6
STEP 6: IMPROVE YOUR SKILLS AS A LEADER IN THE MIDDLE
As the conscience of your organisation, you must be able to find lasting solutions. The downfall of many controllers, CFOs and finance directors is that they are so busy fighting fires that they are unable to devote time to preventing those fires. This step illuminates the real hurdle and its sources that you must face and overcome. It also provides valuable tools that will enable you to use your objective reasoning and business acumen to be a creator of solutions.
After reading this chapter, you should be able to
define why being a leader in the middle is not a career limiter.
become a more effective problem solver.
increase your comfort level in using probing questions.
restate an apparent problem in different ways to find an optimal solution.
This chapter is designed to help you grow out of your job. You accomplish this step by developing and enhancing your skills through practice and application of new tools. Make sure that one of the things you commit to from this day forward is to see yourself as a lifelong learner. This step includes ways to survive as a leader in the middle and three best practices for optimal solutions.
Exercise: Case Study—You?
You have been very successful in coaching Brian. But while Brian’s problems are theoretical, yours are not. As we cover this sixth step, think about how you can use this exercise to become a solution creator for yourself.
Instructions
Part 1: List the top six issues that are preventing you from being more effective. Lack of time is not a valid answer; it is an excuse or a crutch.
_______________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________
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Part 2: Examine these six items objectively.
Now, briefly describe your pain.
I see now that my pain is...
(Examples: “Putting my needs last.” “Procrastination.” “Not asking my boss for what I need to be successful.” “Not addressing employees who are not contributing.”)
Part 3: How would you define the true issue that is stopping you?
The real issue, hidden behind the smokescreen of ongoing fires and lack of time, is...
YOUR PERSONAL STRENGTH: SURVIVING AS A MANAGER IN THE MIDDLE
Playing at or being the leader is much more fun than learning or practising at how to be one.
Your Biggest Hurdle to Becoming a Great Leader
For the majority of management accountants who felt the urge to walk through the leadership door or have found themselves in a situation in which they had to be a leader, there is a huge hurdle to overcome. This hurdle is the most difficult part of management accounting leadership, which is moving from knowing what you need to do to really doing it.
Your organisation expects you to perform high-level work and lead a team. However, it’s likely that you are not given the support and time needed to carry out either of these major functions well. In addition, you are often very knowledgeable about what is best for your organisation, yet your colleagues and leadership may not ask you or take your advice seriously.
The good news is that every great controller and C FO has overcome this hurdle, and so can you. Following are the causes of the manager in the middle syndrome and how you can overcome this major hurdle.
Sources of Your most difficult hurdle
This hurdle has four sources, which together or individually most often prevent you from being the leader you know yourself to be and the team needs you to be. Each arises from middle leader issues you face daily.
Source 1: Your Employees
A misplaced or disheartened employee says, “I hate it here but am stuck until I can afford to retire.” A situation like this will produce problematic results if you do not address it while building a productive and reliable team. You will have people on your team whose heart is not in their work and are terrified to leave. As leader, you must address this problem and ensure that all employees contribute their best work. The true CFO knows that by setting high expectations and holding every employee to them, you set the tone that everyone, including you, must perform each day at 100%. Then you compassionately and directly work on each person’s attitude and remind them to stay positive.
Remember to include the following leadership rule in your efforts.
Natural Rule of Leadership
A leader must never allow the negative attitude of one individual or a small group to infect the positive attitude of the majority. If the majority has the negative attitude, you must change how you quickly lead or let someone else lead. Your real issue could stem from one or more of the following:
Upset or disgruntled employee—Accountants may shy away from confrontation, which indicates you are hesitant to lead. A CFO addresses a conflict immediately. You must always quickly deal with an upset or unpleasant employee with the goal of turning that person back into a contributing member of your team.
Underperforming long-term employee—You may have inherited a performance problem created or ignored by another supervisor. Not facing up to and fixing this situation is like trying to safely drive a car with one flat tire: impossible. A good CFO knows that in a team setting, one bad apple eventually will spoil the whole bunch.
Inadequate Training—Even if you do not think you have the funds or time to train your team members, you damage your credibility as a leader when you have poorly trained or under-trained employees. You cannot accomplish your work alone, and you must surround yourself with people who know more than you do. The CFO always finds ways to turn work activities into learning opportunities.
