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 Management Style
Leadership: Making Changes
Subject: Management,
Leadership, Sales, Motivation
By Victor Antonio G.
Let me start out with three questions:
Here’s an easy question, if you really like
what you’re doing, can you really call it work?
Here’s another, if you could choose your job,
would you be more inclined to excel at it?
Final question, how many times in your career
have you really taken the time to move people around until they found their
right job?
Here’s the thing. We know people are more
productive when they are doing what they really enjoy doing. Yet, too often
we put them in positions, not to succeed, but to fail.
But you can argue, “Well we
just can’t let people do what they want! What if everyone wants the same
position?” Point taken.
But let's be honest with
ourselves for a second, how many times have we really tried to understand the
motivation behind an employee? Many of us ask our employees; well what is it
that you want to do? But here’s a secret, sometimes, if not the majority of
the times, THEY don’t even know. They think they do...or is it maybe that the
when they see others doing well they think it's what they want. The
grass certainly looks greener.
An engineer may see how well
salespeople are doing and all the fringe benefits, perquisites they receive
and proceed to convince himself overtime that he would be ideal for that job.
I’ve seen people who were motivated by jealousy, delusions of grandeur or
simply the potential income that comes with a job only to fail in the long run
because they "changed jobs" for the wrong reason.
As managers, one of the most
difficult tasks you have is to first, work with what you got. Second, fill
the positions with maybe incomplete or incompatible employees. This reminds
me of the visual-spatial game where you have to put the geometric pieces into
the appropriate shaped grooves. But sometimes, you have to many squares and
not enough triangle grooves and that is a problem.
Here’s the first step,
determine if you have good clay or bad clay. If you have good clay you have a
person who is moldable and is willing to take guidance in finding him (or her)
a position. If you have bad clay, either clay already hardened with no
plasticity, and then you either find the person an open groove or make an
inevitable decision. Now no one likes to talk termination but let me give you
my take and my experience for a moment.
When I worked for a sales
company as vice president, I adopted a sales force that hadn’t been able to
get out of their rut for 5 years running. There numbers remain virtually flat
during that time period at around 14 million. When I took over as vice
president the first thing I did was meet with the salespeople and took some
time to travel with. Why? I first wanted to see how they were presenting
themselves and our company to potential customers. During this time I went to
meetings and presentation with them to see how they worked. I looked at the
content presented, the manner in which it was presented and who the people in
the room where.
After my whirlwind trip with
last about 3 months, I knew exactly what the problems were. About 50% of my
sales force was essentially worthless. By this I mean, their product
knowledge was abysmal; they were catalog salespeople who simply opened up
product listing and asked the customer, “Do ya see anything ya like?”
Second, about 70% had the
selling skills of a rock. Their presentation skills were horrible. I believe
in part because they didn’t know their products as well as they should of and
their insecurity in front of tough question customers made that evident. In
the face of touch questions, the majority danced and the customers picked up
on it.
Lastly, about 90% of them
didn’t set up the meetings with the right decision makers. Many of the
meetings being setup were with people whose decision-making ability was
minimal.
So after 3 months of
reviewing and speaking with the salesman, enticing them to take some more
courses, which some outright fought against, I terminated 70% of the sales
force. Top management screamed, “He’s bloody nuts? In my first year our
sales stay flat at $14 but with 30% of the sales force. By the next year we
were back to 100% in personnel and revenues stood at $37M. By the third year
the sales force had grown 300 from when I first took over and sales were at
$98M.
The lesson, sometimes you
have to dismantle to rebuild because you get tired of patching up holes. And
for those of you who have homes, you know what I’m talking about. Patching up
holes makes a structure look weak and its value is perceived as low.
During this 3-year time
period, many of the salesmen who stayed expressed interested in learning new
product, which I accommodated them in exploring new territories or market
channels. But I also made sure salespeople knew that others, without
mentioning names, were interested in their territory. Competition is good,
but integrity has to be maintained. And I always assured the incumbent that
as long as a strong sales effort is maintained that would never happen.
When you have good clay,
your only enemy is the time needed for training and nurturing. But again,
it’s better to build slowly and surely and not force piece into grooves.
Moving people around
intimidates many managers because they have a tendency to want things to be
nice and neat on an organization chart. And this is where one of the logjams
of human improvement lies. When people focus more on managing the neatness of
their organization chart, they have disconnected with reality. Human beings
are transient, ever changing in terms of needs and desires. What drives a
person today, will not necessarily work tomorrow. Maybe they’re bored the
second year and now have a ‘been there, done that’ attitude. Manage people’s
desires, not their position.
To give you a visual, a man
has been crawling across the desert dying of thirst for many days. He finally
comes across a water stand where the vendor is selling a glass of water for
$1000. The rich, wealthy man, too tired to put up a fuss at the ridiculous
price, with some reservation he pays the vendor and then continues on his
journey. A few hours later, another vendor tries to sell the man a glass of
water at the same ridiculous price of a $1000. Does he buy the glass of
water? If you guessed no, you’re right. The rich man countered the offer
with $100. What changed? Why did he pay $1000 the first time after days in
the desert and not more than $100 for the second glass? Because his perceived
value and his needs changed after he got his thirst quenched by the
first glass. Now the second glass didn’t seem to promise the same value and
hence his low bid. Because now, he was no longer thirsty, he was now hungry.
For management, what makes
this task difficult as I mentioned, is that many people think they know what
they want, but they are motivated to change for the wrong reasons.
Responsibility is laid at management’s feet for decipher the human enigma of
changing wants. But, that’s why they get paid the big buck. Manage people,
not the chart.
I once heard a story about
the Japanese who in times when an employee is not working out, management
apologizes to them for putting them in a position to fail and then move the
worker to another position. The lesson to be learned here is twofold:
Management should not be afraid to admit to themselves and the employee when
they are not meeting the company’s expectations. Second, management bears the
ultimate responsibility of finding an employee’s groove so they won’t fail.
True managers facilitate the process of creating an environment for motivating
unproductive workers to become productive members of the company.
Please share this with a colleague or friend who
may need some words of inspiration.
Copyright © 2004 by Victor
Antonio G. All rights reserved. This article MAY be reproduced in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, as long
as the author’s name, website and email address are included as part of the
article’s body. No part of this article may be altered. All inquiries,
including information on electronic licensing, should be directed to Victor
Antonio G., www.VictorAntonio.com
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