Game Changer: How to Be 10x in the Talent Economy

360° MANAGEMENT

It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do. We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.

—STEVE JOBS

THE BIRD’S EYE VIEW

In the previous chapter, we began to explore what we identified as the symbiotic relationship between talent and management. Merriam-Webster defines “symbiotic” as “characterized by, or being, a close, cooperative, or interdependent relationship.”

Now we turn our attention to the symbiotic relationship between employees and managers. “Close, cooperative, and interdependent” is the optimal state of affairs.

In the hierarchy of the workplace, most of us have people below us, people above us, and people adjacent to us. We also have myriad people who are in other departments, people who are neither our bosses nor our direct reports.

In order for a company to have the greatest chance for a 10x-level culture, the management of talent has to flow in all directions. It is among the highest priorities for those with power to create an environment where this can exist.

To state it another way, no team can function at its best in an atmosphere where a subordinate does not feel comfortable sharing ideas with people above and adjacent to them.

Moreover, as each talent rises through the ranks, they will likely manage more people. This means that the spirit in which they were “raised” by the company will proliferate, for better or worse.

To foster a culture of support, openness, and safety, those above you need to protect you and give you the latitude to express your ideas in full; those adjacent to you need to feel sufficiently empowered to help sing your praises and receive praise from you; and those beneath you must be emboldened to offer you support and come to you with their ideas, challenges, and disasters. Good will and empowerment rarely “trickle down” and they certainly are even less likely to “trickle up.” The spirit of close, cooperative interdependence has to emanate everywhere, and flow freely between all involved parties.

Without a culture of symbiotic positivity, you can guess what happens. Political infighting festers, the aggressive push aside the meek, and an environment of cagey silence pervades, top to bottom. To anyone who has experienced this kind of workplace—and, unfortunately, most have at least once in their career—it would not be an overstatement to call it a living nightmare of toxicity. In today’s economy it’s worse than a nightmare, because that kind of environment is going to turn off the best and brightest, and once you lose the talent war, you completely limit a company’s ability to compete and excel.

If the spirit of symbiotic positivity seems like a universally acknowledged good, it’s also true that, historically, the opposite spirit often prevails. To this day, many company management cultures err on the side of fear, silence, and “every person for themselves.”

Moreover, even when relations are not adversarial, there can exist a natural disconnect between those who run the day-to-day and those who build the future. Ralph Perrine, director of the award-winning Innovation Garage, which powers a portfolio of solutions for the healthcare industry understands this need to build bridges in all directions.

“When our team starts to design or code something new, we have that natural innovator’s excitement,” Perrine explains, “But it’s unfair to expect everyone else to automatically feel that excitement right off the bat.”

“Our customer ecosystem is made up of stakeholders—auditors, security and privacy teams, infrastructure support, customer support—who will all play a role in the eventual impact and customer experience of the solution we are building. These stakeholders have a right not to be excited—at least until they understand how the new solution works and how it impacts their goals and areas of responsibility.”

“This actually works in our favor. We have gained a lot by listening and learning from those who are not automatically excited about new things.”

In a hilarious analogy, Perrine likens this disjointed state of affairs to the plight of the inventor of the pooper scooper. “The guy who invented it was probably thrilled about it. But for the rest of us, it’s just a tool we have to use in the morning when we take the dog out. So there’s sort of this gap between the excitement that the innovator feels versus the attitude of the people who end up owning and operating that innovation later on.”

For Perrine, 10x development means not only finding a way to communicate your passion, but also finding a way to absorb the other party’s skepticism. “Driving change is hard,” he says. “Over time, I’ve learned that our products improve when we’re willing to hear others tell us the many ways things might go wrong.”

360° Management—not to be confused with 360° reviews—is our prescriptive measure for building bridges and thriving in the workplace. It’s about turning your managers, your peers, and your underlings into the great managers we’ve described in this book. We understand that 360° Management is an aspirational ideal, but the striving itself is a crucial step on the road to an individual and/or a company becoming 10x.

Dealing with your manager is often the hardest part of any job. Not every manager has the tools, the training, or the proclivity to be great at guiding others. It’s a truism that people often rise to their level of incompetence and nowhere is this more evident than with regard to managerial style. The top brass are not always those with the highest EQ. After all, the difference between management and leadership is huge.

There’s also “your place in things” to consider. In most environments, you can’t go to your boss’s boss and ask them to get your boss to be a better manager—at least not on a regular basis.

Therefore, in order to get the guidance and representation you need, it will be necessary to manage your manager and your peers, with the same dedication that you hopefully manage your charges (if you have them).

Sometimes, ironically enough, dealing with underlings can be a manager’s worst angle. Dr. Audrey Weiner, former CEO of The New Jewish Home, told us about a large healthcare organization who engaged an external firm to conduct a series of extensive evaluations of senior and middle managers. It was an elaborate process, including direct feedback to each manager along with consultation with the CEO, followed by coaching sessions to address relevant issues. When the C Suite manager participated in this process, the results were particularly informative, and not altogether positive.

“He was skilled in managing up, and in working with his peers,” Weiner says. “However, those who reported to him spoke of his lack of supervision, training, and responsiveness to issues. Even with coaching he was never able to make the needed changes to be successful in his role.”