Source 2: Your Work
The great CFO and everyone else all face similar work, which can be demanding and is time-sensitive. However, you should never let the urgent crowd out the important.
Deadline pressures—The great number of deadlines we face makes them seem to be the most urgent matters your team must work on today. However, more important duties are in your leadership in-basket, such as building a high quality and loyal team. Great CFOs turn deadlines into something meaningful, which, in turn, helps their employees enjoy the work.
Repetitiveness and boredom—Repetition is supposed to build perfection. Yet poor leaders allow the necessity of doing the same work over and over produce boredom, inappropriate short-cuts, inattention and passivity. The leader in management accounting uses the nature and volume of the work as a catalyst for measurable improvement and a commitment to quality.
Massive quantity and never-ending flow—Similar to the problems created by repetitiveness, the unfortunate fact that most of us have more work than people can harm our credibility. A CFO shows poor leadership by not using this situation as a catalyst for the team to focus on cross-training, streamlining and simplifying. A CFO challenges his or her team to find ways to become lean so it has more time to work on activities that personally are meaningful and rewarding.
Source 3: Your Firm’s Culture
The culture is an area in which too many management accountants let the manager-in-the-middle syndrome defeat them.
The accomplished CFO restructures any part of the firm’s culture that undermines the effectiveness of his or her team. Even if you feel you cannot change your employer’s overall culture, you already (a) affect this culture and (b) set the tone for your department’s culture. As someone who wants to be an effective leader, you must take charge of changing cultural norms so your team feels like winners, not losers.
Lack of external support—Using your leadership talents as negotiator, change agent and role model, you must build support for your team’s efforts one fan at a time. Management accounting is sometimes looked down upon by people who do not know any better. Your duty as leader is to teach others that the management accounting team is vital to the organisation’s overall success.
Demanding employer—Many of us work for entrepreneurs who push themselves hard and expect everyone else to work impossible hours and weekends. Yet you and your team members want to have time for family and activities outside of work. Here, an excellent CFO can show assertiveness and care. As team leader, it is up to you to find the appropriate balance between commitment to the firm and to the individual. Once you find it, you must protect it and, when needed, stand up for your employees’ rights and needs.
Source 4: You
We can and do undermine our desire to be great. Following are areas in which the true leaders have learned to stop getting in their own way.
No Sounding Board—To be a great leader, you must seek out honest feedback regarding your effectiveness. The following are common excuses management accountants give when asked to consider using a coach or mentor:
“I don’t have time.”
“I know how I am doing.”
“I can’t trust anyone to tell me the truth.”
“He (she) will only tell me the bad things I am doing.”
“I don’t trust anyone that much.”
“I work alone most of the time.”
All of these are false excuses that tell me the individual is afraid.
The great CFO knows that having a sounding board goes beyond using one to obtain honest feedback on your leadership abilities. The management accounting leader in a typical organisation may feel isolated for a variety of reasons. You will always need someone to bounce ideas off and provide suggestions, critiques and insights. Unless you work in an organisation where you have multiple peers who perform the same work that you do, you will not have access to peer support. It is up to you to seek out and recruit a mentor or coach.
Too many projects—Because of your multiple responsibilities, you may burn yourself out. All CFOs know that they need to regularly relax to refresh and replenish. It is acceptable to be a Type A leader if your busyness produces excellent results while still building a great team. It is not wise to be busy if you never produce anything great.
Misspent or wasted energy—Just as being overly busy can make you an ineffective leader, so can applying your precious energy in the wrong areas. The CFO treats his or her energy like a cash investment. Each investment of energy must be wise and produce a measurable or meaningful payoff. If the benefit does not exceed the cost, rethink what you are working on or turn to your sounding board for clarity.
BEST PRACTICE: SOLUTION CREATOR
How to Be an Effective Problem Solver
Whenever acting as a solution creator, keep in mind the following points:
The CFO’s initial goal is to uncover the person’s pain.
The CFO’s ongoing objective is to build a strong relationship of trust.
The CFO treats each person as a client in order to maintain a professional approach to problem solving.
The CFO’s professional demeanor helps him or her to find realistic and innovative solutions for the client.
The CFO’s professional demeanor helps build a relationship of trust with those who rely on the CFO’s acumen and insight.
The CFO strives to be an equal partner with the other person because a partnership means that each party is invested in the relationship.
