Passion, People and Principles
post # 30 — March 15, 2006 — a Careers, Managing post
For a lot of my professional life, I got paid to do training. It usually went very well in the sense that I got high ratings (evaluations) and people not only paid their bills, but invited me back again to do it again and again.
I now believe that the overwhelming majority of all business training, by me and by everyone else, is a complete waste of money and time, because only a microscopic fraction of any training is ever actually put into practice and yield the hoped-for benefits.
The main reason is that companies keep trying to bring about changes in behavior by training their people in new things, and then sending them back to their operating groups subject to the same measures and management approaches as before. Not surprisingly, little, if any of the training ever gets implemented.
What companies don’t seem to understand is that training is a wonderful LAST step in bringing about changed behavior, but a pathetically useless first step.
Take, one example, the many speeches and seminars I have been invited to give since the publication of my 2000 book The Trusted Advisor. Companies have paid my co-authors and I loads of money to come in and be (a) inspirational and (b) informative about the importance of, and mechanisms for, growing relationships with existing clients. However, in vain do I point out that in order to have the time to nurture these relationships, it follows that you need to be more selective on which new client proposal opportunities you pursue – there are only so many hours in a day.
This doesn’t always go down well. In fact, I got fired by one firm after the training seminar, for suggesting that it was OK to decline to pursue something. ‘In this firm’, the National Managing Partner said, ‘we pursue all new business opportunities.’
That’s fine by me. He may be right and I may be dead wrong. But why did he spend all that time and money encouraging his people to do something other than what he believed in, and what they all knew he was going to evaluate them on?
Another example of wasted money are the calls I get to put on training programs to help people become better managers. I put my callers through a standard set of questions: Did you choose your managers because they were the kind of people who could get their fulfillment and satisfaction out of helping other people shine, rather than having the ego need to shine themselves? (No!) Did you select them because they had a prior history of being able to give a critique to someone in such a way that the other person says- wow, that was really helpful, I’m glad you helped me see all that. (No!) Do you reward these people for how well their group is done, or do you reward them for their own personal accomplishments in generating business and serving clients? (Their personal numbers!)
So, let’s summarize, I say. You’ve chosen people who don’t want to do the job, who haven’t demonstrated any prior aptitude for the job, and you are rewarding them for things other than doing the job? Thanks, but I’ll pass on the wonderful privilege of training them!
The truth is that most firms go about training entirely the wrong way. They decide what they wished their people were good at, allocate a budget to a training director and ask that training director to come up with a good program. Note, of course, that a training director (or Chief Learning Officer, if you prefer) is the LEAST influential person in the firm in the sense of being positioned to bring about any real changes in how things happen in daily execution. Pathetic and useless. A waste of everybody’s time.
The correct process would be to sit top management down, ask ‘What are people not doing that we want them to be doing?’ and then figuring out a complete sequence of actions to address the questions – how do we actually get people to change their behavior? What measurements need to change? – what behaviors by top management need to change to convince people that the new behaviors are really required, not ust encouraged? – what has to happen before the training sessions to bring about the change? What has to be in place the very day they finish?
Only if done this way will firms and companies get a return on their training dollar,pound, euro or yen.
A good test is as follows. If the training were entirely optional and elective, and was only available in a remote village accessible only by a mule, but people still came to the training because they were saying to themselves ‘I have got to learn this – it’s going to be critical for my future’, then, and ONLY then, you will know you have timed your training well. Anything less than that, and you are putting on the training too soon.
post # 29 — March 13, 2006 — a Strategy post
There is a fascinating article by Rob Nixon, the Australian specialist in accounting firms. He found a 1964 study of accounting firm profitability, and correcting the numbers for inflation, found that in the past 41 years, Australian accounting firms had improved their profit per partner about 40 percent, a lot less than 1 percent per year, compounded.
