the way verified that the proper staff work had been done in the first place. This minimized the “informational” aspects of the meetings themselves, saving time while in fact better preparing the participants with the information they needed.
This colleague also helped run the meetings differently—for instance, by keeping the lines clear between discussion and debate sessions, and the actual decision making itself (following the principles outlined in the exhibit). This allowed for richer, more thorough conversations about the products and debates around the trade-offs involved, and ultimately led to better decisions. After the meetings, the chief of staff ensured the appropriate follow-up took place and that the various committees stayed closely coordinated with one another. Finally, the company trained additional executives in these skills so that the role could be reproduced and the benefits scaled
A final note. Just because a decision is made doesn’t mean people are committed to it. As the industrial company’s example suggests, people bring their own motivations to meetings, and we’ve seen plenty of cases where a “yes” in the meeting turns into a “maybe” in the following days and weeks. Part of the solution for this is to make sure the next steps are clear, including the nitty-gritty details of execution. After all, a decision only matters if it can be implemented. The broader challenge, of course, is making sure that everyone feels a stake in the outcome. Getting there involves institutionalizing the principle of “disagree and commit,” articulated by Jeff Bezos in his 2017 letter to Amazon shareholders.
Question 3
What is everyone’s role?
Just as it’s crucial for meetings to have a clear purpose and for attendees to know whether they’re meant to be debating or deciding, it is equally important to know who makes the call. Indeed, even if it’s clear who the decider is—and even if it’s you—it’s a mistake to meet without fully considering the roles of the other participants and how they are meant to influence the outcome. This was part of the challenge faced by the industrial company’s product-development team: where the backers of a given product sought to informally veto any moves that would kill or delay it, even though they had no explicit authority to do so.
Poor role clarity can kill productivity and cause frustration when decisions involve complicated business activities that cut across organizational boundaries. At a global pharmaceutical company, for example, a pricing decision for a new product became a political, energy-sapping affair because several leaders believed they each had decision-making authority in overlapping parts of the pricing process. Further confusing matters, the ultimate pricing decision was made by a committee where no single member had clear authority to decide.
Blurry accountability can also have immediate repercussions in an era where speed and agility are a competitive advantage. For example, a major business unit of an industrial company missed out on a high-priority acquisition because the head of the unit thought the CEO and executive team needed to approve all acquisitions. The CEO, meanwhile, thought the business head could make the call. Before the mix-up was sorted out, just 48 hours later, a rival had stolen the deal.
To get a handle on meeting roles and responsibilities, we are fans of using a simple yet comprehensive “cheat sheet” of responsibilities. Our list goes by the acronym DARE, and while you may prefer different nomenclature in your company, make sure you can identify the essence of these four roles when you hold your next decision meeting. (Note that your chief of staff could also come from any of these roles and serve in two capacities.)
Decision maker(s) are the only ones with a vote and the ones with responsibility to decide as they see fit; if they get stuck, they should jointly align on how to escalate the decision or otherwise get the process unstuck, even if this means agreeing to “disagree and commit.”
Advisers give input and shape the decision. They have an outsize voice in setting the context of the decision and a big stake in its outcome—for example, the decision might affect their profit-and-loss statement. But they don’t have a vote on the decision.
Recommenders conduct the analyses, explore the alternatives, illuminate the pros and cons, and ultimately recommend a course of action to the advisers and decision makers. They see the day-to-day implications of the decision, but they also have no vote. In general, the more recommenders the better in the process—but not in the decision meeting itself, as noted in the exhibit.
Execution partners don’t give input so much as get deeply involved in implementing the decision, and therefore they must be informed. For speed and clarity, you will need the right ones in the room when the decision is made so they can ask clarifying questions and spot flaws that might hinder implementation. Notably, the number of execution partners doesn’t necessarily depend on the importance of the decision. An M&A decision, for example, might have just two execution partners: the CFO and a business-unit head.
These stakeholders are all critically important, and they should hear so from you—even as you take away their decision rights, votes, veto power, and escalation authority, as appropriate. Remember, just because they don’t have a vote doesn’t mean they don’t have a voice. Good decisions are the culmination of a thoughtful process. Clarified roles will help that process be thorough—and speedy.
One role you never want represented? T, for tourists. Many of your colleagues will want to be in the loop and will even need to be involved downstream eventually—but if they have no role in the decision-making process, they shouldn’t be in today’s meeting. Get disciplined, keep them out, and find other ways, such as memos or town halls, to communicate decisions to relevant stakeholders.
Many of your colleagues will want to be in the loop and will even need to be involved downstream eventually—but if they have no role in the decision-making process, they shouldn’t be in today’s meeting.
Be mindful, however, that tourists come for a reason, and having a lot of them is often a sign of deeper problems. It’s human nature, after all, to want to know what’s going on. If you aren’t giving them a clear sense of how their roles fit into the decisions being made, you can expect grumbling—and it will be deserved. To prevent it, make it a point to communicate more than just the outcome of a meeting, but also what it means for specific roles. In large organizations, enlist other leaders, including your direct reports, to help you.
The best organizations use multiple channels and vehicles to share and reinforce information about important decisions, policies, and so on. The worst companies tend to leave it to serendipity—and to chance.
Finally, there could be plenty of situations where a “guest” seems a perfectly reasonable idea—say you want to give an up-and-coming direct report a chance for some C-suite exposure. If they are truly contributing to one of the roles we’ve outlined, go for it. More likely, you risk falling into one or more of the traps described in this article. If what you want is exposure for your colleague, suggest that the CEO invite them to lunch instead.
Den som vill skapa ett framgångsteam gör klokt i att inspireras av eliten inom idrotten. Här är ingredienserna för att knåda fram ett vinnarlag – oavsett sport eller näringslivsgren. Framgångsrika idrottsklubbar har en lagprestanda som många företag trånar efter. I sin nya bok ”Vinnande ledarskap” identifierar forskarkollegorna Margareta Oudhuis och Stefan Tengblad de principer som ligger bakom medaljerna.
1. Rätt miljö Klubbar som når långt har bland annat en publikdragande arena, toppmoderna träningsanläggningar och viktig kringexpertis som fysioterapeuter, idrottsläkare, dietister och sjukgymnaster. Det vill säga allt som krävs för att maximera spelarnas förutsättningar.