As Weiner notes, uncovering the problem is never enough. Each individual has to be willing and able to “look 360°,” acknowledge room for improvement in every direction, and be willing to invest the energy and time it takes to accomplish real change—a series of growth spurts that, she maintains, will only take place about half the time.

“At this particular organization,” she adds, “when this individual couldn’t change, several team members chose to move on to other organizations.”

That’s the price you pay for not taking the need for 360° Management seriously.

For today’s dedicated worker, everywhere on the chain, there’s a bonus aspect to 360° Management that’s also worth mentioning: By taking an active role in the flow of managerial guidance both to and from you in every direction, you are taking responsibility for your own destiny and fully embracing the understanding of interdependence that exists in organizations.

That’s what being 10x is all about.

Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don’t want to.

—RICHARD BRANSON

HOW MUCH MANAGEMENT IS MANAGEMENT ENOUGH?

In a two-year study on team performance recently covered by Laura Delizonna, PhD, in Harvard Business Review,¹ Google revealed that the highest-performing teams have one thing in common: psychological safety, or the belief that you won’t be punished if you make a mistake. As Paul Santagata, Head of Industry at Google put it, “Our success hinges on the ability to take risks and be vulnerable in front of peers.” This data is particularly valuable because, well, if there is anything Google does well, it’s data.

Santagata posits six steps to bolster a safe atmosphere: 1) Approach conflict as a collaborator, not an adversary; 2) Speak human to human; 3) Anticipate reactions and plan countermoves; 4) Replace blame with curiosity; 5) Ask for feedback on delivery; and 6) Measure for safety.

Step Number 6 is germane to our vision of 360° Management. For our money, great management and the sense of safety it can engender is a corporation’s greatest invisible asset.

However, a sense of safety is not what people usually think of when they think of management.

Betterworks recently ran a piece called “People Hate Being Managed—What Organizations (And Managers) Need to Do Instead,”² in which author Deborah Holstein points out that only 1 in 7 employees believe performance reviews inspire them to improve. “Newsflash,” she writes, “No one WANTS to be managed. Even the term ‘manage’ evokes feelings of control and manipulation.”

Holstein astutely recognizes that the roadblock to good management is usually found in a lack of bespoke practices. “If an employee receives feedback from their manager who’s been only loosely involved in their development,” she explains, “they’re far more likely to reject any constructive criticism they receive. It’s only natural. If they don’t feel that their manager truly knows them, their work, and their strengths, why would they believe that their manager has a good grasp on where they need to improve? Many employees who find themselves in this situation will question whether their manager is even qualified to be giving them feedback. And when the review process is closely tied to earning a bonus, raise, or promotion, employees can’t afford to be open to feedback, both figuratively and literally.”

Great bespoke management is hard to find, but what would the workplace look like with no management at all? In a curious and telling counter-example on the importance of good management, Amazon-owned Zappos’ CEO Tony Hsieh recently tried to abolish traditional managerial roles by implementing a system called Holacracy.³ According to Business Insider, this self-management program is the creation of Brian Robertson, a former software developer and entrepreneur turned management guru. Through Holacracy, Hsieh and Robertson advocate a workflow that allows engineers to develop ideas utterly without the direction of a manager.

On the surface, it sounds great. Work is processed through “roles” that are always subject to change. For instance, an employee who isn’t a marketer can take on the marketing role, in addition to whatever other roles they hold down, should they get the urge. In lieu of management, Holacracy implements what Robertson calls “lead links”—people who assign roles and represent “their circle,” but with one key difference: These “links” are in no way responsible for the individuals they oversee.

It is not a surprise to us that Hsieh’s noble experiment has had some serious casualties. When Hsieh’s email call for Holacracy hit the company server, the organization divided three ways, between believers, nonbe-lievers, and those who “decided to remain out of convenience, despite their reservations.” All official titles were abolished, and 14 percent of the company—a whopping 210 employees—voluntarily hit the road.

As one disgruntled employee put it, with the move toward Holacracy, “Employees are in constant fear of losing their jobs for saying or doing something that proves to management that they aren’t a ‘culture fit.’“ Another employee described the change as a gear-shift toward a “disruptive atmosphere” that included “bothersome social experiments.” One beleaguered employee gave the company a two-star rating and bemoaned the fact that top brass would allow so many strong employees to leave just to bolster an ideology.

To us, this story has a plain and simple lesson: No management is definitely not the answer. Less management is frequently not the answer either. What the modern company needs is a game changing program of 360° Management for everyone—flexible, agile, human-centered, and fear-free.

One of the most important after-effects of 360° Management is that it often weeds out those who aren’t a good cultural fit for a given organization. There have been several instances in our own careers where we had the wrong people on various projects. Sometimes these people were employees, sometimes they were clients, and in a few unfortunate cases they were even business partners. In each of these instances, we waited far too long to take action. In fact, truth be told, we usually took no action at all. In many of these cases, we waited until someone else took action. Not only did we want to give someone endless “benefit of the doubt,” we really believed in our heart of hearts that, if we made the correct moves, we could get these individuals to “straighten up and fly right” (and by right, we mean the way we wanted).

