A few years ago, I took a job as a team lead of a small group of DBA’s at a small pediatric hospital. I loved the opportunity that I was given and will be grateful for the person who gave me that chance. Prior to this gig, I had spent the past couple years consuming lots of media on leadership and management, I consumed various books, articles, podcasts, etc…that would help me be a better leader, one resource that was incredibly helpful was a book named “Herding Tigers” by Todd Henry.
The Eye of the Tiger
Henry states in this book that he doesn’t like using the phrase “herding cats” when it comes to managing creatives. Creatives work, as defined by the author, is the kind of work that must be figured out as we go along…creative workers can “shape the chaos into form, meaning and value”. Henry writes that he likes to think of creatives as tigers, not cats.
Henry goes on to claim that creatives need both stability and challenges. Creatives also need direction, but not step by step instructions. Creatives need to understand the expectations but need to be given the freedom to adjust things to be able to meet those expectations.
Never ascribe to malice that which can be attributed to ignorance – Hanlon’s Razor
Henry writes “the stakes are simply too high for you and your team…you need practical, tactical ideas that will help you gain clarity and take your leadership to the next level”. This book was written for those of us who will be leading creatives. Todd Henry seems to understand that leading and managing creatives requires a different set of tools…different techniques
This is a relatively short book (around 300 pages) and is broken into two parts and 12 chapters. Each of the chapters in book start with a quote and a principle like;
“To create stability, shift your mind-set from doing work to leading the work”
“To provide stability, you must earn, manage, and strive to maintain your team’s trust”
“To create stability, manage your team’s margin by aggressively protecting “white space”.
Then the author uses the chapter to unpack these principles with loads of good information and real bits of “practical, tactical advice”. Some of the things you read will be new and maybe counter intuitive…other things will make sense and may have you ask, “why didn’t I think of that”.
Do the math
Henry works to dispel several myths about creatives. Myths like “they are fragile” or “they just want to use the new tech” are, in my opinion, handy excuses to excuse poor leadership. Henry does a great job discussing what creatives need to be successful and Henry uses a simple “matrix” to illustrate his logic.
Henry shows a “Challenge/Stability Matrix” on page 28 of the kindle version.
A creative worker needs to find a way to be in the top right “thriving” corner. Personally, I feel that all employees should be in the thriving section of their own matrix and a good leader will work with each employee to help make sure that they stay in or really close to that “thriving” quadrant.
The F’s
In evolutionary psychology, people refer to our basic and most primal motivators or drivers as the “The Four F’s”. These are Fighting, Fleeing, Feeding, and..uh..mating….Henry describes that creatives need three “F’s”; Focus, Function, Fire.
Focus-Henry writes that the job of a manager is to ensure that the team’s attention is allocated to the right problem at the right time. No one likes to have their time wasted! Respect your team and their time! A manager should ask questions like;
What are we doing?
What are we not doing?
When are we doing it?
Function– Henry wants the managers to ensure that the team has the resources and processes in place that it needs to do its work. A manager needs to assess the teams’ operations by asking things like;
How will we do it?
What do we need in order to do what we do?
Fire-Leaders keep their team motivated to do the work they need to do…not busy work, not garbage yardage like swimmers call bad laps but real work. It’s not easy but some things that a manager should ask are;
Why are we doing it?
What will it mean?
By the way, when you walk by my desk, this is why you see a lighter, a magnifying glass and a small vice grip wrench. These are constant reminders of what a good leader has to do, daily!
Rituals
Henry also provides some details on the things that you as a leader should be doing on a regular basis. He calls the rituals and he describes what rituals should be done weekly, monthly, or quarterly. For example, we should be reviewing our outstanding tasks on a weekly basis but maybe evaluating our teams commitments on monthly basis. Perhaps every quarter one should re-examine or re-iterate the teams core principles and help everyone stay on the same page?
Knowledge isn’t power until its applied -Dale Carnegie
Gang, this is not a scientific journal and its not some “hokey feel good” book asking you to drink kombucha and exchange gratitude journals. It’s a solid book with a lot of great actionable advice.
Bottom line, folks…if you are a manager or want to be a manager of BI folks you should read this book. As I mentioned, I used the Kindle version for this review, but you can get a copy just about anywhere and if you want more information on Todd Henry you can find him at https://www.toddhenry.com/