”Miljön ska underlätta för idrottarna att fokusera på kärnverksamheten och de sportsliga prestationerna. Motsvarande tänkesätt kan man utgå från när man utformar arbetsplatser”, säger Margareta Oudhuis, professor i arbetsvetenskap vid Högskolan i Borås.
2. Skickligt lagbygge Balans mellan individ och kollektiv är grundläggande i topplagen. Å ena sidan ska varje spelare tänja sin egen roll och maxförmåga. Å andra sidan måste det finnas en kollektiv ansvarskultur, där alla gemensamt jobbar för att laget ska vinna.
Var och en måste också känna sig uppskattad och bekräftad, konstaterar Margareta Oudhuis och tar före detta förbundskaptenen för landslaget i ishockey, Conny Evensson, som exempel.
”När han klev in i omklädningsrummet efter en match gick han inte fram till stjärnan i laget som ändå blev omklappad av alla, utan till den spelare som ingen ser. Det gjorde han medvetet för att lyfta dem som inte får lika stor uppmärksamhet.”
3. Robust spelfilosofi Spelfilosofin är lagets ryggrad som klargör hur målet ska nås. Den är också en form av värderingsmässig ledstång att hålla sig i.
”När spelfilosofin sitter i ryggmärgen frigörs energi till kreativitet. Framgångsrika lag lyckas också ständigt förbättra den”, säger Margareta Oudhuis.
Om lagets filosofi och värderingar inte respekteras ska tränaren markera, säger hon vidare. En uppmärksammad händelse var när Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Olof Mellberg och Christian ”Chippen” Wilhelmsson trotsade lagets riktlinjer och gick ut på krogen. Krogbesöket ledde till att de skickades hem från landslagssamlingen i Göteborg 2006.
”Det fungerar inte om lagets värderingar bara gäller vissa spelare. Alla – även stjärnorna – måste respektera dem. En spelare berättade att laget fick ett större förtroende för förbundskaptenen Lars Lagerbäck efter beslutet.”
4. Orubblig vinnaranda För att ta sig till medaljerna gäller det att ha en välkomnande och öppen miljö i laget. Nya, skickliga spelare ska inte ses som ett hot, säger Margareta Oudhuis.
”Kommer det in en riktig bra spelare ska laget tänka, ‘vad kul nu blir vi ännu bättre’. Om det uppstår osund konkurrens är det nödvändigt att stävja den. Det gäller även inom arbetslivet.”
Den tidigare tränaren för herrlandslaget i handboll, Bengt ”Bengan” Johansson, var en mästare på att mejsla fram rätt laganda bland spelarna, konstaterar hon.
”Han lyckades bland annat få en väldigt duktig spelare att sitta på bänken och vara lycklig när laget vann. I stället för att känna sig utanför, stöttade han genom att vara glad och lyfta dem som spelade.”
5. Fullt fokus ger flyt Fokusbubblan är avgörande för att kamma hem medaljerna. Inget lag har segrat med spelare som är disträ eller riktar koncentrationen mot annat än det som händer på planen. Det kan vara värt att påminna sig om på företagen, där just fokus snarare har blivit en bristvara på många håll, anser Margareta Oudhuis.
Ritualerna före match är ofta viktiga. Legendariska förbundskaptenen Tommy Svensson hittade en numera berömd metod för att få laget i vinnarstämning inför åttondelsfinalen mot Saudiarabien i VM 1994, där Sverige tog brons.
”Han läste dikten ‘I rörelse’ av Karin Boye. Det fick spelarna att bli berörda och känna att ‘vi klarar detta’ – och så gick de ut på planen och vann matchen.”
För mycket mejl, för många möten, för lite tid. Känns det bekant? I dag är besvär orsakat av stress och andra psykiska påfrestningar på jobbet vanligt.
Struktören David Stiernholm har de senaste 15 åren hjälpt olika verksamheter att strukturera upp. Här är hans tips för att minska stressen på jobbet.
Pappershögarna är lägre, kontorslandskapen öppnare och mötena slukar allt mer arbetstid. Under åren som David Stiernholm varit verksam som struktör har han besökt hundratals arbetsplaster och lagt märke till ett antal saker som förändrats. Att vi i dag jobbar mer och mer digitalt är självklart men konsekvenserna är att inflödena blivit många fler än tidigare.
– Det är inte bara inflöden av information utan även att kommunikation sker i många olika kanaler. Många jag träffar uttrycker att de behöver hjälp med att reda ut det här, hur ofta ska jag titta vad som skrivs och vad ska jag fokusera på? Många upplever att de blir avbrutna hela tiden, säger David Stiernholm.
David Stiernholm har lyckats strukturera upp sin egen arbetssituation så att han kan leva efter 37-15-4-metoden. Han jobbar 37 veckor om året, är ledig 15 veckor och jobbar bara fyra effektiva dagar i veckan för att kunna vara ledig på fredagar. Foto: Nicklas Thegerström
Boken ”Förenkla på jobbet” riktar sig framför allt till verksamheter där anställda eller egenföretagare själva lägger upp sitt arbete. Det kan till exempel vara experter, forskare, skribenter och chefer.
– I dag är folk mer hänvisade till sig själva. Många förväntas själva lägga upp sitt arbete och lära sig nya system utan att kanske riktigt fått förklarat för sig vad man ska ha det till. Det skapar stress.
I dag tar också möten allt mer tid av arbetsdagen. Så pass mycket att många inte riktigt hinner det de ska göra på sin övriga arbetstid. Det kan medföra att man får jobba över eller småjobbar hemma på kvällarna. Att planen för dagen spricker är också vanligt, liksom otydliga mål. Ambitiösa personer utför fler arbetsuppgifter än de förväntas. Det är mycket till dem boken riktar sig åt.
– Men också personer i chefspositioner som är utsatta då många assistentjobb och andra stödfunktioner försvunnit. Det är klassiskt att mellanchefer blir klämda. De ska vara operativa och tillgängliga för sina medarbetare och samtidigt hålla huvudet ovanför vattenytan, arbeta strategiskt och genomföra det som kommer ovanifrån. Det är lika vanligt i näringsliv som i offentlig sektor.
Lösningarna då? Det viktigastemenar David Stiernholm är att hitta roten till problemen för att kunna svara på frågan om varför någonting är så krångligt.
