Surprisingly, only 10% of your managers could be moving your company forward. The rest may look busy—but they’re probably just spinning their wheels. That special 10%—your purposeful managers—make the seemingly impossible happen. Ask anyone at German airline Lufthansa.
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Its purposeful managers saved the company from near bankruptcy—recouping a DM 750 million loss and achieving a record profit of DM 2.5 billion. Purposeful managers embody two elements essential for driving meaningful change:. focus—zeroing in on goals and seeing them to completion, weighing options before acting, and concentrating on key projects; and. energy—vigor fueled by intense personal commitment and the capacity to tackle heavy workloads to meet tight deadlines. One element without the other isn’t enough.
It’s possible—even likely—that 90% of your managers could lack one—or both. Here’s how to identify your company’s purposeful managers—and help the rest join their ranks. The Idea in Practice Purposeful Managers Why are purposeful managers so productive? With their focus and energy, they carefully orchestrate their time—e.g., building “think time” into their schedules, answering e-mails during specified periods of the day, etc. They also are crystal clear about their intentions, demonstrate unrelenting willpower, pick their battles carefully, and feel personally responsible for their company’s fate. Most important, they refuse to let others (bosses, peers) or organizational constraints (job descriptions, salaries) limit their agendas. Instead, they define their goals, then control their environment to meet their objectives—cultivating influential relationships, independently accessing resources, etc.
In Short Supply Managers short on focus and/or energy can have damaging consequences for your company: The procrastinators (low focus, low energy) dutifully perform routine tasks but fail to take initiative, raise performance levels, or engage with strategy. The disengaged (high focus, low energy) are exhausted and unable to commit to tasks that hold little meaning for them. They approach their work halfheartedly, deny a problem exists, or refuse to act even when it’s critical. The distracted (low focus, high energy) comprise most managers.
Shortsighted and overcommitted, they feel a desperate need to do something—anything—when pressure mounts. But short on reflection, they have trouble developing strategies and adjusting their behavior to new realities. Creating Purposeful Managers How to boost your managers energy and focus? Give them meaningful challenges, then let them decide how to meet them. Empower them to turn compelling visions into reality. Stress how essential their contributions are. Example: Embattled Lufthansa CEO Jurgen Weber realized only a network of purposeful managers could save the company.
Gathering 20 senior managers, plus the board, he presented the facts about the company’s plight—and declared he didn’t have the answer. He gave the managers three days to devise solutions. Then he and the board left. The managers embraced the challenge.
Deciding that Lufthansa was worth fighting for, they committed themselves to ambitious goals—eventually defining 130 radical changes and implementing 70% of them. The rest of Lufthansa’s turnaround is history. If you listen to executives, they’ll tell you that the resource they lack most is time. Every minute is spent grappling with strategic issues, focusing on cost reduction, devising creative approaches to new markets, beating new competitors. But if you watch them, here’s what you’ll see: They rush from meeting to meeting, check their e-mail constantly, extinguish fire after fire, and make countless phone calls. In short, you’ll see an astonishing amount of fast-moving activity that allows almost no time for reflection. No doubt, executives are under incredible pressure to perform, and they have far too much to do, even when they work 12-hour days.
But the fact is, very few managers use their time as effectively as they could. They think they’re attending to pressing matters, but they’re really just spinning their wheels.
The awareness that unproductive busyness—what we call “active nonaction”—is a hazard for managers is not new. Managers themselves bemoan the problem, and researchers such as Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton have examined it (see “The Smart-Talk Trap,” HBR May–June 1999). But the underlying dynamics of the behavior are less well understood. For the past ten years, we have studied the behavior of busy managers in nearly a dozen large companies, including Sony, LG Electronics, and Lufthansa. The managers at Lufthansa were especially interesting to us because in the last decade, the company underwent a complete transformation—from teetering on the brink of bankruptcy in the early 1990s to earning a record profit of DM 2.5 billion in 2000, thanks in part to the leadership of its managers. We interviewed and observed some 200 managers at Lufthansa, each of whom was involved in at least one of the 130 projects launched to restore the company’s exalted status as one of Europe’s business icons. Our findings on managerial behavior should frighten you: Fully 90% of managers squander their time in all sorts of ineffective activities.
