VWs in China and building relationships

Posted on 16 September 10 by Scot

Combining my interests in German cars, international relations, and general management, I recently read the book, 1000 Days in Shanghai, by Martin Posth.  The book is about Volkswagen’s initial journey to become the first international automobile manufacturing partner in China.  I found several interesting themes in the book, particularly the patience and vision which the VW crew exhibited when things didn’t go as planned.  When factory workers appropriated factory supplies shipped in from Germany meant for the new joint venture factory and instead used them in their own Chinese car factory, for example, Posth philosophizes (and it was probably easier doing so years later in his book than it was at the time) that when the Chinese workers saw the potential success of their new company, these kinds of behaviors would stop.  Time after time, the Germans felt the Chinese violated the terms of their contract agreement while the Chinese felt the Germans weren’t living up to their word and doing what they could to improvise in a changing environment. Yet both side persevered and the VW/Audi story in China is a huge success.

Then, in a recent airplane ride, I read a brief article in the in-flight magazine that was offering advice about doing business in China. The article echoed a theme I’ve also uncovered in working with the Japanese astronomy community:  the Japanese/Chinese business relation is built first on personal relationships (giri on / guanxi), then on the written agreement, whereas in the West/USA, the contract is the basis of the business relationships.  The people may change, but the contract remains. Our contracts are often very detailed and precisely worded.  Their contracts are broader and talk more about intentions and partnerships.  We use contracts to tell us what to do when conditions change. Our Eastern partners view changing conditions as natural reasons to renegotiate the contract.  Both approaches make sense, but both are fundamentally different and ripe for misunderstandings if these differences aren’t recognized up front.

So, besides knowing a bit more to expect when partnering with some of our Eastern colleagues (something increasingly common these days), this situation reminds me of another simple, obvious, yet valuable point.  Any time you’re interacting with another person, whether from your own culture or one very different, it’s important to understand their environment; it’s important to state and understand each other’s expectations and assumptions.  Without this understanding, there would never be a Volkswagen in China. Without this understanding, it is much harder to reach true harmony and agreement in any of your human relations.


When negotiating one international agreement, Scot remembers being frustrated while his negotiating partners complained they didn’t understand a certain passage of text. After failing at multiple attempts to figure out what wording was confusing and getting maybe just a little bit frustrated, Scot remembered that not everyone is as direct as Americans. What “we don’t understand” really meant was “we don’t like”. He could have spent all day going through the text word by word without addressing the real issue at all. With that bit understood, the problem was recognized and then fairly quickly dealt with and resolved. International negotiations are full of such fun opportunities to learn how others think.

Posted in General | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Kill the Annual Performance Review

Posted on 25 August 10 by Scot

Kill The Annual Performance Review

I’ve been holding on to this link for a while, hoping to write more about it, but there’s really not much more to write, so here it is.  The author, Samuel Culbert, was making the rounds a while back – NPR, WSJ, etc. After hearing him and reading this article, I was tempted to check out the book, but from what I can tell, it’s pretty much summed up in his short interviews and articles. The book doesn’t seem to offer much more than the basic premise: that traditional performance evaluations emphasize all the wrong things and set up an unnecessary adversarial relationship between the supervisor and employee.

Personally, I’m all for (and encourage) providing performance feedback, but the traditional yearly employee evaluation is a pretty poor way to do it. Read the article, search for Culbert’s interviews, or read his book (and let me know if my guess about it is wrong) if you want to know more.

Another instance where “going through the motions” management is actually bad for employee productivity and morale and where a little more thought can reap great rewards.

Aloha.

Posted in General | Leave a comment

Is project management enough?

Posted on 6 August 10 by Scot

I was reviewing some notes from a colleague’s previous class on project management when I came across the following lines that caught my interest:

A business or organization cannot survive on project management disciplines alone.

Project management is defined as delivering to time, cost, and quality.

Staff development is seen as an overhead if converted to a project cost, but [is] essential for an improving workforce.

Employee development, morale, work/life balance, and even preventive maintenance/upgrades: these are all long-term needs that can easily be viewed as short-term distractions in a project-oriented culture.   It is clearly of little or no benefit to a project manager to use valuable schedule and resources on these kinds of activities.  So, this is where the functional (line) managers need to step to the plate. They are the ones that have the responsibility to provide a talented, skilled, stable, and motivated work pool to the project managers.  They have to be the ones to make sure their staff development needs are met.  They are also responsible for the basic functionality of the systems under their control. Thus, time for both staff development as well as system upgrades and maintenance must be reserved and held back from project allocation.