– Idén är att om man hittar själva grundproblemet så löser man många fler aspekter och symptom än de man först tänkte att man skulle lösa. Det är ofta ganska få problem som ställer till det ganska mycket.
En viktig faktor är tid och allt som ska hinnas med på arbetsdagen. David Stiernholm säger att många har ganska dålig uppfattning om hur lång tid en viss arbetsuppgift kommer ta och att många överskattar hur brådskandet vissa saker är.
– Om man är ambitiös är det lätt att tänka okej, det är brådskande så jag måste släppa allt annat och göra det direkt. Du borde istället fråga chefen, när behöver du egentligen ha det klart? Och inte nöja sig med så ”snart som möjligt” för det kan betyda väldigt olika för olika personer. Bråttom är ett godtyckligt begrepp.
Vad är svårigheterna?
– Att vi gapar efter för mycket direkt. Börja med någonting väldigt avgränsat och försök förenkla det. Om du börjar med ett stort problem och du samtidigt är stressad och har för mycket att göra är det väldigt lätt att misslyckas.
Jag tar avstamp i klassiska kvalitetsförbättringsverktyg som utvecklades i Japan på 50-talet och som går ut på att man frågar sig själv fem gånger vad problemet är för att komma fram till själva grunden till varför det blir på ett visst sätt.
2. Avsätt egentid
När möten slukar mycket av arbetstiden är det viktigt att avsätta tid varje vecka för att bara jobba med sådant du måste göra men kanske sällan hinner. Det är okej att flytta på den tiden om något viktigt möte skulle bokas, men bara om du flyttar tiden till en annan dag den veckan.
3. Kräv tydliga deadlines och mål
Vet man inte riktigt när någonting som är brådskande egentligen måste vara klart är det lätt att stressa i onödan. Kräv en exakt tid av din chef för att få bättre koll på hur du ska prioritera och lägga upp din tid. Tydliga mål gör att du inte bränner ut dig genom att göra uppgifter som egentligen inte förväntas av dig.
Kraven på dagens drömchef är betydligt högre i dag än tidigare. Men vilka egenskaper är viktigast för att en chef ska bli omtyckt av sin personal? Forskarna Lisa Björk och Charlotte Simonsson ger sina bästa råd för att hantera ledarskapsrollen.
Lyhörd, tydlig, coachande och en människokännare. En rapport från Manpower där 2.307 både anställda och företagare svarade visar att många föredrar chefer som är människokännare – i stället för sakkunniga inom sitt arbete. Tre av fyra tyckte dessutom att deras närmaste #chef är ganska eller mycket bra. Men kraven på dagens drömchef är betydligt högre än förr i tiden.
– Dagens chef ska vara både terapeut, visionär och operatör, säger Charlotte Simonsson, som har forskat på ledarskap och är forskare på institutionen för strategisk kommunikation, Lunds universitet.
På dagens arbetsmarknad ska chefer kunna hålla flera bollar i luften. Samtidigt som de ska se den enskilda medarbetaren, och inspirera eller stötta, ska chefer också leda verksamheten och komma med nya strategier, menar Charlotte Simonsson.
– Vi har gått från ett mer uppgiftsorienterat ledarskap till mer människovetande, jag tror det är en del av samhällsutvecklingen där chefer får en mindre hierarkisk roll, säger hon.
Den nya synen på ledarskap utvecklades under 1980-talet. Ledningsfilosofin betonade kommunikativt ledarskap istället för traditionella strategiska mönster. Enligt Charlotte Simonsson befinner vi oss fortfarande i den utvecklingen.
Samtidigt som dagens ledarskap gör det enklare att fånga upp medarbetare, som mår dåligt, innebär det också mer ansvar för chefen. Det i sin tur riskerar att ge stresspåslag tillägger Charlotte Simonsson. Hela sju av tio chefer mår så psykiskt dåligt att arbetet drabbas, visar en undersökning av fackförbundet Saco, under förra året. Dessutom har många chefer arbetat trots sjukdom eftersom de upplever att ingen annan gör jobbet.
Längst ned på listan över egenskaper, som chefer önskas behärska, skvalpar resultatorienterad och effektiv.
Senaste gången Manpowers undersökning genomfördes var för fyra år sedan. Även då hamnade resultatorienterad och effektiv i botten. Däremot har tydlighet blivit en allt viktigare egenskap bland chefer.
Varför vi efterfrågarmer människokännande drag av dagens chefer är en svår fråga att besvara. Men en förklaring kan vara att arbetslivet blir allt mer gränslöst. Det menar Lisa Björk, som är utvecklingsledare i organisation och ledarskap på Institutet för stressmedicin, ISM. Hon har framför allt studerat den offentliga sektorn.
– Flera personer har ett gränslöst arbetsliv där gränserna för fritid och arbetstid suddas ut, många arbetar på kaféer eller aktivitetsbaserade kontor när vi går över till en tjänstebaserad ekonomi, säger hon.
När människor arbetar utanför kontorstider eller på olika platser ställer det högre krav på att chefen är närvarande. Framför allt eftersom egenskaper såsom coachande uppskattas mer. Samtidigt är det en utmaning när arbetet blir mer flexibelt.
– Flera studier visar att medarbetare känner större arbetsengagemang när chefer uppvisar en sorts mänsklighet, men för att vara en stöttande chef krävs det att du har rätt förutsättningar, säger Lisa Björk.
Det krävs att chefen har lagom med underanställda, annars är det svårt att validera varje enskild medarbetare. Likaså krävs det att du som chef har stöd från personen ovanför dig – med andra ord din egen chef.
– I offentlig sektor har mycket nära stöd till chefer plockats bort, exempelvis sekreterarfunktioner, dessutom sitter somliga chefer långt ifrån sin egen chef, vilket gör det svårt att hinna vara den chefen man önskar vara, säger Lisa Björk.
Drömchefen kommer troligtvis fortsätta vara en människokännare ett bra tag framöver, tror både Lisa Björk och Charlotte Simonsson.
– Ingen föds som en perfekt chef utan det handlar om att utveckla sina mänskliga förmågor, säger Lisa Björk.
Experterna tips:
1. Börja med att vända dig mot dig själv.
– Hur ser dina förutsättningar ut för att vara drömchefen? Fundera på hur stor arbetsbelastningen är, exempelvis hur många underanställda du klarar av för att vara en bra chef, men även hur relationen ser ut till din egen chef, säger Lisa Björk.
