STRATEGIES
FOR WINNING
Buried Treasure * Who Knows
What’s Hidden Right Under Your Nose?
In the 1970s, the Dallas Cowboys football team adopted the
philosophy of drafting the best athletes they could find, some of
whom did not have any college football experience. In the process,
they found genuine talent that everyone else in the National
Football League had overlooked. However, in the long run, the
Cowboys decided it was more productive to focus on drafting football
players who had already proven themselves on the football field.
We see that many businesses have designed their selection
process in a similar manner: they almost always hire good people,
but they make the mistake of placing some of these people in
positions for which they are ill suited. Perhaps you’ve heard
someone say, “He looked good in uniform, but he couldn’t play.”
That’s a way of saying that an employee appeared to have all the
attributes for success in a particular job, but didn’t perform up to
expectations. Everyone has hired and promoted people who turned out
to be disappointments. The number of times we have heard about top
salespeople who became lousy sales managers is painful. That mistake
occurs because neither the company nor the employee has a clear
understanding of what it takes to become an outstanding sales
manager. Oh, for sure, the company has a job description in a file
somewhere that the sales manager could dust off and read if he or
she wanted to, but traditional job descriptions are inadequate
today.
A complete job description goes beyond listing the duties that
go with a job title. A complete job description has to describe the
attributes of the person who will perform the job in an
extraordinary manner because he or she has the right brain power,
the right behavioral traits, and the right occupational interests
for the job.
A Personal Story from Bud Haney
We all subscribe to the idea that our people are among our greatest
assets, recognizing that those organizations that stand head and
shoulders above our peers and competitors in business tend to have
superior people policies and, on the face of it, superior people.
Accordingly, many of us spend a huge amount of time chasing the
rainbow, at the end of which we know we’ll find a pot full of those
perfect people that our industry leaders seem to have, instead of
focusing upon identifying the best in those who already make up our
teams. And therein lies the secret of those organizations with
people-based competitive advantage – it’s not just that they
identify and recruit great people (and, of course, that does help),
but that they work with those people that they have to make them
great, to find just what attributes they uniquely possess that can
be developed and employed effectively within the organization, to
build the sort of serious competitive advantage that only good
people can confer.
The simple point is that sometimes looking at the familiar in an
entirely different way can produce results that we scarcely expect.
Your people are like that – you assume that because you’ve worked
with them for a while, you know what they are, and what they’re
capable of. That’s truly only up to a point. To uncover genuine
hidden potential requires a shift in the way you evaluate your
people.
Take the following actions to get started.
Uncover Your Team’s Career Goals,
Aspirations, Likes/Dislikes and Strengths/Weaknesses
You can’t begin this process without knowing a lot about each and
every member of your team. Start by talking with them regularly. Find
out what they like to do. Research published in a 1999 Harvard
Business Review demonstrated that people excel at jobs that
interest them deeply more than at jobs that their education, skills or
experience might suggest fit them perfectly. Find out what your people
enjoy doing, what career plans each has, and where they aspire to go
in your business or in life in general. Don’t confine yourself to
informal chats. Use more formal means like the Profiles Checkpoint
360°™ (see
www.hrihouston.com) and psychometric assessments like the
ProfileXT™ to determine the particular strengths of your key assets.
The authors of the HBR research cited above put it perfectly:
“…the best way to keep your stars is to know them better than they
know themselves – and then use that information to customize the
career of their dreams.”
Make Better Use of Strengths
When you have a good appreciation of the particular strengths of
each member of your team, start to look for new ways in which to
apply them. Brainstorm on how you can apply these strengths in new
or imaginative ways to enhance the roles of each of your people and
to address problems that you haven’t previously been able to
address. In one successful example we observed recently in the IT
industry, a talented project manager was put into the role of sales
manager – not because she knew an awful lot about sales or had a
gleaming sales record – quite the contrary – but because she was
particularly good at organizing campaigns, marshalling resources,
motivating her team to action, and seeing initiatives through to the
end. Take off the blinders when it comes to applying strengths in
new ways.
Turn Weaknesses into Strengths
In the movie Enemy of the State, Gene Hackman tells Will
Smith, “…in guerrilla warfare you gotta turn your strengths into
weaknesses…if they’re big and you’re small, then you’re fast and
they’re slow…you’ve got to work with what you’ve got.” You’ve got to
do the same with your people. Look at what you currently perceive as
shortcomings, and then look at situations where those attributes
could be positive. After all, most weaknesses are just overused
strengths.
For example, a customer service representative who’s just too
assertive to “put up and shut up” with angry customers may actually
make a very successful salesperson, capable of overcoming objections
not easily overcome by others. Consider the marketing executive who
comes up with killer campaigns but just can’t seem to follow them
through to the end. Focus that person solely on developing the
creative campaigns, and assign project management and completion to
someone better suited. Look at every shortcoming you currently
perceive in your team members, determine where a weakness might
become a strength, and figure out how you can capitalize upon it.
You’ll be amazed at the results.
Feedback, Feedback, Feedback
In a recent study, 25 percent of employees said lack of feedback
from management about their performance was one of the main reasons
for changing jobs. Make it a formal objective to provide positive
feedback on a job well done to every one of your people at least
weekly. This requires you and your management team to actively seek
opportunities to provide feedback. Not only does this increase the
interest level in the job being done (we all like to be recognized),
but it helps to reinforce positive behavior and performance at the
expense of more negative alternatives. Also, experience shows that
when you provide feedback to the team, they’ll provide feedback to
you.
If you’ve been searching for a competitive advantage, then the
answer may be just under your nose. Before you start exploring more
exotic sources, look at the people who are driving your company
right now. You’ll find untold treasure buried behind those familiar
faces you see every day.
*From the book 40 STRATEGIES FOR WINNING IN
BUSINESS by Bud Haney and Jim Sirbasku. © S&H Publishing
Co., 5205 Lake Shore Drive, Waco, Texas 76710-1732. All rights
reserved. Contact S&H Publishing Co., (254) 751-1644, for reprint
permission.