Completed Staff Work

Audio Transcript Auto-generated

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  You know my name is Jackie O's time your management

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  professor from the Catholic University of America.

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  And I wanna welcome you to the short class on

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  completed staff work here.

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  We're gonna learn leadership and followership and how this dynamic

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  relationship works to advance organization goals.

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  The content of this course is based on the book,

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  the memo and this is the story of completed staff

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  work that well, that was first refined during the Second

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  World War.

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  And it's my favorite textbook because I wrote it here.

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  We're gonna learn about leadership and followership and leadership.

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  And followership is an exercise of how the bosses can

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  work with subordinates and we work together as individual contributors

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  and managers.

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  This is a dynamic relationship where leaders expect from staff

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  to get recommendations and get their best thinking and to

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  get their best advice and followers air.

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  Our ships managed up to persuade the boss to make

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  to give the boss the best recommendations.

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  Remember, managers only do one thing.

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  Your boss only does one thing.

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  Your boss makes decisions.

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  We is individual contributors.

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  As good followers, we exercise followership and developing options for

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  the boss and make making recommendations for the boss.

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  Now this is based on anticipation, but the word would

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  be think.

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  And our statue would be the thinker Tom Watson, from

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  IBM the decades ago, one of his staff to think

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  so what he did on every flat surface.

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  He put signs up that said, Think to encourage the

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  staff to give Cem thought process to think about, to

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  adjust, to anticipate our story begins in the Second World

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  War and from the memo and complete a staff work.

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  And this is a tale of two aircraft carriers to

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  war machines to pieces of machinery by opposing Navy's USA

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  Side is the USS Yorktown, and here we have a

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  picture of it here.

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  It's a flat top.

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  It's an aircraft carrier, and the Japanese side had had

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  the Japanese navy bustle there.

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  Their aircraft carrier called the Chicago and Chicago and New

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  York our similar pieces of machinery that Chicago is.

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  Actually it's probably a superior machine, but little bit newer

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  but an engineering marvel to launch aircraft tears now, the

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  challenges they met together on and they're actually opposing fleets

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  met together in May of 1942 and and and and

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  known as what's known as the Battle of Coral Sea.

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  And in this battle, both both war machines, both every

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  cop carries were severely damaged.

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  The damage was so bad that on each side, oddly

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  enough, each side engineers did a battle damage assessment and

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  said both independently of each other.

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  Each other said that each beach needs 30 days, actually,

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  three months, 90 days with repairs.

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  So here we have, ah shot of their Chicago damaged

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  in the bite of coral sea on fire and it's

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  ah, it's it's it's headed west towards the Japanese islands.

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  In the drive got dried up for three months, repair

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  and the Yorktown went east when back to Pearl Harbor

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  in Hawaii and to be repaired to go in, the

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  driver dried up, be prepared.

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  Now here's where our story changes because each isn't in

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  route to their home base to be repaired.

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  And here we have a picture of the off of

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  the bowels of the U.

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  S. S Yorktown were of, ah, Japanese bomb came through,

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  the flight deck exploded.

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  Tremendous loss of life, tremendous damage.

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  And we're looking down.

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  We're seeing the damage that was caused.

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  Now both ships are heading home and Here's Here's Here's

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  Here's the example Our example of completed staff work while

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  the ship's Aaron rally in the 18 days after the

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  war, after the battle of the Belt of Coral Sea

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  going back to two, uh, Pearl Harbor, the crew of

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  the Your Count begins to make repairs.

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  They anticipate their thinking that this piece of hardware, this

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  piece of equipment, this asset of the company needs to

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  be fixed so that it could be put back in

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  service could be brought off line.

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  Get off deadline and begin to be, ah, productive value.

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  Add to to the to the to the organization.

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  It's a battleship, it Zen aircraft er, but they've anticipated

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  needs to be repaired.

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  So as there is, they're making that 18 day steaming

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  trip back to Hawaii.

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  They begin to do repairs, and it's not pretty.

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  It's not good.

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  That is pretty ugly, as a matter of fact, but

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  they begin to work on the repairs and and and

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  and begin to bring the ship back online.

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  Now the Japanese ship, as far as we can tell,

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  the the Japanese are such perfectionist and could not deviate

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  Ah, from from a policy and procedure that they probably

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  did very little as it went as it limped home

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  to the Japanese mainland for repairs.

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  Where is the U.

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  S. A ship was already was already under repair.

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  Admiral Nimitz, who ran all this?

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  Ah, And then that theater dispatched master shipbuilder master ship

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  fitters and flew them out to the aircraft to continue

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  the work.

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  And what happened is is that when the ship got

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  into two Thio to Pearl Harbor ah, lot of the

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  work was already underway.

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  The one word that describes completed staff work is anticipate.

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  The crew anticipated what would be needed anticipated with the

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  work would need to be done and began to do

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  the work.

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  And I'm sure they got approval up.

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  But they probably did a lot of the work knowing

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  the commander's intent, knowing what the organization needed and started

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  to do the work they thought about it did the

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  interest anticipate and, um, and began work.

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  Now here's Here's a picture of the New York on

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  in dry Dock in in Pearl Harbor, and it's about

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  to be launched.

