Leadership Lessons From The Baron Von Münchhausen

 

I love the stories about the Baron Von Münchhausen. This German legend "... served until 1750, in particular taking part in two campaigns against the Ottoman Turks. When he got home, Münchhausen supposedly told a number of outrageous tall tales about his adventures."
 

In one of the adventures he ends up on a cannonball just at the moment it is fired away to the palace of the Sultan, that is under attack by his army. If we have to believe the dear Baron himself, he guided the cannonball exactly to the place he needed to : right next to the enemy.
 
To be fair. I really believe that he believed that he steered the cannonball in the desired trajectory by sitting on top of the steel ball. The only thing he did in the end, was add weight.
 
Now, you know I am going to make an analogy, don’t you?
 
So here we go.
 
Some Project Managers are sitting on top of a project that is going at warp speed giving orders and directions, completely convinced that what they do, matters. But many teams don't need the added weight. At least, not when they are going at warp speed. And not when you are just waving your arms.

Sometimes our natural tendency is to increase our grip, be more present, making sure everyone is there and knows what to do. Communicate to the max, even if it is just through the “two cans with the string” of virtual communication. We’ll talk to people, again and again. Collect every single piece of information. Over and over again.

I am not quite sure why this happens. Perhaps we want to make sure people do the right thing, are not goofing off. Possibly we fear people cannot make the proper decisions or make promises the team cannot keep. It might even be a desire to shield information, making sure a stakeholder gets the “proper” information.

The Von Münchhausen approach creates several problems.
 

• Problem 1: If you are the central point for information gathering, communication and decision making, you become a bottleneck. You need time to read, process, make up your mind and ask for clarification. When there is a lot going on in the project environment you get a lot of information and you need to make a lot of decisions. You suffer from an “exploding mailbox”. When delays get serious, this has huge negative impact on team performance.
   
• Problem 2:  Another problem is lack of different perspectives if you remain the principal point for interpreting information. In his book “Three Blind Men And The Elephant” David Schmalz tells the story of three blind men that are describing an elephant by just touching the animal. The first one feels its trunk and thinks it is some kind of rubber hose. The second one is standing at the side of the elephant and imagines some kind of massive wall. The third and final man is located near the tail of the elephant. He figures its a rope. The moral of this story is that while everyone is “looking” at the same thing, different perceptions create different views. If it’s “just you”, you miss out on the diversity of minds in your team.
   
• Problem 3:  When intervening your team, you are changing their behavior. By asking them over and over again how they are doing against the plan, you are changing their responses. By being too much “in their face” you might distract them and make it difficult for them to get into a productive flow.
   
• Problem 4; People like to have influence. Being recognized as knowledgeable and use their creativity. Being able to make decisions about ones own activities is a huge motivator. By remaining the central point for everything, you miss out on a big opportunity to engage your team members.

Image by John Mahowald