Do Business Well

B.Value world-class performance in every role: At strong companies every role, performed at excellence, is respected. If you want to understand the culture of a company, look first to its heroes.

• Within as many roles as possible, set up different levels of achievement. Identify specific criteria for moving up from one level to the next. Reward progress with plaques, certificates, and diplomas. Take every level seriously.
• Within as many roles as possible, set up broadbanded compensation plans. Identify specific criteria for moving up within each band. Explain clearly the reason for the pay cut when shifting from one band to another.
• Celebrate “personal bests.” Many people like to compete with themselves. Design a system so that each person can keep track of his or her performance monthly or quarterly. Use this system to celebrate monthly or quarterly “personal bests,” as and when they occur.. A growing number of “personal bests” means a growing company.

C. Study your best: Strong companies learn from their very best. Internal best practice discovery is one of their most important rituals.

Start with your most significant roles and study your best practitioners. Build a talent profile for each role. This will help you select more people like your best.

Revise all training to incorporate what you have learned about excellence in each role.

Set up an internal “university.” The main function of this “university” should be to provide a forum for showcasing how your best, in every role, do what they do. As far as is possible, every employee should be exposed to the thinking, the actions, and the satisfactions of your best, in every role. Your employees can learn many other things at this “university“—policies, rules, techniques—but the main focus should be a presentation of internal best practices. Remember, this “university” can be as flexible, informal, and brief as the size and complexity of your organization requires—the important thing is to learn from your best in a disciplined way.

D. Teach the language of great managers: Language affects thinking. Thinking affects behavior. Companies must change how people speak if they are to change how people behave. Strong companies turn the language of great managers into the common language.

• Teach the Four Keys of great managers. In particular emphasize the difference among skills, knowledge, and talents. Make sure people know that all roles, performed at excellence, require talent that a talent is any recurring pattern of thought, feeling, or behavior, and that talents are extraordinarily difficult to teach.
• Change recruiting practices, job descriptions, and résumé qualifications to reflect the critical importance and the broader definition of talent.
• Revise all training content to reflect the differences among skills, knowledge, and talents. A great company is clear about what can be trained and what cannot.
• Remove the remedial element from training. Send your most talented people to learn new skills and knowledge that can complement their talents. Stop sending less talented people to training classes to be “fixed.”
• Give every employee the benefit of feedback. Know that 360- degree surveys, personality profiles, and performance appraisal systems are all useful as long as they are focused on helping the person understand himself better and build upon his strengths. Stop using them if they are focused on identifying what needs to be fixed.
• Start the great managers‘ “performance management” routine.

These master keys, although not a substitute for great managers, are a valuable companion. Left unturned, they allow conventional wisdom to create a climate hostile to great managers. With every policy, system, and language built around its core assumptions, conventional wisdom drowns out the small voices of dissent and forces each great manager to question even her most fervently held beliefs. In a climate like this, great managers cannot grow. They cannot refine their intuitions with practice. They are too busy trying to stay clearheaded and to survive.

However, when turned successfully, these master keys alter the whole company climate. The climate becomes supportive to great managers, reinforcing their insights and pushing them to practice and to experiment and to refine. In this climate great managers will thrive. Employees will excel. The company will sustain its growth. And conventional wisdom will be uprooted once and for all.

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