Was our excessive tolerance due to an unconscious desire to be given the same latitude should we fail ourselves? Or did we merely have an aversion to the conflict we thought might ensue should we address matters directly? The answer is anyone’s guess, but the long and short of it is we clung to several bad work relationships way past their sell-by date. This has been a really hard pattern for us to live through. We pride ourselves on the ability to evolve and improve quickly when presented with good information, but with this challenge we seemed to repeat mistakes over and over and, what’s more, we had to live with the negative consequences on a daily basis. These were not bottom line problems on a spreadsheet. These were interpersonal problems that sat in our office and looked us in the eye. #painful.

Over time, by embracing and implementing 360° Management, this state of unhealthy affairs has been mostly eradicated. With inner vision from trusted advisors, above and below and alongside us, our own weaknesses and ambivalences were exposed, and our true feelings about some difficult colleagues came out.

One thing that receiving 360° Management helped us see is this: When someone is failing in a role, you do a huge disservice to everyone involved by not addressing it. A person who is not thriving needs to be freed up to move to a place that is the right fit for them.

360° Management cuts through the morass of baked in hierarchies and gets everyone to the truth quicker.

The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.

—JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES, 1936

JUST OUR KIND

An inspiring living example of 360° work practices is taking place at KIND Snacks, the brainchild of Mexican-American businessman, philanthropist, and author Daniel Lubetzky. Established as “not-only-for-profit,”^® the company’s stated mission is “creating a kinder and healthier world—one act, one snack at a time.”

It’s working like gangbusters. At the time of this writing, KIND is the fastest-growing snack company in the United States, estimated to be valued at more than $4 billion.

At the heart of it all is Lubetzky, a powerful, confident visionary who might have started as a religious figure or a political leader under other circumstances. In fact, one of the reasons Lubetzky cuts such a striking figure in the movement toward compassionate business practices is that he didn’t come straight from the business world per se. The son of a Holocaust-survivor and a Mexican Jew, Lubetzky’s earliest efforts included a Haas Koshland Fellowship to write about ways Arabs and Israelis can foster peace through joint ventures. Describing himself as a “social entrepreneur working to build bridges between people,” the rush of enormous success in the snack trade does not seem to have derailed his primary sense of purpose one bit. He continues to develop unusual hybrids between altruism and capital, most recently launching Empatico, a $20 million, multi-year initiative to broaden kids’ worldviews through meaningful interactions with peers across the globe, and Feed the Truth, which seeks to improve public health by making truth, transparency, and integrity the foremost values in today’s food system. In 2015, President Barack Obama and Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker named Lubetzky a Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship. He’s also an appointee to the Anti-Defamation League’s Inaugural Board of Directors.

Close, cooperative, interdependent—Lubetzky and his team embody the new age.

“It’s very much an open meritocracy here,” he says with pride. “I’ve seen many, many places that I actually admire overall, but that somehow just failed at creating an open culture. I know a person who is considered one of the best CEOs of all time, a very impressive person . . . but if you understand the culture in that company, nobody ever dares disagree with that CEO or whatever the CEO says. They won’t confront the CEO because they know it’s not going to end well. And it terrifies me to become that.”

Lubetzky understands the paradoxes and pitfalls of late-era capitalism, and his self-scrutiny is one of his most 10x qualities. “The more you succeed,” he told us, “the more you are engendered to thinking that you cannot make mistakes, that you’re infallible, the more you intimidate people. It’s not what I want.”

With this in mind, he has built KIND on the bedrock of his values—transparency, honesty, ownership, and critical thinking. “I welcome disagreement,” he says, “so one of the main things I try to do is create a culture where we foster critical thinking and critical listening. And we welcome feedback and we welcome people that say, ‘I don’t agree with you.’ And we don’t do it as jerks. The people that I have the most trust in here are provocative to a point—not provocative for the sake of being provocative because that’s annoying. But they’re true critical thinkers, healthy skeptics.”

To grow this “open air” environment, KIND stages team orientations that include quirky confessions from new and old team members—hidden life details people wouldn’t figure out if they weren’t told. At one recent powwow, a new team member confessed a secret phobia, which led to a group-wide discussion of phobias. “We all ended up sharing and getting closer, all of us.”

For Lubetzky, this regular exercise isn’t just about “meet and greet.” It’s an important watershed moment where every new hire is given permission and even actively encouraged to question everything and speak their mind. “It’s so important that people recognize that this is not just a job, that we treat each other like family. Everybody is an equal in that room.”

Obviously, the core of his mission is kindness, but for Lubetzky, kindness is not what many think. “A lot of people confuse kindness with weakness because they think being kind is synonymous with being nice.” He says the word with just a tinge of disgust. “You can be nice and be passive, without anything pushing you to do right. Real kindness requires an action. You need to be a protagonist in your own story.”

If it seems counterintuitive that a billion-dollar company can stand on such an ephemeral notion as kindness, Lubetzky is quick to explain that, seen from a certain angle, kindness is synonymous with proactive problem-solving. “A nice person often isn’t willing to confront challenges, but a kind person, by definition, always at least tries to solves problems. A nice person just doesn’t bully people; a kind person stands up to the bullies.”

