Dodo Loves Marketing

If you want to be sure that you have started with the right three talents, study your best in the role. This may sound obvious, but beware: conventional wisdom would advise the opposite.

Conventional wisdom asserts that good is the opposite of bad, that if you want to understand excellence, you should investigate failure and then invert it. In society at large, we define good health as the absence of disease. In the classroom, we talk to kids on drugs to learn how to keep kids off drugs and delve into the details of truancy to learn how to keep more kids in school. ..more

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“I am ultimately responsible for the quality of all teaching in my district. Yet every day, in every classroom, there is a teacher and there are students . . . and the door is shut.”

Gerry C., a superintendent for a large public school district, captures the manager’s challenge perfectly: How can you get people to do what _you want them to do when you are not there to tell them to do it? Gerry knows what all great managers know: As a manager, you might think that you have more control, but you don’t. You actually have less control than the people who report to you. Each individual employee can decide what to do and what not to do. He can decide the hows, the whens, and the with whoms. For good or for ill, he can make things happen. ..more

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Even when they have selected for talent, some managers are hamstrung by their fundamental mistrust of people. This mistrust might be a product of some deep-seated insecurity, or it might be couched as a rational conclusion—”I think the human race is basically driven by selfishness, and therefore most people will cut corners if they think they can get away with it.” But whatever its source, their mistrust means that these managers are extremely reluctant to let each employee find his or her own route to performance. ..more

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Level 3: At this level customers expect partnership. They want you to listen to them, to be responsive to them, to make them feel they are on the same side of the fence as you.

Service businesses have long realized the importance of this partnership expectation. That’s why Wal-Mart positions hearty senior citizens at their front door to smile a welcome and remember names. That’s why all airlines create loyalty clubs offering special treatment to frequent fliers. And that’s presumably why video stores offer a “staff picks” section: “We’re like you. We watch videos, too.” ..more

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Everyone has talents—recurring patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior that can be applied productively. Simply put, everyone can probably do at least one thing better than ten thousand other people. However, each person is not necessarily in a position to use her talents. Even though she might initially have been selected for her talents, after a couple of reshuffles and lateral moves, she may now be miscast.

If you want to turn talent into performance, you have to position each person so that you are paying her to do what she is naturally wired to do. You have to cast her in the right role. ..more

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There’s a great deal you can learn from spending time with your strugglers. You can learn why certain systems are hard to operate. You can learn why initiatives are poorly designed. You can learn why clients become unhappy. And over time, you can become, as some managers are, highly articulate in describing the anatomy of failure and its various cures.

Ironically, none of this is going to help you understand what excellence looks like. You cannot learn very much about excellence from studying failure. Of all the infinite number of ways to perform a certain task, most of them are wrong. There are only a few right ways. Unfortunately you don’t come any closer to identifying those right ways by eliminating the wrong ways. Excellence is not the opposite of failure. It is just different. It has its own configuration, which sometimes includes behaviors that look surprisingly similar to the behaviors of your strugglers. ..more

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The language of “average” is pervasive. Reservation centers calculate the “average” number of calls a customer service representative can handle in an hour. Restaurant chains project staffing needs by estimating how many servers are needed to staff the “average” restaurant. In sales organizations, territories are divided up based on how many prospects the “average” salesperson can handle. “Average” is everywhere. ..more

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Each year, buoyed by the hope that leaders are made, not born, tens of thousands of budding executives traipse off to leadership development courses. Here they discover the many different traits and competencies that constitute the model leader. They receive feedback from their peers and direct reports, feedback that reveals the peaks and valleys of their unique leadership profile. Finally, after all the learning and reflection is complete, the hard work begins. Each willing participant is asked to craft a plan to fill in those valleys, so that he can reshape himself into the model leader, smooth and well-rounded. ..more

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Sooner or later every manager is asked the question “Where do I go from here?” The employee wants to grow. He wants to earn more money, to gain more prestige. He is bored, underutilized, deserves more responsibility. Whatever his reasons, the employee wants to move up and wants you to help.

What should you tell him? Should you help him get promoted? Should you tell him to talk to Human Resources? Should you say that all you can do is put in a good word for him? What is the right answer? ..more

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Law firms are rarely considered cutting-edge organizations, but with their use of graded levels of achievement, they are far ahead of most companies. Although all lawyers are free to choose more conventional career paths—moving into the management of other lawyers, perhaps, or becoming a legal generalist for a corporation—these levels of achievement provide lawyers with an alternative, but equally respected, path to growth. It is a path that offers them both the opportunity to become experts and a simple way to track their progress. ..more

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These levels of achievement will certainly help redirect an employee’s focus toward becoming world class. However, the manager’s efforts at career redirection will be forever hindered if all of the pay signals are telling the employee to look upward.

Although each of us is motivated by money in different ways, the fact of the matter is that few of us are repelled by money. All of us may not hunger for it, but only a tiny minority of us find money positively distasteful. Therefore the simple truth is that it will be much easier for managers to redirect employees toward alternative career paths if some of those paths involve a raise in pay. ..more

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b. Satisfactions

Everyone breathes different psychological oxygen. What is fulfilling for one person is asphyxiating for another.

