I suppose it makes sense that people are the most challenging aspect of running an innovation services firm like Atomic Object. Even when you take away the obviously critical people we call clients, my greatest struggles, the peaks of my happiness, and the valleys of my despair, can mostly be attributed to the amazing people we employ. Operations, finances, strategy, sales, facilities, technical practices — these challenges are as nothing compared to leading and managing people.

My personal management style is consultative, collaborative, and participative. Talking through problems and opportunities with other people is a natural part of my decision making process. I feel like we make better decisions together than I would alone. Even when it comes down to a decision I alone make, I seek other’s perspectives and ideas beforehand. This style requires my employees to engage in complex issues, question me, take time to understand, and sometimes disagree with me. I want to make it clear, the upsides of working with people willing to seriously engage like this far outweigh the downsides, but at times I experience frustration along the way.

So you need independent thinkers to get to the best decisions. But what if you’re king? Tom Petty has it that being king is a pretty sweet gig:

It’s good to be king and have your own way
Get a feeling of peace at the end of the day

I actually find more peace at the end of the day from collaborating rather than dictating. Being king makes my style of decision making more complicated sometimes.

By king I mean, of course, being in charge. Owner. Boss. Manager. Supervisor. When you’re king, the talk-it-through, collaborative approach to decision making demands a high degree of trust. If your employees don’t trust you, they won’t tell you what they really think, and you’ll probably hear an awful lot of “yes”. Trust is built slowly, through actions, not rhetoric, and can be destroyed much more easily than it can be built. One way I’ve built trust with my employees is by encouraging a culture of questioning and independent thought as we embrace our work.

There have been times when I wonder if I’ve been too successful building this culture.

A culture of questioning and independent thought is valuable to the extent the thoughts are valuable. With respect to the quality of the decision, there is nothing inherently good about having your own opinion and expressing it. If your ideas are novel or contribute a new perspective to a decision, that’s valuable. But what if they aren’t relevant, and you choose to live in a world that admires personal perspective and beliefs, strongly held and openly expressed? A risk, it seems, in these circumstances, is that you hold to your opinions and ideas past the point where you should be getting on board with the consensus or deferring to those with more experience, broader perspective, or authority. If deferring to other people’s ideas and working to implement them can be seen as a weakness, then sticking to your own ideas must be a strength, right? Unfortunately not. What you risk is inadvertently closing your mind to and showing a lack of respect for the direction of your team or your team’s leader. I resist thinking this is a lack of respect, but that’s definitely how it can feel.

After contextualizing a problem, collaboratively brainstorming, listening and answering questions, explaining what I want — investing the time, in short, to get one of my employees on board with an assignment or course of action — I expect ownership, responsibility and action. When later I hear questioning, lack of ownership, preference for other work, or disbelief in the value of the work, I have to wonder. There’s a time for their push back, for questioning, and for confusion. But having gone through that, and having been given the context and rationale for the decision or task, then it’s time for ownership and action, not resistance or disengagement. Should I interpret resistance as a lack of respect for my experience and leadership? Shouldn’t it be ok, particularly for very young or inexperienced employees, to just say “got it, boss”, and set about solving the problem at hand? I think the answer to this question is obviously “yes”, but when I continue to have to work on motivating and explaining, I wonder if I’m observing a misplaced worship of the culture of independent thought.

It’s hard in these circumstances to not just abandon delegation and do the work myself. When I experience this disengagement, I wonder, is it because people aren’t paying attention? Do they not care? Is it a lack of respect? Are they slower on the uptake than I’m assuming? Do they have ulterior motives? Is it a pressure to challenge for challenge’s sake? Is it a generational difference? Or is it a bad employment match? The answer to the question, no doubt varies with each situation. I definitely don’t have this one figured out. At any rate, it’s a keen reminder that it’s not always good to be king.