I’m not saying that these project equivalents be considered sacred cows or anything. The resources spent in maintaining a well-adjusted, skilled staff need to be justified in terms of losses that would result from the expected turnover if these employee needs weren’t met. Similarly, system upgrade and maintenance task resources need to be justified against the potential lost time once they fail or need to be replaced.  But in any case, the responsibility for forming and advocating these projects must be with the employees and their functional, not their project, managers.

Not a really complex or novel thought here, but just another indication of a need for intelligent and thoughtful management that clearly understands its roles and responsibilities.

Scot’s graduate advisor, R. Ed Nather, has been known to say:

If it goes without saying, better say it twice.

As time goes on, Scot finds more and more wisdom in that statement and applies it often. Defining people’s project and functional roles is a great example of the value of explicitly stating what everyone often implicitly assumes without checking to make sure everyone else is operating under identical assumptions.

Posted in General | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

The role of politics in astronomy

Posted on 17 July 10 by Scot

For some, politics is a dirty word – either a necessary evil or something to be avoided altogether. For others, it’s the name of the game. What role does politics have to play in modern astronomy?

I suppose first of all, it might help to define what I mean by politics. One definition I read recently said politics is public action for the purpose of personal gain. Patrick Lencioni defines politics as  when people say things in order to achieve a secondary effect, not because they really mean what they say. In the Sciences, I might modify it a bit to be when people say or do things that are not based on pure scientific objectives. I’m not sure that’s the right definition, but let’s start with that for now.

What are some examples of politics in astronomy? Well, how about underestimating the price of a new telescope or instrument because you think you can only get X dollars now for your project, when you know you’ll have to come back later for more funds?  How about starting a new project not because you think it contains the best science, but because you think you can get money for it?

Now, I suppose it would be naive to say there is no place for politics in astronomy. We certainly have to strive and compete for funding. We have large communities we have to work with and keep happy; we need to keep their interests and culture in mind when we interact with them.  Pure scientific objectivity might have to take a back seat occasionally to keeping people working together.   Another Lencioni definition of politics (from The Five Dysfunctions of a Team) is when people choose their words and actions based on how they want others to react rather than based on what they really think. This kind of politics certainly doesn’t help team dynamics, but can be useful for building collaborations and bridging cultures (you may not always agree with a cultural norm, but while you’re building a cross-cultural relationship, your scientific objectives might be furthered more effectively if you pay some heed to them).

The Dog and Pony Show. Ultimately, only effective at undermining a scientitst's credibility and value.

Going with the second best vendor for a product might provide needed benefits to a collaborative partner, for example, that wouldn’t be realized via the first choice, with only a minor hit on scientific output, price or schedule.  These might be cases where scientific objectivity is sacrificed a little to achieve a larger political, or social, end.  I have misgivings about these kinds of political compromises, in general, but if not abused, there’s probably a time and place for them.  They work best, though, when the scientific loss is acknowledged and compared with the political or social gain.

On the other hand, when we start losing our scientific grounding, things become very dangerous quickly.  Our stakeholders rely on our objectivity – that’s our value – scientific objectivity and output.  When we show a pattern of sacrificing scientific output for political gain, we lose the very core of what makes us valuable to people.  We lose our community’s trust.   And when that happens, the temptation can be again to resort to politics to quickly restore some of that lost value,  thereby deepening the hole and continuing the cycle.

Compared to the professionals, the ones who have all the money we are often seeking, astronomers are generally extremely poor politicians. This is not a game we’re likely to win.  We’re valued for our science – that’s our unique trait and asset and should be our defining characteristic.  We sometimes need politics to play nice with our friends, to share the benefits of our efforts, to communicate our results, but when politics starts dictating our science, we lose the very essence of why we exist.

Scot’s seen enough Dog and Pony Shows in astronomy to know that the only people being fooled are the performers themselves. He currently has no dogs nor ponies of his own. He used to have a brine shrimp, but it died.