It’s our observation that Lubetzky’s vision of kindness in the workplace can only lead directly to 360° management—open culture, opinion sharing, honest expression, healthy feedback exchange, and mutual problem solving, all under an umbrella of genuine safety. Lubetzky agrees, but notes that it has been a learning curve for the company. The balance of kindness and accountability didn’t happen overnight.

“Several years ago, we didn’t meet our numbers,” he recalls, “but they weren’t bad, so I gave people bonuses anyway. And we created this environment where some people started expecting stuff—a culture of entitlement rather than the meritocracy we want to create. A lot of people started thinking that because we’re ‘kind,’ nobody gets fired, nobody loses their bonus. Well, that doesn’t work because people who perform exceptionally well need to be differentiated from those who don’t. You need to create a culture of accountability, too. Without accountability, you’re not being kind to anyone. And when you’re not willing to provide feedback to someone because you think you’re being nice, you’re actually doing them a huge disservice.”

Remarkably, KIND is even putting a new spin on the single most unpleasant work transaction there is: termination. They always have a reason for termination, and they always give team members a severance package beyond what’s normally considered good, but what’s most game changing (and most 10x) is the attitude they bring to the undertaking.

“We don’t ‘fire’ people,” Lubetzky says. “It doesn’t mean that we don’t let people go. It means we don’t do it in a nasty way where you’re shown the door. Of course, if somebody is criminal or they engage in sexual misconduct or they’re racist or any of these horrible things, you immediately show them out because they’re poisoning the well. But in most cases you need to remind yourself that you brought these people. And if things didn’t work out, it’s not only on them.”

This is a humane and refreshing turnaround from the days when the pink slip was delivered with hasty cruelty, followed by the security guard. Often, KIND will even enlist the person who is being let go to help find and train a replacement. It’s not “adios, amigo.” It’s “you’re still family—and we still have your back.”

“When someone has to be let go, we blame ourselves first,” Lubetzky says. “And in fact, we have sometimes been slow to discover that a person just isn’t right for the job we hired them for, that they’re just not going to work out. That’s on us, too. Everything you do is either strengthening or undermining the culture of kindness and accountability.”

Conversely, if someone wants out, Lubetzky has learned to not go overboard trying to retain them. Part of being kind is letting people move on when their heart is no longer in it.

In pure 360° fashion, Lubetzky also doesn’t ascribe to the culture of six-month or one-year reviews. He believes in giving and receiving immediate feedback, always constructive. “Great leaders seek feedback from all sides,” he insists. “Because, in the end, it’s the people you’re bringing to your organization that define who you’re going to become.”

The goal for KIND team members, according to Lubetzky, is to experience “ownership,” which he defines by two measures—the financial and the cultural. The financial is comprehensive. “Every full-time team member gets stock options. Everybody’s an owner, regardless of your seniority. We have four-hundred-plus owners in KIND. Also, everybody’s eligible for a bonus, and we have a long-term incentive cash program available to 100 percent of the organization, not just to senior members. There is no strata.”

Cultural ownership is harder to define but no less mandatory. “Ownership of the company means encouraging people to express their opinions at every stage. We welcome challenges, and we honor people for being willing to question dogma and assumptions. And by isolating which assumptions are leading us, we solve a lot of our most difficult problems.”

On one level, it’s as if KIND treats each member of the team as a freestanding entrepreneur, with the ability to weigh in and seek guidance where it really counts, and the power to benefit from all the company’s big successes. That it’s working so well is something of a minor miracle and a testament to the power of multidirectional management and open culture. Lubetzky remains as dedicated as he is gregarious, and you can’t help thinking that all of this couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.

“I never set out to become a wealthy person,” he says. “That was never my driver. I wanted to have a positive impact, to build bridges. When I was a kid, nine years old, my dad started talking to me about what he went through in the Holocaust, being in a concentration camp, and it terrified me. He didn’t pull any punches. But he also shared how people rose . . . to have courage at a moment when things were darkest. And kindness was the only reason he survived. One percent of people my dad’s age survived the Holocaust because the Nazis didn’t have use for children. But through kindness he survived and . . . it drove me to want to foster empathy and respect and humanity in one another. That’s what’s driven me, always. That’s my true north.”

HALLWAY MANAGEMENT

You may feel you already know Z100’s Elvis Duran, and odds are you’ve heard him speak. A radio host since the early ’80s, a Z100 host since 1989, and the morning show host since 1996, Duran is syndicated across roughly eighty stations as well as XM Satellite and the iHeartRadio app. At the time of this writing, Elvis Duran and the Morning Show is the most listened to Top 40 morning radio program in the United States, ranked #1 in nearly eighty markets. He’s literally got our nation by the ears.

Still, when this titan of the airwaves shows up for work, he considers himself a single member of a synergistic, collegial team—a team with some very unorthodox habits. They eschew meetings and prefer to gab in the halls. They don’t overplan. They have a little too much fun and truly enjoy one another’s company. They ask one another smart and difficult questions. They have one another’s backs.

