How to manage up at work: drive change & make your boss love you
What do you do when you get the chance to talk with a pair of NBA legends? You ask them about management techniques of course!
These aren’t just any basketball players. They’ve each won at least one championship ring and were part of arguably the greatest NBA team of all time alongside hall of famers including Michael Jordan, Scotty Pippen and Dennis Rodman. In this article they’re going to share some lessons with us to help you achieve all-star status in the workplace. Let’s goooo!
Are you a change agent?
If you’re reading this, chances are you fit the persona of the change agent: You’re someone who likes to think outside the box, has a strong belief that things can be better, and wants to shake things up to move towards a better tomorrow. These are all key traits of the innovator. But here’s the problem: most organisations on the planet are designed with an immune system to change. It’s much easier to stick to the status quo than it is to shake things up and risk everyone’s bonus. This means the innovator often finds themself with a target on their back. If this sounds like you, you’re probably wondering how to get out of the cross-hairs. Well let me tell you a quick story that might help.
Generating innovation vs Capturing innovation
I was recently on a livestream for a big insurance company with a few hundred employees joining the session online. One of the leaders asked me to give some tips on how leadership can make their people more innovative. My response was simple: I asked everyone on the call to raise their hand if they have at least one idea for how to make their team, project or department better. Immediately, hundreds of virtual hands went up.
Almost every employee has at least one idea to make their team, department, or organisation better. This is a good place to start the change process.
The message was clear: most companies don’t have a “generating innovation” problem - they have a “capturing innovation” problem. And yet so much of the corporate innovation activity we see is focused on getting employees to come up with ideas - aimless hackathons, pitch days, and the like. Ideas are cheap and they’re everywhere. As the change agent in your organisation, one of the most important things you can do is create the right environment for innovation to happen and then get out of people’s way!
So let’s look at a simple framework you can use to convince your leadership to buy into this kind of change agenda.
What do successful change agents do well?
One thing I’ve learned along the way is that whether it’s a multinational corporation or a basketball team, innovation often starts with an individual like you who makes it their mission to drive positive change. There are three things that successful change agents do particularly well.
1. They use storytelling to evangelise the need for innovation and keep the change agenda top of mind.
Look at the most popular thought leaders floating around today: Malcolm Gladwell, Simon Sinek, Seth Godin - first and foremost they are masterful storytellers. In an era where leadership teams are drowning in data, one of the best ways to capture their attention is to have success stories and anecdotes in your back pocket. This is an excellent way to create “moments that matter”
A spoonful of sugar really does help the medicine go down. The litmus test of a good story is one that can be remembered and retold. Case in point: Any basketball fan knows that the Chicago Bulls of the 90’s are one of the most storied teams in sports history, having won 6 championships and broken numerous records.
1997-98 was no ordinary season for the Chicago Bulls with many players leaving and their last chance at victory at stake. It was a storybook setup with a fairytale ending.
The storyline was set when supercoach Phil Jackson dubbed the 1998 season “The Last Dance” - this was no ordinary season as it would be his final one with the bulls, likely to be Michael Jordan’s final season before retirement, and their last chance at creating history. The Brothers Grimm would be jealous of such a storybook setup and the team delivered with a fairytale ending. It’s a story for the ages that’s still being dissected and retold a quarter of a century later.
2. The second thing change agents do well is create simplicity and clarity where others create confusion and complexity.
Rather than trying to “boil the ocean” and answer every single question upfront, they understand that it’s more like “boiling the frog” - your best chance at leading and influencing people is to get started and win them over one small step at a time. Frameworks and toolkits are an excellent way to turn your inspirational vision into a series of practical steps. Many a management consultant has made a career out of this.
In a sport where most coaches force their teams to memorise a playbook as thick as a cinder block, Phil Jackson famously applied a framework to simplify a complex situation. With the triangle offense, the Chicago Bulls were able to create a free-flowing style of basketball that the league had never seen.
3. And finally, successful change agents use co-creation to engineer success.
One of the key steps in selling your vision is finding your champions who will help you win over the project sponsors you need to get on board. I’ve rarely seen a case of successful innovation that was done in isolation.
Interestingly, involving detractors in the process is often a good recipe for success. Chances are you know who in the organisation will resist your change effort, and what their resistance will be. Ignoring these people won’t make them go away. The best thing you can do is anticipate and plan around their resistance, then involve them in the process and let them have their say. You might be surprised at what they can bring to the table when you give them a safe forum to speak their mind. Pro-tip on this one: getting the timing right is key - too early and they’ll shoot you down, too late and they’ll feel they didn’t get a chance to say their piece.
By working out in the open like this, you can massively increase your chances of getting buy-in from key stakeholders. On a team with huge stars and huge egos, the Bulls could have easily devolved into a game of “pass Michael the ball”. However, whether it was Steve Kerr hitting the winning shot in Game 6, or Dennis Rodman sacrificing scoring in favour of doing the dirty work, the 98 Bulls worked together to transcend their reputation as a team of champions into a champion team.
Learning from some legends
When I got the chance to hear from members of this legendary Chicago Bulls team, I was curious what they had to say about the experience. In particular, on a team with such strong leaders as Michael Jordan, how did they manage upwards to ensure they had a role to play and make an impact on a team that changed the course of basketball history?
For the full interview, check out the video. Here are some snippets:
Scott Burrell, 1997-98 World Champion
“When I became a Bull, I became a champion. No other team practices like them, no other team communicates on the court like them, no other team comes to the gym with a business mindset like they did. Playing with Michael, Scotty, Dennis and Toni Kukoc - 4 hall of famers - no other team has those guys. So I had to fit in, but I didn’t change who I was, I just changed my work ethic.
Sometimes people are afraid of change. You’ve got to keep pushing forward, but make sure they’re not afraid, and they’re open and willing to get better and maybe do things a little differently. You’re trying to move the company forwards by managing upwards, so don’t be afraid to suggest things.”
Ron Harper, 5x World Champion
“You’ve got to get your team to believe in you, and to see that what you are doing will benefit not only you but will benefit the team and will benefit the organisation. Upper management change can only happen when good things happen. I played with the great MJ and the great coach Phil Jackson, and the only way we could get the Bulls management to listen to us was by us to win games.”
Summary & Takeaways
If you like this approach, here’s the TL;DR version you can send to your colleagues:
The problem with being a changemaker is that organisations are designed with an immune system to change, which means innovators often end up with a target on their back.
But the good news is, great ideas are everywhere. Too much corporate innovation activity is focused on trying to generate innovation, when the more efficient route is to simply put in place the structures and processes to capture the potential innovation that’s already in your organisation.
In order to convince your leadership to make these changes, there are three things you should focus on doing well:
Using storytelling to inspire leadership on the need to change
Using a framework to simplify what might seem like a complex process
And co-creating success by involving leadership in innovation
I hope you found this helpful, and if you did, now it’s your turn to co-create with me by leaving a comment with a time you had to manage upwards in order to drive change.
