Managing Softly: Learning From Buddha, Gandhi, Gracie

Use the power of democracy's tools

Democracy's tools are simple. What about a referendum, a vote where people have to answer yes or no to a question. For the referendum initiator it's a basic tool to validate population agreement with a specific political orientations. Once the yes answer succeeds, he is in a appropriate position to act given his people allowed him to.
In Europe, all the countries of European Economic Community have organized referendums to ask their respective populations: "Do you want your country to enter in Europe?". People voted and answered yes or no. In the country where the yes answer got the majority, the president got the momentum to act  thanks to a democratic legitimacy. It was the case in France and Germany for instance. In the countries where the no answer got the lead, like the UK, the president didn't get the momentum and delayed potential entrance of his country in European Economic Community.
Following the same idea, launch a referendum inside your organization to secure people who are in line with your strategic orientations. Contrary to national political votes, you can do it electronically and don't necessary need the majority to act. Everyone know that a committed, enthusiastic 25 percent of an employee population can sweep the entire organization along with them because most people do not actively resist. The key being to inform people of the rules before. Through referendums, boards of directors could validate the readiness of the population of employee to embrace the targeted change.
Start the idea in small amounts, at a subsidiary scale for instance, on a secondary importance business orientations. Then decline it in big.

Note: Managing Softly is a book written by me. It has been published in US. You can buy it clicking here. To discover 12 reasons to read that book, click here. To discover what this blog can offer you, click here.

Create a campaign task force as for USA Presidency

To arrive at the top of any organization is never an easy task. Even the great CEOs find it hard. They have to be the best and to answer to high expectations from everywhere. They quickly feel alone running big companies where thousands of employees imagine him as knowing everything on every corner of the organization while the shareholders are waiting to see if they have made the right choice.
Let's compare the CEO with a candidate to the White House. The candidate has been highly supported by a real campaign task force for months when he is elected. Not the CEO who is rather short-listed by few decision makers. Once working, the President of USA is free to appoint his task force members according to his needs. The CEO can do the same but with a little less margin of maneuver. Only a few years later, the President has to remobilize his task force or create a new one to run for new elections. If still there, the CEO doesn't have one.
What if few task forces of CEO's position candidates could officially campaign internally, following pre-established rules by your company, to support the CEO and associate people in the decision process. A CEO adopted by company's people before taking the job has the best chance of success.

Note: Managing Softly is a book written by me. It has been published in US. You can buy it clicking here. To discover 12 reasons to read that book, click here. To discover what this blog can offer you, click here.

Set up work-guard attitude

We write work-guard in reference to body-guard. Body-guard are to protect someone. Work-guard attitude is to protect people work, contribution, will to innovate, idea, etc.
In today’s companies, there is so much inter-personal conflicts, quarrels, competition than some people's work doesn't gain representation, is run down by stronger people, is muffled by the noise of the internal competition.
A work-guard attitude is one adopted by NVP management orientated people to protect others' work and help them to be heard in the organization to the profit of all. Set up work-guard attitude into your company.

Note: Managing Softly is a book written by me. It has been published in US. You can buy it clicking here. To discover 12 reasons to read that book, click here. To discover what this blog can offer you, click here.

Change your mind about integration

One of the major concern when recruiting someone is about his or her probability to integrate well into the organization. Generally, the new comer has been briefed about the culture of the company, the type of management, the way people are, the way they do things and the way they behave. But the underlying concern is: Will the current employees accept him, admit him, recognize him any kind of legitimacy, competence, value added.
In any measure, all the responsibility of successful integration or not is in the hands of the newly arrived person. Now let’s think from the opposite direction. Are your current people really tolerant? Open-minded? Ready to welcome difference? Interested in confronting point of views, experiences and ideas with different people? If yes, the company wouldn't have any concern regarding the effective integration of any new comer. A large number of well-coming people being able to integrate someone despite any normal appearing difference at the begining.
Do the necessary to have tolerant people. In the way you choose them, you promote them internally, you evaluate them, etc. The more you insist on it the more you will have a richly assimilating organization.

Note: Managing Softly is a book written by me. It has been published in US. You can buy it clicking here. To discover 12 reasons to read that book, click here. To discover what this blog can offer you, click here.

Train your manager to become well-being promoters

During the industrial revolution people where suffering from accidents, physical diseases, body diseases due to hard work. Today computers have replaced the industrial machine and blue collars are less numerous than white collars. However new consequences relating to this new way of working began to appear. Stress, burn out and psychological diseases are part of everyday working life.
The worst is that those negative effects are more difficult to feel immediately because of their slow effect. In some case, neither the person himself or his co-workers detect it.
Train your managers to accept this new well-being means for their team members even if apparently incompatible with business: rest at work in dedicated spaces, "do nothing at work" sessions, isolation spaces, regression rooms, Ayurvedic Indian massages, Tai Chi, yoga...
Given people won't do thing once back at home because they are too tired by a hard days’ work, while at the same time, they know they need it, offer them the psychological and physical air to do it at work.

Note: Managing Softly is a book written by me. It has been published in US. You can buy it clicking here. To discover 12 reasons to read that book, click here. To discover what this blog can offer you, click here.