In other words, a mere 10% of managers spend their time in a committed, purposeful, and reflective manner. This article will help you identify which managers in your organization are making a real difference and which just look or sound busy. Moreover, it will show you how to improve the effectiveness of all your managers—and maybe even your own.
Focus and Energy Managers are not paid to make the inevitable happen. In most organizations, the ordinary routines of business chug along without much managerial oversight.
The job of managers, therefore, is to make the business do more than chug—to move it forward in innovative, surprising ways. After observing scores of managers for many years, we came to the conclusion that managers who take effective action (those who make difficult—even seemingly impossible—things happen) rely on a combination of two traits: focus and energy.
Think of focus as concentrated attention—the ability to zero in on a goal and see the task through to completion. Focused managers aren’t in reactive mode; they choose not to respond immediately to every issue that comes their way or get sidetracked from their goals by distractions like e-mail, meetings, setbacks, and unforeseen demands. Because they have a clear understanding of what they want to accomplish, they carefully weigh their options before selecting a course of action. Moreover, because they commit to only one or two key projects, they can devote their full attention to the projects they believe in. Consider the steely focus of Thomas Sattelberger, currently Lufthansa’s executive vice president, product and service. In the late 1980s, he was convinced that a corporate university would be an invaluable asset to a company.
He believed managers would enroll to learn how to challenge old paradigms and to breathe new life into the company’s operational practices, but his previous employer balked at the idea. After joining Lufthansa, Sattelberger again prepared a detailed business case that carefully aligned the goals of the university with the company’s larger organizational agenda. When he made his proposal to the executive board, he was met with strong skepticism: Many believed Lufthansa would be better served by focusing on cutting costs and improving processes.
But he kept at it for another four years, chipping away at the objections. In 1998, Lufthansa School of Business became the first corporate university in Germany—and a change engine for Lufthansa. Think of the second characteristic— energy—as the vigor that is fueled by intense personal commitment. Energy is what pushes managers to go the extra mile when tackling heavy workloads and meeting tight deadlines. The team that created the Sony Vaio computer—the first PC to let users combine other Sony technologies, such as digital cameras, portable music players, and camcorders—showed a lot of energy. Responding to CEO Nobuyuki Idei’s challenge to create an integrated technological playground for a burgeoning generation of “digital dream kids,” Hiroshi Nakagawa and his team put in 100-hour weeks to create the kind of breakthrough product Idei hoped for. One manager, Kazumasa Sato, was so devoted to the project that he spent every weekend for three years conducting consumer reconnaissance in electronics shops.
Sato’s research into consumer buying patterns helped Sony develop a shop layout that enhanced traffic flow and, by extension, sales. In the end, the Vaio captured a significant share of the Japanese PC market.
While both focus and energy are positive traits, neither alone is sufficient to produce the kind of purposeful action organizations need most from their managers. Focus without energy devolves into listless execution or leads to burnout. Energy without focus dissipates into purposeless busyness or, in its most destructive form, a series of wasteful failures. We found that plotting the two characteristics in a matrix offered a useful framework for diagnosing the causes of nonproductive activity as well as the sources of purposeful action. The exhibit “The Focus–Energy Matrix” identifies four types of behavior: disengagement, procrastination, distraction, and purposefulness. Before we look at each type more closely, we should note that these behaviors have both internal and external causes.
Some people are born with high levels of energy, for example, and some, by nature, are more self-reflective. But it is important not to overlook the organizational context of these behaviors. Some companies foster fire-fighting cultures; others breed cynicism and, hence, low levels of commitment in their workers. To change the behaviors of your managers, it may be necessary to alter the organizational landscape. The Procrastinators Of the managers we studied, some 30% suffered from low levels of both energy and focus; we call these managers the procrastinators.
Although they dutifully perform routine tasks—attending meetings, writing memos, making phone calls, and so on—they fail to take initiative, raise the level of performance, or engage with strategy. Some procrastinators hesitate, Hamlet-like, until the window of opportunity for a project has closed. At Lufthansa, for instance, the manager who was charged with developing an internal survey delayed beginning the project until the deadline passed. “I could have done the work,” he admits, “but for some reason, I could not get started.” The nearer the deadline loomed, the more he busied himself on other projects, rationalizing that he couldn’t turn to this task until he cleared his desk of less important jobs. People often procrastinate when they feel insecure or fear failure. One young lawyer, assigned a key role in an important merger project, was initially excited about the prospect of making a presentation to the executive board.
