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The Four Styles of Management

What is your work style and how does it interact with other styles? Who’s on your team and how can you help them to reach a higher level of performance? And what about the style of your boss or your spouse – how can you best influence him or her so that you both get what you desire? These are all million-dollar questions. The answers can be found in understanding how the four forces — Producing, Stabilizing, Innovating, and Unifying — operate within each of us.

Each of us expresses a certain work style – understood in its broadest sense as a mode of operating in the world – that reflects our own unique combination of the Producing, Stabilizing, Innovating and Unifying Forces. All four forces are present in each of us in some form, but usually one or two of them come to us most naturally. In addition, when one force is relatively strong, one or more of the others forces will be relatively weak.

While we may modify our general style depending on circumstances, stepping out of our natural strengths costs us more energy than operating within them. For example, imagine a highly innovative entrepreneur who is forced to do bookkeeping for a week. Sure, she may be able to do it, but she’s also going to feel extreme tedium, effort, and a loss of energy as a result. It’s because of this energy cost that most of us express fairly consistent characteristics that reflect our usual way of managing. Effective management therefore requires understanding your own style and its relative strengths and weakness, as well as that of the people with whom you work and interact.

The chart below shows how each basic work style compares to the others. It compares the pace (slow to fast) of how a style tends to act, think, and speak; the time frame (short view to long view) of how a style tends to perceive a situation, trend, or idea; the orientation (process-oriented to results-oriented) of how a style tends to relate to people and situations; and the approach (structured to unstructured) of how a style tends to operate in daily tasks.

The 4 Styles. Each of us has some combination of the Producer, Stabilizer, Innovator, and Unifier styles (PSIU)

The Producer

The Producer (P) has a high drive to shape the environment and is focused on the parts that make up the system. Thus, this style moves at a fast pace, takes […]

By Lex Sisney|2021-05-18T05:33:27-07:00November 9th, 2011|Articles|1 Comment

The Secret to Managing Everything

The secret to understanding management is this: Complex adaptive systems (such as people and organizations) must (1) shape and respond to changes in the environment and (2) do so as whole organisms, including their parts and sub-parts. If they are unable to do so, they will cease to get new energy from the environment and will perish.

Intuitively, this makes sense. For example, imagine a family of four. If the family is to survive and flourish, it must shape the environment by getting resources such as money, food, and shelter. It must also respond to the environment, including to changes that are economic, societal, ecological, and so on. At the same time, it must pay attention to the all the parts that make up the family system – things like the act of cooking, cleaning, commuting, paying the bills, and taking the kids to school. It must take into account the different and often conflicting needs of the individual family members. It must also give focus to holistic dynamics so that the family acts like a single, unified whole – for example, making sure that there’s plenty of love, warmth, laughter, support, and nurturing for all of its members.

If the family isn’t able to shape or respond to the environment, or if it loses focus on the parts or the whole, it will quickly run into trouble. If the pattern continues, then the family will disintegrate. Just imagine a family that doesn’t have income, or a family that can’t perform its daily routine, or that can’t respond to new economic changes, or whose members are always fighting among themselves. Obviously, it’s not a family you’d want to be a part of. It is not resilient or adaptive to change. It costs all of its members more energy than they get in return. Such a family is on the precipice of complete failure.

The same is true for every organization. It must be constantly shaping and responding to change while focused on the parts and the whole. Therefore, I am going to classify observable behavior, at its most basic level, as either shaping or responding to change while focusing on the whole organization or on its parts or sub-parts. I call this the Adaptive Systems Model of organizational behavior.

The dimensions of behavior within the Adaptive Systems Model exist on a relative and time-dependent scale. For example, if there’s a high drive to shape the environment, then at the same time, there will be a lower drive to respond to change. If there’s a high drive to focus on the […]

By Lex Sisney|2021-05-18T05:34:14-07:00November 5th, 2011|Articles|1,006 Comments

The Pre-Startup Checklist

Before a startup ever launches, you should have a checklist of critical items in place. These items have nothing to do with writing a business plan or forming the articles of incorporation. In line with the old saying “well begun is half done,” without these basic requirements, the venture won’t get off to a successful start. Even worse, ignoring this checklist can lead to your investing a lot of capital, time, and energy – only to find out that you’re doing the wrong thing, with the wrong team, at the wrong time.

