Is Your Management Operating System Due for a System Upgrade?

With over 30 years of business management and leadership experience, I can attest that there are no silver bullets to management success. No quick fixes. Remember the Staples® “Easy Button?” There are no easy buttons. Santa might have one, but they seem to be out of stock everywhere else.

However, in my global travels, I’ve seen prospective and current leaders continue their search for silver bullets. I’ve personally searched in vain for the easy button. I’ve screamed alone into the wind: “It really can’t be this hard to run a business, can it?” 

With the benefit of experience and hindsight, I now cringe when I see a new book or system that promises instant results. “The 7 tips for x.” The 5 secrets of y.” These titles make for sexy book covers, but will they help or hinder in the long run? 

Yes, you can get small nuggets from flavor-of-the-day management books, but does each nugget fit together into a holistic approach to business leadership, or is the theme just another shiny ball that distracts from your core purpose, vision, and north star?

There are real costs to pursuing the shiny balls of management philosophy and practice. In the face of rapid change and fierce external competitive pressures, your team needs to know that you’ll lead with consistency and persistence. That your approach is repeatable, reliable, and strikes the right balance between agility and standardization. If your approach to management is constantly shifting, then the true foundations of business, trust and accountability, are incredibly difficult to establish and maintain.

The Search for Root Cause

If you’ve been following my work, you’ll know that my management philosophy is based on the principles of organizational health, coupled with the tenets of continuous improvement. Hence, one of the most important lessons I can get across is this: Before we jump to solutioning – which is standard practice for “busy,” results-oriented managers – we pause, ask “why,” and search for the root cause of the challenges we’re facing. As I sit and think about the root cause for the proliferation of – and outsized demand for – marginally helpful self-help, quick fix management training solutions, a “five whys” exercise keeps leading me to the accidental manager effect.

I’m an accidental manager. You may be one too. There are millions of us. To illustrate, let’s look at my path to becoming an accidental manager. You can play along by tracing your journey too.

My training for the workforce was a winding path. I started as a high school dropout rock ‘n roll road warrior, then transitioned to piano mover / bookkeeper during my economics undergraduate education, then on to teaching assistant and researcher during six years of graduate school in finance. I found my purpose as an undergraduate – I knew I was going to spend my lifetime as a teacher and a coach. I also thought I knew where the path to becoming a teacher would take me – to a cloistered academic environment filled with pipes, argyle socks and woolen sweater vests. 

Note: We’ll be talking a lot about purpose moving forward, so I suggest that you contemplate your own purpose as part of our Personal Planning A3 exercise.

You see, during my collegiate years I thought the endgame was the role of college professor. The plan was to teach and perform research at the collegiate level for the remainder of my career. Done and dusted. All sorted, right? Wrong.

After earning a Ph.D., instead of searching for a teaching and research-focused professorship, we (my dear wife Linda, and I) put all of our eggs into the basket of the entrepreneurial venture Carl Schweser and I had started as a side hustle during graduate school. Our little venture was designed to help prospective financial analysts pass the rigorous CFA® exams. 

All of the sudden, bang! I’m an accidental manager. Yes, I’d led classrooms of students as a teacher and was typically “that guy” in academic group projects everyone would look to for counsel and direction, but I had no formal managerial training. A combination of my own hubris and an urgent need to get things done led me to believe that my previous wins and experiences would translate into Andy Temte becoming an effective manager of teams. Hmmm, what could go wrong?

The Accidental Manager

I define the accidental manager as an individual contributor who entered the workforce with vigor and promise. The label “high potential,” or hi-po, would likely have been placed on this individual early in their career. 

The accidental manager knocked the cover off the ball as a new hire – demonstrating outstanding skill and delivering reliable, high quality results to the business. The accidental manager typically holds a degree or skill portfolio in a field other than management (e.g., nursing, marketing, biology, or in my case, finance) and has no formal training in leading teams of other humans. The accidental manager is placed into a managerial role as a “reward” for their exceptional performance, often with little or no training regimen to accompany the promotion – leaving the newly minted manager to fend for themselves and look after their own learning and development journey.

The tortured logic that’s applied to decisions around promoting an individual contributor to a management position with no experience typically goes something like this. “Yvonne is awesome at her job and gets along with everyone on the team. She’ll make a great manager,” or “We don’t have time to lead a full search for a new manager for department x, so let’s tap Trevor for the role. He’ll do just fine.”