Go beyond the individual value-added analysis

The concept of added-value is central in today business. People are often spoken of according to their individual added-value.
But to much focusing on individual added-value leads us to forget something just as important: the inter-added-value. We call the inter-added-value the contribution of an individual to the individual added-value of others. Individual added-value concept is the link to the position of the person and tells about his added-value inside this position. The inter-added-value notion looks at the contribution of an individual in triggering, making emerge or increasing the added-value of co-workers.
People can be more contributive in the inter-relations, the inter-plays, the inter-spaces than if they were compartmentalized in their position. Some soccer players or base-ball players don't appear as great individual players but are mandatory for winning. They can be those who build the team spirit, re-boost the key players when everything looks nearly over, block opposing player to open the way for a good shot. They have a very good inter-value-added but not a great individual value-added.
Go beyond the individual value-added analysis and adopt inter-value-added concept to fairly evaluate your people. It will help in a business world where working means more and more interacting with people, partners, know how, places, moments.

Note: Managing Softly is a book written by me. It has been published in US. You can buy it clicking here. To discover 12 reasons to read that book, click here. To discover what this blog can offer you, click here.

Stop be-too obsession

Every acknowledges it's not possible to both do a job and build a career given both are full-time jobs.
Nevertheless the more we are career-orientated the more we focus on looking like those who have positions similar to the one we are targeting. We fall into excessive be-too attitude: doing the same sport as the models, frequenting the same places, wearing the same clothes, behaving the same way and so much more. The huge promotion of leaders, complemented by the laurels and honors we reward them with, accelerate our will to be like them. But it engenders a double mistake: an disproportionate effort to become someone else and the belief that yesterday’s leaders can fit with today’s issues. In fact, The necessary qualities of yesterday’s leaders are not those of tomorrow’s. Recent political history perfectly underlines this misunderstanding. Someone who want to become president of the United States has to be good in front of the TV cameras such as Jimmy Carter, being the first to excel in this art. And so, George Washington would probably not be elected today.
Therefore, free your company from that be-too obsession. Help your potential leaders to understand that they must go beyond traditional models, find their own way, invent a new generation of leaderships. Tell them about Buddha, Gandhi and Gracie.

Note: Managing Softly is a book written by me. It has been published in US. You can buy it clicking here. To discover 12 reasons to read that book, click here. To discover what this blog can offer you, click here.

Kill the baby-sitter syndrome

You can ask to someone to resolve in one day the problem you have been contributing to create for years.
Nevertheless, too many people in your company are asked to solve those rampant issues. They feel like the baby-sitter to whom parents say Saturday evening before leaving: "So, our lovely Tom mustn't watch TV after 9 o'clock, mustn't drink coke and mustn't play video games longer than thirty consecutive minutes, but must read", whereas they have let him be capricious and allowed him everything all week. The baby-sitter, even if formidable, will never manage to bring up well the child in one evening while the parents have been  badly bringing him up for too long.
Kill the baby-sitter syndrome. Instead of asking your people to solve problems originating from a long time ago, identify the ones that are on going and tackle it when it is not too late yet. Learn to understand rather than not facing and tackling problems which otherwise will remain and become institutionalized: inappropriate habits, default in the way things are made, costing way to make others, etc.

Note: Managing Softly is a book written by me. It has been published in US. You can buy it clicking here. To discover 12 reasons to read that book, click here. To discover what this blog can offer you, click here.

Reverse the hiring approach

Every company first define jobs before looking for matching people from inside or outside.
By doing so they deprive themselves of hiring great people.
Reverse the way you are thinking. What about identifying great people possible to hire first. Then write the job description according to who they are, what they are interested in, second.
In the traditional approach you imagine an ideal and see reality not as you would like it to be: no one perfectly entering in the boxes you have conceived. In the reverse approach you first identify great people inside or outside your organization then conceive the ideal organization for them.
Any company must evolve to survive. The more you learn to attract the best people of the epoch the more your organization will be in line with the way business must be done at that time.

Note: Managing Softly is a book written by me. It has been published in US. You can buy it clicking here. To discover 12 reasons to read that book, click here. To discover what this blog can offer you, click here.

3. The Next Decades

Recruit mediators to maintain internal peace

A company is like a city. People, teams, services, business units are more or less neighbors. Internal conflict is frequent and can create bad situations often reaching the point of no return. It is human nature that makes those difficulties possible. Pressure accentuates them. Internal competition accentuates them. Managers need to be diplomatically armed to solve these damaging situations.
Hire a mediator to maintain peace, like in a city where neutral conflict specialists can help in resolving passionate quarrels between people who share a common interest in a friendly solution. A full time mediator is not requested. But someone coming one day a week or less or more to bring neutral kindness and to contribute to internal peace inside your company to achieve better interaction outside. A senior person, near to retirement, who knows your company very well or your industry could be perfectly appropriate.

Note: Managing Softly is a book written by me. It has been published in US. You can buy it clicking here. To discover 12 reasons to read that book, click here. To discover what this blog can offer you, click here.