After months of review and processing (this company is much larger than the largest law firms, so don’t panic), they identified eight actual behaviors the best managers engaged in. All center around motivation, communication, and support:

  • Coaches
  • Empowers their reports and don’t micromanage
  • Shows personal interest and concern
  • Oriented towards productivity and results
  • Listens and shares information
  • Helps with career development
  • Articulates a clear vision for the team, and
  • Possesses technical skills that earn respect.

The company coupled these identifiable behaviors with classes, panels, one-on-one’s, and other tools to help managers scoring low on any one to improve.

You’re wondering whether all this effort didn’t lead to a dead end, since we’ve already stipulated that the high-performing engineers at this firm are instinctively allergic to management and crave autonomy. Well, yes and no. As it turns out, their autonomy-seeking behavior is focused on doing engineering, not on their own career paths and roles at this company. As one nicely put it:

“Engineershate being micromanaged on the technical side,” he observes, “but they love being closely managed on
the career side.”

I agree with this fellow’s remark, and also have an explanation for it: Engineers are surpassingly confident they can come up with the most fitting technical solution, so “back off!,” but are deeply insecure in their heart of hearts that they know how to manage their careers, careers being, you know, kind of squishy and random-seeming things—they might use the word “stochastic,” at least to themselves.

Another dimension to this: Given that all your peers are Type A’s, how painful is it to score poorly as a manager? Consider this fellow’s experience:

In an environment of top achievers, people takelow scores seriously. Consider [a] vice president, who came to [the firm] in 2011 from a senior sales role at Oracle. During his first six months, he focused on meeting his sales numbers (and did so successfully) while managing
a global team of 150 people. Then he received his first UFS scores, which came as a shock. “I asked myself, ‘Am I right for this company? Should I go back to Oracle?’ There seemed to be a disconnect; my UFS [upward feedback] scoreswere terrible.” Then, with help from a people ops colleague, he took a step back and thought about what changes he could make. He recalls, “We went through all the comments and came up with a plan. I fixed how I communicated with my team and provided more visibility on our long-term strategy. Within two survey cycles, I raised my favorability ratings from 46% to 86%.

How important is it to raise a manager’s score? Suffice to say that very few people quit firms; they usually quit managers.

In Law Land, you can translate this as follows: (a) those who leave BigLaw because it’s not to their taste are going to leave regardless of the firm or the manager; this is the first set of people; (b) the second set of people consists of those who sincerely want to make a go of BigLaw and love their firm but can’t stand their boss. These are the people that cost you the most to lose, not just because they’re the most promising prospects in your pipeline but because they hope to be in this game for the long haul and they’ll do it at a competitor if their boss drives them out of your firm.

The third, residual, and we submit tiny set is (c) those who leave no matter how delightful and inspiring their boss is because they are at odds with your firm. There’s nothing you can do about them, and the sooner they and you are separated the better all around.

So now, many of you who are with me this far may have guessed our anonymized high tech company is, indeed, Google. The HBR article is here.

But recall the message going in:  This was a high-stakes, real-world demonstration that you can persuade autonomy-seeking professionals that management matters.

How much of a difference might that make to your firm?


This article has been all about data.

You are free to think of Google and data in two ways:

  • “Google and data” are joined at the hip! How would you expect them to address their internal management challenges other than by using data?! This means nothing to me. I’m home free to do what I’ve always done. In short, “Nothing to see here folks; you can all just move along.”  Or:
  • Well, now, Google seems to be a rather impressively successful organization. (From a $50-billion market cap upon its IPO ten years ago to $600-billion today; has your firm done the equivalent?)  Perhaps there’s something to be learned here.

Those of you in Camp A are excused. Everyone is entitled to their comfort zones. But your right to your comfort zone ends where the strength of your firm’s long-term talent pool ends.

Those of you in Camp B? Hire a few graduate student quants and start a few experiments. It will cost you virtually nothing and God forbid you learn something. And if you’re afraid people might actually be expected to change, remember that you have Type A’s fear and loathing of low scores on your side as your secret weapon.

GoogleHBR

Related Articles

Email Delivery

Get Our Latest Articles Delivered to your inbox +
X

Sign-up for email

Be the first to learn of Adam Smith, Esq. invitation-only events, surveys, and reports.





Get Our Latest Articles Delivered to Your Inbox

Like having coffee with Adam Smith, Esq. in the morning (coffee not included).

Oops, we need this information
Oops, we need this information
Oops, we need this information

Thanks and a hearty virtual handshake from the team at Adam Smith, Esq.; we’re glad you opted to hear from us.

What you can expect from us:

  • an email whenever we publish a new article;
  • respect and affection for our loyal readers. This means we’ll exercise the strictest discretion with your contact info; we will never release it outside our firm under any circumstances, not for love and not for money. And we ourselves will email you about a new article and only about a new article.

Welcome onboard! If you like what you read, tell your friends, and if you don’t, tell us.

PS: You know where to find us so we invite you to make this a two-way conversation; if you have an idea or suggestion for something you’d like us to discuss, drop it in our inbox. No promises that we’ll write about it, but we will faithfully promise to read your thoughts carefully.