These airlines forget that customers don’t usually choose one airline over another by comparing safety records. Whatever the airline, customers fully expect that they will arrive at their destination unharmed. They demand safety, but they are not impressed by it. It is the wrong outcome for airlines to emphasize.
Southwest Airlines again stands out as the exception. Their flight attendants are experts in all the required safety procedures, but safety is not the point of their work. Fun is the point. Their passionate CEO, Herb Kelleher, instinctively empathized with air travelers. He realized that air travel is inevitably stressful. He knew that he would never be able to remove everyone’s fear and frustration. All he could do was encourage every one of his employees to make the flying experience as much fun as possible. Hence the songs, the jokes, the games, the “coloring outside the lines.” Kelleher’s intuition means that every Southwest employee is focused on the right outcome.
Intuitions like this can be powerful, but there are other, more practical ways to see the world through your customers’ eyes. For example, Adrian P., the manager of two car dealerships, conducts focus groups with a selection of recent buyers every other month. The Walt Disney Company’s Imagineers, the supremely creative individuals who design and build the theme parks, are constantly “on site,” standing in the lines, mingling with guests, riding the rides.
Customer surveys are an even more sophisticated way to delve into the mind of your customers. If you have the time and the inclination, you can design a survey that includes questions on all possible aspects of the customers’ experience. To identify the most important aspects, you must work out which questions show the strongest link to the customers’ ratings of overall satisfaction, likelihood to recommend, and likelihood to repurchase. Using this technique, Gallup has been able to help many companies zero in on those few emotional outcomes that are truly important to their customers.
A large insurance company wanted to hold its doctors accountable for the quality of service they provided their patients. The insurance company was interested in doing this for all kinds of reasons, not least of which was the fact that unhappy patients tended to stay in the hospital longer, sue more readily, and die more often. For an insurance company these are rather important considerations. Thus you might have forgiven them if they had forced every doctor to run his or her practice according to a detailed procedures manual. But they resisted this tactic. Instead they asked Gallup to investigate which core emotional outcomes patients truly valued. We discovered that once you feel secure in your doctor’s basic competence, there are only four things you really want from your doctor when you visit:
You want to be kept waiting for no more than twenty minutes. (availability)
You want to feel as though someone cared about you. It doesn’t have to be the doctor. It might be the receptionist or the nurse. But someone has to care about you. (partnership)
You want the doctor to explain what your condition is in words that you can understand. (partnership)
You want the doctor to give you something that you can do for yourself at home to alleviate your condition. (advice)
If you can say “Yes” to all of these questions, you are much more likely to recommend and return and much less likely to sue or die. Using these four emotional outcomes as their measure of service, the insurance company could then hold each doctor accountable for quality of service without having to dictate how each doctor should run his or her practice.
#2: WHAT IS RIGHT FOR YOUR COMPANY?
Make sure that the outcomes you define for your people are in line with your company’s current strategy. Again, this sounds like motherhood and apple pie. But with the dizzying pace of change in today’s business world, it is sometimes hard for managers to keep track.
The key distinction here is between “mission” and “strategy.” A company’s mission should remain constant, providing meaning and focus for generations of employees. A company’s strategy is simply the most effective way to execute that mission. It should change according to the demands of the contemporary business climate.
For example, the Walt Disney Company’s mission has always been to release people’s imagination by telling wonderful stories. In the past they relied on the twin strategies of movies and theme parks. Today, however, faced with increased competition, they have broadened their strategy to include cruise ships, Broadway shows, video games, and retail stores. As Bran Ferren, executive vice president of research and development at Walt Disney Imagineering, describes it: “Vibrant companies must put together five-year plans. But they must be willing to change these five-year plans every single year. It’s the only way to stay alive.”
Although this constant reassessment of strategy is vital to the health of the company, it does place managers in a rather difficult position. They are the intermediaries, charged with explaining the new strategy to the employees and then translating it into clearly defined performance outcomes.
Often this can be as simple as telling your salespeople that with the new company strategy focused on growing market share rather than profit, each salesperson will now be encouraged to focus on the outcome “sales volume,” rather than the outcome “profit margin per sale.”
However, sometimes the changes in strategy are more radical and the pressures on managers to refocus employees on different outcomes are more acute. For example, the most effective strategy for many high-tech companies used to be innovation. Hence the large R&D budgets, the hordes of disheveled but creative software designers, and the unpredictable, slightly unfocused work environments. Recently, though, the strategy of these high-tech companies has shifted focus. For the major players who dominate the marketplace, critical mass — getting your product to be accepted as the standard — is now more important than innovation. Innovation can be bought from the smaller boutique houses. Thus these larger companies need to change the way they operate to ensure that virtually everyone’s efforts are focused on spreading the new language/platform/product into the marketplace. This means that managers in these companies will have to hustle to redefine the desired outcomes and find new definitions of success. Number of users, for example, may now be more important than revenue per user.