The Real Difference Between Startup and Pre-startup

I’m going to define the core difference between startup and pre-startup using a single word: commitment. Commitment means that the entrepreneur and founding team have taken a real risk to make the business happen. They are clearly and unequivocally in. It’s Dodge City or Bust. Without commitment, the venture will remain stuck in pre-startup mode – as an idea that will never be actualized.

For example, I recently had coffee with an old colleague who wanted to talk about his new “startup.” He had written a business plan, registered a domain name, and was seeking advice on raising capital and building the technology. He was still working at his day job, where he planned to stay while building on the idea in his spare time. As we talked, I could tell that what he really wanted was someone with whom he could discuss the idea – to explore it further and get another perspective. He was still just trying it on and not yet fully committed.

You can always tell if someone is committed to a new venture by his or her actions. Have they taken a significant risk such as quitting their day job or putting their own money into it? Are they excitedly and constantly talking about the opportunity? Are people rallying around their cause and vision? These are all great signs of commitment – and that’s when you know you’re in startup mode. With them, a new business can be born and has a chance of success. Without them, you’re still in pre-startup or it’s a non-starter.

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By Lex Sisney|2021-05-18T05:35:05-07:00October 31st, 2011|Articles|713 Comments

The Stages of the Execution Lifecycle

Navigating your company up the execution lifecycle ¹ and keeping it in optimum shape is a great challenge. This article will show you how to do it successfully.

The stages of the execution lifecycle become easier to understand with a little pattern recognition. Basically, every business must shape or respond to its environment and it must do so as a whole organization, including its parts and subparts. If it doesn’t do this, it will cease to exist. Recognizing this, we can call out four basic patterns or forces that give rise to individual and collective behavior within an organization. They are the Producing, Stabilizing, Innovating, and Unifying (PSIU) forces. Each of these expresses itself through a particular behavior pattern. The combination of these forces causes the organization to act in a certain way.

Just like the other lifecycles, the execution lifecycle exists within a dynamic between stability and development. The basic stages of the execution lifecycle are birth, early growth, growth, and maturity and, from there, things descend into decline, aging, and death. The focus within the execution lifecycle should be to have the right mix of organizational development and stability to support the stages of the product and market lifecycles. That is, the lifecycle stage of the surrounding organization should generally match the lifecycle stage of the products and markets. If it’s a startup, the surrounding organization is the entire company. If it’s a Fortune 500 company, this includes the business unit that is responsible for the success of the product as well as any aspects of the parent organization that influence, help, or hinder the success of the product.

The surrounding organization should act a certain way at each stage of the product/market lifecycle, as you’ll see below. Note that, when a force is or should be dominant, it will be referenced with a capital letter:

• When piloting the product for innovators, the company should be in birth mode and be highly innovative and future-oriented (psIu)
• When nailing the product for early adopters, the company should be in early growth mode and be producing verifiable results for its customers (Psiu)
• When beginning to scale the product for the early majority, the company should be standardized and operations streamlined for efficiency (PSiu)
• When fully scaling the product for the early majority, the company’s internal efficiencies should be harnessed, as well as the capability […]

By Lex Sisney|2021-05-18T05:37:49-07:00October 28th, 2011|Articles|3,857 Comments

Exit the System – The First Step to Strategic Change

During one cold winter in Minnesota, I worked as a college intern for the mayor’s office in St. Paul. There are two things I still remember about the job. One, my twenty-year-old Toyota Corolla had a broken heater and so the commute from my apartment at the University of St. Thomas to downtown St. Paul felt like a prolonged, icy slap in the face.

The second thing I remember is how totally caught up in the political system everyone was at the mayor’s office – certainly the mayor, but also the assistants, wonks, and even the janitor. Politics at the mayor’s office — who’s doing what, who’s saying what, how the political winds are moving — was all encompassing.

