Moose on the Table

Thanks to the poor health, poor relationships, and poor choice of career path being suffered by our protagonist Pete, he’s going through the toughest moments of his life.

In a recent conversation with his boss, the Senior Vice-President of client services at Newton-Millbank Tech Services, Pete’s been informed that trust and communication has been really quite poor in the operations department of a certain division – a division he heads.

Morale is down; as a result, absenteeism is rife and client service levels are down the drain. Pete’s challenge is to get his people to start talking to each other and communicate more and better, or else they all might drown together when the ship finally sinks.

The Call of the Riled

A client service management meeting is set for Pete’s group to address the reasons why their sales are declining. During the meeting, the following reasons were determined:

• Delayed decision making


• Lack of accountability


• Lack of urgency


• Lack of openly sharing information


• Departmentalism and turf wars

During the meeting, it becomes apparent how laid-back Pete’s people are. When their boss pushes hard for an explanation as to why a particular project is late or not completed at all, he’s given quiet, monotone explanations, such as factors beyond the control of that group, how hard everyone had been working on it, and how the project was being researched further.

After the meeting, Pete contemplates on what transpired as he slouches in his chair. Moments later, he goes wide-eyed as he sees what seems to be a large cow or horse nibbling on the lower branches of a small tree. They lock eyes and Pete feels that he’s really beginning to lose it this time.

The Dread POETS Society

After that unsettling meeting, all the staff decide to grab a few drinks and seek solace in what they call the POETS society, the Piss-On-Everything-Till-Sunrise Society, as they humorously refer to their after-work drinking group.

During the session, they try to motivate Pete into finally putting some leadership into the team, and even tell him that despite his obvious failings, he’s still a lot better than their big boss, Doug, the Senior VP who’s apparently just good at kissing up to those above him and kicking down those below.

In the end, Pete is invited to join a workshop and get ideas for leadership improvement. On his way home, strangely enough, he again sees the strange animal he had seen the night before.

Of Moose and Managers

The key theme of the workshop session is Courageous Leadership. It’s all about:

• Having the courage to navigate unwanted change


• Having the courage to strengthen leadership in the face of daily management crisis and technical issues


• Having the courage to talk about sensitive issues being avoided


• Having the courage to listen to what you don’t want to hear

Jason, the workshop teacher discusses how silence kills organizations – even literally killing people when safety issues aren’t addressed. When people in an organization fail to communicate, it leads to a myriad of problems. Some of the common ones are:

• Hiding/suppressing information


• Minimizing or avoiding big problems/issues


• Helplessness, cynicism, and apathy


• Turf protection and silos or departmentalism


• Team members dislike and avoid each other


• Blame-storming, fault-finding, and sniping (often wrapped in “humorous” zingers)


• Lower respect for self and others


• Mediocre meetings


• Messengers are shot and wounded, and resolve never to make that mistake again


• Lobbying, politicking, and decision-making are done outside the meeting


• The boss makes decisions, then uses meetings to “hold court” or “discuss” what’s happening


• “Are there any questions?” is really a dare from a boss to say anything that’s considered to be disagreeable

What keeps people from having courageous conversations? FEAR.

As Pete takes the elevator after the session, he catches a blur of brown in the corner of his left eye just as somebody smashes into him and flings him toward the far wall. Then everything goes black.

Elf Perception

After coming to, Pete meets Alfred, who claims to be his guardian elf, sent to help him deal with the moose problem. With this, Pete concludes to himself that these moose are what he’s been seeing lately.

The moose seem to thrive in environments where people have real issues communicating with each other and waste a lot of time avoiding problems they know have to be resolved. The more the issues are ignored, the bigger the moose grow.

Pete definitely has to speak up and deal with the moose.

As Pete reviewed his workshop book, he came up with some useful revelations:

• Regrets for actions we don’t take are difficult on our soul.


• Fear is all in our head.


• Fear is a powerful form of imagery – it’s our own terrifying optical illusion.


• Fear lets the air out of the tires that roll us along through life. If enough air is released, the tires will be damaged and we’ll be forced to slow down or stop to address the problem.


• What would you do if you weren’t afraid?

