This is the second of the areas in which you need to excel identified by Debbie Benton in CEO Material. It comprises six elements.

Feeling broadly adequate

Many people have problems with this one. Is broadly adequate enough? Surely it’s the outstanding people who get to the top? I suggest that isn’t really so. Indeed there are some absolutely  outstanding managers and CEOs, but actually not all that many. If a group of middle managers were asked to name the most outstanding manager they know, I suspect that only a few names would be on each of their lists. Is your boss outstanding? Is your boss’s boss outstanding? (You do not have to share these thoughts with them!).

Debra Benton suggests that if you accept that you are broadly adequate, you have reason to feel quite self-confident, and self-confidence is what you need.

Being decisive

Few people have doubts about this one. But pause for a moment. What does it mean to be ‘decisive’? Basically it means making decisions, which are (far) more often right than wrong. You can take your time over making them. Being decisive doesn’t mean making momentous decisions instantly – like they do on TV. Being decisive means adopting a process for making decisions that generally leads to effective decisions. It includes being focused and setting goals.

Although you make the decision, the decision-making process should not include you alone. Take advice, ask other people and probe their advice to you, but a CEO cannot offer the excuse that the decision was made by a committee. S/he is is accountable for his/her decisions, and many a CEO has lost his/her job because his/her decisions were wrong. You must be accountable for your decisions at your own managerial level. After all, you are the CEO of your department!

Seeking honest feedback and improving on it

This is one of the things that is very difficult to do, especially in an Asian environment, where seeking feedback from those who report to you is not normal practice. As a long term resident in   Asia, I think this is a pity, and is inhibiting to effective management. But having said that, it would be wrong to give the impression that seeking feedback – we’ll think about ‘honest’ in a moment – is extremely common practice in the west either. Far from it in my experience.

In my early days in industry, I worked for an oil company who sent middle managers who were thought to be CEO material away on a learning program in a quiet place. They went through a series of psychological tests and interviews and shared the results of questionnaires about them, some of which had been completed by their staff. The process was described by one manager who had been through it as being taken apart for a couple of days and then being put back together again. One manager in particular went through the process and came back with the report which was made up on every participant. On his return, he called all of his staff together and shared with them his report. He held nothing back, and asked all his staff to feel free to talk with him to explain why they had assessed him as they had, and to help him overcome the deficiencies in his performance that they had identified.

There was no stampede to do this, but eventually some brave souls did accept this invitation. Interestingly, that man was the only one from that batch who attained CEO level. I share that story to let you know that I think Debra Benton is absolutely correct in her advice, but, my word, it takes great courage. Courage, of course is also a CEO characteristic.

More on this theme next time. Stay tune.

Bob

In her book,  CEO Material, Debbie Benton identifies 16 areas on which you should work if you want to be regarded as CEO material. The first of these is Craftsmanship, which is a concept not generally used with reference to managers. A craftsmen is more often a skilled manual worker, who gains the ‘craftsman’ title by being especially skilled at his/her job. The author identifies four areas of managerial skill in which you should make yourself extremely competent. Let’s check them out.

Having a good track record

I don’t think too many people would disagree with this one. Success breed success in the climb to the top of the managerial ladder. But this is not so straightforward as it might appear. It is possible to be seen as ‘skilled’ if you avoid any serious stuff-ups as a junior manager. But Ms Benton, in common with many writers on management, suggests that the way to get noticed is to do something, rather than not doing something. In other words, toeing the party line and playing ultra-cautious is actually not the way to get noticed – to be seen as having a good track record. On the contrary, doing things successfully is what gets you noticed.

Taking on a generalist not a specialist role

It is not insignificant that the big boss is called the ‘General’ Manager (GM for short). If you get too high in your specialist field you may be highly valuable to the company, but too valuable in that role to be CEO material. Think of wearing a pair of glasses. If you can see  the company only through your accounting – or manufacturing or HR – glasses, then your capacity to make the broader decisions required of a GM is somewhat restricted.

In a large company there may be things like job rotation, so you can get experience in another function, or even become CEO of a small company subsidiary. Don’t let HR push you around however. You are responsible for your own development. So you must recommend to HR where you want to go, and if they won’t let you go there, look for another job (or read the next paragraph!). But avoid being regarded as the company specialist in something, or that is where you will stay.

Constantly seeking information

This element builds on the last one. If you are in a big company, but you cannot persuade HR to move you where you want to go, then at least you can read about something new, or attend courses on it in your own time. Get information about other functions, because you need to be a generalist. And if you do something in your own time – because your company is too mean to give you time to learn – make sure that your boss knows about it.

Get involved with people in the organization in this new specialty and let them know that you understand what they are talking about. If there is a promotion coming up into this specialty, and  the senior managers in it know you know what you are talking about, it may be these managers, rather than your own who recommend you for the position.

Having a fire in your belly

This is not as painful as it sounds!

You need to be keen, and to be seen to be keen. Promotions do not come to wallflowers – or at least we hope they don’t! Set off to work each morning with the intention of doing something different and significant, not just to do the daily grind. Humdrum is not a word you should have in your vocabulary if the CEO office is your target.

Stand by for the next posting

Bob

DA Benton, McGraw-Hill,  2009

Debra Benton is a successful consultant and author, with a long list of top drawer clients. She has previously written best-selling books including Executive Charisma, and How to Act like a CEO.

This book is sub-titled ‘How to be a Leader in any Organization‘ but could almost be sub-titled ‘Debra’s Book of Lists,’ because each chapter contains lists of characteristics and is filled with exhortations of what you should do if you want to to be regarded as a potential CEO. In her Conclusion chapter she actually lists 365 things you should do – one for each day of the year – to get yourself regarded as potential CEO material.

The author follows the same approach in each chapter. First, she gives a short bulleted list of key elements in the chapter topic. This bulleted list generally contains three points, each of which becomes a section heading a little later on. A couple of these lists are slightly longer. Then she lists the behaviors that a budding CEO should exhibit to demonstrate competence in the topic area. The list for Chapter 1 Have a Good Track Record, for example identifies 20 such behaviors, though this is the longest list in the book.

There is nothing exceptionable in the book, but nor is there really anything new, though the author makes some very insightful observations. Some of the chapter headings may raise eyebrows however. You Feel Broadly Adequate (chapter 5) could be one such.

She does sometimes resort to making recommendations that make good sense, but gives no clue as to how to implement them, which is the major weakness in the book. An exhortation with no real advice on how to make it happen seems to me to be not so valuable. Likewise, some of the headings are broader than the actual topics. One of the three key points bulleted in chapter 1, for example, is Develop People Relationships. No one would argue with that as a useful attribute for a budding CEO, but the section dealing with the attribute is almost all about the importance of a good mentor. No one would gainsay that either, but there is more to good people relationships than having a good mentor, I feel.

Much of the content of the book is derived from interviews with around 200 practicing CEOs, and throughout the book, the points the author is making are supported by direct quotes from these CEOs. The  quotes are not specifically ascribed, however., at the request of the CEOs concerned.

If you are aiming for the top, then this book can give you some useful pointers that may help you get there.

Stand by for the next posting

Bob

The Socialized Mind – an Example

In the last posting I talked of the way children are socialized when  they are young. This also happens in business, with even more pernicious results. Let me share a story with you.

Many years ago, I was consulting to a large Asian conglomerate – name withheld to protect the guilty. One of the responsibility areas of my specific client contact was international recruitment. My client contact spent a lot of time – and company money – traveling the world talking to young nationals who were on the verge of graduating. His purpose was to entice these national graduates – from the best business schools in Europe and America – to return to their homeland and work for this company.

That is fair and fine.

I asked him what happened when these fresh graduates returned and took up employment with the company. He proudly told me that they underwent an ‘orientation program’ for three weeks where they learned how the company worked.

He was a little surprised when I was less than impressed with this concept. He asked me to explain myself – actually he demanded that I explain myself!

In my innocence, I had the temerity to suggest to him that while the idea of an orientation program was very sound, I felt that the way he explained it to me was back-to-front.

It seemed to me that these new graduates would be heaps more up-to-date with new ideas in management and organization, that they should be teaching the existing  managers what they had learned, since they were heaps more current with what was  going on in the world of business than were the existing managers who probably had not read a book on management or organization in maybe 20 years.

Since he was speechless with rage at this point he couldn’t interrupt me, so  so I bravely – or foolhardily – carried on.

If these grads were given the assignment of making presentations to the existing managers instead of being lectured at by them, the existing managers would be getting a very reasonably priced learning session. Then, instead of the grads going out into the company and watching how things were done and learning how to do things ‘the company way’, they should be in the company exploring how things were currently being done and offering thoughts on potential improvement.

So instead of being assessed on how much they had assimilated, they should be assessed on how much they could change.

A funny thing happened shortly after this ‘discussion’. The decided, my client manager told me, that my presence was no longer required, and I was offered some money to go away – and not come back.

I didn’t know about socialized minds at that time, but after reading Immunity to Change, I can now explain that the company was in fact trying to anchor the minds of the new management trainees in ways of management that were maybe already a generation out of date. In fact the program was geared to bring the management trainees back to level 1 from level 2 or even 3 where they probably actually were. And in hindsight, the longer the trainees stayed in the company, the more firmly they would be anchored at this level, so when they were senior enough to be lecturing the management trainees 20 years down the track, they may be saying exactly the same things as were said to them 20 years before .

I left the contract bloodied but unbowed.

Was I right? Please give some feedback.

See you soon.

Bob

The following table explains the concept in a bit more detail:

The Three Adult Plateaus Described

So what does all that mean?

Socialized Mind

If this is the level of mental complexity with which I view the world, then messages that I think to send will be strongly influenced by what I believe others want to hear, thus self-reinforcing. Because this is the lowest level of mental complexity it may be marked by very convergent thinking, often with limited understanding. It is the level of thinking where you are told to think in a certain way, so you interpret all incoming ideas on the basis of this. The way I think is the way I am.

For those of you old enough to remember George Orwell’s novel entitled Animal Farm will recall that the new animal leaders at Animal Farm trained the sheep to break into a chant of ‘four legs good, two legs bad’ any time that ideas were offered that may have brought the concept of Animal Farm into question. Thus divergent ideas were not even listened to

To an extent, we tend to bring up our children in the early years of their life at this level of mental complexity, to the extent that when in adolescence or even before, they begin to question what we tell them, or have told them, a frequent reaction is punishment for them. So if an adult remains at this level of mental complexity, ‘childlike’ could be a way of describing them.