Rob attributes the lack of any real progress to time billing, and the focus on such things as growth and size, rather than profitability. Fascinating reading!
post # 28 — March 12, 2006 — a Client Relations post
I received the following from a guy named Jeff. He asked – One major challenge we have is managing ‘scope creep.’ Clients are always changing, enhancing, modifying, backtracking, re-hashing, deliverables and we seem less than great at controlling the associated costs. And the client does not want to pay. What do you do? Is it up front education? A formal contract, detailing the change-order process? We want to be easy to do business with, but we don’t want to lose money either.
Well, Jeff, we certainly all know what this feels like. You try to be nice, and the other person just takes advantage of you, never reciprocating the niceness.
I invite you to think about how you would handle it if this were an employee, or a family member, or a friend or acquaintance. How do you deal with this in other walks of life?
You’ll find that the key point is that it’s all in the timing. If you were mad at your spouse, the time to raise an issue would not be when you were so desperate to solve the issue that you would lose your temper, or be under immediate pressure to get your way. Done then, you are almost certain to get it wrong.
But you also wouldn’t raise the issue the first time it happened – you would try to be supportive. What you would probably do, if this were a friend or a spouse, is to say that you don’t want to fight about what has just happened, but only want to work out how you want to work together tomorrow.
You would say something like ‘I wonder if we could just go for a walk and talk about some things. Everything’s really good now, but it would really help if we could work out some issues that are bothering me. Can we talk about the future?’ Talking about the future rather than the immediate events really helps defuse the emotions, and allows a more sensible conversation.
In the world of clients, as in personal life, you can’t take extreme positions.
On the one hand, you do have to try and be helpful and flexible and be willing to try and accommodate your clients’ needs. But you can’t keep on just being nice, because then you’ll just keep getting exploited.
If you do, it’s easy to predict that you’ll get madder and madder, stop enjoying the work and then, one day, you are going to explode with fury, really telling that person what you think of them. (That’s what happens in bad marriages where people can’t raise criticisms about each other without giving offense.)
The answer, Jeff, doesn’t lie in systems. It lies in the verbal and interpersonal ability to raise a criticism, while still being committed to the relationship.
Yes, it’s wise to get agreements down in writing at the beginning of a business relationship, and also to agree (with as much non-legalistic language as you can) what would constitute a change of scope.
I think it wise to draft a chatty letter to clients saying the following – (this is language I actually do use) – ‘just to make sure we are both thinking about the project in the same way, I want to be clear that I will be happy to engage in additional activities such as (telephone calls and preparatory reading) up to XX hours. This represents my investment in our relationship. However, if what you ask me to do exceeds that amount of time, I will contact you to ensure that you still want me to do the extra work, and agree an appropriate fee for it.’
This doesn’t stop clients being demanding, but when they are, I then call to discuss things, using the following language (also a real example) – ‘I hope you are happy with my work and that you think I am being helpful and client-centric. If you wish me to invest more time in this project, perhaps we can discuss whether or not it would be appropriate me to bill you for more investment time.’
The choice is then theirs. Now, I don’t want to pretend that this approach works in 100 percent of all circumstances. There are still going to be clients who will keep trying to get something for nothing, even though I have explained that I have ‘reached the limit of my ability to invest in the relationship.’ (Exactly the language I use.) If they still want additional work for no additional fee, I do walk away.
Everyone deserves a fair chance to work out a relationship, but I am not so desperate that I continue to work with people I know to be unfair and unjust. Not only is life too short, but I would rather accept the extra stress of developing other new business than be forced into accepting abuse and exploitation.
As always, I invite other people’s experience and contributions. Is there more advice out there to help Jeff?
What follows are the abbreviated highlights of a telephone conversation that took place on March 2, 2006, just as Steve Rubel the world’s most respected authority on blogging was joining Edelman, the international public relations firm. The full interview may be found here
Maister – Do professional firms who that are engaged in business-to-business services have an easier opportunity to use blogging than do companies who that serve the mass consumer market, or is it harder?
Rubel – It would be very misleading and limiting to think of blogging as only about conversations with customers or clients. It’s about connecting with a wide group of stakeholders.
However, if you do think about connecting with clients, it should be easier for professional service firms to take advantage of blogging.