2. Prata med dina medarbetare om ditt #ledarskap.
– När jag har intervjuat chefer säger många att de inte har berättat för sina medarbetare hur de vill att deras eget ledarskap ser ut. Genom att prata med kollegorna är du tydlig med vad de kan förvänta sig av dig, säger Charlotte Simonsson.
3. Fundera på hur du motiverar dina medarbetare.
– När du har kollat igenom dina förutsättningar är det dags att kolla på hur du motiverar andra. Vad är viktigt för mig och vilken typ av ledare vill jag vara, säger Lisa Björk.
4. Ta ett helhetsgrepp.
– Dagens chefer kan inte vara bäst på allt när de har så mycket att göra. Det viktiga är att du som chef tar ett helhetsgrepp och blickar framåt, säger Charlotte Simonsson.
På uppdrag av Manpower Work Life genomförde analysföretaget Inizio undersökningen i januari 2019. Materialet omfattar anställda, egenföretagare, arbetssökande och studerande. Totalt svarade 2.307 personer på undersökningen. Respondenterna hade möjlighet att välja mer än en egenskap som drömchefen behärskar.
Fackförbundet Saco:s undersökning är en sammanställning av olika källors datamaterial. Bland annat från Arbetsmiljöverket, Försäkringskassan och SCB. Materialet omfattar både enkätfrågor och statistik.
Källa: DN.se, maj 2019 Charlotte Simonsson, Lisa Björk, Manpower och Saco. Länk
Decision makers fed up with slow or subpar results take heart. Three practices can help improve decision making and convince skeptical business leaders that there is life after death by committee.
Two years ago, we wrote about how it was simultaneously the best and worst of times for decision makers in senior management. Best because of more data, better analytics, and clearer understanding of how to mitigate the cognitive biases that often undermine corporate decision processes. Worst because organizational dynamics and digital decision-making dysfunctions were causing growing levels of frustration among senior leaders we knew.
Since then, we’ve conducted research to more clearly understand this balance, and the results have been disquieting. Asurvey we conducted recently with more than 1,200 managers across a range of global companies gave strong signs of growing levels of frustration with broken decision-making processes, with the slow pace of decision-making deliberations, and with the uneven quality of decision-making outcomes. Fewer than half of the survey respondents say that decisions are timely, and 61 percent say that at least half the time spent making them is ineffective. The opportunity costs of this are staggering: about 530,000 days of managers’ time potentially squandered each year for a typical Fortune 500 company, equivalent to some $250 million in wages annually.1
Managers at a typical Fortune 500 company may waste more than 500,000 days a year on ineffective decision making.
The reasons for the dissatisfaction are manifold: decision makers complain about everything from lack of real debate, convoluted processes, and an overreliance on consensus and death by committee, to unclear organizational roles, information overload (and the resulting inability to separate signal from noise), and company cultures that lack empowerment. One healthcare executive told us he sat through the same 90-minute proposal three times on separate committees because no one knew who was authorized to approve the decision. A pharma company hesitated so long over whether to pounce on an acquisition target that it lost the deal to a competitor. And a chemicals company CEO we know found himself devoting precious time to making hiring decisions four levels down the organization.
In our previous article, we proposed solutions that centered around categorizing decision types and organizing quite different processes against them. Our latest research confirms the importance of this approach, and it also highlights for each major decision category a noteworthy practice—sometimes stimulating debate, for example, while in other cases empowering employees—that can yield outsize improvements in effectiveness. When improvements in these areas are coupled with an organizational commitment to implement decisions—embracing not undercutting them—companies can achieve lasting improvements in both decision quality and speed. Indeed, faster decisions are often a happy outcome of these efforts. Our survey showed a strong correlation between quick decisions and good ones, suggesting that a commonly held assumption among executives—namely, “We can have good decisions or fast ones, but not both”—is flawed.
Three fixes that make a difference
Avoiding life on the bubble
Of the four decision categories we identified two years ago, three matter most to senior leaders. Big-bet decisions (such as a possible acquisition) are infrequent but high risk and have the potential to shape the future of the company; these are generally the domain of the top team and the board. Cross-cutting decisions (such as a pricing decision), which can be high risk, happen frequently and are made in cross-functional forums as part of a collaborative, end-to-end process. Delegated decisions are frequent but low risk and are effectively handled by an individual or working team, with limited input from others. (The fourth category, ad hoc decisions, which are infrequent and low stakes, is not addressed in this article.) Clearly, it is important that these types of decisions happen at the appropriate level of the company (CEOs, for example, shouldn’t make decisions that are best delegated). And yet, just as clearly, many decisions rise up much higher in the company than they should (see sidebar, “Avoiding life on the bubble”).
Even those businesses that do make decisions at the right level, however, complain about slow and bad outcomes. The evidence of our survey—and our experience watching executives grapple with this—suggests that while the best practices for making better decisions are interrelated, there’s nonetheless one standout practice that makes the biggest difference for each type of decision.
Big bets—facilitate productive debate
Big-bet decisions can be future-shapers for a company, the most important decisions leaders make. And they often receive much less scrutiny than they should.
The dynamic inside many decision meetings doesn’t help. It’s as if there is an unspoken understanding that the meeting should proceed like a short, three-act play. In the first act, the proposal is delivered in a snappy PowerPoint presentation that summarizes the relevant information; in the second, a few tough yet perfunctory questions are asked of the presenter and answered well; in the final act, resolution arrives in the form of an undramatic “yes” that may seem preordained. Little substantive discussion takes place.
In a global agricultural company, for example, the members of the executive committee tended to speak up only if their particular area of the business was being discussed. The tacit assumption was that people wouldn’t intrude on colleagues’ area of responsibility. Consequently, when the top team moved to decide on a proposed new initiative in Europe, the leaders from the US business stayed silent, even though they had years of hard-won experience in marketing and cross-selling similar agricultural products to those new ones under discussion. Nonetheless, the decision was made, the products launched—and sales lagged expectations. Later, the European sales force was frustrated to learn their US counterparts had relevant experience that would have helped.