You can see how difficult it might be to change the minds of such people

We’ll look at the other levels in the next posting

Bob

The bulk of the population are on or around the second plateau, the self-authoring mind, the characteristics of which are:

Moving through the Levels

The thinking at level 1 is very concrete – very black and white. As one moves to levels 2 and 3, the landscape becomes much greyer.

Research cited in the book which we will not explore in any detail indicates that less than 10% of the population are at level 1, and a similar percentage is either moving to or already in level 3, leaving the bulk of the population moving to or already in level 2

I am personally uneasy with the figures cited in the research, and I would want to question where the research took place. I suspect it will have been in the West. I believe there is a far larger proportion of the world’s population at level one than the figures suggest.  Coincidentally, while reading this book, I was also reading another by Robert Elegant, a journalist who spent most of his working life in Asia. His book was written more than a decade before this one, but he describes how political systems can keep people at level one – citing the Great Cultural Revolution in China as an example. Wherever a culture talks of – and represses – ‘dissidents’, it is telling people what to think, which must keep them at level one. One could also question the influences of religion in this concept also. Think of Galileo being punished for suggesting that the earth revolved around the sun, which contradicted the dogma of the Catholic Church at that time. Or the absolute restriction on the exploration of certain ideas which are regarded as being contrary to Islam.

Until the academic community accepts these concepts there is the probability that the whole academic system may be working at level 1, thus producing level 1 graduate. Now there is a scary thought!

I’ll leave you with that one.

Bob

They introduce two new concepts very early in the book, an it is important that these are understood before you can get the most out of the bulk of the book.

It was commonly misunderstood that people cannot make serious mental changes after they reach their thirties, but more recent research cited by the authors has shown quite conclusively that in fact they can. The authors call this concept ‘mental complexity’ and they stress that this is quite different from IQ, which in fact doesn’t change markedly after a certain – quite young – age. So it’s not having or not having a high level of IQ that matters. It’s what you do with the IQ you have got.

They show that there are in fact three different levels of mental complexity, which they show in the following diagram :

There are two catches. The first is that the movement from one level to the next is not automatic. Unless something happens in one’s life, then one can stay at the level of the socialized mind forever – thus giving rise to the myth that people can’t change, develop, or grow as they get older. Fortunately, the research indicates that only a comparatively small percentage do so.

We shall explore some further implications of the three plateaus in the next posting

Don’t go away

Bob

If this sounds like an invitation to play trills on your own trumpet, you need to think again. Larina Kase makes a very valid point when she says: ‘We need to overcome the fear of self-promotion because research has shown that visibility and connections are the most powerful predictors of promotions. This means that you can be the best person in the world at what you do, but if your results are the world’s best kept secret, you will be too.’ 

If you blow your own trumpet, you are seen as a bragger. So? Have someone else blow your trumpet and one of the best ways to ensure that this happens is to find a business need within your organization and fill it – and do a good job. Then people will notice you and do your bragging for you.

Gain Composure and Keep Control over your Emotions

This is all about emotional intelligence – or lack of it. I believe not enough time and effort is devoted to developing your emotional quotient (EQ), which unlike IQ, can be developed – with effort. Out of control emotions – or absence of EQ – can be major problems for leaders, and Kase hints that without developed EQ, it is impossible to be a confident leader. Bear in mind that your emotional balance as a leader will have a marked effect on the emotional reactions of your team members.

As Kase suggests: ‘The emotional task of leaders is primal (first) in two senses: It is both the original and the most important act of leadership. The emotions of leaders are contagious. You can have a positive – or negative impact on the performance of others.’

What is EQ? No space to discuss at length here, but key skills include:

• Self-awareness
• Self-management
• Social awareness
• Relationship management

Having consulted to an organization where a key manager had the EQ of an underdeveloped gnat, I can vouch for the awful effects this had on the organization.

Stand Out! Be Different to get Better Results

Again, this may be a scary suggestion to follow. But, quoting Seth Goddin, Larina suggests that you don’t have to be beige, but you don’t have to be neon green either. Goddin proposed the concept of the purple cow.

One way to make yourself remarkable is by shocking people with how much value you deliver beyond their expectations, which is much more valuable than wearing odd socks or outlandish clothes.

There is a close link here between the first and third components in this posting. Promote yourself, and stand out, by being a superior performer. Superior performers get noticed – and have organizational promotion potential.

Stand by for the next posting

Bob

Build Supreme Motivation in Yourself and Others

As a confident leader, she suggests, you motivate yourself to get outside your comfort zone to get better results, but you also inspire others to move out of their comfort zones.

Mood is important and contagious and a harmonious climate leads to both inspiration and productivity. The better the energy level and mood of the team, the better the work performance.

The key to growth and success is a mindset that is focused on learning. A fixed mindset entails the belief that you have a specific set of skills and talents that are relatively unchangeable. Self-confidence in fixed mindset people is vulnerable. When the going gets tough, growth-oriented people get going in a positive direction, while fixed mindset people get frustrated and disappointed and move in a negative direction or not at all.

Overcome Procrastination and Boost your Productivity

I think there is a big dollop of procrastination in all of us. I concede there certainly is in me.

Procrastination can be part of your comfort zone so it’s a habit. To break any habit – even a bad one – requires initial discomfort, and you might not be willing to make yourself uncomfortable right now. Even doing something that is purely enjoyable and relaxing can be tough because we feel we are sacrificing work time – and we are not supposed to enjoy what we are doing at work, are we?

Most people are afraid of failing. As a result, we pay it safe, try to do too much, or avoid taking action. The solution, ironically, is to fail. When we allow ourselves to fail, we see it is not as horrible as we had anticipated and that the effects are not so pervasive and long-lasting as we had feared.

We often would rather live with live with a difficult situation than face the uncertainty resulting from resolving it. This is the fear of the unknown – a great procrastinator.

Be Authentic and Project Likability and Confidence

At first glance this suggestion may seem a contradiction in terms. If I am myself, how can anyone ever like me? And this poses a problem for the confident leader, suggests Kase, calling it the ‘Imposture Syndrome’ – you feel that you are ‘acting’ in a leadership position. The imposture syndrome is both a cause and a result of not being a confident leader, she suggests.  Again it boils down to your mindset – what you think – and you can choose what you think.

A key support for this method of turning problems into opportunities, she suggests, is becoming a good listener. If you interrupt and don’t listen to other people’s ideas, you aren’t likable. Is this why you feel your boss is not like-able? Now look in the mirror. What would your staff say about you?

Food for thought.

Bob

Let’s look at the first couple.

Focus on what’s Important

The first step in getting focused is to find what Kase calls your “Big It”, or what’s most important. This may seem obvious, but it’s not always apparent. An important – and seemingly silly – question is for whom is it important. Kase introduces the idea of the “Inner Committee’, which probably comprises all the people who have ever had an influence on your life. She asks: Do you want to do it, or is someone inside your head saying you ought to do it.

She suggests an interesting definition of ‘true success’, which comprises achievement, significance, legacy and satisfaction

When you work from withing your comfort zone, you tend to set only safe goals. Why not go for big, challenging ones?

Keep your Energy Flowing

Peak performers in business, sports, relationships and life share several characteristics. The two most important qualities are:

• Knowing how to regulate their energy
• Focusing on results

Visioning – the mental rehearsal of achievement – has shown to be nearly as effective as real life practice with Olympic athletes. Visioning a business performance includes:

• Be clear about your objectives
• Be clear about the process
• Use your five senses
• Connect your image to your mission

Some people are addicted to activities. The difference between workaholics and peak performers is that workaholics seek out activities, whereas peak performers seek out results.

She talks about the need to link your thoughts with your behaviors to modulate your energy. You may remember that this idea was central to an earlier Book of the Month called Performance Intelligence.

More next posting.

Bob

Make the change stick by using your natural strengths instead of overcompensating for your weaknesses

There’s some meaty stuff in the heading for this step. Let’s carve into it.

At first sight, the name of the step almost doesn’t make sense. How can you harness your strengths and release control?

As ambitious, achievement-oriented people, she says, we sometimes get caught in the vicious cycles of trying to control situations, and often what we think works is the opposite of what does. Control is paradoxical, and letting go of ineffective control is the key to change. If you’re unwilling to experience discomfort,you’ll probably have more discomfort because you’ll try to control it with actions that end up increasing it. If you try to make sure that something will not happen, it is more likely to happen.

It is coincidental that this book follows the last Book of the Month, Immunity to Change, which is all about how our subconscious stops us from doing what we know we need to do.

Our natural tendency to over-control not only impacts ourselves adversely, but can also adversely affect our staff. Ever heard of a practice called ‘micro-managing’?

Like anything, control is useful in moderation, but you can have too much of even a good thing. When you are exerting a lot of effort, but not getting the results you want, it may be because you are trying too hard. When you are outside your comfort zone, you’ll be tempted to do what you’ve always done, which will give you the results you always get. Remember that Peter Drucker defined insanity as doing the same things and expecting different results. Joe Vitale in The Attractor Factor (2007) suggests you should focus on what you want, but be prepared not to have it.

A couple of months ago, in relation to another Book of the Month, The Differentiated Workforce, we made some observations about performance appraisals, one of which was the over-emphasis on areas for improvement. In Immunity to Change, the authors make the same point, and so does Larina Kase here. Maybe we should ensure that in the performance appraisal documentation, we include a section on strengths, which would identify what the appraisee does well – and should do more of.

This step seemed to have more grey boxes than the others. But then, we did say that the grey boxes were one of the strengths of this book.

In the next postings we’ll quickly explore Part 2 of the book, which is about turning problems into opportunities. We all have plenty of problems, so even if we could turn half of them into opportunities, what a wonderful world it might be!

Stay tuned

Bob

Keep yourself moving ahead even when you want to stop

This step indicates how we can turn anxiety into something positive.