For example, the state newspaper published an opinion piece about some mundane issue… I think it was the style of the new streetlights. If I hadn’t set foot in the mayor’s office, I would never have given this a moment’s thought. I’m sure the rest of the population didn’t care either. But in the mayor’s office, that article caused a flurry of activity, debate, and crisis management fit for a minor natural disaster. At least three, intense meetings were called to address the issue. I remember thinking, “What’s wrong with you all? Don’t you know that no one but you actually gives a shit?”

The same thing is true for any system – including your business, your family, and your life in general. When you’re standing inside the system, small things take on great significance. It’s only when you see them from outside the system that you can put them in the proper perspective. Some time ago, I ran a large affiliate marketing company. Looking back, I can easily see how caught up in that system I was. I lived and breathed affiliate marketing all the time. If some random affiliate in Hogeye, Indiana, wrote a critical review of my company on a 100-person affiliate blog, I would respond in full crisis mode, just like the mayor of St. Paul.

One of my favorite sayings is: “You can’t see the picture when you’re standing in it.” You first have to stand outside the system. If you’re going to respond to a “crisis” or attempt to change or improve the status quo, you’ll want to look at it with a fresh set of eyes and a bird’s eye view. If you try to change a system from within – therefore without seeing it as a comprehensive whole in an even larger context – you’ll simply perpetuate what’s already there.

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By Lex Sisney|2021-05-18T05:40:53-07:00March 27th, 2011|Articles|Comments Off

Bam! Ninja surprise! – How to Win Friends and Influence People in the Social Media Era

Two weeks ago, I switched newsletter providers to MailChimp. MailChimp is known as a low-cost SOHO email provider with cheeky humor and copious references to Ninjas.

Over the past few years, they’ve been getting a lot of buzz and customer goodwill. Curious to give them a try, I signed up, dropped my old provider, and hoped for a smooth transition. Setting up my campaign was straighforward. It’s when I pressed “Send” that the trouble started. The MailChimp interface promptly said: “Sending: Started at Jan 30, 2011 10:57 pm” — and there it hung for over an hour.

I re-queued the campaign and tried again. Same problem. Frustrated, I emailed their customer service. A day later, I received a response. The customer service rep politely informed me that they weren’t sure what was causing the problem and the development team would have to investigate. Two days later, I received another email saying the development team wasn’t sure what the problem was either, that they canceled the email in the queue, and that I should try again. Like Groundhog Day, I tried again and got the same problem.

Now feeling very frustrated, I jumped on Twitter and broadcast to the world, “Anyone else think that MailChimp sucks? I’ve been stuck in queue for 72 hours. Is it growing pains?” About 3 minutes later, I received a reply via Twitter from MailChimp. We traded tweets back and forth and they provided some basic diagnostics — all over again. When the problem couldn’t be solved, they asked me to contact customer service using “online chat perhaps?” Now fuming, but deciding to give it one more try, I hopped onto a MailChimp online chat.

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By Lex Sisney|2021-05-18T05:45:18-07:00February 14th, 2011|Articles|Comments Off

Who’s On Your Team?

A Winning Model for Human Resource Management

“I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.”
– Oliver Wendell Holmes

The CEO stood at the podium and declared once again to the staff gathered for the annual all-company meeting: “Our people are our greatest asset.” And the audience sighed inwardly because they knew it was bullshit. A worn-out cliché that becomes more hypocritical with each use. They think, “If people are indeed our greatest asset, then why have training budgets been slashed again? And if I’m truly valued here, why am I working longer than ever but for less pay? And what about Frank in accounting? He’s not an asset – that jerk is a liability!” or some variation. Rarely do companies back up their “our people are #1” rhetoric with demonstrable, consistent actions.

Perhaps there’s no better way to mask a self-evident truth like “value your people because ultimately your value comes from them” than through over-worn clichés and empty rhetoric. It’s a shame because if you’re going to build a thriving organization, you’re not going to do it through strategy, systems, branding, sales, market share and efficient use of capital – you’re going to do it by building and re-building a winning team. Everything in your organization traces itself back to the people involved. It’s the people who define the strategy, design and implement the systems, conduct the branding, engage in sales, capture market share, and deploy capital. People are indeed your most important asset.

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By Lex|2021-05-18T05:46:19-07:00December 26th, 2010|Articles|Comments Off