If this sounds more like a hang-out than an actual business, keep in mind that every single weekday from 6:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. Eastern time, they put on a show that is engaging, multidimensional, and darn near seamless. Despite the fact that it’s Duran’s name on the marquee, he views the operation holistically.

“Here’s the magical way our universe works,” Duran explains. “To the people working with me, I make it very clear that I’m not their boss. Yes, at the end of the day, I’m the loudest guy there and, you know, I’ll probably have a final say when it comes to many decisions. But I don’t want them to think of me as someone on some other level. I have to perform with them, because, for four hours a day, we’re on a stage together. And I can’t reprimand people on the air. I cannot correct them. The best I can do is motivate them as a friend. And that philosophy has bled into our relationships off-mic as well.”

A Texas native and a long-time New Yorker, Duran’s signature talking style on and off the air is a warm blend of those two polarities—the easy drawl and the big city spiel. He discusses his workday with just a tinge of comical Southern country boy fatalism, marveling at the fact that it all seems to function despite the odds.

“Our room is really a free-for-all,” he says. “People telling jokes, others trying to top them. But they all know their opinions are welcomed. They know I have a deep respect for what they bring to the table. And I know that I can’t do what they do. I’d be lost without them.”

Duran’s door is always open to his staff, but surprisingly he prefers not to take his work home with him, and he’s quick to point out that the free exchange of ideas and opinions is really just a byproduct of his personality. “It’s not like we even cultivated an open atmosphere or anything that formal. We operate this way because I hate bullshit. I just don’t like time-wasting. I’m not a firm believer in sitting down and having meetings, I don’t like them. Let’s just meet in the hall and, you know, ‘What do you think about this?’ ‘Great, let’s do it.’ ‘Go!’”

What Duran is describing is 360° Management in full swing, a machine where all parts are free to communicate with each other. Incredibly, he and his team don’t even really plan their four hour shows, other than the prep work necessary to properly accommodate a guest or develop a brand-new segment. They discovered, through painstaking trial and error, that too much prep undermines the flow. “When we showed up Friday morning, we found out we were no longer in a Thursday night mood.”

Naturally, this policy of winging it can sometimes scare the bejeezus out of the top brass at corporate.

“They’ll ask what tomorrow’s show will be like and I’ll say, ‘I don’t know!’ And it’s like, ‘What kind of business model is that?!’” Duran laughs. “But it keeps my team fresh because we trust each other, we trust that the ideas are there, and we trust that we’ll listen to each other about what works and what doesn’t. And you know what? We end up with enough material every morning to do ten shows.”

In a brilliant act of managing up, Duran understands and respects corporate’s concerns, and so, to compensate, he has honed his team to become almost entirely self-sufficient, a kind of high-functioning island. “Corporate entities are running around putting out fires all day,” he says. “I do what I can to not be a fire.”

As with Lubetzky and KIND bars, it’s notable that the holistic nature of the product itself seems to affect relations between the workers in a healthy way. The shared sense of mission has the power to transform the very people who deliver the goods. Duran and his team observed a giant spike in ratings when they did shows that involved motivational speaking—encouraging people to get out there and improve their lives and relationships—but they also found their own communication was improved. Connecting your team to the values of the mission is a key game changer in the new workplace.

“Just by virtue of speaking about the positives in life and motivating people on the air,” Duran says, “it motivates the management team as well. In our room, it’s almost as if we have our staff meeting live for four hours every day.”

As Duran puts it, his people are in “the friendship business. People are in their cars and on their way to work, either leaving a bad relationship in the bed behind them or going into a bad relationship with a boss. They need someone they can trust for 20 minutes to an hour every day.”

It’s working—for Duran, his listeners, and his organization. As with Springsteen’s team, longevity is something to behold—Duran boasts of five employees who’ve been with him for twenty-five years, an anomaly in the nomadic world of radio. He also makes it a point to support ex-staff, long after they’ve moved on. He also talks about his employees—from the sound engineers to the administrators and beyond—with a sense of real awe and respect.

At one point, Duran had the itch to be a program director himself, to “architect” the sound of a radio station, but the formal role of manager tripped him up. “Overseeing people was not my thing, I’d never done it before and I hated it. I hated getting calls in the middle of the night from people telling me they were too drunk to show up to work, I didn’t like that kind of responsibility. But I learned from it.”

Duran returned to the mic at Z100 with a renewed sense of purpose. When David Katz, formerly of the Don Buchwald & Associates (Howard Stern, Kathleen Turner, et al.) approached him with a vision for syndicating the show, Duran was intrigued. Z100 balked at the idea, and in true 10x fashion, he and Katz decided to do it themselves. The show spread like a wildfire and the inevitable followed: his team grew, and teams need to be managed. This time, Duran deployed a 360° managerial style.

“I’ve learned to love it,” Duran explains, “because the truth is, my team manages me, more than the other way around. They know what makes me tick. I didn’t get into radio because it’s a business. I got into radio because it’s not a business to me. I was an awkward, bratty kid, I didn’t want to be a boy scout, I couldn’t play baseball. But I had that need to connect with people and communicate. My dad was a big storyteller, joking, fun-loving, drinking-bourbon-at-5-o’clock-every-day-and-telling-jokes-to-his-friends kind of guy. I wanted to be that. Radio taught me how to actually communicate with people, so every time I think of it as a business I kind of retreat a little bit, and whoever is managing me needs to always understand that in order to get a better return.”

