This week in pm-clinic: Surviving the visionless manager
This week in the pm-clinic discussion forum:
I lead a small team of 6 – we’re paired with 3 other small teams, all reporting into the same group manager.
Problem #1: the group manager doesn’t have a vision. He’s vague and tends towards disinterest in leadership matters.
Problem #2: All of us leads have visions, but they’re different.
Problem #3: Leaders and founders seem content to let us fight out our respective visions in code.I’ve run up this hill before – it’s not fun. I want to find another way to deal with the situation and I’m hoping pmc can help.
– Surviving the visionless manager
The best way through is an experienced facilitator. This can be an internal person. It is a great way to take this kind of situation forward…great facilitators are invaluable!
I’m a facilitator fan – I’ve been paid to be one and I played one on TV (ok, that’s a lie). The problem is:
1) Getting all parties to agree to bringing at outsider in. This is hard.
2) Getting agreement on picking the outsider. This is harder.
3) Getting everyone to agree to on outcomes, after the faciltiator leaves. This is really hard.
In healthy teams, I agree, it’s not hard to go find a respected manager, bring them into a discussion and ask them to mediate. But many organizations are just not that healthy.
So there are four team leaders? Do they agree with you? Different visions cost everybody – so they should be interested in solving the problem. Can you not get the four of you to set-up a “vision meeting” say once-per-month? IF you’re boss does not care, he won’t prevent it I would think.
Can you identify the cost vs benefits of participating into such an ad-hoc cooperation for each team leader? Don’t share the “complaint” with them, share the cost/benefits. It is more motivating.
Finally, if the four of you can agree on what the cost/benefits are, and also agree to what “vision” really mean, you might all present this to your group manager and ask him to arbitrate if need be.
As a last resort try this: Can you list three reasons why your boss might not care about what you call vision? Is it possible he has (in his opinion) bigger problems? If you can identify what his problems are and can link the benefit of “vision” to solving them, you will likely see him getting interested. The trick is to approach it from his point-of-view, not yours.