Mike Smock has an interesting post on why it is necessary to keep secrets. The post flies in face of currently accepted wisdom about being open and transparent; however, the argument is entirely correct and valid.
Taking his argument further, I strongly believe in command and control management. Since past 6 years I have seen too many people to think that being open, transparent and empathic will do wonders for the team. My experience is that a lot of people are only too willing to give up the responsibility of decision making to someone else. They wait for someone to come along and tell them what to do, how to do and check upon them every day if the job is done as per specs. I have seen many people shy away from taking decisions because of fear; fear of facing the consequences. Only people who are grounded in reality can make good decisions. Unfortunately, a lot of people live in a dream world where they hold court. All good things happen because of them and all bad things happen because someone else screwed up. That is, they are too busy playing the victim instead of making things happen. They do not pay attention to the reality of the situation or to the decision context. Psychologists call this FAE (Fundamental Attribution Error). A more elegant perspective is the concept of Shih from Sun Tzu’s Art of War. Shih is the power inherent in a configuration & timing of action. In English, this means that power of shih comes from deep insight into each element of task at hand, how they interact with each other and with the environment and when we need to deploy each of them to gain the maximum result with least effort.
A person who has Shih is always grounded and aware of the context in which he or she is operating. Leadership requires this shih above all else. Consequently, I believe that the fundamental requirement of a leadership role is to define reality for the rest of organization. However, this tendency to avoid reality and not be context sensitive, makes a lot of them unsuitable for leadership roles.
What does this have to do with management style? If a lot of people are unable or not willing to step up and take charge, the only style that can work is command and control. That is why, I micromanage every new member of my team for at least 3 months. During this 3 months, as I gain more insight into the person’s work ethic and intensity level, I introduce the soft elements of leadership in stages tailored to each person’s character and abilities. This is where the core values of a company come into play. I look at the first 3 months of a new person’s job in my company as a time to introduce our core values. As the person internalizes these core values, I can ease back with the knowledge that the person can use the core values as a decision guide in crunch situations.
Bottomline is that I feel leadership comes after management. Not before. Management style, by necessity has to be command and control till the team member is ready to live the values of your company.
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