Do Business Well

“What can the company do to create a friendly climate for great managers?”

We have said that an employee may join a company because of its prestige and reputation, but that his relationship with his immediate manager determines how long he stays and how productive he is while he is there. We have said that the manager is the critical player in turning each employee’s talent into performance. We have said that managers trump companies.

All this is true. From the employees‘ perspective, the manager is indeed more influential than the company. However, the company still wields enormous power. By themselves, great managers can offer limited local resistance to conventional wisdom. Only a total company effort can dislodge it completely.

In most companies conventional wisdom remains deeply entrenched. Even though many managers might disagree with some of its central tenets—each person has unlimited potential; help each person to overcome his weaknesses; treat others as you would like to be treated—still these tenets survive. They are held firmly in place by a network of policies, practices, and languages. This network pervades the company, affecting the way employees are selected, trained, paid, punished, and promoted. By themselves, great managers can make small advances in the opposite direction, but they can never break all the way through to the other side. No matter which route they try, sooner or later they open a door and find convention standing there with some policy or rule or system that stops the great manager in his tracks:

“You can’t pay people that way.”

“You can’t promote him if he doesn’t have more than three years’ experience.”

“You’re not treating every employee the same. That’s unfair.”

“Here’s our new performance management system. Make sure every employee is trained on every one of these competencies.”

“You can’t give her that title. She doesn’t have anyone reporting to her.”

Conventional wisdom is barricaded behind a wall of selection, training, compensation, and performance management systems. The only way to dislodge it completely is to replace these systems. And only the company can replace these systems.

Using the Four Keys as our guide, here are some of the master keys that the senior management of a company can use to break through conventional wisdom’s barricades.

A. Keep the focus on outcomes: The role of the company is to identify the desired end. The role of the individual is to find the best means possible to achieve that end. Therefore strong companies become experts in the destination and give the individual the thrill of the journey.

• As much as is possible, define every role using outcome terms.

• Find a way to rate, rank, or count as many of those outcomes as possible. Measurement always improves performance.

• The four most important emotional outcomes for a customer are accuracy, availability, partnership, and advice. Examine each role within the company and identify what actually needs to happen to create these outcomes. In training classes, explain how the standardized steps of the role lead to one or more of these emotional outcomes. Also explain where, how, and why employees are expected to use their discretion to create these outcomes.

• Hold managers accountable for their employees‘ responses to the twelve questions presented. These twelve questions are a very important outcome measure. Although we would not advise paying managers on their employees‘ responses, managers should use the twelve questions as part of their overall performance scorecard.

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