Of course, there are times when the change in strategy is so dramatic that no matter how clearly you redefine the desired outcomes, your current cadre of employees will be unable to achieve them. Faced with this situation, you can’t rewire people’s brains, as high-tech companies found when they tried to turn software designers into marketers, and as banks discovered when they tried to retrain tellers to become salespeople. All you can do is try to find roles within the new strategy that play to their talents. If no such roles exist, then you have no choice: these employees have to move on.
#3: WHAT IS RIGHT FOR THE INDIVIDUAL?
Dennis Rodman is arguably the best rebounder ever to play the game of basketball. He is certainly the most bizarre player. With hair that changes color every week, a fondness for women’s clothing, and a persecution complex, he is an explosive, unpredictable man. How do you manage him so that he is motivated to use his talents and to limit his outbursts?
During the previous three seasons, the Chicago Bulls had lost Rodman to various infractions for at least twelve games per season, so for the 1997-98 season they opted for a different strategy. Keeping in mind Rodman’s talents, and the challenges he presented, they drew up a contract built around some very specific outcomes. It was the most incentive-laden contract in the history of the NBA. Rodman was guaranteed $4.5 million. He would receive another $5 million if he stayed out of trouble for the duration of the season; another $500,000 for winning the rebounding title for the seventh time; and another $100,000 for having a positive assist-to-turnover ratio.
The numbers here are stratospheric, but the concept is applicable to every employee: Identify a person’s strengths. Define outcomes that play to those strengths.
Find a way to count, rate, or rank those outcomes. And then let the person run.
It worked for Rodman and the Chicago Bulls. By the end of the season Rodman had missed only one game for disciplinary reasons. He had won the rebounding title for the seventh time. He had 230 assists versus 147 turnovers. And the Bulls had won the championship.
Of course, if you are managing a large group of people who perform exactly the same role, it may be more difficult to tailor the outcomes to each individual. But if your team is small and variously talented, then you must take each person’s unique talents into account when defining the right outcomes. Bud Grant, stone-faced Hall of Fame coach of the Minnesota Vikings, described it this way:
“You can’t draw up plays and then just plug your players in. No matter how well you have designed your play book, it’s useless if you don’t know which plays your players can run. When I draw up my play book, I always go from the players to the plays.”
When defining the right outcomes for their people, great managers do the same. They go from the players to the plays.
CHAPTER 5: The Third Key: Focus on Strengths
* * *
Let Them Become More of Who They Already Are
Tales of Transformation
Casting Is Everything
Manage by Exception
Spend the Most Time With Your Best People
How to Manage Around a Weakness
Let Them Become More of Who They Already Are
“How do great managers release each person’s potential?”
So, you have selected for talent and you have defined the right outcomes. You have your people, and they have their goals. What should you do now? What should you do to speed each person’s progress toward performance?
Great managers would offer you this advice: Focus on each person’s strengths and manage around his weaknesses. Don’t try to fix the weaknesses. Don’t try to perfect each person. Instead do everything you can to help each person cultivate his talents. Help each person become more of who he already is.
This radical approach is fueled by one simple insight: Each person is different. Each person has a unique set of talents, a unique pattern of behaviors, of passions, of yearnings. Each person’s pattern of talents is enduring, resistant to change. Each person, therefore, has a unique destiny.
Sadly, this insight is lost on many managers. They are ill at ease with individual differences, preferring the blanket security of generalizations. When working with their people, they are guided by the sweep of their opinion — for example, “Most salespeople are ego driven” or “Most accountants are shy.”
In contrast, great managers are impatient with the clumsiness of these generalizations. They know that generalizations obscure the truth: that all salespeople are different, that all accountants are different, that each individual, no matter what his chosen profession, is unique. Yes, the best salespeople share some of the same talents. But even among the elite, the Michael Jordans of salespeople, the differences will outweigh the similarities. Each salesperson will have her distinct sources of motivation and a style of persuasion all her own.
This rampant individuality fascinates great managers. They are drawn to the subtle but significant differences among people, even those engaged in the same line of work. They know that a person’s identity, his uniqueness, lies not just in what he does — his profession — but in how he does it — his style. Peter L., the founder of a capital equipment rental company, describes two unit managers, one who is a terrific salesperson, networking the neighborhood, joining local business or community groups, literally wooing customers into the fold. The other is an extraordinary asset manager who squeezes life out of every piece of machinery by running the most efficient workshop in the company. Both of them excel at their roles.