The person you help rarely knows what the source of their pain is because he or she is too close to the action to see things objectively. This is when the CFO becomes invaluable.
The following are your most valuable tools for uncovering your employer’s pain:
Gap analysis
Probing questions
Problem restatement
Their Pain Is Real and Tangible, Yet hidden
The term “pain,” in this context, means that your organisation’s executives, managers and employees have unresolved problems. As the controller or CFO, you are the logical choice and most qualified person to help rid them of their pain. You understand how the business operates, you understand how the finances work, and you understand the key players and what makes them tick. One of the most rewarding aspects of the CFO position is to be regarded as the resource that employees think of first when they need a solution.
This does not mean that your coworkers and colleagues will get answers from you.
What you will do best is employ your tools to help them find their own solutions. The last thing you want is to place yourself in a position in which you cannot get your own work done because you are always solving everyone else’s problems. An effective way to avoid this career-limiting situation is to see yourself as a consultant to others in the organisation. Good consultants best serve their client when they enable the client to arrive at his or her own solution to a problem and instils accountability in the client. In order to do so effectively, you must ensure that others trust you.
BEST PRACTICE: PROBING QUESTIONS
How to get to the Real Problem
The CFO uses probing questions to uncover the sources of the pain. You poke and prod until the person says “ouch.” The solution you seek starts there.
The reason you seek the pain point is because the people who need a solution knows a problem exists but is unable to resolve it on their own. They have a goal or destination that they want to reach. Not being able to get there leaves them very frustrated, so they naturally are defensive. If you use direct questioning, they will likely become defensive, leaving them unable to locate the real causes for their pain.
Power in Probing Questions
Probing questions (PQs) are critical to the CFO because they do the following:
Encourage people to think and unlock untapped potential
Allow people to discover their own answers, thus transferring ownership
Mine the real experts—the employees—for their gold
Help people realise how the work they do contributes to the whole
Help people feel fulfilled, satisfied and valued
Build positive attitudes and self-esteem
Remove blocks and open people up to unexplored possibilities while inviting discovery, creativity and innovation
Help people envision what it will take to do what they have not attempted before
Guide people toward where they want to go, while recognising the value in where they are and have been
Involve people in the decision making process, generating commitment to solutions
Generate alignment with a shared vision or desired outcome
Encourage people to identify, clarify and express their wants and needs
Encourage people to take risks
Recondition people from knowing what to think to knowing how to think
Nurture a deeper relationship and engender trust
Dissolve resistance to change
Create a high-energy, high-trust environment
Fundamentals of PQs
PQs are open-ended.
PQs ask “What” or “How” instead of “Why” or “Who.”
PQs are you-oriented.
PQs show that the questioner is open and willing to hear the answer—whatever it may be.
PQs are framed to fit the situation and clarify what is required.
PQs help people learn through the process of answering.
PQs give a person credit for their answer, whether they know something or not.
PQ’s can be shaped to fit the situation.
PQ’s aid the learning process.
PQ’s start out broad and general, then can be made more specific with each answer you receive.
Exercise: Examples of structured probing Questions
Assume that you are trying to understand why an employee, John, has missed a deadline or does not appear to you to take an action plan seriously. You would naturally want to hold this person accountable.
If you begin the conversation with confrontation, the employee will become defensive and may not be honest about this situation.
Try using the following questions to uncover and understand all the facts so you can enable the employee to become part of the solution.
Ask your employee:
What was the original deadline?
What were you able to accomplish?
How well do you think that you met the desired outcome?
What interfered with your meeting this outcome?
Based on what you did accomplish, what would you do the next time this occurs?
You may be thinking “Why not ask him if he completed it?” or “Why not ask him what is left to be done?” or “Why not ask him why he didn’t finish the project as requested?”
If you go to the heart of the matter before you uncover any facts, you risk not getting a straight answer. If the employee is feeling the least bit of shame about not meeting the deadline, he most likely will lie to you or minimise what is left undone. Also, you may not be aware of other circumstances. For instance, your boss, unbeknownst to you, gave him a rush project and he failed to inform you, assuming your boss would do so.
In other words, boldly and blindly going into your accusations through direct and pointed questions about his alleged or assumed lack of professionalism could damage the trust you have built with him.
