Johanna Rothman is a busy person with all the writing and consulting she does. How does anyone do it? With practical mechanism to manage themselves, others, and innovative organizations.
Johanna gave me early copies of her new trio of Modern Management Made Easy books, which are all about practical management. I like how the books and the guidance are based around practical stories and common management myths. And then bring in practical experience and loads of references around how the myths arose and why they are no longer appropriate (if they ever were). Johanna’s writing style in these books is very personal - we have coffee from time to time, and I hear her “voice” coming through the words on the page loud and clear. This made the reading flow nicely along with a few chuckles and through-provoking head scratchers.
An important topic that Johanna weaves through the books is the concept of congruence - the idea that we get the best out of a system when the needs of self, other and the context are taken together and balanced. It’s a new term to me, although it make a lot of sense in context. Particularly as a manager, it is an interesting way to consider how to create synchronization across these elements - or the negative impacts when they are out of balance.
And to be a good manager, one must start by being able to manage oneself, and that is where book 1 starts, with Practical Ways to Manage Yourself. While I am tempted to leave a list of the myths, that would be no fun in a book review. The guidance here is how to move from being an individual contributor to being a manager and the new ways one has to think about the work to be done. No longer is the manager “the expert,” but they are now serving teams, finding ways to remove roadblocks and begin to think about growing the team. [Update] In almost every story throughout the three books, there is as key aspect of “manage yourself” which I forgot to highlight. In most of these stories, one manager stops by the desk of another. And before the conversation starts, the manager gets themself to a good stopping point in their work, and THEN turn and focus their attention on the person who has come to chat with them. This is a beautiful, simple example of “manage yourself”.
Book 2 shifts to guidance around how to work with teams and make that servant leadership really stand out, Practical Ways to Lead and Serve—Manage—Others. The refrain I kept coming back to as I read through this is about flow efficiency compared to resource efficiency and the assumptions behind “an idle resource is a waste.” When we believe that as individuals, we get afraid of downtime. When we believe that as managers, we pack people’s schedules with work - even if that work cannot possible all get done. The big problem with this way of working is that allows no room for variability - and the kind of work that most people do these days (knowledge work) has plenty of variability. Everything takes longer when we have a resource efficiency mindset. On top of that, with little slack, there is little opportunity for people to reflect on getting better at what we do. The additional guidance in this book is all about enabling the people and teams to get into their flow state - removing roadblocks and not introducing new barriers; getting to know people and context; measuring outcomes, not busyness.
And the third book takes it up a notch to consider Practical Ways to Lead an Innovative Organization. Once again flow efficiency arises, but now we are thinking about the flow of managers along with their teams - and the fact that innovative organizations have very different ways of working. I liked how she talked about the nature of teams and management in bringing new products to market. Those old barriers and silos only serve to slow things down. The guidance in this book has a lot to do with the environment managers create - the environment is the source of the behaviors and results we see, so for the behaviors and results to change the environment (beliefs, measures, assumptions) must be challenged and changed. The other element that arose in book 3 that kept coming up for me is the idea that work tends to flow more smoothly when there is clear purpose and direction - and this is another responsibility of management (and everyone to clarify). Johanna talked about the Greater Goal many times - having a north star, so it is always clear What Good Looks Like can help resolve a lot of conflicts about “how” inside organizations.
This set of books is a nice, open way to think about management starting with the inside and then your teams and then the full organization. And it’s loaded with references to other interesting readings, along with practical advice and experiences.