Great accountants love the fact that two plus two equals four every time they do it. Great salespeople get a kick out of turning a no into a yes. Great flight attendants gravitate toward the tired, angry business traveler or the boisterous school sports team at the back, because they enjoy turning around the tough customers. ..more

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Being primed and ready for the unexpected has always been a valuable talent. In today’s turbulent business environment, where mergers, acquisitions and reorganizations are changing the face of American business, managers need that adaptability more than ever. What are the skills that allow good managers to respond readily to change? There are five principal ones:

1. Problem-solving ability. Because we’re a global economy dominated by multinational companies, problems are appearing much more quickly and they are more severe than they were before. There is a lot of ambiguity and there are many paradoxes. Along with polished business smarts, you must also be problem-smart. Your antennae must detect problems early and be sensitive to potential difficulties before anyone else’s. Your intuitive powers must be razor-sharp so you can detect a problem’s early warning signals. Once found, you can determine the appropriate solution. ..more

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You’ve just been offered a plum post as manager of a large division in an international corporation. Before uncorking the champagne and calling all your friends with the news, consider:

Ideally, managers of decentralized operations are expected to act like autonomous, free-ranging, market-sensitive executives—much like the classic entrepreneur. But in reality, you are often trapped in a hierarchical middle, held accountable for profit-center responsibility while, at the same time, chief executive officers and their surrogates violate your autonomy without recognizing it, sometimes even going behind your back to intervene on divisional turf.

If you are offered a division manager’s job, talk to the CEO (it will be the chief operating officer in a very large corporation) and ask, “What kinds of decisions do you see yourself getting involved in?” ..more

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More and more managers are on the move. By the time they reach their late forties, general managers have assumed from three to nine managerial posts. All else being equal, a manager’s functional background, experience and special competencies will determine how that person takes charge, according to Dr. John J. Gabarro, professor of organizational behavior at the Harvard Business School, who carefully monitored the management experiences of 14 new executives over a three-year period.

Some managers make the transition in easy, sure strides; others falter and fail. Here are some touchstones for a safe voyage: ..more

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“Joe will be leaving us soon and we want you to fill his role for a while. You will, of course, maintain your present responsibilities as well.”

Directives like this are becoming increasingly common, as organizations embark on acquisitions, mergers and downsizing to meet competition. Salaries are often the first costs to be cut, and middle managers are asked to double up on responsibilities, assuming the dual roles of first- and second-line manager.

What are some of the prime difficulties of maintaining these two responsibilities simultaneously? Among them are: ..more

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New psychological research is sharply focusing on people’s practical intelligence: The special talents with which we meet life’s daily challenges.

Two Minds at Work

Most of the investigators believe there are two intelligences at work in people: a practical, experiential intelligence that makes our daily decisions and has nothing to do with IQ, and a rational intelligence that unravels the mysteries of math and literature, offering some logical explanations for our actions.

Sternberg and Wagner have studied the influence of what they call “tacit knowledge” on the practical intelligence of successful business executives. “This tacit knowledge, which is rarely verbalized,” they say, “enables workers to meet the often unwritten and unspoken demands of their jobs.” ..more

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The workplace is becoming more racially diverse, thanks to affirmative action and increased educational opportunities for minorities. Unfortunately, racial tensions often manifest themselves. These can disrupt working relationships, slow down productivity, dampen motivation, alienate clients and customers, and even invite legal action.

When racism erupts, managers tend to make some common mistakes, like:

• Setting ultimatums. “Some managers simply say, ‘You two will work together or else,’ ” says Maudine Cooper, staff director for the District of Columbia government mayor, Washington, DC. “This approach only makes matters worse.” Forcing a relationship does not change people’s feelings, which are at the root of the problem. As long as they continue to harbor the hatred or mistrust or whatever it is they feel, the problem will tend to persist. ..more
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Even in an era where mandatory retirement ages are .creeping higher and higher, corporate managers need to plan for their own transitions from the seat of power to new roles and other activities.

For some, a top consideration is perpetuating a philosophy of business that they feel they have helped their companies develop. They want to know that what they have contributed to the corporate culture and success will not be lost.

Others are more pragmatic. They accept that new management must set its own standards and tone. They put their energies into planning for their own futures elsewhere.

There are many managers who don’t care too deeply about what happens to their organizations after they leave. Such managers recognize that corporations are, by their nature, designed to survive the individual employee, and they, therefore, see little value in staying too emotionally involved. ..more

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“Cognitive divergence” describes the situation of a person whose thinking has become so different from the rest of the group that he or she doesn’t really fit in. This person is now considered ^-out of it,” an eccentric, a maverick. Some changes that can make you seem like this in your own organization:

• Your company may have changed since you joined it as a bright young newcomer. New people with a different management philosophy may have taken over, or the company may have expanded or changed direction as time passed.
• Times may have changed. New ideas, new technology may cause a company to change its outlook. Where once it valued those managers who ran production centers or developed new products, now it may save its smiles for its financial or marketing managers. Or, vice versa. ..more
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