Posted in General | Tagged | 2 Comments

Who advocates for the Observatory?

Posted on 10 July 10 by Scot

I’ve been reading a book on corporate boards, so expect a few posts on astronomy governance coming up, starting with this one. I really knew nothing about how boards out in the “real world” operate, so reading this book has been a great inspiration for reflection on boards I’ve seen in astronomy. There are plenty of things “wrong” with the Board I am currently associated with (according to the corporate model, at least), but one of the common complaints I’ve heard levied against it is not one of them: that its members are also its funders.

On the surface, this complaint seems legitimate and I even bought into it for a while, since there appears to be a clear conflict of interest between someone trying to get more value for less money as a member of a funding agency while simultaneously advocating for the observatory to the funding agencies for the funds it needs to operate and expand.

The flaw in this argument, however, is the passing of the advocacy buck to the Board instead of to the Observatory. Corporate boards are composed to represent the institutions’ stakeholders and certainly an observatory’s funding agencies qualify as stakeholders. Does this make it hard for the Board to argue for more funding from the funding agencies if the funding agencies are the Board? Yes, certainly. But venture capitalists and shareholders, analogs to our funding agencies, are regular members of corporate boards as well. It is not the board’s responsibility to argue for increased funding; it’s the responsibility of the Observatory to present a case compelling enough that its stakeholders are willing to invest more to get more return. This situation is exactly what works in the corporate world and it makes sense that it can work in the astronomy world, too. The observatory, however, has to be willing to act as its own advocate, making strong, supported cases, for the funds it requests. Our Board meets twice a year; who better to understand the ramifications of increased and decrease funding than the Observatory? Who better to argue to those with the purse strings what is best for the Observatory? The Observatory, or the Board?

I think there are other issues with the the make-up of the board, but its having representatives from our funding agencies is not one of them. I’ll discuss some of the other issues in future posts.

I should particularly note here that these are my opinions, not necessarily those of Gemini Observatory, for whom I work. See my standard disclaimer to the right.


While on the subject of advocacy, Scot decided to link to the web splash of a recent result that he is co-author on: the analysis of the surface metal lines on a white dwarf star suggesting the remains of a rocky dwarf planet recently accreted onto the star’s surface. This scenario represents a possible interesting way to see the insides of extra-solar planets!

Posted in General | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Fire those who need to be fired

Posted on 17 June 10 by Scot

Right on the heels of my recent blog post about keeping bad employees too long, an article appeared in the 4Jun10 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education by Michael Munger subtitled, Five Suggestions for New Academic Administrators. In it, he summarizes part of what I was trying to say in that post: fire those that need to be fired. He repeats my theme that firing people who need to be fired is best for you, the employee, and those left. Many will even thank you for it in the end. Often being fired is the impetus they need to find really satisfying employment elsewhere. So, I highly recommend following the link above and reading Munger’s article, especially the last point on page 41.

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

When to release in-progress plans….?

Posted on 15 June 10 by Scot

I’m normally an advocate of complete transparency and openness. The more information you share with your employees and community, the more involved they are and the more support and help you get from them in return. I’ve been a bit shocked lately, though, at the complete dismissal of this approach when it comes to ideas or plans that are in development and not yet finalized. The response is stated so matter of factly like “of course we can’t distribute the plan yet; it’s not been finalized or approved.” The stated concern is that there is no reason to keep people up in arms about something that might change later – that releasing an incomplete plan is simply asking for trouble and creating chaos for no reason.

I’m pretty sure I disagree with this argument. That the plans are not finalized makes it the PERFECT time to share them with people. To do otherwise seems to me to be saying that the people can’t be trusted to distinguish a work in progress plan from a final plan – that somehow they aren’t smart enough to know the difference. It also seems to be saying that we don’t want people’s input in these plans; we will simply tell them when it’s all been ironed out. Even if this isn’t the intent behind withholding the in-progress information, it ends up being the perception. People feel untrusted and unvalued.

If there are concerns about an idea or plan, isn’t it better to get them out ahead of time – when they can actually be addressed? Time spent debating, understanding, and fixing the issues up front will be much more useful than time spent convincing people the plan they had no input on is the best way to go after the fact. The way to get buy-in for an idea or plan is to let people get involved in its formation, not by spinning it to them afterward.