That Sinking Feeling

After all this, Pete finally comes to the point where he decides to do what he can to make everything better. With the help of Jason, he gets people to sit down with him and comes up with the following discussion points:

Rules of Engagement

• Sniping, potshots, or put downs are not permitted.


• Discussions are to focus on the problem, issue or behaviour and avoid personal put downs, judgmental statements, or sweeping generalizations.


• Everyone is to participate and stay engaged in the conversation.


• No cutting each other off, finishing someone else’s sentences, or engaging in side conversations.


• Phones, pagers, e-mail devices, and non-participants are not to interrupt the meeting.

Three Steps for Excellent Moose Hunting

• Stop picking up and throwing moose pies at each other and talk about the moose instead.


• Agree to collectively jump up at the same time and tackle the moose when it appears, since any one individual will probably be killed if she/he tries it alone. Moose are really dangerous.


• Figure out how the moose got in the room and block that path to prevent any more of them from getting in.

Three Basic Ways for a Team to Make a Decision

• Command – made by a team member (often the boss) without any input from other team members


• Consultative – made by a team member after consulting others who have knowledge or who must be committed to the decision for it to work.


• Consensus – made by the entire team as a group.

Facing the Bull

To put solid plans in place in able to move them forward, the team develops top 5 Strategic Imperatives, through an exercise called “bucketing” – grouping similar ideas.

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  CULTURE CHANGE/LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT. This includes reducing victim-thinking, bringing core values to life, increasing teamwork/ownership, and developing leadership skills at all levels.

  
  


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  PROCESS MANAGEMENT. Reducing costly errors and rework, improving client service levels, and breaking down department silos.

  
  


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  COMMUNICATIONS. Increasing two-way conversations up, down, and across operations; identifying and dealing with moose issues; and using e-mail more effectively.

  
  


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  DECISION MAKING AND ACCOUNTABILITY. Cutting bureaucracy by reducing approval levels/bottlenecks, simplifying systems, and getting everyone to take more responsibility for their work.

  
  


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  MANAGEMENT TEAM DYNAMICS. Increasing meeting effectiveness, reducing turf protection, and increasing teamwork and coordination.

  
  

Two Steps Forward, Four Hooves Back

When the Senior VP Doug sends out an email to all his managers about the company’s growing absenteeism problem, the main part of the message reads as follows:

Clockroaches are those employees who are as useful as a roach and mooch off our time clock. Judging by the parking lot at starting and quitting times, we have way too many around here. I am fed up with you telling me about their excuses, whining, and complaining. We need a new standard for you and them: impress me or leave.

This pushes Pete to finally speak up and tell Doug that calling their staff names is not consistent with the company’s value of treating each other with respect. After having been told this, the embarrassed Doug requests Pete to come up with a solid action plan for his own team.

In the Winner’s Circle

The meeting takes a turn for the worse – and then some. Pete’s action plans for his own team and department aren’t accepted by Doug. As a matter of fact, to add insult to injury, Doug fires Pete, blaming him for all the mess that the company has gone through, and fixating on Pete’s ‘moose’ ideas.

Pete accepts his fate gladly and takes his firing in stride.  He begins applying for managerial positions elsewhere.

As it turns out, however, Newton-Millbank Tech Services isn’t through with Pete yet. To Pete’s complete surprise, Cy Garnet, Doug’s boss, invites Pete for a lunch meeting.

In the course of the meeting, Pete learns from Cy that after his departure from the company, Doug has become completely unbearable. As a result, conditions for the company just ended up worse. And in the end, they had to let go of Doug.

Together with the rest of the financial board, Cy offers Pete the Senior Vice-President position, Doug’s job – a complete turnaround from what had transpired weeks before. And after thinking it over for a good number of days and after talking it over with his wife, Pete accepts the offer and returns to NMTS.

The next few months involve some of the hardest work of Pete’s professional life. The hours are long and the discussions difficult. He takes a few intensive days of preparation filled with lots of practice and feedback to improve his speaking and presentation skills. It proves to be a somewhat ego-bruising exercise, but in the end, the payoff is huge.

Pete would look back years later and say it was one of the most significant personal-growth investments he’d ever made – and it was a great achievement for NMTS as well.

Pete’s personal and organizational turnaround is quite a story. Be inspired by his courageous leadership, and resolve to face your own moose as well!

ISBN: 978-0-978-2221-7-8

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