Whether the cause of such dynamics is siloed thinking or a consensus-driven culture (of which, more later), the effect on decision making is decidedly negative. Bet-the-company decisions require productive interactions and healthy debate that balance inquiry and advocacy. In fact, the presence of high-quality interactions and debate was the factor most predictive of whether a respondent in our survey also said their company made good, fast big-bet decisions?
Leaders can encourage debate by helping overcome the “conspiracy of approval” approach to group discussion. Simple behavior changes can help. For example, consider starting the decision meeting by reminding participants of the overall organizational goals the meeting supports, in order to reframe the subsequent discussions. Then assign someone to argue the case for, and against, a potential decision or the various options under consideration. Similarly, ask the leaders of business units, regions, or functions to examine the decision from outside their own point of view. A rotating devil’s advocate role can bolster critical thinking, while premortem exercises (in which you start by assuming the initiative in question turned out to be a failure, and then work back for likely explanations) can pressure test for weak spots in an argument or plan.
The objective should be to explore assumptions and alternatives beyond what’s been presented and actively seek information that might disconfirm the group’s initial hypotheses. Creating a safe space for this is vital; at first it can be helpful for the most senior participants to ask questions instead of expressing opinions and to actively encourage dissenting views. Productive debate is essentially a form of conflict—a healthy form—so senior executives will need to devote time to building trust and giving permission to dissent, irrespective of the organizational hierarchy in the room.
A final note of caution: minimizing the number of debate participants to speed up decision making could harm decision quality. As many studies show, greater diversity brings greater collective wisdom and expertise, along with better performance. This is also true in decision making. To ensure a faster process, companies should manage the expectations of debate participants by limiting their voting rights and sticking to other agreed-upon processes, as we explore next.
Cross-cutting decisions—understand the power of process
An executive we know joked during a meeting that “a committee is born every day in this organization.” Just then, another executive nearby looked up from his computer to announce he had just been invited to join a new committee. The comedic timing of the line was perfect, but it wasn’t a joke.
Or perhaps the joke is on the rest of us? We often find companies maintaining a dozen or more senior-executive-level committees and related support committees, all of which recycle the same members in different configurations. The impetus for this is understandable—cross-cutting decisions, in particular, are the culmination of smaller decisions taking place elsewhere in the company. And cross-cutting decisions were the ones that executives in our survey had the most exposure to, regardless of their seniority.
Yet when it comes to cross-cutting decisions (involving, for example, pricing, sales, and operations planning processes or new-product launches), only 34 percent of respondents said that their organization made decisions that were both good and timely.
There are many reasons cross-cutting decisions go crosswise. Leaders may not have visibility on who is—or should be—involved; silos make it fiendishly hard to see how smaller decisions aggregate into bigger ones; there may be no process at all, or one that’s poorly understood.
Solving for cross-cutting decisions, therefore, starts with commitment to a well-coordinated process that helps clarify objectives, measures, targets, and roles. In practical terms, this might mean drawing a bright line between the portion of a meeting dedicated to decisions from the parts of a meeting meant to inform or discuss. Any recurring meetings (particularly topic-focused ones) where the nature of the decision isn’t clear are ripe for a rethink—and quite possibly for elimination.
Good meeting discipline is also a must. For example, a mining company realized that its poor decision making was related to the lack of rigor with which executives ran important meetings. As a result, the top team developed a “meeting manifesto” that spelled out required behaviors, starting with punctuality. The new rules also required leaders to clarify their decision rights in advance, and to be more deliberate about managing the number of participants so that meetings wouldn’t become bloated, on the one hand, or lack diverse views, on the other.
The manifesto was printed on laminated posters that were put in all meeting rooms, and when the CEO was seen personally reinforcing the new rules, the news spread quickly that there was a new game afoot. As the new practices took hold, the benefits became apparent. In pulse-check surveys conducted over the course of the following year, the company’s measures of meeting effectiveness and efficiency went up by almost 50 percent.
A social-network analysis, meanwhile, allowed a global consumer company to identify time wasting around decision making on a heroic scale—as many as 45 percent of interactions were found to be potentially inefficient, and 23 percent of the individuals involved in an average interaction added no value. In response, the company broke down complex processes into key decisions, clarified roles and responsibilities for each one, defined inputs and outputs for each process, and made one person accountable for each outcome. After conducting pilots in several countries, executives used two-day workshops to roll out the process redesign. The resulting benefits included a significant financial boost (as employees used the freed-up time in higher-value ways), as well as an arguably more important boost in employees’ morale and sense of work–life balance, which in turn has helped the company attract and retain talent.
Delegated decisions—make empowerment real
Delegated decisions are generally far narrower in scope than big-bet decisions or cross-cutting ones. They are frequent and relatively routine elements of day-to-day management. But given the multiplier effect, there is a lot of value at stake here, and when the organization’s approach is flawed it’s costly.
In our experience, ensuring that responsibility for delegated decisions is firmly in the hands of those closest to the work typically delivers faster, better, and more efficiently executed outcomes, while also enhancing engagement and accountability.
Our research supports this view. Survey respondents who report that employees at their company are empowered to make decisions and receive sufficient coaching from leaders were 3.2 times more likely than other respondents to also say their company’s delegated decisions were both high quality and speedy.
A vital aspect of empowerment, we find, involves creating an environment where employees can “fail safely.” For example, a European financial-services company we know started a series of monthly, after-work gatherings where leaders could meet over drinks to discuss failure stories and the lessons they’d learned from them. The meetings were purposely kept informal, but top management nonetheless established ground rules to ensure that the stories would be meaningful (not trivial) and that employees telling the stories would be protected. The meetings started small but became popular quickly. Today, a typical session includes 40 to 50 of the company’s top 150 leaders. The climate of trust and openness the sessions encourage has translated into better ideas, including practical lessons that have helped the company speed up its release of new products.
As this example suggests, empowerment means not only giving employees a strong sense of ownership and accountability but also fostering a bias for action, especially in situations where time is of the essence. That’s easier said than done if there’s no penalty for avoiding a decision or sanction for escalating issues unnecessarily.