When buyers think about hiring firms, one of the things they care a lot about is “smarts” – having really good advice and counsel to offer. Blogging brings that to life – it’s a perfect way to demonstrate that you have something to say and something to offer.
That’s good for the buyer, and if you really have something to special to offer and something special to say, it’s good for you. That’s the kind of transparency that will help the buyer choose a better professional, whether it’s a law firm, an accounting firm, a PR firm, or an advertising agency.
It’s a lot harder to hide now. If a firm or agency really thinks it has the smartest people, then they haveit has a real incentive to get them out there and to show them off.
Maister – But who’s doing the listening and participating out there? Is it the clients you are trying to serve, or is it just other consultants picking your brains and stealing your best ideas?
Rubel – I can track how people arrive at my blog, and the buyers arrive through Google. Buyers search for my topics on Google and, because I’ve been creating and giving away content for two years, they find my blog and me.
The media found me through blogging- they are there and they are listening and watching. And then the buyers found me through the media attention. They don’t necessarily join in the blog conversations, but they are listening and lurking silently, and in big numbers.
Maister – If someone truly did want to do a better job of eliciting reactions and creating true conversations, what should they do?
Rubel – One thing they definitely should do is begin by visiting other people’s blogs and participating in their conversations by adding comments there. It’s a good strategy to be prepared to be a little provocative and controversial, without being rude.
You start by going where the other people are and respectfully and politely joining in their conversations. Eventually, if you have been doing it often and regularly, they will notice you, come to you, and join in your conversation. There’s no short cut or quick hit here.
You should read widely among other blogs so that you know what people want to talk about. In the “blogosphere” that means subscribing to and reading a lot of RSS feeds, so that you know what’s being discussed and what’s hot.
Last, and most important, you should use the technology to “Trackback” and link to other bloggers so that you help visitors and yourself to be part of the larger inter-blog conversation. You won’t get a lot of intra-blog conversations going if you try to keep it all on your blog. You’ve got to link in.
Ultimately, it’s about providing value and making people want to interact with you because they derive benefit when they do.
Maister – These sound like life lessons, not just blogging lessons.
Rubel – Yes, these lessons are general. But the blogosphere has its own culture, just like a dinner party in China is going to be different from a dinner party in the UK.
If you want to join in, you need to take the time to learn the specific manners and mores. Unfortunately, it is very easy to make a big ‘faux pas’ in a foreign country by doing what you would normally do at home.
Maister – What else can blogging do for the blogger?
Rubel – Whether it’s blog-based or news-based, you can be really valuable by being the best aggregator of information in your field. The blog is the perfect tool to make that possible. That’s not just doing a cut-and-paste job on other people’s blogs, although too many people are taking that approach. You must work at contributing. I have developed systems that help me find stuff, and find it before others do. That’s part of making yourself the “go-to resource.”
I’m not a journalist. I’m a finder of information, a sharer of information, an aggregator of information. And it works, because I’m out there every day uncovering things and sharing them with my audience.
For more of Steve’s comments, and my reflections on them, go to my article Setting Knowledge Free
post # 26 — March 7, 2006 — a Managing, Strategy post
A lot of my professional work for the past two decades has had the following structure. A CEO or managing partner calls me up and says something like this –
‘We’ve been managing this firm for profitability and cost control, and pulled it off. We’re in terrific shape. Now we want to initiate a new era of inspiration. We want our people to be client-centric, to become trusted advisors. We want them to collaborate across boundaries so we can become a one-firm firm, and we want them to focus on developing our juniors so we can be a great place to work. Can you come and help convince our people to do all this?’
Since these are all goals and values I advocate and believe in, I have (in the past) frequently accepted this assignment. I have often been successful at building enthusiasm for these strategies. It’s not because I’m so talented, but because most people, it turns out, would love to work in a company or firm that subscribed to those values. Getting buy-in is not that hard.
However, I frequently run the final strategy meetings with anonymous voting machines, and after everyone has voted that these are strategies they want to pursue, and that they want management to pursue, I then ask the question – how many of you think we will actually do this, will run the company this way, and actually will implement these strategies?
In the overwhelming majority of cases, people indicate with the anonymous voting machines that they do NOT think the new strategies and policies will be implemented. Notice that the people voting are not some group of lowly employees – they are the partners or senior vice presidents of the enterprise. If they are skeptical about the company’s own ability to implement its own declared strategy, can you imagine how cynical the employees are?
As I have touched on in two of my recent articles – Are You Abusive, Cynical or Exciting? and Strategy and the Fat Smoker people’s depressing view of their own future comes from two sources.
First, their fear that they will not themselves live up to their own high aspirations when faced with temptation. Second, they believe that those in leadership positions will not ‘keep the faith’ – leaders will continue to manage as they have done in the past (usually driven by short-term financials) rather than the way they say they are going to manage in the future.
During the past 20 years of doing what I do, I have seen leaders of all kinds. Some really DO want to change, and are sincere about trying to lead their organizations in new directions. Other leaders truly are as cynical as their colleagues suspect them to be. These leaders want everyone else to change and live to high standards, but fully intend to go on managing the same old way. This second type is just trying to get more from others (the organization) without having to give more.
What has been fascinating to observe is how hard it has been even for the sincere leaders to get their colleagues and subordinates to believe that they have changed, and that they will manage to new standards.
People almost never believe this. They just don’t accept that there has been ‘a conversion on the road to Damascus.’ They never believe there truly is a new religion in place. They always believe that their leaders are going to go back to managing the way they have done for the prior 5, 10 or 15 years.
When you think about it, the cynicism is to be expected. Why should people think the leopard has changed its spots? What could the leader possibly do that would get those closest to them, those who know them very, very well, to think that they have shifted the basis on which they will make decisions? And if those closest to the leaders have a hard time believing that the leaders have truly changed their thinking, what hope is there for convincing the rest of the organization?
I don’t mean to become a cynic myself, but I have to report that new strategies and change efforts are easier for a new CEO or managing partner to implement than for the existing CEO or managing partner to be credible about. Leaders who want to convince their organizations that they have changed have a very difficult task.
Anyone out there have suggestions about how to overcome all this organizational skepticism?
post # 25 — March 2, 2006 — a Careers post
I am not a natural people person, so I watch out keenly for lessons on how to interact with others. Here’s a few pointers I picked up along the way.
We often think of the distinct topics of dealing with superiors, colleagues, clients and subordinates as separate discussions. But the reality is that it’s all one topic: how to deal with people.
You can use these different perspectives to help you think through difficult situations. If you’re stuck on how to deal with a boss, ask yourself: ‘How would I handle it if I were dealing with a client?’ Similarly, you can get a lot of insight into dealing with your subordinates by pondering the question: ‘If this person were a colleague, what would I do?’
Actually, the principle is broader than that. We all deal with people in our personal lives: parents, siblings, friends and lovers. These relationships are not always harmonious, yet we deal with issues and get on with the relationship. When you’re contemplating what to do in a business relationship, draw upon your experience in your personal relationships. You won’t do the identical thing, but it will help you think it through.
What do we try to be in personal relationships to build bonds? Sympathetic, supportive, nurturing, considerate and kind. Apply that everywhere in all your business relationships. They are the keys, in any relationship, to getting the other person to respond to you and treat you as you want to be treated.
When dealing with a subordinate, a reservations clerk at the airport, your boss, your spouse or anyone else, you are more likely to get cooperation if you control any emotions you are feeling.
A while ago, before I had given up smoking, my wife, Kathy, turned to me and said ‘David, can I get your help?’ Of course, I said yes. She said ‘Well, when we travel, we are usually lucky enough to stay in hotel suites, and your smoking doesn’t bother me. But, occasionally, we are in small hotel rooms, and I find that, then, the smoke makes my eyes itchy. What do you think I should do about that?’
This is, of course, brilliant. She had every right to be angry, but she knew that expressing her anger would reduce the chances of my cooperation, not increase it. She had every right to criticize me, but she knew that if she was explicit in her criticism, I would become defensive and try to justify myself.