TURNING ON YOUR MANAGERIAL COMPASS

In both of the above examples, what you’re seeing is a game changing blueprint from the top which dictates the tone with which an entire organization runs. Fundamentally, for 360° Management to truly work, it has to start from the top down.

Still, there are plenty of things you can do, below, adjacent, and above you, to help improve the environment within your corporate structure. 360° Management is the 5D version of what we talked about in Chapter 3 when we first discussed manageability. You might think of it as manageability in the round. This panoramic view is crucial—in order to be a 10xer, you need to be open to learning, willing to seek advice, and, most of all, be adept at two-way communication—and not just between you and superiors.

You need to seek guidance everywhere.

When feedback is not proffered, you go get it, from as many credible sources as possible. And you need to be okay with it even when it hurts. Especially when it hurts.

Time and time again, we have noticed that, in the face of criticism, the true 10xer never gets angry or defensive, never tells you why your observations are untrue, and most of all they never, ever pass the buck. The true 10xer says, “Thank you. I didn’t realize I was doing that. Can you tell me a little more so I can better understand and correct course?” Curiosity rules this roost.

Conversely, those who are unmanageable, who will never become 10xers, will usually tend to have communication problems with everyone—bosses, juniors, peers, at home. So how do you deal with somebody who is not 10x, but who thinks they are? It ain’t easy. Even if an unmanageable talent generates lots of money for a brief period of time, their relationship to the venture will ultimately be unsustainable because they won’t allow themselves to deploy 360° Management. The result is that the unmanageable talent has refused to investigate their own weak spots, refused to connect meaningfully with others, and refused to offer their advice where others need it most.

At the core, what the 10xer understands is that self-improvement is the best use of their time, money, and energy. There is no better investment. Still, trying to pull off self-improvement without a sense of just who is above, below, and beside you can leave even the best-intentioned talent stabbing in the dark, making wild guesses about where they need help the most. Once a talent embraces 360° Management, they create the space for rapid evolution.

360° Management is not an insta-cure, and every situation calls for its own finessing. Still, here are a few commonly recurring workplace challenges, and some 360° directions for how you might handle them.

Scenario #1: Managing Sideways

GOAL: “I want to get more credit for my work and acknowledgment. Currently it is rare.”

SCENARIO: “I am doing really good work but rarely being recognized.”

ACTION: First, check with others to make sure you’re actually doing decent work. Most coworkers will be honest if they know you’re open to the truth. Then, enroll a colleague to be your champion in exchange for being theirs.

STEPS:

1. Identify the right partner given the options.

2. Get away from the office with them to have a candid conversation.

3. Explain the nature and value of the Third Party Effect.

4. Ask if they are willing for the two of you to become each other’s cheerleaders and advocates, offering each other accolades in front of fellow employees whenever appropriate and possible.

5. Make absolutely sure they are comfortable enough to say no if this offer is not right for them. You don’t want to cut this deal only to find out they don’t like you or your work.

6. Adjust as you go to make sure neither of you are doing too much or too little.

PITFALLS:

1. You may not be doing really good work, in which case this will be a tough sell.

2. If your approach is too blatant and obvious, the others at work will understand that this praise was “paid for.”

3. You may choose someone who rarely does good work, in which case your own credibility is in danger of taking a hit from backing the wrong horse.

4. You may do a great job promoting them, and they bail on you and don’t reciprocate. It happens.

Scenario #2: Managing Up

GOAL: “I need to get better at what I do and need more feedback to do it.”

SCENARIO: “I am ambitious and want to continue growing and improving toward 10xness. My company does semi-annual reviews, but they are not enough and are not taken seriously. These reviews seem to be an exercise in ‘checking the box’.”

ACTION: Enroll your supervisor in helping you achieve this goal.

STEPS:

1. Assess the landscape and try to identify any potential obstacles.

2. Send a note to your boss that says:

Dear first name,

I really hope you don’t mind this formal note, but I wanted to enlist your help, and I wanted to ask for it in the most respectful and carefully thought out manner possible. My desire to grow and improve in my role here is tremendous and your guidance has been very helpful thus far.

As such, I wanted to see if I could enlist a bit of help from you, since our wagons are somewhat hitched and the better I do, the better it is for our whole team.

With that in mind, do you think you would be willing to provide additional feedback for me in one or all of the following ways:

Real time, i.e. whenever you see that I’m doing something good or bad, please be sure to let me know, and definitely tell me how I can make improvements.

Monthly, i.e. a quick 15-30 minute sit down each month where we review my work and discuss places where there is room for improvement.

Quarterly . . . Same as Monthly but less frequent

Thank you for your time and consideration. Please don’t hesitate if you have any questions or concerns.

3. Assess your boss’s response and adjust accordingly. If it was positive, make sure to calendar and make it easy for them to follow through.

PITFALLS: Boss says, “Not a chance.” Fallback position might be if they were willing to give you emails or notes in lieu of a sit-down. If it’s really a dead-end, you could ask the same from a peer in exchange for doing the same for them.