Executives who get delegated decisions right are clear about the boundaries of delegation (including what’s off-limits and how and where to escalate what’s beyond an individual’s competence), ensure that those they entrust with decision-making authority have the relevant skills and knowledge to act (and if not, provide them with the opportunity to acquire those capabilities), and explicitly make people accountable for their areas of decision-making responsibility (including spelling out the consequences for those who fail to respond to the challenge). This often means senior leaders engaging in conversations and dialogue, encouraging those newly empowered to seek help, and in the early days subtly and invisibly monitoring the performance of those participating in “delegated” forums so as not to appear to be taking over. Leaders might want to start mentoring their reports with a small “box” of accountability, slowly expanding it as more junior executives grow in confidence.
For leaders looking to become better delegators, it’s not a question of choosing between a style that is “hands-on” or “hands-off,” or between one that is “controlling” or “empowering.” There’s a balance to be struck. Root out micromanagers who are both hands-on and controlling, as well as “helicopter autocrats” who are hands-off and controlling, occasionally swooping in, barking orders, and disappearing again. But the laissez-faire executive—generally too hands-off, delegating but leaving those with the responsibility too much to their own devices (sometimes with disastrous results)—is also a danger. The ideal in our experience are hands-on and delegating leaders who coach, challenge, and inspire their reports, are there to help those who need help, and stay well clear of actually making the decision.
After the decision: Seek commitment, not unanimous agreement
In his April 2017 letter to Amazon shareholders, CEO Jeff Bezos introduced the concept of “disagree and commit” with respect to decision making. It’s good advice that often goes overlooked. Too frequently, executives charged with making decisions at the three levels discussed earlier leave the meeting assuming that once there’s been a show of hands—or nods of agreement—the job is done. Far from it.
Indeed, any agreement voiced in the absence of a strong sense of collective responsibility can prove ephemeral. This was true at a US-based global financial-services company, where a business-unit leader initially agreed during a committee meeting not to change the fee structure for a key product but later reversed course. The temptation was too great: the fee changes helped the leader’s own business unit—albeit ultimately at the expense of other units whose revenues were cannibalized.
One of the most important characteristics of a good decision is that it’s made in such a way that it will be fully and effectively implemented. That requires commitment, something that is not always straightforward in companies where consensus is a strong part of the culture (and key players acquiesce reluctantly) or after big-bet situations where the vigorous debate we recommended earlier has taken place. At a mining company, real commitment proved difficult because the culture valued “firefighting” behavior. In staff meetings, company executives would quickly agree to take on new tasks because it made them look good in front of the CEO, but they weren’t truly committed to following through. It was only when the leadership team changed this dynamic by focusing on follow-up, execution risks, and bandwidth constraints that execution improved.
While it’s important to devote enough resources to help propel follow-through, and it’s also important to assign accountability for getting things done to an individual or at most a small group of individuals, the biggest challenge is to foster an “all-in” culture that encourages everyone to pull together. That often means involving as many people as possible in the outcome—something that, paradoxically, in the end will enable the decision to be implemented more speedily.
While it’s important to assign accountability for getting things done to an individual, the biggest challenge is to foster an “all-in” culture that encourages everyone to pull together.
Follow the value
There are many keys to better decision making, but in our experience focusing on the three practices discussed here—and on the commitment to implement decisions once taken—can reap early and substantial dividends. This presupposes, of course, that the decisions leaders make at all levels of the organization reflect the company’s strategy and its value-creation agenda. That may seem obvious, but it bears repeating because all too often it simply doesn’t happen. Take the manufacturing company whose operations managers, faced with calls from the sales team to raise production in response to anticipated customer demand, had to consider whether they should spend unbudgeted money on overtime and hiring extra staff. With their bonuses linked exclusively to cost targets, they faced a dilemma. If they took the decision to increase costs and new orders failed to materialize, their remuneration would suffer; if the sales team managed to win new business, the sales representatives would get the kudos, but the operations team would receive no additional credit and no additional reward. Not surprisingly, the operations managers, in their weekly planning meeting, opted not to take the risk, rejected a proposal to set up a new production line, and thereby hindered (albeit inadvertently) the group’s higher growth ambitions. This poor-quality—and in our view avoidable—outcome was the direct result of siloed thinking and a set of narrow incentives in conflict with the group’s broader strategy and value-creation agenda. The underlying management challenge is part of a dynamic we see repeated again and again: when senior executives fail to explore—and then explain—the context and underlying strategic intentions associated with various targets and directives they set, they make unintended consequences inevitable. Worse, the lack of clarity makes it very difficult for colleagues further down in the organization to use their judgment to see past the silos and remedy the situation.
Designing an organization to deliver its strategic objectives—setting a clear mission, aligning incentives—is a big topic and outside the scope of this article. But if different functions and teams do not feel a connection to the bigger picture, the likelihood of executives making good decisions, whether or not they adopt the ideas discussed earlier, is significantly diminished.
About the authors: Aaron De Smet is a senior partner in McKinsey’s Houston office, Gregor Jost is a partner in the Vienna office, and Leigh Weiss is a senior expert in the Boston office.
The authors wish to thank Iskandar Aminov, Alison Boyd, Elizabeth Foote, and Kanika Kakkar for their contributions to this article.
De senaste fem åren har chefers ohälsa ökat kraftigt, visar ny sjukstatistik. Även antalet långtidssjukskrivningar har stigit brant.
Pressen på landets chefer ökar. Allt fler mår dåligt psykiskt. Det visar företagshälsan Previas nya stora statistiksammanställning över sjukfrånvaron hos 12.300 chefer på drygt 400 Previa-anslutna företag över hela landet.
Mellan 2014 och 2018ökade chefskårens sjukfrånvaro – korttids- och långtidssjukskrivningar sammanlagt – med 50 procent. Och just psykisk ohälsa orsakade 2018 fem gånger fler sjukskrivningar bland chefer än under 2014.
Lennart Sohlberg, analytiker och hälsoekonom hos Previa, konstaterar att chefer över tid har sjukskrivit sig betydligt mindre än övrig personal.
– Men nu håller det på att förändras, genom den här trenden med ökad psykisk ohälsa inom chefsledet.
Pernilla Rönnlund, organisationskonsult hos Previa, understryker att arbetsplatserna över lag måste bli mer hållbara.
– I dag är det högt tempo och hög stressnivå, många möten och ständiga förändringar. Det blir för lite tid över för återhämtning, reflektion och kreativitet.
Många linjechefergör sitt yttersta för att se och respektera medarbetarnas arbetsmiljöutmaningar, och tar ett stort ansvar för att komma till rätta med deras problem, konstaterar hon.
