Change Communications

I found this recently and wanted to share it. It came in some text after Maslow, Macgregor and Herzberg which are great references on the subject. However I was kind of taken by the simplicity of this contribution.

I looked up Spots & Myers on Google but I can find no reference. Anyone heard of them? Could this be Isabel Briggs Myers? Hmmm.

Things a manager should do to ensure his team is not productive:

• Ask as much as possible
• Criticise his employees in front of their colleagues
• Blame them for their mistakes
• Treat them without any respect for their feelings
• Do not consult before taking action
• Do not explain your actions
• Refuse to take your employees’ ideas into account

Things a manager should do to ensure his team is productive:

• Provide structure
• Inform
• Listen
• Encourage new ideas and responsibilities
• Consult before taking action
• Show your esteem
• Spend more time on building relationships than technical problems

And with that said, I think the above makes a good reminder of communication objectives for my next mission: communication and team coaching for a complex and pressurized IT project at a major French telecommunication company that is undergoing major contractual changes.

Bon weekend!

Nicholas

[updated with English translation on 6 June 2007,  original French is below]

Ce qu’un chef doit faire pour que l’équipe ne soit pas productive:

• Demander plus que possible
• Critiquer ses collaborateurs devant leurs collègues
• Les blâmer pour leurs erreurs
• Les traiter sans respect pour leurs sentiments
• Déclencher l’action sans consulation
• Ne pas expliquer les actions
• Refuser de prendre les idées des collaborateurs en considération

Ce qu’un chef doit faire pour que l’équipe soit productive:

• Prévoir une structure
  
• Informer
  
• Ecouter avant de passer à l’action
• Entraîner à plus d’idées, de responsabilités
• Déclencher l’action après consultation
• Montrer de l’estime
• Passer plus de temps sur les rapports humains que sur les problèmes techniques

Liam FitzPatrick, from Competent Communicators and the Black Belt Dojo blog, offered this in a comment and it made me chuckle so much that I thought it would be best as post in its own right. Unfortunately I see many of these every day… ouch!

1. Regard any new idea from below with suspicion - because it is new and because it is from below.
2. Insist that people who need your approval to act first go through several other layers of management to get their signatures.
3. Ask departments or individuals to challenge and criticise each other’s proposals.
4. Treat problems as a sign of failure.
5. Express your criticisms freely and withhold your praise (that keeps people on their toes). Let them know they can be fired at any time.
6. Control everything carefully. Count anything that can be counted, frequently.
7. Make sure that any request for information is fully justified and that it isn’t distributed too freely (you don’t want data to fall into the wrong hands).
8. Make decisions to reorganise or change policies in secret and spring them on people unexpectedly (that also keeps people on their toes)
9. Assign to lower-level managers, in the name of delegation and participation, responsibility for figuring out how to cut back, lay off or move people around.
10. Never forget that you, the higher-ups, already know everything important about this business.

Source: Rosabeth Moss Kanter via an interview with the BBC.