Boss says, “Yes,” but then never takes the time to do it.

Boss doesn’t even respond.

Scenario #3: Managing Up Revisited

GOAL: “I want to get a raise and promotion.”

SCENARIO: “I believe I have done good work, I have had positive feedback from my superior and positive results in hitting my goals. However, there’s been no reward for this thus far.”

ACTION: Enroll your supervisor in helping you achieve this goal.

STEPS:

1. Assess the landscape and look for any obstacles.

2. Send a note to your boss that says:

Dear first name:

I hope you are doing well and I hope you don’t mind this formal note, but I wanted to enlist your help and wanted to ask for it in the most respectful and carefully thought out manner.

As you know, I have (list all your great accomplishments, your time at the company, your love for the work, and any other positive, company-related actions, including mentoring people, meeting goals, breaking records, making sales, etc.).

Because of this and all of your positive feedback in and out of my reviews, it is my fundamental belief (and hope) that these contributions have reflected well on you, me, and the rest of the team. I know we all sink or swim together, so supporting one another is something I value above almost all else. I know you know and believe this too, which is why I am writing to ask for your assistance in helping me make a meaningful improvement to my comp and my position. I believe if it were up to you, this would be easy, but since there are others involved, I am really hoping you would advocate on my behalf. In addition to your seniority and leadership, it is always better having someone else sing your praises. Even saying what I did in the first paragraph was uncomfortable for me.

Assuming you are amenable to this, is there anything I can provide to make this easier? I will gladly do all the heavy lifting.

Thanks for your time and attention, and please don’t hesitate if you have any questions or comments.

3. Follow up at regular intervals until you get a response.

PITFALLS: Your boss doesn’t agree with your assessment. If this is the case, you might ask for the hard feedback so you know: A. How you got it so wrong and B. What is needed to get to the point where you can try again.

Your boss agrees but there are other obstacles (such as budget cuts, his boss doesn’t care, the company is in trouble, etc.).

Scenario #4: Managing Diagonally

GOAL: “I want to support a member or members of my team that are below me, though I may or may not be their manager.”

SCENARIO: “I know that a supportive environment helps with job satisfaction and overall performance, and I want to be a part of making my workplace supportive by encouraging and going to bat for those below me on my team. I also know our wagons are hitched so I want to help them succeed as it will be beneficial to our whole group.”

ACTION:

1. Get to know the members of my team who are below me.

2. Determine those members that are really fantastic and then sing their praises.

3. For those who are not quite as developed, give them guidance and support where feasible.

BYPRODUCT: Leading by example will hopefully be contagious and other members of your team will behave the same way, either by singing your praises or singing the praises and/or mentoring those below them.

PITFALLS: It’s feasible you back a bad horse and someone whom you are singing the praises of either does something bad, or doesn’t reciprocate with you when they are in a position to do so. Obviously backing a bad horse won’t win you any favor with your supervisor, but don’t let that alone prevent you from continuing to champion and mentor those beneath you who are deserving. Karmic points are won in all circumstances.