– Samtidigt sitter de själva med en enorm stress och press på sig. De flesta biter ihop, men lider av en brist på stöd från högre chefer. Allt fler har i dag sina chefer i andra länder, och de företagsledningarna förstår inte alltid hur svenska arbetsledningar förväntas fungera.
Särskilt de yngrecheferna med småbarn hemma riskerar att bli sjuka. De måste jonglera såväl ett stressigt familjeliv som en alltmer gränslös chefsroll med vidhäftande mer eller mindre uttalade krav på arbete och tillgänglighet kvällar och helger, vab och egen sjukdom.
Många linje- och mellanchefer längtar efter att ledningsgruppen skulle vara mer synlig och tillgänglig för dem:
– Särskilt de yngre vill att deras egna chefer ska vara synliga och coachande, de är vana att bli sedda och vill få diskutera och ifrågasätta.
En sådan nära och förtroendefull dialog mellan chefsleden är en förutsättning för att upprepad korttidsfrånvaro bland cheferna ska kunna fångas upp, innan den riskerar att leda till utbrändhet eller annan sjukdom, och en långtidssjukskrivning.
De företag som mår bäst och går bäst är som regel de som i tid förmår att fånga upp och stävja för mycket övertid på kvällar och helger.
Och alla arbetsgivare är – enligt lag – tvungna att säkerställa en sund arbetsbelastning och god arbetsmiljö. Trots det talar företagsledningar nästan uteslutande om affärsstrategier, verksamhetsplaner och resultat, påpekar Pernilla Rönnlund.
– Ledningsgruppers kompetens kring hur man kan arbeta proaktivt kring den sociala och organisatoriska arbetsmiljön är fortfarande låg. De bör tänka på att om man inte tar in arbetsmiljön också i ekvationen så kommer det att påverka årsredovisningen sista rad negativt.
– En trygg, tydlig och enad medlemsgrupp ger trygga mellanchefer. Trygga mellanchefer ger trygga motiverade medarbetare.
Men ser ledningen inte signalerna kör folk in i väggen. Och det kostar i slutänden företaget pengar.
Previa ser enökad efterfrågan på analys, stöd och kompetensutveckling inom arbetsmiljö, ledarskap, hälsa och rehabilitering.
– Och det är viktigt att det finns möjliga ersättare, om chefen behöver ta en time out, säger Pernilla Rönnlund.
Tips för att motverka psykisk ohälsa bland chefer:
Bygg nätverk som ger chefer möjlighet att bolla idéer och söka stöd.
Ta fram fler mentorprogram.
Minska personalgruppernas storlek.
Avlasta cheferna administrativa arbetsuppgifter så långt som möjligt.
Se till att ha en tydlig ersättare vid chefens frånvaro.
Gör kontinuerlig uppföljning av arbetsmiljön och stressfaktorer på arbetsplatsen.
Procrastination is like a sore throat; it’s a symptom with many possible causes. Unless you know the cause, the treatment for the symptom might things worse. This column contains the five most common causes of procrastination and how to overcome them.
1. The size of a task seems overwhelming.
Explanation: Every time you think about the task it seems like a huge mountain of work that you’ll never be able to complete. You therefore avoid starting.
Solution: Break the task into small steps and then start working on them. This builds momentum and makes the task far less daunting.
Example: You’ve decided to write a book. Rather than sitting down and trying to write the book (which will probably cause you to stare at the blank screen), spend one hour on each of the following sub-tasks:
6. Assign those materials to sections of your outline.
7. Write the first three paragraphs of a sample chapter.
8. Create a schedule to write 2 pages a day.
2. The number of tasks seems overwhelming.
Explanation: Your to-do list has so many tasks in it that you feel as if you’ll never be able to finish them all, so why bother getting started?
Solution: Combine the tasks into a conceptual activity and then set a time limit for how long you’ll pursue that activity.
Example: Your email account is being peppered by so many requests and demands that you feel as if you can’t possibly get them done. Rather than fret about the pieces and parts, set aside a couple of hours to “do email.” Schedule a similar session tomorrow or later that day.
Thinking of the work as an activity rather than a bunch of action items makes them seem less burdensome.
3. A set of tasks seem repetitive and boring.
Explanation: You’re a creative person with an active mind so you naturally put off any activity that doesn’t personally interest you.
Solution: Set a time limit for completing a single task in the set and then compete against yourself to see if you can beat that time limit. Reward yourself each time you beat the clock.
Example: You’re a newly-hired salesperson who must write personalized emails to two dozen customers. The work involves quickly researching their account, addressing any issues they’ve had with the previous salesperson, and then introducing yourself.
Rather than just slogging through the work, estimate the maximum amount of time it should take to write one letter (let’s say 5 minutes). It should thus take you 120 minutes (2 hours) to write all of them.
Start the stopwatch, write the first email. If you have time left over, do something else (like read the news). When the stopwatch buzzes, reset, write the second email, etc.
4. The task seems so important that it’s daunting.
Explanation: You realize that if you screw this task up, it might mean losing your job or missing a huge opportunity. You avoid it because you don’t want to risk failure.
Solution: Contact somebody you trust and ask if they’ll review your work (if the task is written) or act as a sounding board (if the task is verbal). Doing the task for your reviewer is low-risk and thus the task is easier to start. The reviewer’s perspective and approval provides you extra confidence when you actually execute the task.
Example: You need to write an email demanding payment from a customer who’s in arrears. Because you don’t want to damage the relationship and yet need to be paid, it’s a difficult balancing act–so difficult that you avoid writing the email.
To break the mental log-jam, ask a colleague or friend if they’ll review your email before you send it to see if it hits the right tone. Writing the email then becomes easier because you’re writing it for your friend to read rather than for the customer.
Problem: You just don’t feel like working.
Explanation: You’re feeling burned out and generally unmotivated, so you’re finding it very hard to get down to work.
Solution: You have two choices: 1) reschedule the activity for a time when you’ll be more motivated or 2) motivate yourself in the short-term by setting a reward.
Example: You need to write a trip report but you’re tired after a long day of travel. While you know that the report will be more accurate if you write it now, you decide to write it tomorrow morning after breakfast and coffee–a time when you’re typically more motivated.