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  They finished, they finished the work on it.

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  And this was a spectacular effort because remember the engineers.

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  The perfectionist forecasted 90 days Thio, bring the ship back

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  to suspect.

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  Back to specifications.

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  Back to like we built it.

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  This is the same mindset of the engineering.

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  The perfectionist of the engineer, as the Japanese did had

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  90 days, but they took the time.

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  The 90 days to bring it back to perfection.

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  Bringing back to specifications.

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  U S A.

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  Here are repair.

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  Guys. Did Justin up to bring it back online and

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  not too much more.

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  It was quick.

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  It was dirty.

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  What? It was very good.

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  So Admiral Nimitz said you don't have three months.

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  You got three days.

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  Got 72 hours Fixit prepared.

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  I don't care what it looks like just so long

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  as they can float, Run, Get to get it out,

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  Get it done and get her out.

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  And they did 72 hours.

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  They gotta down one.

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  And it was a heroic effort.

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  It took It.

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  Took had 1400.

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  Uh, master shipbuilder ship fitters.

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  Come on, do all kind of welding and they violated

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  all kinds of safety protocols, violated all kinds of problems.

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  It wasn't brought up to specifications, It was just done.

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  They had welders all over the place working, drawing power

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  off the hour.

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  And then when they were doing the welding, they didn't

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  even train off the aviation flu.

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  They took a risk.

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  They took a chance because they didn't have time.

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  The days that would require to get all the fuel

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  Adderall fumes.

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  They did the work anyways horribly dangerous, all kinds of

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  safety protocol.

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  But but everyone's took the rest, commanded them just to

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  get up and get it ready now.

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  The end of the story is, is that Yorktown steamed

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  back out to sea while Chicago was back in being

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  repaired. And we go on a few weeks later, in

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  June of 1942 of the Battle of Midway.

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  The Alert.

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  Stewed knows that this was the turning point in the

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  Second World War in the Pacific Theater.

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  USA won that battle.

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  Whole whole World War was turned on that one battle,

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  and part of it was because your Ken was there

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  and the Chicago was not still being repaired, and your

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  town was was there for that battle and helped change

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  the course of the world.

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  Who are the war now?

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  This is an exercise in leadership, and followers should remember,

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  this is a dynamic relationship and the best leaders, The

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  best managers understand this.

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  It is done through making recommendations and and where the

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  boss just makes a decision.

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  Now remember, it has This has three simple steps to

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  it isn't if not very hard is actually quite quite

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  simple and complete a staff work.

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  All that is needed is for the is for the

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  staff, the individual contributors to do the research, we do

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  the work we do way.

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  Look at the landscape.

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  We were very well all the things that could go

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  wrong, Not wrong, because we don't want the boss to

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  be surprised.

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  So we do the research and from the research, we

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  develop options.

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  We come up with different courses of action that the

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  boss could take.

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  And then from those options, we give the boss one

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  recommendation. We give one course of action, he could sign

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  off, sign off on it or not, or make a

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  river make his own recommendation or his own questioning back

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  or not.

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  But usually things were moving so fast as it wasn't

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  at 72 hours to get your account out of dry

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  dock that the boss will probably sign off on any

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  of our recommendations because time won't allow us to do

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  this. And this is the greatest challenge that most managers

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  have is they just don't have enough time.

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  Biggest complaint There, it run out of time.

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  No, this is Ah ah, Cabinet Secretary.

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  This happen to be the secretary of energy and the

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  secretary of the time.

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  This was taken a few in the previous administration is

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  from Secretary of Energy, and he has a PhD in

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  physics. He's a rocket scientist, but But the staff thinks

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  that they're making him look good And that these piled

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  up this paper's is his desk is piled up with

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  papers and it makes it look like he's busy working

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  hard. And in fact, it's just the opposite.

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  He has stuff.

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  Pilot was on his desk, but I want you to

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  do is to take away from this completed staff work.

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  Is that you go into the boss with a recommendation?

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  Boss says yes.

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  No, maybe.

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  But yesterday and you walk out with it.

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  Don't leave anything on your boss's desk.

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  You take that piece of paper that decision maker member

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  with you don't leave in orders that don't create work

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  for your boss.

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  Nothing stays on your boss's desk.

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  You'll never get to it.

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  He doesn't have time to get to it.

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  He doesn't have time to study.

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  And he doesn't have that luxury of time.

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  You do.

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  You do.

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  You make that.

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  You make the recommendation.

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  You persuade him to accept your recommendation and you go

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  on to the next step so that it is finished.

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  Their completed staff work means that there's nothing to add

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  when it's done properly.

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  All the boss has to do is sign off on

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  it or not.

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  Okay, it or not, but it's a completed action.

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  It is done.

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  There's nothing to add.

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  And when you do this, you will be a valued

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  member of your boss's team.

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  You will be the one that will be promoted above

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  your peers.

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  Uh, and I want to thank you for this for

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  joining for the short class.

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  And if you have any questions, please follow me on

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  Twitter at Jack us, where l E S t d

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  m e and I look forward to doctor anymore.

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  Thank you.