But as time passed, he found the challenge of the task overwhelming. He began imagining horrible scenarios: losing his train of thought, saying the wrong thing, seeing the stifled yawns and suppressed smirks of his audience. He became so obsessed with the notion of failure that he was almost paralyzed. Other procrastinators coast along in the chronically passive state that psychologist Martin Seligman called “learned helplessness.” At some point in their lives, they were punished or suffered negative consequences when they took initiative. Now, as managers, they believe that any effort they make will be shot down. They think they have no control over events, so they do nothing, which can ultimately debilitate their companies.
Surprisingly, in the early phases of Lufthansa’s turnaround—when things were chaotic and managerial jobs were relatively unstructured—fewer managers than we expected were procrastinators. But when circumstances returned to normal and formal procedures were reestablished, many managers lost both focus and energy. They stopped setting goals for themselves and became passive. This reinforced our sense that procrastination doesn’t wholly depend on personality; it can be influenced by organizational factors.
The Disengaged Roughly 20% of managers fall into the disengaged category; they exhibit high focus but have low levels of energy. Some of these managers are simply exhausted and lack the inner resources to reenergize themselves. Others feel unable to commit to tasks that hold little meaning for them.
Disengaged managers have strong reservations about the jobs they are asked to do; as a result, they approach them halfheartedly. Many managers in this group practice a form of denial we call “defensive avoidance”: Rather than acknowledging a problem and taking steps to correct it, they convince themselves that the problem doesn’t exist.
Plenty of denial was at play when Lufthansa stood at the brink of bankruptcy in 1992. Even though the entire industry faced a severe downturn and Lufthansa was losing revenue, these managers ignored or reinterpreted market signals, convincing themselves that the company’s expansionist strategy was correct. Many of them continued to hire new employees in the face of massive operating losses. By contrast, some disengaged managers refuse to take action—even when it’s obviously needed. One manager responsible for ground services in a major airport, for example, fully understood the threat of bankruptcy and the need to make radical changes.
He enthusiastically participated in all the change management meetings and offered ideas for improving operational productivity. Yet deep down, he believed his job was to protect his area and his people. He convinced himself that his department was a core group and should be spared from layoffs. Later, when it become clear that cuts in all areas were inevitable, he agreed to the layoffs in principle, but his personal discomfort kept him from truly committing to them.
He delayed making the decision and invested little energy in making the right cuts. As a consequence, his results were less than stellar. Disengaged managers tend to be extremely tense. That’s hardly surprising, for they are often plagued by feelings of anxiety, uncertainty, anger, frustration, and alienation. They deal with those emotions by withdrawing and doing the bare minimum, which make the situations worse.
Despite their low levels of energy, these managers suffer from burnout far more frequently than their colleagues do. And they are easily overwhelmed by unexpected events. While some managers are inherently more likely than others to distance themselves from their work, disengagement is often a result of organizational processes.
In a major U.S. Oil company, for example, we witnessed a committed and enthusiastic manager gradually become apathetic.
An IT specialist, he was assigned to an interdisciplinary strategy-development task force that was charged with creating a new business model for an upstream division. The team came up with several radical proposals, but they were met with lukewarm responses from senior managers. After several months, the team’s ideas were diluted to the point that not even the IT manager found them interesting. What had once been an exciting task became a farce, from his point of view.
Believing that no one was interested in new ideas, he concluded that he was foolish to have been as engaged as he was. “I distanced myself,” he says. “I knew that none of our innovative ideas would ever make it to implementation. So I continued working out concepts and ideas—but with no skin in the game.” To be fair, even the best organizations occasionally create cynics out of enthusiasts. But some organizations seem to make a practice of it by consistently sabotaging any flickers of creativity or initiative. The Distracted By far the largest group of managers we studied—more than 40%—fall into the distracted quadrant: those well-intentioned, highly energetic but unfocused people who confuse frenetic motion with constructive action. When they’re under pressure, distracted managers feel a desperate need to do something—anything.