Alternatively, you motivate yourself short-term promising yourself that you’ll buy and download a book that you’ve been wanting to read… but only if you write the report tonight.
Favorisering, arrogans och konflikträdsla är några av de egenskaper hos chefer som retar oss mest, enligt en ny undersökning från Yougov. Det bör inte viftas bort, eftersom det påverkar människors hälsa.
Enligt undersökningen av Yougov retar vi oss allra mest på konflikträdsla, det angav 21 procent som chefens mest irriterande sida. Anna Nyberg, psykolog och forskare i arbetsmiljö, har skrivit en avhandling om hur chefers ledarskap påverkar medarbetarnas hälsa. Hon säger att en chefs oförmåga att ingripa vid konflikter kan få väldigt negativa effekter:
– Det har visat sig påverka arbetsgruppens dynamik negativt, så att det till exempel kan uppstå mer utstötnings- och mobbingprocesser med mer stress och psykisk ohälsa i de här grupperna, säger hon.
Viktigt att människor blir sedda 18 procent av de svarande uppgav att de stör sig på att chefen inte tar tillvara på deras kompetens. Anna Nyberg är inte förvånad över att det hamnar högt upp på listan.
– Att inte ta vara på medarbetares kompetens kan handla om att inte vilja ge dem inflytande, men att ha inflytande i arbetet är en av de mest studerade faktorerna i arbetsmiljöforskning och vi vet att det är viktigt för vår hälsa.
Chefskapet kan vara störande i sin egen rätt Att chefen favoriserar vissa anställda mer än andra och inte kan ta kritik är andra egenskaper som svenskarna inte gillar hos sina chefer. Men enligt Anna Nyberg kan bara det faktum att en chef har inflytande över medarbetaren vara tillräckligt för att man ska irritera sig.
– En auktoritet aktiverar ofta processer inom oss som kan härstamma från relationen från våra föräldrar eller andra tidigare auktoritetsfigurer.
• Konflikträdd 21 % • Tar inte vara på min kompetens 18 % • Favoriserar vissa anställda över andra 16 % • Tål inte kritik 13 % • Allt ska göras på chefens sätt 12 %
Too many leaders have been conditioned to think of leadership only in terms of power and control. But there is a better way to lead, says best-selling business author Ken Blanchard—one that combines equal parts serving and leading. This kind of leadership requires a special kind of leader: a servant leader.
“In this model,” says Blanchard, “Leaders assume a traditional role to set the vision, direction, and strategy for the organization—the leadership aspect of servant leadership. After the vision and direction are set, the leaders turn the organizational pyramid upside down so that they serve the middle managers and frontline people who serve the customer. Now the leader’s role shifts to a service mindset for the task of implementation—the servant aspect of servant leadership.”
Many organizations and leaders get into trouble during implementation, warns Blanchard.
“When command-and-control leaders are at the helm, the traditional hierarchical pyramid is kept alive and well. All of the organization’s energy moves up the hierarchy, away from customers and frontline folks who are closest to the action. When there is a conflict between what customers want and what the boss wants, the boss wins.”
Blanchard suggests that leadership, learning, and talent development professionals correct this situation by philosophically turning the traditional hierarchical pyramid upside down—putting customer contact people at the top of the organization and top management at the bottom.
“This philosophical mind-shift reminds everyone in the organization that when it comes to implementation, leaders serve their people, who serve the customers. This change may seem minor, but it makes a major difference between who is responsible and who is responsive.”
The next step, according to Blanchard, is to align policies, practices, direction, and support to remove barriers for the people who are taking care of customers. This high-investment approach to talent management is designed to bring out the best in everyone.
“Servant leaders are constantly trying to find out what their people need to perform well and live according to their organization’s vision. In top organizations, leaders believe if they do a good job serving their people and showing them they care, the employees will, in turn, practice that same philosophy with customers.”
The Biggest Barrier to Servant Leadership
In looking back at all of the organizations he has worked with over the years, one of the most persistent barriers to more people becoming successful servant leaders is a heart motivated by self-interest, says Blanchard.
“As a leader, you must ask yourself why you lead. Is it to serve or to be served? Answering this question in a truthful way is so important. You can’t fake being a servant leader. I believe if leaders don’t get the heart part right, they simply won’t ever become servant leaders.
“Managers who somehow have themselves as the center of the universe and think everything must rotate around them are really covering up not-okay feelings about themselves. This is an ego problem that manifests as fear or false pride. When you don’t feel good about yourself, you have two options. You can hide and hope nobody notices you, or you can overcompensate and go out and try to control your environment. I always say that people who feel the need to control their environment are really just scared little kids inside.”
“I learned from the late Norman Vincent Peale that the best leaders combine a healthy self-acceptance with humility. As I learned from Norman, “Leaders with humility don’t think less of themselves—they just think about themselves less.”
An Old Model for a New World of Work?
Blanchard explains that leaders with a servant heart thrive on developing people and helping them achieve their goals. They constantly try to find out what their people need to perform well. Being a servant leader is not just another management technique. It is a way of life for those with servant hearts.
“When I first began to teach managers back in the late 1960s I met Robert Greenleaf, who was just retiring as a top AT&T executive. Bob talked about servant leadership—the concept that effective leaders and managers need to serve their people, not be served by them. It was entirely new thinking then. In many ways, Bob is considered the father of the term servant leadership.”
It is much easier for people to see the importance and relevance of servant leadership today than it was back then, says Blanchard.
“Today when people see you as a judge and critic, they spend most of their time trying to please you rather than accomplishing the organization’s goals and moving in the direction of the desired vision. ‘Boss watching’ becomes a popular sport and people get promoted on their upward-influencing skills. That role doesn’t do much for accomplishing a clear vision. People try to protect themselves rather than move the organization in its desired direction.
“Servant leaders are constantly trying to find out what their people need to be successful. Rather than wanting their people to please them, they want to make a difference in the lives of their people—and, in the process, impact the organization.”
Servant Leadership: The Power of Love, Not the Love of Power
A few years ago, Blanchard received a letter from a man in New Zealand with a line that he believes sums up his leadership philosophy.
“The man wrote that he felt I was in the business of teaching people the power of love rather than the love of power.
“I believe the world is in desperate need of a different leadership role model. We need servant leadership advocates. Spread the word to everyone who will listen! And remember: your job is to teach people the power of love rather than the love of power.”
