Gaiziunas Manager Moving Mountains

Return on Education: Excellent Employees, Brilliant Performance, Best Results
1. Auflage 2011
ISBN: 978-3-86416-144-5
Verlag: mi-Wirtschaftsbuch
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 224 Seiten

Every executive board would like to have the best in their field. Unfortunately, this undertaking has been failing extensively and categorically for years.
Every year billions are spent on executive and personnel development, talent management, training and qualification, with modest results. No man-agers can move mountains like this, not to mention the range of challenges which are mounting up in this time of exogenous shocks, threatened global supply networks and dwindling raw material sources. The 'input' principle is to blame: Too much emphasis is placed on what is put in. The 'best in class' pay attention to what comes out.
They work according to the principle of 'return': Training should no longer just make it possible for managers and employees to move mountains. The mountains need to be moved in the training itself. This is self-financing and profit-generating because it creates 'return projects' which are designed to increase turnover, reduce costs and/or improve efficiency. That's how mountains are moved! With this new understanding of management development and the unleashed power of developing personalities. In short, with future competence. The author spotlights twelve megatrends from business and society that managers across all industries will need to master with future competence in the next few years. They lead in to Change Management 2.0: Transformation instead of just change.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Gaiziunas, Nicole

Leseproben

2 Only What’s Necessary, Please!

“A lot is possible. Very little is necessary.”

Laotse

“Go ahead and shoot around all you want. I’ll hit it with the first shot.”

John ‘The Duke’ Wayne

“When I think back on all the crap I learned at High School, it’s a wonder I can think at all.”

Paul Simon, ‘Kodachrome’

Management by Zeus

Making a mistake is painful. It’s absolutely unbearable making a 3000 year old mistake. Too bad that the Greek classic isn’t a part of today’s management development curriculum. Managers would save themselves a few errors in judgment if they knew more about Heracles and his manure.

This demigod completed, literally, 10 herculean tasks. He slew the nine-headed hydra and kidnapped Zerberus, the hellhound of Hades. He also worked some real wonders in agriculture.

Zeus had given him the task of cleaning out the stall of Augias (the King of Elis) in only one day. The king had about three thousand heads of cattle, who according to Homer, “had amassed an endless amount of manure over the past several years.” This task from the father of all the gods stank to high heaven. It was impossible to achieve this in a single day. What did Hercules do?

He could have shoveled the manure himself. He could have recruited an army of helpers. He could have asked Aries, the god of war and always available for a tough job, for some support. All of that would have been possible. However, Heracles would not have been a demigod, if he hadn’t known that:

There’s a big difference between possible and necessary.

Each of us knows the difference. Unfortunately, mostly only retrospectively: think of all that we have managed to get done when we look back on our long day as the whistle finally blows? What fires did we put out, where did we intervene, what did we set in motion, clean out, motivate, push-start, organize, control, improve, dismiss, project, correct! And what did we actually achieve, move or massively change? We have done everything possible. But what was really necessary for massive change? At this point, as we look back at the end of the day, thoughts such as these normally lead to a knee-jerk reach for the remote control or the Chivas Regal. King Augias wasn’t much different.

He had already tried everything possible to get rid of the mountain which stank to high heaven. He’d tried everything possible, but achieved little. The cattle were producing manure faster than he and his farm laborers could clean it away. Based on this frustrating experience, Augias, full of confidence, made a bet with his divine helper. He bet a tenth of his livestock as a bonus for Hercules’ success. Because he was totally convinced that Hercules could not manage this huge task. Demigod or no demigod. Augias reportedly said: “Heracles has only two hands and a shovel.” It might make you smile, but it’s a misapprehension. Because Heracles didn’t take up the manure shovel. His motto was:

Don’t do everything possible. Just do what’s necessary.

Heracles didn’t use a shovel. Instead he damned up two streams, Alpheos and Peneos, into a huge lake and then blew up the dam, channeling the thunderous mass of water into a crashing surge through the middle of the cattle stalls. The largest flush in the ancient world. The refuse disappeared quicker than King Augias could say “cut the crap.” Angry and foaming at the mouth, he refused to give Heracles the promised wager. Because he couldn’t believe that he had not come up with the idea himself. He had tried everything. Unfortunately, not what was necessary. He wasn’t a ‘return’ manager. But Heracles was (only Philistines called him Hercules).

Not a lot has changed since these mythical times. How many billions are spent by companies each year for literally ‘everything possible,’ to increase the fitness of their workforce?

That is the curse of the possible: it is not essential.

People don’t get better because they are trained for ‘everything possible.’ They become more effective when they learn that, and only that, which is necessary: training to the point. To the point of ‘return.’ What is that point?

Training to the Point of Return

Outside of Best Practice, training is seldom carried out to the point of return. Instead they apply the watering can principle.

What happens, for example, to a project engineer, who always overshoots the average rebate quota by an embarrassing 20 percent for project contracts? Obviously, the man gets negotiation training! So that he gets his contracts signed in the future with less of a rebate. Does he do that?

You can bet your Mont Blanc that he doesn’t. Of course negotiation training is possible. Augias would definitely book it – and that says a lot. Augias was an unlucky fellow when it came to Return on Education. Because negotiation training, in this case, is definitely not necessary. Because there is no necessity in the truest sense of the word because we don’t know what is causing the necessity, why the engineer is being so generous with his rebates. Is he really just ‘too soft’ in price negotiation? Then negotiation training would be of benefit. Or does he explain the contract with so many gaps in information, that at the end of the negotiation the contract can only be achieved by giving such rebates? Then such negotiation training would be a manure shovel for 3000 cattle: possible, counterproductive, and money wasting. Or as the Americans so aptly say: Totally beside the point. The point of return.

In order to make your employees fit to the point of return, you must first know what the point is.

That the engineer was giving too much of a rebate is obvious to any accountant in sales. That a buyer, in comparison to his colleagues, isn’t getting the rebate right, is also obvious. That a development group is taking too long is absolutely clear as well. If somewhere, someone is achieving less than he should, it’s obvious. So get the people trained! But in what? What is the exact problem? What is the ‘Point of Maximum Return’?

Normal Practice: organizes training courses
Best Practice: identifies the ‘Point of Maximum Return’

At exactly the point where the maximum ‘return’ on education comes in. A good idea? Revolutionary. And in a lot of companies never even considered. Even worse: the totally essential question about the ‘Point of Maximum Return’ is transferred over to the trainer. That’s pretty funny when you think about it:

A trainer carrying out a needs analysis for the ‘Point of Maximum Return’ for each individual participant is about as likely to occur as a 500 meter high iceberg in the middle of the Sahara on which a big band of mice is playing the Rumba.

No trainer can do that in a seminar. If at all, then before the seminar starts. However, trainers are rarely booked for that. Even if they were: that is not the job of the trainer! The average trainer cannot identify the ‘Point of Maximum Return.’ Only Sherlock Holmes can do that.

Sherlock Holmes, the Trainer

Why does the project engineer with the weak rebate quota receive negotiation training in nine out of ten companies? Although it doesn’t really help? And how much budget is used up for it? You need a good detective to find out why the good man is giving out too much of a rebate. In nine out of ten companies, however, the detectives are poorly equipped for this. Sherlock Holmes had a magnifying glass. What is the magnifying glass of the ‘return’ detective?

The magnifying glass of the ‘return’ detective is the skill profile.

Management and Personnel Development still have no profile in many companies. Literally: they are lacking a profile of their competencies. The engineer with a weak rebate record can only get negotiation training because his inability to explain contracts is not on a list anywhere. Not on a list of required competencies.

It is not possible to train something that is not even on the list!

If it isn’t...