She did not approach the problem as a logical, rational one to be ‘solved,’ but an interpersonal, psychological, emotional one. She was less concerned about being right, and more concerned about getting what she wanted.
There’s a simple rule. If you are trying to make a point and do it with emotion, you give the other person the opportunity to deflect the conversation onto your emotions and away from your point. Keep your emotions out of it.
Want to know how to deal with others? As a good first approximation, think of others as like you, not as ‘them’ If you want to influence someone, ask: Would it work on me? Figure out how you like to be dealt with. Draw up your own list of how you expect to be treated. Treat others that way.
Are these old, unoriginal thoughts? Of course, but still worth asking ourselves how well we actually apply them in our lives.
post # 24 — February 28, 2006 — a Careers, Strategy post
In the article I published on my website last Friday (February 24, 2006) entitled It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Much You Want It
I argued that the key to the success of individuals and firms is the level of drive and determination that they have.
As a follow up, here is the scale I use when I am running meetings. I put the following alternatives up on a screen and ask everyone to tell me what percentage of the people they know in the organization fit into each of these categories. (It works much better if you have anonymous voting machines, which I use a lot.)
- Burned out
- Jaded, Cynical, Skeptical
- Bored or Complacent
- Dutiful
- Satisfied
- Hopeful
- Interested
- Intrigued
- Enthused and Excited
- Passionate and Energetic
I don’t have enough research to report reliable averages to you here, but I can tell you some general patterns.
First, if you ask people to use this scale and tell you how their employee / subordinates are feeling those higher up in the organization always give much higher ratings about how the subordinates feel than the subordinates do themselves. Those on top routinely underestimate the disaffection of those below.
Second, people tend to rate themselves more highly than they rate their peers (ie how excited are you right now versus how excited are you colleagues?)
I’m not entirely sure what this means, but I have learned that people tend to exaggerate their own dynamism, and they are skeptical about the engagement of their peers. Which is the truth I don’t know, but I’m always suspicious about what people tell you about themselves – my slogan is that what you think of yourself is always irrelevant data. What everyone else thinks of you is going to influence things much more.
Anyway, you can probably guess where the overall trends seem to be. Every organization talks about delivering on exciting careers for its people, inspiring them with its vision and so on forever. My polling data suggests that most firms have a ways to go.
What’s your mood right now?
post # 23 — February 26, 2006 — a Careers post
This past Saturday I participated in the 7th Annual MIT Sloan Leadership Conference. My topic was the title of this blog: why business schools cannot develop managers.
This is not a new topic for me. As I have often reported, I have every business degree the planet has to offer, and even taught at the Harvard Business School. Yet at the end of all that I knew quite a lot about business and nothing about managing.
‘Business’ as a subject (and a degree program) is all about things of the logical, rational, analytical mind: Mike Porter’s five forces, the numerous P’s of marketing, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, etc, etc. It’s about knowledge.
Managing, on the other hand, is a skill, and has nothing to do with rationality, logic, IQ or intelligence. It’s a simple issue of whether or not you can influence individuals or organizations to accomplish something. It’s about influencing people, singly or in groups (or in hordes.) No amount of intelligence will help if you are not able to interact with people and get the response you desire. (Believe me, I have experienced the difference. I know a lot about management from my education. That doesn’t mean I’m any good at doing it.)
And of course, this is not accomplished by taking a college course in psychology, sociology, anthropology or any other ‘ology’ where we sit around and intellectualize about ‘human resources’ but never have to actually deal with a real live human being. (It reminds me of the Linda Ronstadt / Dolly Parton / Emmylou Harris song which contains the line – you don’t know what a man is until you have to please one!)
To help people develop as managers doesn’t mean discussing management (or even worse – leadership), but rather requires putting people through a set of processes where they have to experience it, try it out , and develop their emotional self-control and interactive styles.
MBAs are not getting the right education for management, although in developing their analytical skills the business schools are perfect for developing consultants, investment bankers and other professionals, as evidenced by where their graduates actually go. Henry Mintzberg, a professor at McGill has recently published a book – Managers not MBAs – which makes many related points.