“When we stay within our comfort zones, we don’t experience much anxiety, but we don’t experience much growth. Knowing exactly how to make the most of our worries is something that inevitably comes up as we get closer to our goals. With no anxiety you get no results. With too much, you get poor results, But with the right amount, you get great results” (pp 68/69)

Larina offers an interesting definition of anxiety, suggesting that it  is simply energy with an unfavorable interpretation.She also suggests that trying to avoid anxiety is like pushing a beachball down into the swimming pool. The harder you push it down, the higher it pops back up.

Her answer is deceptively simple, though initially counter-intuitive – simply allow yourself to experience the anxiety, and it will work for you rather than against you. Psychologically, the more you try to suppress a thought, the more that thought recurs.(How often do you actually calm down after some well-meaning person suggests that you calm down?)

She makes another counter-intuitive suggestion, that acceptance entails two things:

• A willingness to experience all feelings and events
• The ability to use the energy which you would usually use to try to suppress the thoughts and feelings that you find disturbing toward acting ion accordance with your values

Recent studies have shown that this works, and that having a sense of control in your job leads to improved performance

The author suggests that Step 6 is the most important step, so we’ll devote a whole posting to it.

Stick around

Bob

Whom do you know and what resources do you need to help you make   the change?

Larina Kase makes an important point about being a team leader, which I can’t remember having come across before. “You need to organize motivate and guide the team so that you are all successful. Not ‘please help me to be successful’. The higher you go, the higher your team goes”.

You need to assess who is on your team – and you frequently have no choice about this – and then assess the readiness of the team to change (‘cos if they won’t, you can’t!). Two leader behaviors are particularly important here:

• Give everyone the right tools – here is where you show yourself to be a supportive leader rather than a directive one
• Be generous with praise and gratitude

For this latter, she cites the work of positive psychologist Martin Seligman, whose research found that by focusing on three good things that went well each day for a week, and also focusing on people’s ‘signature strengths’ (what they like doing and do well), led not only to success but also measurably increased happiness. (How many times has your boss concentrated on things that went well against those that went badly? And how many times have you done so with your staff??)

GROWTH Step 4      Win with the Right Decisions

Make those tough choices that lead to your best results

The author suggests that the million-dollar question is: ‘Is it worth it?”, and that this question should be asked before you take the risk, and not afterward. She suggests that you conduct a cost/benefit analysis to make yourself aware of  the costs, challenges , risks and potential problems with working towards your goals as well as the potential rewards, payoffs, benefits and wonderful outcomes.  You need to consider:

• Your feelings during this process
• Your schedule and resources
• The things that can go wrong
• Other people’s reactions

She suggests that the biggest challenge of all is the ‘in-the-moment decision’, the one that needs to be made on the spot.

Think about it

Bob

What change do you want to make and why is it important to you?

Interestingly, one of the key factors that Larina Kase identifies about vision is anxiety, probably from her time on the clinical faculty of the Center for the Treatment and Study of Anxiety at the University of Pennsylvania. But it has to be the right amount of anxiety as she tabulates below:

This diagram underlines the main point of this step. To be a leader, you must be working outside your comfort zone. Your vision for change must make you feel uncomfortable with the challenge you have set yourself, to prepare for which you need to answer four questions:

• What am I successful in spite of?
• If I could change one aspect of my work performance, what would it be?
• What is my greatest strength?
• What drives me crazy about other people?

Some of these questions seem counter-intuitive, but ask them anyway.

GROWTH Step 2      Realize your Commitment

Be honest: are you ready to make the change right now?

Kase suggests that readiness – in ourselves and others – is often something we assume rather than measure. You can check yourself through an online questionnaire on her website (see this title in Book of the Month).

She proposes five stages to go through

• Pre-contemplation – not even thinking about it
• Contemplation – thinking about it
• Preparation – getting ready to do something
• Action – doing something
• Maintenance – long-term progress and success

She then explains when to jump straight in and when to take things just one step at a time

Bob

The Confident Leader

How the most Successful People go from Effective to Exceptional

Larina Kase, McGraw Hill, 2009

Larina Kase has already co-authored a business best-seller called The Confident Speaker, (with Harrison Monarch, in 2007), which I must confess I haven’t read.

This book is very practical, In fact it has very little theory in it, and is based on her experiences as a psychologist and a business coach. Thus it is not like some other books on leadership which are heavily based on research studies – and which, because of this, can sometimes be heavy reading.

There are several unusual features about the book.

Firstly, it has virtually no introduction. It starts straight into the first of the six steps that she recommends that confident leaders follow – giving the acronym GROWTH, incidentally. So there is no theory about why she recommends these six steps. This is not a drawback. I have read many books on leadership, and there is nothing in this one that contradicts the contents of any of them.

The practicality of the book is highlighted by Kase’s grey boxes. Throughout the book, as she recommends something that the person wishing to become a confident leader should do, she inserts a grey shaded box which details the actions that need to be taken to implement the step. For a person who is experiencing the loneliness of the long-distance learner-leader this is an extremely helpful addition to the book. For many of the grey action boxes, there is also a reference to the website that accompanies the book, at www.pascoaching.com.

Through the web site you can access free e-training programs, which may ease the loneliness of the long-distance learner-leader even more. Also through the website, you can access Larina’s blog The MindsetofSuccess.com which is updated with new material monthly, all of which – so far as I researched it – is valuable supplementary material to this book.

One of the newer ideas in this book is that to be a confident leader you need to be able to live with – and even court – anxiety. In fact she suggests that if you are not a little uncomfortable with what you are doing as a leader, you simply exist inside your own comfort zone which is the place to be to stagnate, not to lead. Identifying this aspect of leadership may well arise from her earlier life as a member of the clinical faculty of Center for the Treatment and Study of Anxiety at the University of Pennsylvania, USA.

This book is great for the newer leader – in employment or as an entrepreneur – who realizes that s/he doesn’t know it all yet, and would like some easy to read, intensely practical, advice about how to become a confident leader. If you are one such, go get it. If you are not you probably won’t be reading this anyway!

We’ll be devoting a few postings about the content of the book to further help convince you that you need to read it and learn from it. It is available in paperback form, so is easy for you to pop into your briefcase to read when you get a spare moment or two.

Bob

Another Toyota why?

Professors Becker, Huselid and Beatty, authors of The Differentiated Workforce, are very forthright about this situation, as shown in the quotation used in the last posting.

They – and I  – would criticize the practice on at least three grounds:

• It does not discriminate between positions – “A”positions and position holders get the same as “C” positions and position holders
• The practice of one bonus for everybody fails to recognize the fact that some positions are vastly more important than others in the achievement of organizational strategic goals
• It does not account for variability in performance of various jobholders

• Not all accounts supervisors supervise equally well, nor do bank tellers all tell equally

For these three reasons alone, the practice is highly questionable, but there are more reasons to question it.

It makes a total mockery of the whole performance appraisal system, where managers and supervisors are expected to agonize over the performance of their direct reports. They are supposed to assess these performances – in some cases being required to assess their various staff member’s performances on scales that range from 1 to 100. They are supposed to assess these performances with a view to identifying whether the performer in question is ready to be promoted or should be considered for termination. Some managers and supervisors take this responsibility very seriously and really do agonize over it.

The nett result is that it doesn’t matter a damn. The jobholder recommended for promotion and the one recommended for termination both get the same bonus.

Crazy, isn’t it?

And there is another reason to question the practice. In The Differentiated Workforce, the authors frequently use the phrase ‘line of sight’ in relation to a job and its jobholder(s) and strategic objectives. What they mean is that in some cases it is hard to see how above average or below average performance in some jobs affects the achievement of company strategic objectives. And they propose that probably 80% or more of all jobs in a company fall into this category.

If truth be told, the reason for a common bonus is pure laziness on the part of line managers,  HR and accounting. Let’s face it. It’s the easy way out. No calculations, just a blanket payment.

I make no apologies for this last statement.

Bob

Back to Toyota – why?

The underlying reason is the one we have explored before – equality rather then equity. Our professors Becker, Huselid and Beatty are remarkably forthright on this issue.

‘The goal of performance management and reward systems is to execute strategy by aligning rewards and feedback with actual levels of employee performance. Managers need to ensure that key performers in important positions are highly compensated, good performers are moderately compensated, and poor performers are either helped to improve or to find employment elsewhere’ (p 135)

So there!

All of the authors will be familiar with the management policy in GE under Jack Welch, that the bottom 10% of managers at annual appraisal time was fired. And it seems they would agree with that approach. And so would I!

In their inimitable way, they crystallize their – and our – thinking in a telling table, titled Conventional vs. Strategic Approaches to Compensation.

In which column would your firm sit? If it’s the left hand column, then you have a way to go

Bob

Let’s borrow directly from our authors on this one. On pages 53-4 in The Differentiated Workforce, under the heading of Traditional Approaches are not the Answer, they say this:

‘Conventional approaches to job design use attributes of employees and the environment within which they work (in contrast to the strategy that must be executed) as the primary criteria to determine job structure. Historically, most large firms have used complex job-evaluation systems to allocate points to jobs, rank them, then locate these jobs in the firm’s pay system on the basis of these points. For example, the Hay system for job evaluation prices jobs based on the relative value of skill, effort, responsibility and working conditions of a particular job. The typical job evaluation process allocates points to benchmark jobs, then the remaining jobs are placed in the hierarchy. This process drives a number of organizational decisions, most notably compensation … … the conventional approach looks both internally and to history for its definition of value; what we need is an approach based on future value creation and strategic job worth.’

This situation is made worse by the stress on equality, mentioned in a previous posting, so in conglomerates, where there are many different types of job, it is felt to be important that a job in subsidiary A, which sells foodstuffs, has to be equated to a job in organization B, which services motor cars. With respect, are we comparing apples with apples here? I think not.

And to complicate the issue further, the link between job evaluation and pay opens up another can of worms. If a company can persuade a new hire to accept a salary lower than that allocated for the position – which is possible – that jobholder may not carry the appropriate job title. I know of a situation where this occurred, resulting in a person, who was undeniably managing a department and reporting directly to the GM, having to be called an assistant manager, even though there was no manager to be assisted.

And in addition to that, the system get set in concrete, so that it takes a review by a high level working committee to change a classification once it is made. This still totally without reference to the contribution of the job to the creation of wealth for the company, nor to the performance of the person in the position in question. The working committee may not even know the person, let alone his/her contribution to the achievement of the company’s strategic objectives. They are dealing with an abstract ”job”. The jobholder is not even considered.

Many year ago I was in an Army, and I can remember such a working committee of senior officers visiting the camp in which I was operating, and after two days of ‘intense’ discussion, and a jolly dinner in the Mess – which I enjoyed hugely – concluding that a particular position could be occupied, preferably by a corporal, but a temporary sergeant could also do the job!

The classification of jobs is a minor part of the subject matter of the book, but it can be a major part of the job of HR in a company. And I must confess I agree with the authors. It seems all a pleasant waste of time.

Next posting we’ll explore the main point that the authors make in this thought-provoking book.

Have you bought your copy yet?

Bob

The first of my Toyota ‘whys?’ again.

The larger the organization – and as organizations grow, the HR department seems to grow accordingly – the more paranoid it becomes about equality. Professors Becker, Huselid and Beatty put it this way in The Differentiated Workforce.

Many HR leaders have spent their careers ensuring that all employees are treated equally instead of equitably (p121) [Emphasis is theirs, not mine]

They emphasize that a differentiated workforce stresses equity ahead of equality. [Their emphasis again]

Consider the table below

Why are there no entries in the right hand column? No, I didn’t forget. There is only one, and I want it to be in large type in case you miss it: Under-performing vs best competitors

If you can see your company in the above table, then you need this book – badly and fast!

Many companies would be proud of meeting the criteria in the table, I am sure. I once consulted to a company with a very poor sales force, both in performance and attitude. My recommendation was to fire them all, thus getting rid of under-performers and the baggage that had accumulated over a period of time that made them so ineffective. The GM’s response? “But it is almost impossible to fire people in this company!”

Another story again from a company to which I consulted, though this one has nothing to do with me. The accountants decided to ‘reduce headcount’ so the new GM, filled with democratic fervor, offered a very good redundancy package to anybody who wanted to take it. Who took it? You guessed it! The better performers – many of whom were back in the company shortly as ‘consultants’, being paid (considerably) more than their previous salary!

Who in your company would take redundancy if a similar – silly – offer were made??

Equality or equity? It’s your pick!

Bob

Why is this sacred cow?

Let me share a true story. I was once taken to task by the assistant HR manager of a company to which I was consulting. I had proposed a change to the company structure, which included a change in the way the sales forces were paid. The lady bailed me up one day – almost literally ‘spitting tacks’. “You have no right to interfere with my staff” she spat. “Madam”, I replied, “you have no staff”. She became apoplectic, to the extent I deemed it expedient to withdraw – from the scene, not from the remark.

I am so glad that some few years later, the learned professorial authors of The Differentiated Workforce have justified my stand.

The only staffs that HR has – and is accountable for – is the staff of the HR department. Any confusion on this point and you has a confused organization. Let me ask a silly question. If a staff member is misbehaving in some way – from harassing other staff members to coming regularly late to work – who issues a warning letter? Hands up those who answered ‘HR’. Now go to the straight to the bottom of the class.

If a line manager is accountable for the performance of his/her department – and if s/he isn’t, s/he shouldn’t be employed at all – then it is his/her responsibility to handle all issues relating to his/her staff. And this includes the behavior of the staff in whatever circumstances, including the issue of warning letters as required. HR may advise, and sometimes they should, because HR will be (or should be) more conversant with the laws of the land relating to staff matters that a line manager, but it is categorically NOT the role of HR to issue warning letters to any except HR staff.

‘Aha’, you challenge me. “But what about the staff member’s personal file into which the warning letter must be placed? That’s held by HR”.(This a little triumphantly!). My response – and I believe professors Becker, Huselid and Beatty would support me – would be “Why?” (I have learned something from my reading about Toyota, so there could be four more ‘whys’ to come)

“Because HR always keep the personal files” “Why?”

Eventually it may transpire that HR has always kept the personal files, which may elicit my last “why”.

Let’s look at the situation from a different point of view.

Conventional wisdom suggests that a start up company doesn’t look to hire an “HR specialist” until its staff numbers reach 150-200. So what happens to the personal files in companies that do not have an HR specialist? Maybe they do not have them, but more likely, the line managers maintain them. Then, one day, the CEO announces that an HR specialist is to be appointed and all the line managers heave a collective sigh of relief and bundle up the personal files of their staff and hand them over to the lucky new HR person, who accepts them gratefully because its something to put in the otherwise empty filing cabinets.

The company’s HR problems start from there, simply because HR is doing what it shouldn’t be doing – looking after the people in the organization.

Another sacred cow gets slaughtered in the next posting.

Bob

Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey, Harvard Business Press, 2009

After more than 40 years in the HR business, I thought I knew most of it. This was my ‘big assumption’. Kegan and Lahey know a great deal more than me, I found out, and I thank them for sharing a generation of experience with me – and I hope, you too.

The authors seem to have found the answer to why people find it difficult to change – as you have doubtless found it difficult to change some of your staff. Their discovery is startlingly simple. Most people have an immunity to change. Their research over many years and thousands of people has drawn them to this conclusion, and in this gem of a book, they share their findings with us.

They show how this immunity comes about, how to identify what the immunity – or blockage – to change actually is, and most importantly, how to use their research findings in developmental  activity with your staff and even staff teams.

Did you know that when faced with the dire need to change – your life depends on a change of diet, stopping smoking, and so on – only one person in seven can actually follow the medical advice with the necessary behavior change? Now that’s scary. So is it any wonder that when you advise your staff, at appraisal or some other time, to delegate more, listen better, etc, etc, they don’t do it?

There are two keys to the problem, according to Kegan and Lahey. One is that we often don’t distinguish between a technical change and an adaptive change. A technical change can be effected by simply doing something different – adopting a new technique – and to most managers that’s the only type of change they know. (After all, they haven’t read this book yet!) So with the best will in the world, the appraising manager not only tells his/her direct report that s/he must delegate more, but actually, and helpfully, gives some techniques for the direct report to follow. “Do this and you will become a better delegator”. The direct report tries using the new technique, finds that it doesn’t work so reverts to the previous non-delegatory style. This may be noted by the appraising manager – but it often isn’t.  After all, the appraisal chore is over for another year, now we can get on with the job – it may well be written off as an indication that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

Wrong again! The authors make an impassioned case for the fact that adults can learn a lot if the learning is treated in the right way, which they propose is treating the non-delegation as an adaptive challenge, not a technical one. “There is no drive-through window for adult development”, they observe. This old dog certainly learned some new tricks from his reading this book, I assure you.

They share with the reader an approach called the ‘immunity map’, which you can use to help surface the reasons – and they may be perfectly valid reasons – why the person finds it nigh impossible to change. And incidentally why treating the problem as a  technical problem certainly won’t work.

This is not a book for the faint-heated – it is more  than 300 pages long for starters – but it repays the hard work of reading it. Fortunately the authors do not write like academics.

We shall investigate some of the concepts proposed in the book in future postings and also link the contents of this book with The Differentiated Workforce, which was last month’s Book of the Month.

Bob

Workforce accountability begins with creating performance expectations of both line managers and HR

• So both line managers and HR need to agree and spell out what are their respective accountability as regards workforce development and performance. By doing this the possibility of the whole process falling between the cracks – a concern I expressed in the last posting – is alleviated a little, but not entirely. The agreement must be:
  • Clear – it says exactly what each party will be accountable for
  • Written down – a verbal agreement is insufficient. Writing it down and signing off the agreement is a much stronger commitment
  • Measurable – how will each party be quite sure that the other has met the accountability?
  • Assessed – it needs to become a part of the performance appraisal of each party, and not just assessed on an annual basis only. Once a year is nothing like enough. This accountability is of sufficient importance to the functioning of the company it needs to be assessed at least monthly

Accountability requires inspection to determine if the workforce is meeting  these expectations

• So there are in fact two accountability – although I don’t think the authors make this point clearly enough. The first is accountability for the performance of the workforce in contributing to the achievement of company objectives. The second is the accountability of line and HR managers for facilitating that performance. This is a critical area, because really that’s what line managers and HR are there for – to facilitate and support the performance of the workforce, not to direct and give orders, despite what some line managers may think to the contrary
• The follow-on from this is that workforce development should be a specific entry on the job effectiveness description for both line manager and HR, and the performance of each should be appraised regularly. By whom? By three appraisers – the manager of the respective line manager and HR manager; by the workforce themselves and by each other.
• Can a staff member appraise his/her boss? My word yes! And there should be lot more of it! With feedback from the staff, and a peer assessment from the line manager or HR as the case may be, the manager senior to them both – and it may be one and the same person  – can make a proper assessment of the contributions of each. (In my view, the appraisal of the performance of managers – especially senior managers – is exceptionally poorly done, but more of that anon)

Workforce accountability becomes a reality when when there are consequences for meeting, exceeding or failing to meet expectations, for both line managers and HR

• Here our worthy professors have hit the nail right on the head. So much in the standard system of performance appraisal is meaningless because there are no consequences for non-performance nor any reward for exceeding the desired performance, which, in my view, makes the whole process a futile and time-wasting exercise.

So there are all five of the key points made by Professors Becker, Huselid and Beatty. We be killing sacred cows in the next few postings

Please give some feedback on whether you think what is written in the blog is of value to you, and whether you think that there is something to be learned. In early April, I shall be announcing a major joint project – you and me – for the rest of the year. I do hope you will take part.

Bob

This is a true story, and is offered to indicate how not doing what is recommended by Profs Becker, Huselid and Beatty can be expensive and serious for a company.

The office was a small sales office – around 15 people. The “A” job in the office is the sales and marketing manager. Why? Because the office was selling big ticket items – hopefully once in a lifetime purchases – and this manager is responsible for the total top line of the organization. Unfortunately, the “A” job was filled by a “C” performer and fortunately for both the office and the person, she was ‘promoted upstairs’ moving to a job in Head Office.

The recently appointed GM then set a winning strategy, and took over the role of sales and marketing manager, since Head Office would not allow the appointment of a replacement for the sales and marketing manager.  All other jobs in the office were “B” or “C” jobs. Interestingly, both I and the GM saw the job of Customer Support as a “B” job tending towards an “A”, while Head Office saw the job as , the company saw this latter as a “B” job, tending towards the “C” level. Just a necessary evil

Of course, neither marketing nor HR in Head Office knew about “A”, “B” or “C” jobs, and neither did I nor the GM. None of us had yet read The Differentiated Workforce. In fact the marketing VP at Head Office proudly announces that he has no time to read, so except in the unlikely event that he reads this blog, he will never know about “A” jobs! That is his loss, and sadly that of the company.

As it happened, the Customer Service Manager had been in marketing in a previous life, and ably supported the GM, creating a sort of ‘shared’ “A” job, if this is possible. The system worked well, and the former Sales and Marketing Manager was hardly missed. There was ample and innovative marketing activity.

Sadly, it was not matched by sales success. There were several reasons for this. One related to the product which was very highly priced for the local market, and efforts by GM and the new M&S manager to open the market to foreigners, for whom the product was exceptionally cheap – were vetoed by Head Office. This was coupled with the fact that for some years previous, when the then product range was more priced to the local market, sales had been relatively easy. This had the effect of the sales force waiting for prospects to come to them, thus becoming totally office-bound. This approach did not work with the higher-priced product, but the sales force would not change their ways and go out to prospect.

This situation continued for almost a year, with sales targets well and truly missed, even though regularly reduced. This brought increasing frustration to the GM, who was really an “A” performer in an “A” job, and to the acting M&S manager, who was developing into an “A” performer” in an “A” job with support from her manager, but none from Head Office or her staff.

The authors of The Differentiated Workforce are quite reticent about the support needed for an “A” performer in an “A” job. With no support, from either the sales force or Head Office, neither “A” performer was able to perform at “A” level, in fact they were continually dragged down to low “B” performance

Finally, the GM was approached by a head-hunter, and he accepted a similar position with a major overseas company. HR finally woke up to the potential value of the acting M&S manager – who had been doing two jobs at no extra pay for almost a year – and she was offered a monthly allowance, and a 6 months probation period as M&S manager, but with the proviso that there could be no staff changes – in other words she had to achieve with an un-supportive and under-performing team.

A new opportunity was offered to her, and she resigned also, leaving the sales office with a part-time GM, who attended from Head Office for two to three days a week, no M&S manager, and an under-performing and basically incompetent sales force, which seem to have lifetime tenure.

Where will this office be in six months time? Stay tuned to the blog!

If you would like to comment on this true story, please do so. Address your comments to bob@newbizideas4u, and let’s see if we can get a discussion running. There are actually plenty of discussion points.

Bob

“The first step is to recognize that the workforce is not just HR’s problem, and that line managers and HR leaders must have joint accountability for developing talent throughout the organization”, they suggest (p87).

In the chapter they make five key points, which I will share with you, commenting briefly on each.

Line managers and leaders influence the mindset of the workforce and its capabilities more than the HR function leaders and managers do:

• No real problem here. As soon as a company reaches the size where it has a head office and branches, or around 150 bodies, then HR tends to sit in the head office and rarely get to the branches, if at all. How can they make decisions relating to workforce, therefore, except based on ‘policy’ or written input from someone else (which may or may not be unbiased and accurate)
• Line managers, being with their staff almost all day every day, will clearly influence the staff mindset, and this will have a greater influence on production – of whatever sort – than will dicta from a faceless HR person in head office

Both line managers and HR should be held accountable for the development of a successful workforce

• I have a bit of a problem here. In principle, I agree with the learned professors, but I don’t think this system is workable. Where you have two people accountable for any one thing, there is a tendency for each party to assume that the other party is actually doing something. Thus the matter in hand tends to fall between two stools.
• I would rather go for full accountability being placed on the line managers with the HR manager being accountable for providing the necessary support to the line. Thus, if a line manager identifies a development need for a staff member, and for some reason doesn’t feel capable of meeting it, HR should provide the necessary
• Mind you, HR has every right to suggest that the developmental need of the staff member may well be able to be met by the line manager if the line manager were to be developed a bit.
• It is easy for HR to say, it is the line managers’ job to counsel problem staff, for example, and I would have no problem with that viewpoint, but it is HR’s job therefore to ensure that the line manager is capable to counsel. The most common reason given by line managers for not counseling is that they are ‘too busy”. That is of course a cop out. I believe the basic reason that line managers do not counsel – or coach, for that matter – is that they don’t know how to. If HR cannot provide this developmental activity for the line managers it is failing in a key accountability.

We shall consider the ache authors’ other three points in the next posting.

Stay tuned

Bob

Let’s start by asking a question. When do you switch your hand phone off or deliberately not have it with you? Such times could include when you are in a management meeting, meeting with your boss, having a shower or using the toilet. There may well be others.  Next silly question, does the world come to an unscheduled end, when you do not immediately answer your hand phone at these times?

Remember in the last posting you were asked to monitor the calls you made to confirm how many of them need an instant response and action. If you did this religiously – and honestly – I think you will have found that there were actually very few occasions when instant action was needed. A similar circumstance arises when responding to calls, so your assignment for this week is to monitor your incoming calls. How many of them really, really need to be responded to instantly? If you are a part-way considerate manager now, when a call comes in which you respond to you may say to the caller: “I’m busy at the moment. May I call you back?” And in such cases, what percentage of callers will say “OK”? My feeling is the vast majority.

So it is the receiver who makes the hand phone a problem, not the caller!

Let’s go one stage further. You have identified the times that you either switch off the hand phone, or don’t have t with you. Allow me to ask how many of you included during family meals in your list? Think about it. When you answer the hand phone when you are with anyone at all, the message to that person is that the caller is more important than the person you are with. Now is that really true of your family? Do you really want to tell your spouse or children that they are less important than someone junior from the office? I hope not.

And if it is your boss? Let me ask another silly question. Do you always answer your boss’s calls because you feel that they are significant, or because you are afraid of the boss? And if you are afraid of the boss, what are you afraid of? What if your boss calls when you are in the shower? If this happens, the clever hand phone records that you missed a call, so when you are out of the shower you can call back. And when you call the boss back, does s/he immediately rant at you because you failed to answer his/her call immediately? If s/he doesn’t, then you do not need to answer the call immediately every time. If s/he does, maybe you should look for a new boss! How many people do you know who have been fired because they failed to immediately answer a hand phone call from the boss?

A final thought. When you are dealing with someone or something important at the office, give your hand phone to your secretary or a trusted colleague. Let him/her inform the caller that you are busy with something important, but will call back at, or within, a certain time.

I can feel some shudders from here! If you are worried that your secretary will look at your phone list, you need to consider firing her. If she cannot be trusted in this, can she be trusted in anything else, since she is dealing with confidential material all day? If you are doing a tiger and have a girl/boyfriend or two, then instruct the person to whom you and your phone not to answer calls from certain people. No need to give a reason. (But you might like to consider whether having a girl/boyfriend on the side is such a good idea!)

The hand phone is a marvelous and useful device, but the moral of these stories is that you must manage the hand phone, not have the hand phone manage you.

Food for thought?

Bob

Firstly, consider pay. If a job is a strategic “A” job, then it is recognized as being of critical importance for the company. It is logical that if an “A” job is unfilled, the company will suffer, therefore it is crucial that the importance of the job is reflected in the pay for it. And since it is very possible that the “A” job is not a managerial job, and then it may be that the jobholder is paid more than his/her manager. I personally can see nothing wrong with that.

There has been precedent forever. In the military for example, the platoon sergeant – now there’s an “A” job for you – probably earns more that the second lieutenant who is his/her platoon commander. When I first entered the business world, I worked for an oil company. At the company’s major international port of entry for bulk fuel, the depot superintendent was the most highly paid staff member, but the next four places in the salary stakes were held by senior unionized fuel tanker drivers. Getting a driver supervisor internally was impossible. The selected driver would lose so much pay!

Next consider bonus. If an “A” job is of so much importance to the company, any bonus earned should be significantly higher than that paid for “B” jobs and especially for “C” jobs.

This will be explored in a separate posting in a few days.

Next, selection. The importance of the job needs to be reflected in the effort to find the right person to fill it. Any old body just won’t do. Even filling it with the ‘best of a bad bunch’ of applicants won’t do either. You must fill an “A” job with an “A” person. This is a lesson that needs to be learned in both large and small companies, especially small companies. Filling a key job in a small company with the wrong person – especially if that person happens to be a family member! – won’t do either. In a small company, the person you recruit could be 30% of your workforce, so you really need the right person, not just a person. Recruitment cost is a stupid cost to be economical on. It’s not the cost of recruiting, it’s the potential cost to the company if you choose the wrong person and have to get rid of him/her.

Finally, development. The authors place a lot of stress on this aspect. Development – call it training if you must – is a ‘cost’ that is often ‘saved’ in times of economic stress, national or just within the business. This is because development is seen purely as a cost – thanks in part to short-sighted accountants and accounting practices. The development of a recruit to an “A” job is clearly an investment in the future profitability – or even viability – of the company, so it is an area where a development cent ‘saved’, is a potential profitability  loss of many, many dollars. A classic case of short-sightedness.

To have “A” people in “A” jobs performing at “A” standards is critical for the future of the company, so development of “A” recruits must have the highest priority, and it must also be “A” standard development also. If there is a real restriction on the availability of funds for development, then it makes good sense to spend it all on developing your “A” jobholders.

One lesson to be learned from this book is that many present HR practices are wasteful, if not downright stupid, but exist ‘because we’ve always done it that way’. I call them the sacred cows of HR, and in the next few postings we’ll look at killing some sacred cows.

Bob

A differentiated workforce is one where those jobs, and the staff members in them, who contribute most significantly to the successful achievement of company strategy get special treatment.

There’s a lot in that simple statement, so let’s explore it in a bit more depth.

Firstly, how about the idea that not all staff members contributes equally to the achievement of company strategy? The authors argue that there are “A” jobs, which they describe as ‘contributing disproportionately to one or more of the company’s strategic capabilities’. For example, in a pharmaceutical firm focused on new products, a strategic capability is likely to be R&D, with senior research scientist positions likely to be “A” jobs. In a sales oriented organization, key account sales positions are likely to be “A” jobs.

Two things are important to note. The first is that there are comparatively few “A” jobs in most companies. These authors suggest less than 15% of the jobs in the organization will be truly “A” jobs. Kaplan and Norton (Strategy Maps, Harvard Business School Press, 2004) suggest the percentage may be even lower. In one large company they identified a mere 4% of jobs being truly strategic.

The second point to note is that it is not necessary that an “A” job be a management position. Now there’s food for thought!

So what about the rest of the jobs in the company? ‘ .. all a firm’s jobs are important, but not all jobs are strategic,’ suggest the authors, who then go on to define “B” jobs as being important as supporting “A” jobs, or performing functions that are necessary for the operation of the company, but  have little impact on revenue generation. ‘World class performance in these roles has a neutral or a modestly positive effect on firm performance,’ they suggest. The importance of these jobs is not so much on what they can make for the company if done well, but what they could lose for the company if done badly. If accounts staff processed at 100% accuracy – and you can’t get much better than that – and a degree faster than they process now – the company wouldn’t make any more money, nor get any new clients. The cash intake might be a fraction quicker is all.

“C” jobs have very little impact on revenue generation, and if they are done badly, wouldn’t cost the company much at all in revenue terms. The authors cite data on this, and then suggest that a company might be better paying the bottom 10% of the workforce to stay home, or even better, go work (?) for the opposition! In the large company they use as an example, the bottom 10% of staff cost the company over $16 million each year. In fact, they refer to “C” positions as ‘surplus’ positions, those you could outsource, for example.

They note tellingly that selecting the wrong person for an “A” job could cost the company heaps, whereas an unfortunate selection for a “C” job would have little or no economic impact.

Chapter 3 of the book is about identifying “A” positions and the “A” people you really want to be filling those positions. You need to read it! The authors provide useful tools for you to use in this activity.

We’ll check the ‘special treatment’ the authors recommend in the next posting.

Bob

As a result of your input, I have cobbled together a suggested code of practice for using the handphone, but first some background. The invention of the telephone was a major breakthrough in communication. It provided inter-connectivity for everyone who owned a telephone to communicate with anyone any time anywhere. It may have been the first 24/7/365 application. However, the telephone suffered the limitation of being a fixture in the office. Away from the office meant away from the phone.

Enter the handphone, and suddenly this limitation had gone. 24/7/365 was laterally a reality. However the iniquitousness if the handphone is both blessing and curse. In the case of the manager in our musing it was certainly both, and, in fact, a costly curse. The client was clearly unimpressed with protestations of excellent customer service, when he couldn’t even get the manager’s undivided attention for half an hour!

This posting will consider the caller, and the next one will look at the receiver.

“It takes two to tango” the old saying goes, and that is certainly the case in communication. I suspect that in most cases an incoming call is a bother, because it distracts you from doing what you were doing – even talking to a customer. The problem with the phone, fixed or hand variety, is that the sender of the message cannot see what the receiver is doing. If you walk past a colleague’s office with the intention of calling in to discuss something, and see your colleague in a heated discussion with someone, you tend to say to yourself: ‘I can wait a while’.

This is major issue. In most cases, the call probably can wait. Even if you are the boss and you want to call a staff member for help or input, it is very rare for the information/ help to be required immediately. Don’t take my word for it. Check yourself over the next week. How many times do you need the really need to information NOW?

The handphone is an interruption instrument. And the caller holds the interruption power. So here is a suggestion for caller protocol. Your handphone has the capacity to send messages in other ways than by talking. The SMS facility is not quite as interruptive as the call, so why not use it? You want the person to be free to concentrate on your call, so prepare him/her.

Send an SMS which asks the caller whether s/he is free to take the call now, or whether you would do better to call later. Try a simple format. SMS the following message: “I would like to talk with you about XXX. When today might you be free to talk? Please confirm.”

This approach solves two problems. It allows the receiver to confirm when s/he will be free,  and allows him/her to prepare for your call. Under other circumstances, you call and want an immediate answer, which may require the receiver to get a file, or gather some information from somewhere, when s/he is really busy concentrating on something else. Remember that you job as a manager is to support your staff not demand from them, so not only will the method I am suggesting help you better get what you want, it will also build positive rapport with your staff members.

It also helps you with time management. That’s a win-win-win situation. Try it for a week and let me know how it goes. Next week the receiver.

Bob

Phase 2           Compressing the Sales Cycle

This phase is based on the company’s respect for the potential customer. Rosen calls this ‘nurturing’ the customer, which uses elements of permission marketing. (Never heard of it? You should consider investing in a Marketing Update. Check the Update tab at the top of this page).

One of the bases of permission marketing is that you don’t try to close the prospect right away – otherwise known as the ‘hard sell’. (Ever been caught by someone selling time shares?). First, you need to ask the customer some questions – just as a live (and savvy) salesperson would. As Rosen says: ‘It’s powerful to know who is responding, but don’t let your enthusiasm get the better of you. Empathy and sensitivity are the best courses of action’. Don’t just ask questions. Reward the customer with some sort of small gift for answering. This is ‘pure’ permission marketing, as proposed by Seth Godin in his book of that name.

Through what medium do you ask questions? Here is where email is especially valuable, but you could also consider approaches like Yahoo Messenger, which is a degree more interactive, or even a social network – remember Groundswell?

Phase 3           Consideration and Preference

This is where the rubber hits the road, and because of this Rosen suggests that classic advertising tends to rush in.

It is critical to remain respectful at this point. We want to move the prospect through the sales cycle, but disrespect – pushiness – may well turn the prospect off. When faced with a pushy salesperson, many prospects unfortunately don’t have the interpersonal skills to break off the interaction, but if you are communicating electronically, this problem is easily overcome. The prospect simply switches you off.

One critical element of respect for your prospect is to allow the interaction to progress at his/her speed, even though this might be slower that you would really like. Hopefully, your business is not in such a parlous state that not making the sale today will put you out of business!

Here’s a quote to whet your appetite for the book.

‘The magic of convergence is how to put these pieces together. That’s the secret sauce. I’ve dedicated an entire chapter on it. … You’ll see how some of the oddest combination can deliver the highest yields.’

Rosen proposes four powerful primary concepts for you to employ:

• Know and respect the brand
• Target the prospects where they are in the sales cycle with messages that resonate
• Combine the disciplines to influence behavioral change  in real time
• Create a customer rather than a transaction

You’ll find the answers in his book. Happy reading!

Bob

Rosen explains that the Traditional Model is based on the AIDA principle from the 1960s. AIDA stands for Attention, Interest, Desire,  Action, which he has renamed Awareness, Preference, Consideration and Sale for his own purposes.

A silly, but significant, question. What do you currently use in your company that dates from the 1960s – apart from some staff members? Then why might you be basing your marketing and sales on a model that is 50 years old? Consider our last book of the month Groundswell and consider the different bases for that model. Your customers and their environment have changed out of sight in the last 50 years. Rosen suggests that your approach to marketing should change also. There would be no Groundswell without the internet, for example.

Another quick question. Is it sensible to be using the net for marketing using a technique that is possibly older than you are?

Let’s have a quick look at the alternative he is proposing on the right hand side of his model. He proposes, in chapter 3 of his book, that despite the number of entries in his model, it actually consists of three phases.

Phase 1           Awareness to Interaction

He proposes that Phase 1 pushes through three stages – awareness through engagement to interaction, rather than just creating awareness. He rightly points out that in todays fast-paced world, if you don’t get to interaction first time, the prospects may not be available for you to have a second try.

You need to handle four variables:

• A clear target – are you targeting a segment or are you shooting for the whole world?
• Images to pull the people in
• Empathetic copy
• A sensible offer as the final hook

His model uses empathy instead of frequency. He suggests that it is hard to justify many expensive  advertisements just to create awareness. You should be creating brand and demand at the same time.

We’ll look at Phases 2 and 3 in the next posting

Bob

The Best of Brand + the Best of Direct + Sales Powered by Finance = Success

Introduction

‘Today, it is all about respecting the individual. Convergence retains the powerful imagery and messaging of brand advertising while leveraging the motivational techniques of direct marketing and focusing all of it on the goals set by sales. It is powered by a financial model, using the contribution margin of what a customer is expected to be worth in a set period of time. It is about making money fast: it happens in real time with statistics to guide the way; and has the advantage of being a process we can repeat over and over again, as well as proving critical path accountability to the CFO’

Let me ask a silly question. Does your approach to advertising and selling meet these criteria?? If not, you’d better read on.

Best of Brand

The first ingredient in convergence is brand-building. Good brand builders create emotional excitement around the product or service, not just recognition.

The Best of Direct

Direct marketing is the science of moving people forward in the sales process ideally resulting in sales. ‘Direct’ does not mean ‘direct mail’, which is really only a scattergun approach to brand building. Rosen defines Direct as ‘building communication via any media to provide prospects and customers with ‘proof of concept’ points for their consideration’.

Best of Sales

Salespeople are the organization’s front line. One of the interesting sales techniques that Rosen suggests is ‘objection selling’. Rather than simply listing features and benefits – and how many sales people really know the difference between them? – we should concentrate on why the prospect might not move forward to the sale and understand and overcome these objections in advance. Objection selling provides a basis for empathy with the customer.

The Power of Finance

Convergence uses finance to determine the appropriate investment spend as well as the expected value of the individual. Rosen argues against the comparatively recent concept of customer ‘lifetime’ value suggesting that we concentrate instead on the expected value of a customer over a shorter time frame which may range from a few months to several years depending on the goods or services in question.

Another silly question. How did you calculate your advertising spend for 2010? A percentage of sales from 2009?

Rosen suggests that is as accurate as pulling a number out of a hat! Convergence uses a model based on real-time accounting, incorporating return on advertising investment. When you are able to understand the contribution margin to profit you have the basis of an ROI which interests those who are going to finance your campaign.

Now wouldn’t that be nice?

You probably need this book!

Bob

Becker, Huselid and Beatty, Harvard Business School Press, 2009

Gong Xi Fa Cai to all Chinese readers of this blog. May the Year of the Tiger be good to you and bring you health, wealth and happiness.

On the off-chance that you, as a senior manager or company owner have made a new year resolution to pay more attention to your staff this year, let me offer this book for your consideration. If you are inspired to read it – and implement what you read – your next year may be one of significant improvement in your company performance. If you  choose not to – your choice of course – you are passing up a real opportunity! That’s a pretty strong statement. Let me explain why I made it.