The one concession I offer to these folks is if you can’t share these in-progress works now, then at least make it clear what the process is, when information will be shared, and what role people can then have on helping to shape and finalize it. Without these steps, I don’t see any way to get trust and acceptance by the affected people and what good are new plans and ideas if no one accepts them?

So, I’m interested to hear your ideas- am I wrong? Are there occasions (other than sensitive personnel or contractual issues) where plans should not be shared until after they are finalized? I tried the experiment I mentioned in an earlier post: google “advantages of open communication” then google “advantages of closed communication” and various variants thereof. A lot of hits on the former; nothing significant on the latter.


Scot thinks releasing information sets you free; no need to worry about what you can say and what you can’t and more likely to get valuable input and help from others. Scot would probably make a terrible politician.

Posted in General | Tagged , | 4 Comments

Are we too generous in hiring and keeping employees?

Posted on 3 June 10 by Scot

A recent article I read about how to hire the right people for the right jobs gives a statistic attributed to the US Department of Labor that 50% of all new employees are gone within the first six months of the job.  I’ve tried but failed to verify this number; I even get different answers when I try to find out what the overall average turnover rate is.  So, I take this statistic with a grain of salt (although it may be true, say in the fast food world, for example), but it did get me thinking.  I’ve seen a number of new hires who clearly demonstrated, within their first six months on the job, that they really weren’t going to work out, yet I’ve rarely (if ever) seen them leave, neither on their own accord or through dismissal.

While I suspect this situation is true in the business world, too, I would bet it’s more prevalent in academia and less prevalent in the highest performing institutions in and out of the real world.    Correctly hiring and firing people is a difficult task.   I won’t discuss hiring here, other than to say sometimes you hire the right person, but put him in the wrong job, or give her the wrong supervisor. A person underperforming in a new job may simply be in the wrong seat on the bus, to use a Good to Great analogy.  I don’t have any magical means to determine if it’s the person or the position that’s wrong, so I just note it as another area where careful attention to the process and good management are again needed.

Academia – and observatories are run more like academic than commercial institutions, for better or worse – has a specific mission to train and educate.  This educational mission, I believe, is one reason for the reluctance to let a new employee go who isn’t performing.  Perhaps they just need more training, or more time to learn the system, goes the logic.  Additionally, through the  fundamental trait of academic life called tenure, people have grown accustomed to having underperformers remain on staff with nothing that can be done to move them on.  This sort of tone, combined with a general desire to avoid confrontation and spend as little time as possible in managing, means poor hiring decisions are rarely actively corrected.

While I’m all for giving the right person in the wrong position a chance, there are multiple reasons why we should be more responsive to removing  new employees that are simply that aren’t going to work out.   First of all, keeping these employees is bad for business (remember, astronomy is a business) as they obviously won’t be performing as well as your star employees.  Perhaps even more important, though, is that keeping these people on board is bad for morale and makes the rest of your staff work also less efficient – both through morale loss and having to cover for the poor job of the subpar employee.  When someone is hired who clearly isn’t right for an organization (or a position), most people can tell right away; it’s not a secret held only by a few manager or HR staff.  When employees see new hires with poor performance being kept on, they lose respect for managers (and HR) and lose motivation to perform at their best,seeing as how poor performance is apparently enough to stay on the job.  One bad hire can lower the performance of an entire group or division.  And finally, as both Jim Collins in Good to Great and Buckingham and Coffman in First, Break all the Rules say, you aren’t doing anyone – you, your organization, or the employee – any good by keeping on people who are simply not going to work out.  You lose performance and the employee loses a chance to actually find employment that is a better match to his skills.

So, all this is really to say that the hiring process does not end when the new employee starts her first day on the job. Managers and HR personnel should be continually assessing employees’ performance and fit to their jobs, making corrections as necessary – and making it clear to the new hires that their evaluations don’t end when they get the job!

[4Jun10: A reader pointed out I have oversimplified things here- see the comments below for what I really meant to say and please continue the discussion, if you like.]



Like any other management decision, mistakes can be made in deciding whom to hire. The best leaders Scot has seen are those who can recognize their mistakes and correct them – whether they be in hiring or anything else. Luckily, Scot hasn’t (or so he hopes) yet been anyone’s hiring mistake.

Posted in General | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments