The What, Who, How Thing
"Leadership is like an onion, it has layers" - Shrek maybe?
A couple of weekends ago I was listening to a Jocko Podcast with Ryan Holiday about stoicism. Full disclosure, I am a big fan of stoicism so for that reason alone I would recommend a listen. Like Jocko, I developed stoic beliefs long before I ever heard of the term stoicism, so blogs like Ryan’s Daily Stoic are a great addition to your email inbox as well. What I didn’t know, and which I found really interesting, was his formative time at American Apparel and the story about it’s spectacular failure. Ryan said something to the effect of their leader’s were both tactically and strategically inept or something like that and it got me thinking about my “What, Who, How” framework. There’s no great difference in my view from tactical to strategic layers of leadership, and obviously if you cannot do both your organization is in big trouble. It’s also the framework that led to my wife and I’s very first “fight”, though it wasn’t dramatic or anything, we’re kinda… stoic I guess.
Before we get to the juicy marriage drama, let me start by explaining what the “What, Who, How” framework is. Organizations of any size generally have various layers of leadership. In the military it’s pretty formalized from the newest Private all the way to the Commander in Chief aka the President. It starts with the Private and then goes something like: Fire Team Leader, Squad Leader, Platoon Leader, Company Commander, Battalion Commander, and so on. In the private sector it might be worker, supervisor, manager, director, VP, then onto the “C Suites”, CFO, CIO, CEO etc. Regardless of the total number of layers in the organization, they generally fall into some flavor of: the top layer deciding the “What” that needs to be done, the middle layer decides “Who” can and should do the work, and the lower layer determines “How” they will do it. Even scaled up to massive organizations like the military, you still end up with the same 3 layers repeated over and over again with each new layer expanding the scope of “What” they can and should be doing to achieve whatever strategic goal they have in mind. Like many rules of thumb, there are exceptions but thematically I think it helps us understand the decisions and decision support systems that we encounter. This also helps to illustrate some problems that can occur in your organization with said systems.
So back to my drama filled life, many moons ago when my wife and I were newlyweds she asked me to do something like paint or whatever, I don’t remember exactly what it was. And of course I said “sure!” and hopped to whatever chore it was. Then, I began to receive extremely helpful and compassionate constructive criticism about the manner in which the task was performed by the lovely Mrs. T, which provoked a little ire on my part. When I unprofessionally and rudely commented on the seemingly deficient way that we were operating as a team, we had to erm “come to an agreement”. Luckily, I have a 1-800-flowers subscription (a few more, and I think we get a new car or something).
Basically, the gist of my argument was you can tell me “what” you’d like me to do, or “how” you’d like me to do it, but if you do both then I get grumpy. If you have ever felt like your boss was a micromanager you probably get exactly what bothered me. Consciously or subconsciously, it doesn’t feel right. When the “What” folks want to get into the “Who” or “How” business, things tend to go poorly in your organization. The underlying cause of Ryan’s American Apparel story above seemed to me more of a failure of the leadership layers and not necessarily tactical and strategic idiocy. It might seem like the outcome was the same, but the causes are more important if you would like to avoid a similar fate.
Root cause analysis using the What, Who, How framework is useful for all levels of leadership because you can’t get anywhere if you don’t first know where you are. If it seems like the How folks in your organization are being micromanaged, it could be because they aren’t qualified in whatever How job they are in. If that is the root cause then mentoring, training, etc. might be the best course of action. If the How folks are good to go, then perhaps the Who (middle management and resource management) folks may be misallocating resources. That may indicate the What folks are being unrealistic or they are uninformed of the organization’s resource capacity. That’s a failure of the Who folks to educate or the What folks to listen. Finally, when the What folks are spending time intruding on the Who and How folks, they will quickly find themselves reacting to events because they are not thinking strategically. When the What people start managing by emergency, the system is getting ready to break down in some way without serious correction. While it might seem like a common compliant by every How person, micromanaging is often a symptom of a systematic breakdown. And the only layer that can fix it is the What folks, who are often the guilty party themselves. So, to my fellow What readers, perhaps this week’s rambling might spark some introspection. Also, the odds are pretty good your next great idea might originate from some free thinking How you got there, operating and improving the organization.
Which brings me to my Monday musing quote, naturally from one of the greatest Stoics of all time:
“Whenever you are about to find fault with someone, ask yourself the following question: What fault of mine most nearly resembles the one I am about to criticize?” ― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
PS. Also stop micromanaging people, it’s very annoying.