This book will make you seriously reconsider many of the people practices that you now follow. That I promise on behalf of the authors. It should make you rethink the way you use people and pay people, and more importantly how you spend your money developing people. (You don’t spend anything on developing people? After you have read this book, you may decide to do so!)

What is a ‘differentiated workforce’, and how do you know whether you have one or not? In brief, a differentiated workforce is one in which you have identified who are the people who can have the most impact on the achievement of your company objectives, and you look after them well. The authors suggest that you identify your “A” jobs  – those  which will have the most impact on whether your strategy will be achieved – from your “B” jobs – which you probably must have, although they have minimal impact on strategy achievement – and  your “C” jobs that maybe you shouldn’t have at all.

But that’s not all!

Then you have to look at the people in those “A” jobs and decide whether they are “A”  people, who achieve “A” results all the time. If this is not the case at present, then either you’ve got to recruit some “A” staff, or you’ve got to develop the under-performers until they do reach “A” level. Or, if the worst comes to the worst, you’ve got to remove the non- ”A” performers from the “A” jobs. When you have “A” performers in “A” jobs, you must pay them accordingly.

So the process is:

• Clarify your strategy
• Identify which jobs if performed well, will ensure that you achieve your strategic objectives
• Make sure that those “A” jobs are filled with “A” workers
• Reward those workers well, probably better than the others

If the above fits your company now – that’s great, but I think it will be unusual.

In the book the authors turn some organizational sacred cows on their heads. Like:

• It’s HR’s job to look after people – Not so, it’s the line manager’s job
• All staff at the same level should be paid the same  – Not so, it’s the contribution of the staff to the achievement of strategic objectives that counts
• There should be a standard approach to analyzing and rewarding jobs and job holders. Not so, for reasons already stated
• All staff should get the same bonus based on company performance. This is OK, but only if you want mediocrity, not if you want top-notch success

We’ll look in more depth at some of these critical concepts in later postings. In the meantime, as you visit friends and family, look in at the bookstore and snap up this book. Otherwise your competitors might beat you to it.

Bob

(Hand phone rings. Listens to caller for around a minute. “OK. I understand what you are saying. It seems to me there are two issues, but I really don’t have time to go through them with you right now. I have a guest. …. Oh! You have to go out for a while? OK, then I’ll be very brief because this is an important meeting” Covers the issues, taking about 4 minutes. Closes off call)

“I’m really sorry about that. One of my staff with a problem. Let’s get back to our discussion. Where were we?”

Discusses the issue – a rather large contract – with the visitor for about five minutes.

(Handphone rings again) “Excuse me”

(Listens for about two minutes. “I see. That sounds pretty OK to me. Can you go ahead and get it done? Oh. You have another problem. Please make it quick. I am in a meeting”. Listens for three minutes. “Actually, I don’t really think you need my input for this. Could you please call the marketing manager? She will fix it for you. Thanks. Bye”)

“Sorry about that. One of my staff calling in from outstation”. Now where were we?”

Recaps the initial conversation. Then moves to the next stage of the discussion for about 8 minutes. Things are warming up. It looks as though the deal can be finalized at this meeting.

(Handphone rings again). “Excuse me”

(“Yes, dear. Can I call you back? I’m in an important meeting right now. Oh. You have a visitor coming now. Please be quick”. Listens for three minutes. “OK. I’ll come there soon. Give me around 20 minutes. Bye”)

“Sorry about that. My wife. She has a problem with the maid.

So you are mainly concerned about our ability to deliver on time? Let me assure you that once we have confirmed your order, you will be our top priority and get our undivided attention. Oh. There is another issue? Tell me about it, and let me see how we can overcome it”

Listens for about five minutes, making copious notes during the visitor’s input, “Now let me see if I have fully understood the issue. The main difficulty seems to be …”

(Handphone rings.) “Excuse me”.

Listens for about two minutes. “Thank you, I understand. Yes, we are very interested in taking part in your expo. Can I get back to you in a few minutes? Thank you”.

“Sorry about that. He is organizing an expo next month, and wants us to participate, like we did last year. We actually got some good sales leads from it. Now let me address your last concern ….

Oh, you have to go? I am sorry, I didn’t realize you were on such a tight schedule. Can you spare just another five minutes so I can set your mind at rest about our ability to focus  on serving you?

“No? Ah, you have another appointment? I hope it’s not with our competitor.” Laughs briefly. “Oh, it is? Well thanks for coming by. I trust we shall be able to finalize the issue on your next visit.

Oh? You won’t be visiting us again?”

(Handphone rings). “Excuse me.”

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

If this is a situation you recognize – as a visitor or staff member – please share how you felt. Let’s work together on setting guidelines for how managers should use handphones!

I look forward to hearing from you.

Bob

This seemingly simple little table absolutely justifies your buying of this book. As you read it don’t switch off because your small company does not have these separate departments. The functions must be done, even if you are just a one-person company. Please read on.

The implied problem is that where a company has all of these separate departments, it may have departments that are really separate – the well-known ‘silo effect’. You know how it sounds. “Oh I’m in sales. You need to talk to marketing”. Fiefdoms grow and there can even be little wars between two or more departments. So what the authors, Li and Bernoff are implying is ‘forget about the function. Think of the process’, though I can’t remember them saying this in so many words.

A second gem to come out of this little table is the direction of the activity. In most companies, all of the outputs resulting from the individual departments are outward-looking – from the company to the customer. Li and Bernoff suggest – as have many other authors – that this is the wrong way round. What we all too often have are departments inside the company who are committing the company to doing things – and sometimes investing a lot of money in the process – in the hope of producing and selling to customers what they think the customer might want. (Have you been frustrated as I have with Windows Vista?)

Li and Bernoff are saying ‘wrong way, folks’. Let the customers tell you what they want, so that you can provide it.  One of the most serious problems facing parents is stopping telling their kids what they want/need/should have and letting the kids decide. Same in business. Them out there know what they want, and if you can plug into that and meet those needs, profit is almost assured.

And the third gem – and the point critical from the concept of the groundswell – is italicized in the table (by the authors, not me). The crux of the matter in relation to the groundswell – stressed throughout the book – is that customers talk to each other – now and anyway. A company needs to listen, talk, energize, embrace and support its customers based on  what they are already saying to each other, not just shout marketing messages at everybody or stuff fliers in everybody’s letter boxes!

You’ve probably heard of the ‘customer-centric company’. Which company is likely to be more customer-centric? The one that listens to what its its customers are saying, or the one with siloed departments? And can the siloed departments become more customer-centric – and internally more cooperative? They surely can. This book tells them how, and so does the Book of the Month for February.

Check it out next week

Bob

And does it matter?

Now that question I can answer, based on the ideas proposed in Groundswell, our book of the month for January. Yes, it does matter. In fact it matters a lot!

The classifications are those defined by Forrester Research in US for classifying the people in the groundswell. Let’s check out what it all means.

Forrester Research created the concept, which is explained in the table below. They use the classifications in their research for their customers.

From the definitions in the table, you can take a guess at where you stand. Since I publish a blog – thank you for reading it – and I write articles for it, and other blogs, I would guess I am a Creator, and that fits my classification of the Margerison and McCann Team Wheel, too, but there’s also a bit of critic, collector and joiner (Facebook, et al) in me.

So why does it matter? According to where you are on the ladder, Forrester Research can tell a lot about you. They have piles of data about who goes where, and because they are an international consultancy they can compare people from different countries. They can tell you – as they do in the book – that in South Korea, there are 38% Creators, while  in Europe it’s closer to 10%. Interestingly, the percentage of Inactive in South Korea is about the same as Creators, with Metro China having the lowest percentage at 25%

Come on, Bob. This is marginally interesting, but of what use is it? Let me make two links for you to give some relevance to these figures.

Are you in the business of selling things? Then probably advertising your wares? Maybe on the internet? Then you need to know about which category you are in. For several reasons.

Firstly, your age. Forrester Research available in the book indicates your likely profile according to your age. In very general terms, younger people are more computer savvy than older ones. Thus, they are much more likely to be denizens. So if you are planning on using the internet as an advertising medium, which is the best avenue for you? A straight – boring – web site, a blog, a wiki, or a forum? (Do you know the difference between these? If not, you’ve got some learning to do. You need this book!).

And if you are selling – and advertising – in an export market, the fact, demonstrated clearly by the Forrester research that people in different countries have different profile patterns makes it essential that you factor this knowledge into your marketing activities.

Check out next week’s posting for more questions. And maybe a few answers!

Bob

Richard Rosen, John Wiley and Sons, 2009

You’ve probably heard it said that managers know that 50% of their advertising works – but they don’t know which 50%! If you are in marketing, PR or advertising, you need to read this book carefully from end to end. Whenyou have done that you might be able to tell much more accurately which percentage – and it could be more than 50%! – is working.

Richard Rosen is the founder, president and award-winning CEO of ROSEN, a global consultancy that specializes in transforming marketing and advertising campaigns into cost-effective business models. If you are having trouble persuading boss or client of the value of embarking on an ad campaign, here is where you will find the material in this book may provide the convincing clincher.

Rosen is practitioner with a proven track record which has been based on some models which he has developed for himself. In this quite small book – only 178 pages – he shares these models with you and gives you the opportunity to use them and become a top line professional.

The book is divided into three parts, the first of which is an introduction to the subject, while the second – containing most of the book’s content – is the how-to part, and this is where you should be reading with pencil in hand. He introduces several ideas which I am sure will be new to you, but he does it in a very useful way. Included in this section is a full series of ads prepared for a well-known golf club manufacturer, which he uses to explain the new process he is presenting. This alone separates this book from many others which claim to be how-to books. After you have read how-to, you still don’t know how to! The concept he is explaining is not simple and straightforward, even though it is highly valuable. But when you can actually see the real thing unfold before your eyes, then it is so much more meaningful.

This is not s dry academic tome. Rosen writes clearly and so is easy to understand. He uses many illustrations through the book other than these I have just mentioned . Nor does he simply make assertions about the value of following his approach. He actually gives tables and figures that you can adapt which will help you win over the doubting boss or client.