Why Management Accountants Do Not Use Objective Questioning
For whatever reason, built into the personality structure of the person drawn to management accounting is often the desire to get to the bottom line quickly. So the questions to ask others in order to assist them with their problems are often pointed and filled with assumptions about the situation. While this approach may seem economical and timesaving, it rarely is effective.
The following change agent skills heavily rely on the usage of probing questions:
Active listening
Objective observing
Testing your assumptions
Integrative thinking
Selling your ideas
Use Probing Questions as a Wedge
Start by asking questions that are general in nature and then move to more specific ones. These latter questions will take you to the heart of the matter. The tone of your questions must show that you are open to listening and desire to find the cause of the issue without specifically blaming the person you are questioning. Follow the format in figure 6-1.
Figure 6-1: format for Probing Questions
People naturally or habitually seek expediency rather than objectivity, as shown in the following exercise.
Exercise: What Questions Do You prefer?
Instructions
Assume the same situation applies as in the previous example: you are talking to an employee who you suspect might be underperforming. Consider these two sets of questions and how you would react if your supervisor posed them to you.
Set One
Why are you behind schedule?
What is your problem?
Why didn’t you complete your action plan?
Who on your team is not doing their fair share of work? Why did you make that mistake?
Set Two
How do you feel about your current goals?
What have you recently accomplished of which you are very proud?
What are your specific objectives for this project?
What key things do you need to achieve your objectives?
What have you learned about the work you completed so far?
CFO Lesson
Questions are designed to commence dialogue and foster mutual trust. However, your question’s phrasing will either open or close honesty in the dialogue. Badly phrased questions harm trust and your credibility. Yet we almost always use the first set of questions and then wonder why people do not trust us enough to be completely open and honest.
BEST PRACTICE: PROBLEM RESTATEMENT
Your assumptions drive everything that follows.
How management accountants analyse a problem absolutely determines whether they find a solution and the quality of that solution. Often in hindsight they find the initial definition of the problem was off the mark. The reasons they didn’t permanently solve the problem—f they even tried to solve it at all—are the following:
Every problem can be viewed from conflicting perspectives.
Biases are the unseen killer of the objective truth.
Biases determine our perspective, which drives our analysis, which generates our conclusions and recommendations.
Therefore, the CFO using objective thinking strives to identify any biases he or she and others have from the outset.
Exercise: example of Biased Reasoning
This frustrated couple is having a conversation about their son. Notice how they deal with their plight.
Father: |
“He does not apply himself.” |
Mother: |
“I know. He really isn’t interested. His mind wanders.” |
Father: |
“I’m tired of nagging him all the time.” |
Mother: |
“Me too. It does not seem to have any effect.” |
Father: |
“Maybe he needs tutoring in how to study.” |
Mother: |
“It couldn’t hurt. He has terrible study habits.” |
Father: |
“I’ll call the school tomorrow and arrange something.” |
Mother: |
“Good. I’m sure it will help him.” |
Answer These Questions:
How did the parents define the problem?
Are lack of interest and mind wandering the problem?
What are other ways to see this issue? What other causes of the problem could there be?
Did the parents own up to the problem or distance themselves from it? Are they accountable?
Ways get to the Real Cause of an Issue or Problem
The real issues, which are the root cause of someone’s lingering problem, are often hidden. They may be hidden behind a veil of smoke because of
excessive ego,
fear of failure,
fear of incompetence,
true incompetence, or
game playing for power.
Understanding the cause of smoke screens aids the CFO in seeing behind them and discovering the source of the fire.
No. 1 Big Mistake of the CFO
Not defining the problem accurately
CFOs fall into this trap when they are so focused on the passing of time and deadlines that they aim for expediency over everything else. As a CFO you cannot afford to make this mistake often.
Information for defining the real problem or issue comes from the following sources:
Your personal knowledge
Your expertise
Discussions with the person who needs or demands the solution
Discussions with the people who are affected by the problem and will be affected by the solution
Gap analysis or similar assessment
Investigation or audit of the systems, processes, or documents involved
Your intuition
You err if you heavily rely on only one of these sources of information. You may be comfortable in using what has worked for you in the past and hesitate to rely on other assets or tools. Review this list again and determine which of these talents or assets you most heavily rely on to the exclusion of the others.
No. 2 Big Mistake of the CFO
Not using others to sound out your reasoning or logic
You may encounter this trap when you do not test your reasoning with others who are not involved in the problem. You make this mistake for three reasons.