But more often than not, Trevor is not “just fine” and his transition from individual contributor to manager is fraught with challenges. Yes, he may have been well-liked by his colleagues when he was part of the team, but the bloom comes off the rose very quickly once Trevor needs to begin making difficult choices that aren’t congruent with the desires of his former peers. Trevor likely suffers from the self-inflicted stress of feeling inadequate and unprepared for the role. If Trevor is not skilled in self-reflection, has not invested in grooming his emotional quotient (EQ), or understanding his relationship with others, has not committed to a life of learning, or has a weak ego, all manner of unproductive and unhealthy behaviors are likely to manifest themselves as he attempts to build rapport with his new team members.

Yvonne may have performed well as an individual contributor, but was that because she was an awesome firefighter? You know, the go-to person on the team who knew how to fix problems quickly or could shoulder the weight of the team during times of crisis? Good firefighting and crisis management do not necessarily translate into sustained management excellence. Without intervention and a plan for professional growth as a manager, Yvonne will likely spend her career stuck, flitting from fire-to-fire, as a line manager. Worse yet, her team members will believe that fighting fires is the norm and will resist the difficult work to clearly identify roles/responsibilities and create an environment of flow to minimize waste, improve outcomes, and build team trust.

Both Yvonne and Trevor will likely end up as members of the organizational permafrost (a.k.a., the clay layer) who adopt a fixed mindset and consciously or subconsciously work to avoid meaningful change. Yvonne and Trevor unwittingly slip into active supporters of the “we’ve always done it this way” mantra.

As mentioned previously, another key trait of the accidental manager is that they are not provided rigorous experiential training and development opportunities to fill the skill gaps that the hiring manager either knew, or should have known, existed upon the installation of the accidental manager. Consistent with the themes that led to the decision to promote based on performance as an individual contributor, hiring managers make the logical leap that either (a) “I was an accidental manager and I turned out just fine, so therefore Trevor will be just fine,” or (b) “Trevor is sharp and can figure out what he needs to be successful on his own.” The lack of clear direction regarding learning and development can lead to the adoption of a fixed mindset and/or the shiny ball approach to management philosophy and practice.

Therefore, what we end up with are good-intentioned managers who, over time, develop a calcified “we’ve always done it this way” mindset, or are great firefighters but not prepared to lead teams of people. Firefighting, crisis management, and resistance to change become the norm and team members are routinely blindsided by an ever-shifting management landscape. Trust and accountability are impossible to sustain, as there is no reliable foundation on which to build those critical business characteristics.

The Management Operating System

So if there are no silver bullets to management success and flawed managerial hiring practices perpetuate the adoption of quick-fix, flavor-of-the-day management philosophies, and whack-a-mole business operations practices, what’s the answer?

It’s time to introduce the Management Operating System.

Miriam-Webster defines an operating system as:

“Software that controls the operation of a computer and directs the processing of programs (as by assigning storage space in memory and controlling input and output functions).” 

Operating systems are all around us. They control our computers, phones, televisions, and even our automobiles. The function of an operating system is to provide a playground of sorts for independent applications to perform a wide variety of functions – everything from a simple calculator to wildly complex graphic design and video processing tools. 

As with any playground, an operating system also sets guardrails and rules each application must abide by to ensure the entire system runs smoothly and doesn’t come crashing down. Those of us who are part of “computing generation #1” are acutely aware of what can happen when an operating system is poorly designed. When I was writing technical and test prep manuals in the 1990s and early 2000s I pressed the “save” button after every few sentences due to the PTSD I had developed over losing one too many files to a system crash. In 2022, I’m still leery of losing my work!

Interestingly, many businesses, especially small and midsize businesses, take an ad hoc approach to their management philosophies and systems. At the time of business start-up, there was likely a unified approach driven by a single, charismatic leader; but hubris, the addition of more disparate human voices, and the necessity to quickly reach financial sustainability put limits on the senior leadership team’s ability to spend the requisite amount of time contemplating how the business will function as it grows. Accidental managers abound within the business because either (a) they were there from the beginning and got promoted out of loyalty or convenience, or (b) hiring for managerial talent took a backseat to hiring for technical expertise. “Who needs a management operating system, we need to get $h!t done!”

Unfortunately, assuming the business is still functioning, entropy sets in and the business winds up operating on a foundation of ad hoc rules and unspoken handoffs that no one questions because “that’s the way we’ve always done it.” 