Armed with the information in the book, you will be streets ahead of any competitor who has not read it, so get in quick and become a leader of the pack.

I’ll share a couple of ideas from the book with you over the next week or so in case you are still unsure of whether to make the investment. When you do buy the book and get to use the ideas, please share the outcomes with the blog so we can all learn

Bob

I am a FreeCell addict. I am fascinated by the game and I play it more than I should, I guess. Since I am a performance measurement nut, one of the features I like about the game – part of the Windows basic package, for those who haven’t come across it – is that it keeps score. After each game – win or lose – you can check your cumulative score. This allows you to calculate your average – how you are performing at the moment in Dr Julie’s terms. I have played many thousands of games over the years, so what I do is play a series of 100 games, enter my percentage wins for that 100 games, then start again. The reason I do this is simple. After a number of games have been played, the winning or losing of one game has a minuscule  effect on my overall average. Even a run of 50 wins – which I achieve sometimes – has a tiny effect on a database of 5000, but is significant in a series of 100.

Over the years, my average has progressively risen till it now stands at 85.7. That means that for each set of 100 games I have played in 2009, I have won an average of 85.7 games.  Individual sets range from 78 to 94. At the end of my first year of playing FreeCell, my average score was only 79.3, so I am getting better. My average is rising.

The same principles I apply to FreeCell apply in the world of work, especially for routine activities – those that probably take up most of your day every day. This is especially relevant  to operations staff whose job outputs seem not to change from day to day. Take processing invoices, or insurance claims, or handling accounts, or making product.

Over the five years I have been addicted to FreeCell, I know my average has improved.  Has the processing performance of each of your staff improved over the five years that they have been working for you? And if not, why not? How many invoices are processed by your best performer as compared with the quantity of your worst performer? And – more importantly – is that person being rewarded for it, or is the person who averages 10 invoices an hour being paid the same as the person who processes 20? I suspect that if you check carefully, you will find that the latter is the case, which would naff me if I were the one processing 20!

There are major implications here for several areas of business

1. Reward
your better performers deserve more reward than those who do not perform as well. Simply relate the individual performance against the group performance, and the averages become clear.

2. Performance Improvement
Why is there a disparity in performance? How can the below average performers be helped to raise their average – and with it, the average performance of your department? Perhaps training is an answer, but perhaps it is a system problem. Ask the people who are doing the job. They will know.

3. Staffing
What if your company is intending to increase its customer base by 10% in 2010. Can your department cope, or will you work till 7 each night instead of 6? Do you need a 10% increase in staff, which may amount to 0.1 of a person. (Where do you find 0.1 of a person?)

Please consider these issues, and share your thoughts with our blog readers.

A groundswell is normally thought of as a movement of the populace in a certain direction. We talk of ‘groundswells of opinion’, don’t we? The groundswell that Li and Bernoff write about conforms to the common concept. They define groundswell as ‘a social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from institutions like corporations‘.

That definition ought to be sending quivers up and down your corporate spine – no matter what the size of your business. Is there a possibility that people may be going to bypass the traditional outlets at which which are selling things? If so, what about my/our business?

What indeed!

The authors are not crackpot theorists, but vice presidents and principal analysts at Forrester Research. Never heard of it? I hadn’t either, but it seems that Forrester Research is an extremely prestigious American research organization with a mission to create business advantages for members of their community – their paying customers. Reading the reference section at the back of the book – which I do , but I am sure you don’t – indicates that they have recently conducted vast amounts of research into trends in buying and technology, which provide fascinating and scary information that most companies – especially large ones – need to know. Not just know, but perhaps amend their selling strategies as a result of knowing.

In this book, you will find the answers to such fascinating questions as:
Will Facebook have any effect on my sales and my company?
Rather than forbid my staff members to blog – especially during work hours – should I actually encourage them to do so?
Should we start an internal wiki?
How can I stop people saying nasty things about my company products/services on blogs? (The short answer is that you can’t. It’s what you do after they have said the nasty things that matters)
How can I know what sort of people are in the groundswell? (Many, many sorts. In the book, the authors offer a Social Technologies Profile to help you calculate this. Knowing where your staff are in the Social Technology Profile will also be valuable information for you)

Most important chapters in the book for you will probably be:
Chapter 5    Listening to the Groundswell
Chapter 6    Talking with the Groundswell
Chapter 7    Energizing the Groundswell
Chapter 9    Embracing the Groundswell

One thing is for sure, based on this research. There is a groundswell which you can’t stop, so you had better find about it so you can turn it to your benefit rather than simply have it engulf you later on.

If you would like a short summary of the contents of each chapter to better help you understand why it is important for you to know that this is an important book for you, simply email bob@newbizideas4u and one will be sent to you quite free of charge.

Have a good Christmas and New Year – both western and Chinese! There will be another stimulating Book of the Month coming up in January

Bob

How do you feel when you are termed ‘average’? Many people – including me – bristle a bit at the term, because we feel that we are above average – even outstanding! But the way Dr Julie – as she likes to be called – explains ‘average’ makes good sense. She defines average as ‘the place where you perform on a consistent basis today’.

If we are totally honest with ourselves we do not perform at an outstanding level all the time. We certainly don’t perform perfectly, since perfection is not standard practice among mortals. Dr Julie suggests that we shouldn’t even strive for perfection, because we are setting ourselves up for failure, and that doesn’t seem like a sensible thing for us to do. Rather we should assess our day-to-day performance as average, and rate ourselves on a scale similar to the one below.

There are several important implications from thinking this way:

According to the scale, there is considerable room for improvement. Now that’s a positive!

The average we are talking about is a personal average. It is your present level of performance.

The average is a moving target. The more you perform above your present average – the more you succeed, according to the diagram – the  higher your average becomes.

We often think of average as 5/10, but that’s not really the case. When you are first promoted to manager, for example, you recognize that you have a lot to learn,  and an honest evaluation of your ‘average’ performance may in fact be way lower than a 5. But the longer you are in the position, and the more experience you gain – and most importantly, the more you learn from the experiences you have – the better is your day to day performance. Your initial 3 can move to be 5, 7, or even higher. On a good day, you may hold a performance discussion with a staff member which you would rate as a 9! In your early days as a manager, you may not even have held a performance discussion with a staff member. When you actually steel yourself to do so, that is a  success in itself. Practice may not make perfect, but practice generally means an improved performance, thus impacting your average – the way you perform today – and your basis for tomorrow.

There are some other important implications relating to average. Firstly, you must be positive in your approach to the performance in question. Remember Dr Julie’s point from last posting. Your mind controls your performance. If you go into the discussion expecting it not to be successful – or if you go in expecting a 10 – you will probably not achieve. But if you go into the discussion expecting a 4, getting a 4 is in fact a success, and you may even surprise yourself and score a 6! And if you fail – you rate your performance as a 2 only – all that means is that you still have a way to go in this particular performance area. It does not mean that you are a failure as a manager!Work out what went wrong, and plan ways to improve your performance next time. Don’t invite the monkey of further failure to climb onto your backs. Nor should you plan to go for a 4 next time, but you should look to a 5.

The key to raising your average is simply to want to. If you don’t want to – you are happy to be a 4 forever – you may need to consider other career options.

Welcome to the world of the average, but get working on getting that average higher.

Talk with you again soon.

Bob

Dr Julie Bell – she likes to be called Dr Julie – is a sports psychologist and coach turned business coach. She is not the first such, nor will she be the last, I am sure. Her case is rather interesting since she entered the world of business sort of by accident. One of her athletes was appointed as CEO of a recently-taken over company and suggested that she should join him and became a coach to his management team.  Both he and she felt that there was a lot of carry over between the world of sport and the world of business.

The idea I want to share today is one of the key ideas that runs right through the book. It is the importance of mind. In both sport and business.

New Zealand recently won a spot in the Football World Cup in South Africa 2010. Yippee! (I’m a kiwi remember!). NZ came out for the second half carrying a one goal lead. Imagine the dismay, then, when their opponents, Bahrain, were awarded a penalty early in the second half. The apprehension turned to relief when the penalty kick was saved by the NZ goalkeeper. Frankly it was not a well-taken penalty.

Dr Julie of course does not mention this in her book which was published well before the match, but her points can be applied to the situation. She would say that the penalty was first missed in the minds of both the penalty taker and the goalkeeper.

In the mind of the kicker, there was a whole lot of history. Bahrain had got to the playoff for a finals spot also four years previously, and had been beaten by a single goal. They had played many matches in this competition to get where they were and everything could hinge on this kick – victory (the match was played in NZ, so a goal for Bahrain would have been counted as two goals under the away-goal rule), South Africa – glory. But he missed it.

Why did he miss it? Dr Julie suggests that where there is only 2% doubt in your mind, you lack the 100% confidence needed to be sure of success. The kicker may have said to himself as he thought about the kick: “If I don’t get this, we are likely to be where we weird 4 years ago. So near yet so far”. So there may have been doubt when he actually kicked the ball. So the game could have been lost in the kicker’s mind.

The goalkeeper could have thought: “Oh no! Penalties are given to be scored from. We could miss out on South Africa because of this”. Had he thought like that, he would probably not have made the save. I suspect he said to himself: “Now it’s up to me. I have got to save this for us to get to South Africa.” And he did.

It is important to note that skill and technique of themselves are not the relevant factors in this situation. The kicker had scored many times from penalties before, otherwise he would no have been delegated to take the kick, and the goalkeeper was the best available to NZ, otherwise he would not have been playing. So skills and technique can be overwhelmed by your thoughts.

Translate this to the workplace. You have a problem staff member, whose performance or behavior – or both – is giving you and your department a problem. You need to discuss matters with him/her. What thoughts will you allow to go through your mind before you meet.

Note the word ‘allow’ in the previous sentence. Dr Julie proposes three Principles of Mind:

• Your mind is powerful
• You control your mind
• You have a choice in every situation

The choices you make in your thinking directly influence your actions. In fact your thoughts lead to your actions. How can you replace your potential.

ally negative thoughts about your upcoming discussion with positive ones? Let’s talk about that in the next posting.

Also in the next posting will be our Book of the Month. Look out for it.

Please give me some feedback about the usefulness of this posting.

Contact me on bob@newbizideas4u.com