You are in a hurry.
You have not built or used a network of peers.
You do not think that you need to.
No matter how intelligent or experienced, all CFOs need a way to sound out their reasoning or logic. Doing so is not an admission that you are incompetent, something that most professionals secretly fear. Rather, it is an enlightened practice.
When you turn to someone you trust and know can remain objective, you are simply asking them to look for flaws, biases or assumptions in your thought process. As human beings we all have biases. These assumptions about how life works interfere with your ability to be objective and work to find the optimal solution to a problem.
Never be afraid to ask others to be your sounding board and to help you clarify your thinking so that you remain objective. This is an important trait of the successful CFO.
How to Use Problem Restatement
Problem restatement is defined as restating the problem in as many ways as possible. As you restate the problem several times, you shift your mental gears into a divergent thinking mode. To restate a problem successfully, you take time to generate written statements of the problem without evaluating or solving it.
Exercise: Problem Restatement Case Study
The Painful Problem—The parking lot outside our office building is packed with employees’ cars. Every space is taken and a number of employees have to park elsewhere. This situation generates a lot of complaints.
Getting to a Solution—Having decided to eliminate this problem, our executive team convenes a task force to tackle it. The task force is given the responsibility of devising alternative ways of redesigning the parking lot to hold more cars.
The task force comes up with six different alternatives to increase the lot’s capacity.
It is easy to use the problem restatement tool when you get into the habit of following these six steps.
The Process for Restating the Problem
Use “How to...” to start defining the issue as an answer to the question.
Paraphrase the problem without shifting the primary focus.
“How to increase the number of parking spots near the office.”
“How to increase the number of cars that can park in the lot without increasing the number of parking spaces.”
Make a 180-degree shift in the problem’s focus by viewing it from the opposite angle.
“How to reduce the number of cars that park in the lot.”
“How to transport people to work without using automobiles.”
Simplify the wording.
“How to increase the lot’s current capacity.”
Make each statement positive and remove any negative and inflammatory words.
“How to not decrease the capacity while not impacting availability.”
Revise the statement from the previous step.
“How to equalise the number of cars with the space available.”
Use active statements.
“How to ensure each employee has a place to park.”
Exercise: Restate This.
List some possible solutions generated by the specific problem definitions.
“How to increase the number of cars that park in the lot without increasing the number of parking spaces.”
“How to reduce the number of cars that park in the lot.”
“How to transport people to work without using automobiles.”
“How to equalise the number of cars with the spaces available.”
“How to ensure each employee has a place to park.”
Exercise: Can We Close Faster?
The Apparent Issue
You recently have been hired by Chaos, Inc., whose executives selected you to make immediate changes in how management accounting is done. You determine that their biggest challenge is the lack of timely feedback. The first issue you choose to address is the month-end closing process. Your goal is to reduce it from the current 12 days to 6. You interview the assistant controller, who tells you:
“Each month it takes long hours and the entire management accounting team’s attention to close the general ledger. The process seems to go on forever, yet it has been like this for the past five years. It feels like we do not have enough people to make things easier because everyone is working long, hard days. We also have to delay all of our other work until the GL is closed and the reports are issued. By the end this process, everyone feels exhausted. It takes us a few days to recover, then we get back to our regular work. Two weeks later, it is crunch time again.”
What would you define as the problem?
How to...
How to...
What would be another way to state the problem—via technology?
How to...
How to...
What would be another way to state the problem—via time?
How to...
How to...
What would be another way to state the problem—via the closing process?
How to...
How to...
What would be another way to state the problem—via the people involved?
How to...
How to...
CFO Lesson
The way you define a problem determines your solutions. Therefore, if you define the problem only one way, you limit your solutions, which may not be the ones that solve the problem to ensure that the fire goes out. Using a tool like problem restatement enables you to find the cause of the fire and create the optimal solution.
In the End
When your only tool is a hammer, all your problems look like nails.
The real issues or root cause of someone’s lingering problem are often hidden behind a veil of smoke. As a solution creator or change agent, your task is to ignore the smoke and seek the cause. Furthermore, how you define the problem determines the solutions that you select.
By using probing questions and problem restatement, you will not view all your problems as nails. Instead, you will enable yourself to become a gifted problem solver, one who is valued by everyone with whom you work.