A Real-World Example

To illustrate this point more clearly, let’s wind the clock back to the early 2010s. The business I used to run, Kaplan Professional, was just starting to turn the corner from the devastating impact the Great Recession had on it. It was during this critical period that we adopted the tenets of organizational health and continuous improvement as the foundations of the Kaplan Professional management operating system. After executing a necessary but gut wrenching reduction in force, it became obvious that people were our most valuable asset and that we needed to identify/minimize waste and turn our attention outward, toward the needs of our customers.

During this time of significant change we analyzed each product line and offering for market fit, portfolio fit, and profitability. The CFA training business Carl Schweser and I sold to Kaplan back in 1999 was humming along nicely, even during the depths of the Great Recession, and was the primary source of operating income that supported the rest of the Kaplan Professional portfolio. As a result, some in the business advocated to make an exception for the CFA product line and not put it on the table for review. After all, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” right? Wrong.

Fortunately, the senior leadership team and I decided that there would be no exceptions or protected asset classes. No untouchables. Nothing was off limits. Instead, we took a no-stone-unturned approach, and analyzed the golden goose first.

We knew from anecdotal evidence that flow was not maximized in the annual production cycle of all our product lines. Moreover, since CFA was the largest operating profit contributor, its production needs were prioritized throughout the year. CFA had priority to the point where “black out periods” had been established, within which all production resources were dedicated to ensuring the next generation of CFA-related products made it to market in time, often to the detriment of other product lines and offerings.

Our first step in tearing apart CFA into its component parts was to engage in a multi-day process mapping event. Here, experts and stakeholders from all departments that touched CFA from the inception of a revision cycle to delivery of the finished product gathered to map the work, actions, handoffs, wait times, and processing times along a simple flow diagram.

At the end of day two I stepped into the room for a debrief on the team’s progress. The smell of anxiety, coffee breath, and spent brain cells permeated the room. The fancy new dry erase walls in the conference room were filled with scribblings, boxes, and arrows that pointed in myriad directions. There was no simple flow diagram to be found. 

It turned out that after two days of effort, a process map remained undefined because there were so many instances where handoffs, work, and wait times were unknown. Everyone in the room was beside themselves because although the CFA revision cycle started and stopped year in, year out, no one knew or could codify how that work actually got done from start to finish. 

This was a wake-up call. If our most successful product line in terms of market reputation, revenue, and operating profit couldn’t be defined on a sheet of paper, what efficiency gains were we missing in our other product offerings? Trust was at a low point because the CFA product line always received preferential treatment, and obfuscation and protectionism ran rampant to ensure the status quo was maintained. Accountability was also at a low point because, well, no one really knew how work was getting done, and roles/responsibilities, goals, and incentives were misaligned. In addition, if the process map for CFA looked like COBOL spaghetti code, was the customer really getting our best effort? Probably not.

After the process mapping event for CFA concluded and the senior management team received the final read-out, we knew we had a lot of work ahead of us to move the business toward the high trust, high accountability quadrant of a trust v. accountability cultural four-box. 

If we had any hope of building a sustainable business model that would withstand the ups and downs of the business cycle, we had to stop operating as a portfolio of small businesses – each with competing business models and a feudal approach to leadership – and start thinking about Kaplan Professional as a platform for growth in the broader market for licensures, designations, and certifications globally. 

We needed a management operating system.

The Management Operating System Defined

The concept of a management operating system has been around for years, but has encountered limitations on adoption as existing models primarily focus on structures, processes, and systems that work together. Our approach is different in that we’re purposefully recognizing the impact of philosophy, the human element of business, and specifically engineering the operating system to promote the movement of organizational culture toward high trust and high accountability.

Hence, our definition of the management operating system is this: 

“The set of philosophical principles, business planning structures, and operational measurement tools that foster an environment of agility and flow while simultaneously promoting balance between trust and accountability within an organization.”

Conclusion

The purpose of this Muse is to help leaders and managers think about the foundation of the business as an operating system and install a set of universal guardrails and rules to allow myriad and disparate functional areas of the business to thrive within the management operating system’s playground.

If you’re asking, “Andy, there’s a lot missing here. Where are the specific recommendations? Where’s the holistic model?” The answer is – drumroll please – that my second book, which we expect to release later this year, is going to be a guidebook to help you and your colleagues learn about, contemplate, install, and maintain a management operating system that is customized to your business needs, avoids unnecessary complexity, and is purposefully agile to allow for the change and growth that will inevitably follow.

Stay tuned to this bat channel.

Grace. Dignity. Compassion.

Andy

PS: Please do what you can to support the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine.

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Endnotes:

Operating System Definitions:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_system

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/operating%20system