MINI-SCENARIOS
HOW TO . . .	WHAT YOU MIGHT SAY
Thank those who give you feedback.	While some of that was hard to hear, I am so appreciative that you took the time to share this with me. As you know, I really want to grow and improve and your input is invaluable. Please keep it coming as frequently and directly as possible. I can handle it.
Ask for positive feedback if it hasn’t been offered alongside negative feedback.	Thanks so much for your input. While that was very hard to hear, it will be helpful for me in making improvements. I know that I will learn much more from this kind of constructive criticism than I will from anything on the plus side, but I was curious if there are any areas where you feel I am excelling or have made any meaningful improvements. This info will help me better understand what is working well and should be supported. Thanks so much for this.
Work with your supervisor to come up with a plan to improve when negative feedback is given.	This feedback was wonderful and I really want to make improvements to eliminate the deficiencies you identified. Toward that end, I was wondering if you could help me with planning some action steps and goals toward improvement.
Present ideas up the food chain in the right way, by knowing your audience, and by understanding the nuances of how they will react.	Note: You have to know your superior. If they are someone who can really share the wealth, then you can be much more direct and simply raise your idea directly: I was just struck with an idea about how to do/improve/make X, and I would love the opportunity to sit down with you and present it. I really think it could make a meaningful change for Y. Conversely, if your superior is one of those people for whom everything needs to be their idea, you might try something more like this: Something you said, inspired an idea about how to do/improve/make X, and I would love the opportunity to sit down with you and present it. I really think it could make a meaningful change for Y.
Approach feedback with curiosity rather than defensiveness.	Really? I wasn’t aware that I was doing that, but I am really eager to hear and learn more about your experience so I can work on improving.
Create the right opportunities to talk about your goals with superiors.	I know we don’t often get to have meta conversations about my role here, but I was wondering if we could carve out a little time to discuss how I might better reach the goals you’ve set for me, and in turn advance my career. Part of what I am hoping for in this conversation is your guidance on how I can better help and advance things for you.
Know how to disagree.	Start by restating the item that you would like to disagree with, so you can confirm that you actually understand what is being proposed. Once that is confirmed, go with the positive and negative. So if I understand this correctly, you are proposing X, which would do/operate/etc. by Y. Is that correct? Okay. Given that I seem to understand correctly, while I like A, B, or C about that concept, there are a few issues that concern me. Are you open to hearing about these concerns?
Provide feedback up the chain.	I had an experience I want to chat with you about, and I wonder if you would be open to my giving some candid feedback. 1) I know we have not known each other long, but I feel our rapport is such that I can share this with you, but only with your explicit permission. or 2) Given the history and strength of our relationship, I am confident you would want to hear this but only with your explicit permission.
Understand that peers and subordinates can be just as effective for providing feedback as superiors.	I am humbly and strongly requesting your feedback. We have a lot of contact on an ongoing basis and I am really focused on learning more about my weaknesses, blind spots, or other areas that need meaningful improvement. My goals are to: 1. Learn what I don’t know about myself that you do (see the top left quadrant of Johari Window) 2. Find means and methods to improve myself. 3. Set goals for myself based on #1 and #2. Thank you so much for taking the time to do this as it is incredibly important to me.
Create organization from chaos when your leader or boss won’t.	Given these goals, would it be reasonable to set up a tactical plan for achieving them? With your blessing, I would love to create a spreadsheet/timeline/project management tool/document/etc. to align on who is doing what and by when, so we can all be working toward the same goals as a team. Would that be acceptable and useful for us?
Request success metrics when they are not provided.	I am really excited to do what is requested, but I would love to gain a little more clarity about what success looks like. Are there some measurable goals we could add to this endeavor so I can be sure I am doing what is needed and doing it well? If the goals are not yet clear, I would be happy to work with you to come up with and clarify them, but most important, I want a way to measure my performance as I know this is a meaningful task.
Always go the extra mile.	This should be obvious, but the most successful people are successful for a reason. Where others shy away from work or look for shortcuts, they don’t. Volunteer for the harder work. Be willing to help coworkers with projects. In short, be the person that everyone else can count on to get the job done. Given what you have laid out as the objectives for this, I wanted to go the extra mile and complete X. Before doing so, I just wanted to confirm that this is acceptable and would be a positive move on my part. Please let me know. Thanks.
Never assume.	We’ve said it a bunch in this book, but communication is the cornerstone of any success. Never assume someone knows what you know and never assume someone is going to do something. Be clear, overstate, and overcommunicate until such a time that you know your teammates and superiors well enough to know what things need to be spelled out and what things don’t. Thanks for giving me the instructions. I think I understand what is needed to complete X but just want to clarify to be doubly sure. Could you please confirm that when you said X, that meant Y. Please let me know and I will get started. Thanks.
Never shy away from delivering bad news.	Failures and successes both teach us things. Still, the fact of human nature is that we’re more prone to quickly announce a success and hide a failure. When something isn’t working, don’t wait, communicate. You’ll gain the respect of your superiors and colleagues and gain a reputation as someone who steps up when things are tough. Whenever possible, try to surround the bad news with good news as well; it always helps the recipient absorb the news more effectively. Hi All, I have some bad news and a bit of good news. I hate to be the bearer of this and certainly hope you won’t shoot the messenger but given X, we are going to come up short on Y. Here are the reasons for this and while I wish there was another possibility we feel like we have looked at it from all sides with this being the best option. The good news is: We caught this early, we learned from this mistake, we will save time or money, the product will be better, the team has come together to redouble our efforts and now we can mitigate this to avoid further damage.
Ask for help.	When you’re new to a company or team, ask as many questions as possible. Your instinct may be to try and figure things out on your own. Don’t. Everyone has been in your shoes, everyone has been the new person. Once you settle in, only then should you try to figure out solutions. But even seasoned employees reach out for help and guidance when they encounter unfamiliar roadblocks. A sure sign that the culture of your company is poor is if you don’t feel comfortable asking questions. I am sorry if the questions I am asking in this email are common knowledge here, but I would much rather be doubly cautious than start out with a blunder. As such, here are a few questions which will help me get started and deliver the right results . . .

In our next chapter, we’ll take a look at matters from both sides at once. We’ll explore what it means to sometimes be the manager and sometimes the talent. And we’ll reveal the absolute necessity of getting good at both.

TAKEAWAYS FROM CHAPTER 8

• A culture of support, openness, and safety is synonymous with 360° Management, where those above you protect you and give you the latitude to express your ideas in full; those adjacent to you need to feel sufficiently empowered to help you and receive help from you; and those beneath you are emboldened to offer you support and come to you with their ideas, challenges, and disasters.

• In essence, 360° Management is about turning your managers, your peers, and your underlings into the great managers we’ve described in this book.

• Not every person has the tools, training, or the proclivity to be great at management. That’s why taking an active role in the flow of managerial guidance both to and from you is a form of taking responsibility for your own destiny.

• No management is definitely not the answer, and less management is frequently not the answer either. 360° Management means flexibility and agility flowing in all directions.

• To be a 10xer, you need to be open to learning, willing to seek advice, and, most of all, adept at two-way communication—and not just between you and superiors.

• The manageable talent, finally, understands that the best use of their time and energy is self-improvement, and 360° Management is a fast track to getting there.