By Niel Nickolaisen provided by the CIO Leadership Network.
Last week, I had a fascinating conversation with the vice president of software development for a large technology company. The focus of our discussion was good and bad leadership styles.
This vice president has a director that is a decent guy, but who is very much a “command and control” type of leader. Command in that he makes all of the decisions for his team. Control in that he insists that his team do things his way. In effect, he tells them what to do and how to do it. The vice president is correct when she feels as if this command and control style is killing not only the morale but also the innovation of the team. The team has a solid track record of meeting deadlines and budgets, but not of making any real product advancements.
As we talked, I recalled how difficult it can be to transition from being a command and control leader to an empowering, collaborative leader. In this column and my next, I would like to talk about a model that has helped me make this transition and also helped my staff shift from being managers to being leaders. I call this model Macro-Leadership.
Macro-Leadership is the polar opposite of micro-management. I expect everyone reading this article has had the unpleasant experience of being micro-managed. What matters most to a micro-manager? Methods. The “how” of assignments trumps all other considerations. To a micro-manager, a subordinate must do things a certain way – typically the way the micro-manager would do things. By comparison, what matters most to a macro-leader? Results. The how is left up to the individual. In fact, the macro-leader has no expectation that staff will do things the way the leader would do things.
In order to ensure that I am a macro-leader that focuses on results, not methods, I often use the following visual with my teams. Imagine if you will a cube. The sides of the cube represent the expected/desired results and any other boundary conditions. The boundaries of the cube are things like budgets, timelines, available resources, inviolate policies, et cetera. As a macro-leader, I care that the team delivers the results without violating the boundaries. What I don’t care about is how the team navigates inside of the cube. Inside of the cube, the team needs to find its way and figure out what methods it will use to deliver the results without violating the cube boundaries. If I start to monitor movement inside the cube, I am a micro-manager and will stunt team growth while squashing innovation.
As a leader, if I keep my attention on results, I guide the team towards the objective while letting them be the ones to discover what they can do to achieve their goal. I can also monitor the cube boundaries to see if I need to expand or contract the size of the cube to match the capabilities of the team. If, for example, the team is getting behind and violating the “Time” boundary, I shrink that side of the cube and get more involved. If the team is over-achieving, I relax the “Results” side of the cube and get less involved.
In my next column, I will share some stories about how this model has helped me refine my leadership role and how I have used it to “manage up”.
About the author:
Niel Nickolaisen
CIO, Headwaters
Niel Nickolaisen has held technology executive (CIO) and operations executive (COO) positions; typically in turnaround roles. He is expert in the rapid / adaptive selection, implementation, and deployment of enterprise business applications, analysis tools, and systems. He has developed a strategic and tactical alignment model that results in significantly improved returns on technology and business initiatives (by both improving the benefits and reducing the costs and risks).
He is passionate about process simplification including strategic planning, Sarbanes Oxley, product development, and IT operations. This includes applying lean concepts to all types of business activities.
He is currently the Chief Information Officer and Director of Strategic Planning at Headwaters, Inc; a $1B energy and building products manufacturing company headquartered in South Jordan, Utah. He is also one of the founders of Accelinnova, a company focused on improving organizational and IT agility.
He is past President of the Intermountain chapter of the Society for Information Management. He holds an MS in Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a BS in Physics from Utah State University.
He was named IT Executive of the Year at the 2004 Gartner Research Mid-Sized Enterprise Summit and writes a monthly “business mentor” column for IT executives.