There’s also a misunderstanding going on with executive education. Many large professional firms, in an attempt to develop their own managers, are linking up with prominent business schools to train their partners in management. The partners may be learning about business, but when it comes to managing it’s a case of the blind leading the blind. If you want to get experience (or even understanding) of how people actually respond and function, individually and in groups, it’s not clear that a group of scholars who are super-intelligent but have never actually managed anyone are the best providers of that service. Firms would be better off hiring the Dale Carnegie trainers.
The title of my blog may be too pessimistic. I found out that, at MIT, there is a course which put students through a simulation of a Bosnian peace-keeping force, and another in which students have to learn and put on a production of Shakespeare’s Henry V as an exercise in teamwork. These are creative and encouraging signs. I wish I had been required to take part in and occasionally lead such group projects during my education. It would have been nice to make my mistakes there instead of in more high-profile, high risk and career-threatening situations.
But such approaches remain the exception rather than the rule, and, I suspect, are still being designed and conducted by faculty who were specifically selected for their interest in things of the mind -intellectuals who predisposition is to draw analytical lessons from the experience, rather than to help people hone practical skills. Business schools are becoming MORE scholarly places as the years go by, not less.
I’m not saying business schools don’t do wonderful things for people (and perhaps to them.) I’m very grateful for what my education did for me, and proud of the institutions I was affiliated with. I just don’t think any of it had anything to do with making me a better manager – or much of one at all.
post # 22 — February 24, 2006 — a General post
Now it gets classy. Malcolm Gladwell (author of The Tipping Point and Blink) has begun to blog here People used to say they would listen to anything Dylan, the Beatles or Elvis recorded – my version is that I want to read anything Gladwell chooses to write. Welcome, sir!
post # 21 — February 23, 2006 — a Careers post
There are some wonderful people, clients and firms out there. If you’re lucky, you’ll spend your whole working life with them. However, unless you are very, very lucky, you’re going to encounter some (or all) of the following –
People drunk on power
- An incompetent superior
- Ungrateful bosses
- and clients
- People who don’t share your values
- Colleagues who act like competitive jerks
- Organizations where no-one will look out for your career
- People out to make a buck, and who will do anything to get it
- Cynics and skeptics who are hard to energize (about anything)
- People who won’t trust you, and are themselves untrustworthy.
- Incompetent colleagues with whom you’ll have to work anyway
- A boss who cares only about what you produce, and not about you
- People and organizations characterized by inertia and the fear of action.
- Superiors and clients who place unreasonable demands on you (e.g. last-minute requests or demands to work over the weekend)
- People who look after themselves alone, inconsiderate of the needs and interests of others
- Hypocrites who say they are dedicated to certain things, then act exactly opposite to them.
- Clients or customers who seem to care only about price, and treat you like a vendor
- Organizations that tolerate egregiously bad behavior from those around you, in the name of making money.
- People who will say bad things about you behind your back, much of it unfair and false
The question, then, is – How do navigate your way through this minefield? I’m assuming, of course, that you’re not one of the types described in the list above!
Broadly, you have two choices. You can become a defensive, suspicious, cynical person, or you can learn to get people to treat you right and give you chances, even where that is not their first instinct.
Without idealism or morality, I have been led to the conclusion that the first approach, matching the negativity of your environment, is self-defeating and self-destructive. By being negative, you only serve to reinforce the suspicions of those who show the behaviors above.
The minute you are non-cooperative, or withdrawn, or do only what you have to, people get a clear message about you that only serves to make them feel they were right in their behavior.
The second path, being optimistic, energetic, reaching out to people to form relationships, may not always work, but it’s the best shot you’ve got at eliciting the response you want and need to live an enjoyable and fulfilling work life.
Of course you don’t let yourself be exploited. If people don’t reciprocate, you walk. Life’s too short to work with or for idiots.
There is a textbook theory wich backs up this principle of behavior. It’s called “Tit for Tat” and i goes as follows – always start by being nice, and then treat the other person the way they treated you last time. If they were nice, be nice back. If they were uncooperative, give them a taste of their own medicine.
