Herding cats

Herding cats is an expression that we often use in our company, usually tongue in cheek, when dealing with the difficulty of getting and keeping everyone together in one place for any length of time. But more seriously, it has everything to do with the difficulties of "managing" highly talented professionals.

Clearly, I build my view on experiences inside the information technology industry. Our industry has changed much in the past 10 years or so, and is today fundamentally about very talented people, professionals who don`t suffer fools gladly and have the freedom of choice in terms of which company they work for. Being leaders in such an organisation takes a very different mindset from that of even 10 years ago.

We have certainly walked away from the idea that management is autocratic or controlling, and have focused our efforts much more on leadership. I was, however, interested in reading a recent Harvard Business Review article by Henry Minzberg, which refers to covert management as an appropriate style when managing professionals. I like the notion: that is exactly what it is - it has to be unobtrusive. Furthermore, it is pragmatic and correlates closely to the reality of leadership in organisations staffed by highly skilled and talented professionals.

The leader is typically a highly talented professional in his or her own right, and there needs to be a mutual understanding between the leader and the team. The team needs to accept that the leader has the authority to execute his or her job, but by the same token the leader needs to accept the expertise of the team. This is the covert contract, without which the whole system falls apart. This is built on the principle of trust in each other`s abilities and belief in the validity of the role that each has to play.

The first and most important element for me is the idea that these people already know what to do. They are highly skilled, have done what they are doing successfully for some time and therefore certainly are not open to being told what to do. Clearly they need a framework to operate in, something that allows the various roles to fit clearly and unambiguously, so that each can focus on their job. There also needs to be absolute clarity about when and how they support each other in the overall execution.

In support of this overall cohesive structure it is important that the leadership builds culture. Some of the culture is built into and is part of the "profession"; for example, outside our industry there is a common "culture" evident in the legal, medical and accounting professions, and so on.

This is also true for, say, the professionals in advertising agencies, and this is certainly also true for the professionals inside IT organisations. Some of the culture, such as for software developers or consultants, comes with the turf. On the other hand there is much of the culture specific to the organisation and these two things needs to fit and work well together. Culture is a key guiding force that directs the way in which things happen in these new-style organisations where hierarchy and regulation are low. The stronger and more appropriate the culture, in my opinion, the less worried the leadership needs to be that individuals will make major bad decisions.

Typically, these talented professionals are self-directing, they know what they need to do, they have the skills, motivation and drive, and know the framework in which they operate. However, there remains the need to work within a team. This is where leadership plays a role, establishing these teams and ensuring they are working to the optimum, that the overall game plan has been devised and well understood, resolving conflicts and more.

The organisation is made up of individuals and over the lifetime of an individual with the organisation there will be the need for one-to-one interaction between the leader and his or her team; the need for coaching, mentoring and so on. Notice though how the terminology is changing even here.

Increasingly, leadership is based on providing protection and support for each of the super performers of the organisation. Protection in the sense that the leader has to take care of any "noise" in the system so that the individuals can take care of their work, and support to the level that makes sense for each individual. The leader operates as part of the team (not at the top of an organisational tree).

Lastly, although the leadership provides the "energy" of the organisation, it has to inspire and enthuse, unobtrusively, not by exacting obedience but by inspiring performance. Meeting the very difficult challenge of "herding cats".