Guy H., a school superintendent, manages two exemplary school principals. The first principal is what he calls a “reflective practitioner.” He consumes libraries of journals, stays current with educational theory, and teaches others what he has learned. The second operates exclusively out of a sense of mission and a natural instinct for teaching. There is no educational jargon in her school, just boundless energy and a passion for learning, however it happens.
One of the signs of a great manager is the ability to describe, in detail, the unique talents of each of his or her people — what drives each one, how each one thinks, how each builds relationships. In a sense, great managers are akin to great novelists. Each of the “characters” they manage is vivid and distinct. Each has his own features and foibles. And their goal, with every employee, is to help each individual “character” play out his unique role to the fullest.
Their distrust of generalizations extends all the way to the broader categories of race and sex. Of course, cultural influences will shape some of your perspectives, giving you something in common with those who shared those influences. An affluent white female living in Greenwich, Connecticut, might have a more benign view of the world than, say, a young Hispanic male growing up in Compton, California. But these kinds of differences are too broad and too bland to be of much help. It would be more powerful to understand the striving talents of this particular white female or the relating talents of that particular Hispanic male. Only then could you know how to help each of them turn his or her talents into performance. Only then could you help each one live out his or her individual specialness.
For great managers, then, the most interesting and the most powerful differences are among people, not peoples.
This is a grand perspective, with far-reaching implications, but it’s just common sense. Here’s what Mandy M., a manager of a twenty-five-person design department, has to say on the subject:
“I want to find what is special and unique about each person. If I can find what special thing they have to offer, and if I can help them see it, then they will keep digging for more.”
Gary S., a sales executive for a medical device company, describes it in even more pragmatic terms:
“I deliberately look for something to like about each of my people. In one, I might like his sense of humor. In another, I might like the way he talks about his kids. In another, I’ll enjoy her patience, or the way she handles pressure. Of course, there’s a bunch of stuff about each of them that can get on my nerves. If I’m not deliberate about looking for what I like, the bad stuff might start coming to mind first.”
For Mandy, Gary, and other great managers, finding the strengths of each person and then focusing on these strengths is a conscious act. It is the most efficient way to help people achieve their goals. It is the best way to encourage people to take responsibility for who they really are. And it is the only way to show respect for each person. Focusing on strengths is the storyline that explains all their efforts as managers.
Tales of Transformation
“Why is it so tempting to try to fix people?”
As you might expect, conventional wisdom tells a rather different story. First, it spins us this tale: You can be anything you want to be if you hold on to your dreams and work hard. The person you feel yourself to be every day is not the real You. No, the real You is deep inside, hidden by your fears and discouragements. If you could free yourself of these fears, if you could truly believe in yourself, then the real You would be released. Your potential would burst out. The giant would awaken.
This is a tale of transformation, and we love it. It is just so uplifting and so hopeful, who wouldn’t root for the hero who confronts his demons and transforms himself into everything he always knew he could be? Well, surely we all would. That’s why we root for Michael J. Fox in The Secret of My Success, Melanie Griffith in Working Girl, and John Travolta in Phenomenon. We love all these stories of transformation, not least because they imply that all of us have the same potential and that all of us can access this unlimited potential through discipline, persistence, and perhaps some goo
d luck along the way.
Softened by conventional wisdom’s first installment, we are easily persuaded by the second: To access your unlimited potential, you must identify your weaknesses and then fix them. This remedial approach to self-perfection is drummed into you from your first performance appraisal. You are told that to advance your career, you must “broaden your skill set.” You must become more “well-rounded.” During each subsequent appraisal there may be a few words of congratulation for another year of excellent performance, but then it’s into the nitty-gritty of the conversation — how to improve your “areas of opportunity.” Your manager brings up, yet again, those few areas where you struggle — where you have always struggled — and you and she then cobble together another “developmental plan” to try to shore up your weaknesses once and for all. By the time you reach the end of your career, you have spent so much time fixing yourself that you must be well-nigh perfect.
The best managers dislike this story. Like all sentimental stories, it is comforting and familiar, but strangely unsatisfying. The hero, diligently shaving off his rough edges, seems sympathetic and noble, but somehow not … real. The more you ask these managers about this story, the more vivid their criticisms become. Listen to them long enough and they will peel back its cheery surface completely to reveal the rather sinister messages hidden beneath. This is what they told us:
First, its promise that each of us can “be anything we want to be if we just work hard” is actually quite a stark promise. Because if we can all “be anything we want to be,” then we all have the same potential. And if we all have the same potential, then we lose our individuality. We are not uniquely talented, expressing ourselves through unique goals, unique capabilities, and unique accomplishments. We are all the same. We have no distinct identity, no distinct destiny. We are all blank sheets of canvas, ready, waiting, and willing, but featureless.
First, Break All the Rules Page 14