That makes them as dangerous as the proverbial bull in a china shop. In 1995, Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme was in the midst of a crisis. Facing cumulative five-year losses of DM 2.1 billion and a progressive erosion of market, the company’s survival was uncertain. Internally, the vastly different corporate cultures of two merger partners (Nixdorf computers and the computer division of Siemens) had created a politically vicious, unstable environment—a perfect breeding ground for procrastination, disengagement, and distraction. Klaus Karl, a young software engineer in the relational database part of the business, had reached the end of his rope.
Exhausted by the political battles, Karl grew apathetic and began looking for a new job. He received an excellent offer from software manufacturer Sybase and was less than a month away from his planned departure when he attended a meeting organized by the newly hired CEO, Gerhard Schulmeyer. That meeting was a call to arms: Schulmeyer reminded employees of the company’s European roots, saying that it was destined to be a far better technology partner to companies on the Continent than any U.S. Competitor could possibly be. Dubbing the company “the IT partner for change,” Schulmeyer announced that he would give its technology-savvy young people an opportunity to take part in corporate strategic planning. Their common challenge was to help top management rethink SNI’s approach to the market, to technology, and to change. Karl’s name was on the list of bright young employees fingered to join the new team.
“I faced a real dilemma,” says Karl. “I had an excellent offer, with higher pay and great prospects.
My boss made it very clear that it was quite likely that the change effort would fail and that I might find myself looking for a job. On the other hand, if I was willing to join the change agent program, I would be sent for a special change management training program spanning three months at MIT—along with top managers, including Schulmeyer himself—and then could define my own change initiative.” He weighed his options carefully, and the opportunity to make a difference proved too enticing. Karl committed to SNI. During the training program in the United States, Karl learned to use strategy and change management tools. He formed close bonds with colleagues in the program. By the end, Karl and the other trainees—including Schulmeyer—were “committed to transforming the company.” Over the next two years, we saw Karl completely shake up the middleware development department. “We had to focus on a smaller portfolio of projects, so as to allocate our resources better,” he says.
“Initially, we tried to persuade people to use a new set of analytical tools. They would laugh at us. Some walked away from the meetings.
Many senior people even refused to attend.” But Karl stuck to his guns and continued his campaign of persuasion. “Gradually, they began to listen.
They began to alter their ways of thinking about projects.” As a result, a new product-portfolio analysis system was completed in a mere three months. Karl’s contribution had a powerful impact on the company’s bottom line. Within three years, it successfully launched a variety of new projects that boosted the bottom line by DM 400 million.
Without the contributions of Karl and other reenergized, refocused managers, SNI would never have achieved such a dramatic turnaround. To be sure, the prospect of one’s own hanging focuses the mind. But a crisis need not be a precondition for challenge and choice. Sony’s Idei achieved precisely the same result with the image of a future community of Vaio users, the “digital dream kids.” Convinced that they were building a creative tool for a whole generation, Sony’s engineers charged ahead with amazing determination. Note that neither Weber nor Idei used typical managerial tools to create energy and focus in their subordinates.
“Motivating” people, or telling them what to do, has dismal results. In fact, such exhortations often lead to exactly the opposite of what’s needed. When executives outline desired behaviors for middle managers and set goals for them, the managers aren’t given the opportunity to decide for themselves. As a result, they don’t fully commit to projects. They distance themselves from their work because they feel they have no control. To avoid that kind of reaction, top managers should present their people with meaningful challenges and real choices in how they might meet those challenges. We are not suggesting that meaningful challenge and personal choice are guaranteed to turn around a failing company.
Nor do we want to imply that individual managers will be able to overcome lifelong behavioral patterns simply because they’re presented with challenge and choice. Nevertheless, we strongly believe it would be a mistake for a top manager to conclude about a subordinate, “John is never going to be a purposeful manager because he is just not built that way.” Focus and energy are indeed personal characteristics, but organizations can do much to enhance those traits in their managers. In fact, leaders can directly affect the type of behavior exhibited in their organizations by loosening formal procedures and purging deadening busywork. Presented with a challenge for which their contributions are essential, managers feel needed. Asked for their opinions and given choices, they feel emboldened. When corporate leaders make a sincere effort to give managers both challenge and choice, most managers can learn to direct their energy and improve their focus—and ultimately find their way to the sea.