CHAPTER TWELVE
THE DISCIPLINE OF PERSONAL EXCELLENCE

“The starting point of all achievement is desire. Weak desires bring weak results, just as a small fire makes a small amount of heat.”

—Napoleon Hill

Two hundred years ago, when the industrial revolution began, most of the world was poor. Over the past 200 years, we’ve gone through a technological revolution with the advent of the steam engine and electricity right up to our current amazing technologies. High technology has vastly reduced poverty in most of the Western world and has created more wealth for more people than has ever been dreamed possible in all of human history.

But the fact is that it’s not technology alone that has brought about these changes. It has not been just a technological revolution but a managerial revolution. It is the managers of enterprises and organizations at all levels who have been responsible for the great bursts in progress. Technology has always followed managerial development.

When Vince Lombardi took over the Green Bay Packers, he was asked, “How are you going to change the way this team operates? Are you going to bring in new plays and ideas on how to run the ball?” He said “No, we’re just going to become brilliant on the basics.” For you to succeed greatly as a manager and leader, you must also become brilliant on the basics. Often, a single key skill that you develop can dramatically improve your effectiveness and your ability to get results.

Become an Excellent Manager

What is an excellent manager? An excellent manager is somebody who achieves superior results by consistently getting the best out of him- or herself and by releasing the potential of others so they can make their maximum contribution to the organization.

The strength of any organization is determined by the quality of its managers at all levels. They are the “officer corps” of the corporate army. What they do and how well they do it is the key determinant of corporate success. The most conservative studies estimate that the average person works at less than 50 percent of capacity, and sometimes less than 40 percent or 30 percent! A good manager creates an environment in which the average person functions at 60, 70, 80, or 90 percent, and occasionally close to 100 percent of capacity, and makes a massive rather than average contribution to the organization.

Ask the Right Questions

The starting point of managerial effectiveness is asking and answering the right questions, over and over. Excellent managers are highly aware of the answers to the important questions: Why are you on the payroll? What have you been hired to accomplish? A good manager is continually asking and answering these questions, for himself, and for each staff member.

Good managers are extremely result-oriented, versus process- or activity-oriented. They always have their eye on the ball, on the results they’ve been hired to produce.

Another question you can ask and answer is, “What is the unique contribution that only you can make?” What can you and only you contribute to your organization that if done well will make a significant difference? Most people spend 80 percent of their time on the 80 percent of their work that only contributes 20 percent of their value. Top-performing managers always concentrate on the few things that, if done really well, will make a real difference.

Questions you can ask, especially if you are not making the progress you want, or you are experiencing resistance, include “What are we trying to do? How are we trying to do it? Could there be a better way?” Continually asking these questions widens your perspective, expands your range of understanding, and brings you answers, ideas, and insights that help you to be more effective and to make a more valuable contribution in a shorter period of time.

Focus on Key Result Areas

Your key result areas are your most significant areas of contribution. They are the field of performance of the manager. The focus on key result areas is the key to your effectiveness, your future, and your career. Each of the seven key results areas for managers is important. In each position of management, one of these key result areas is usually more important than any other at the moment.

Customer Service

The first key result area is customer needs. As a manager, you have three customers that you have to satisfy to be successful. The first customer you have to serve is your boss. As long as you please your boss and give the boss what he or she wants in the form that he or she wants, your job will be secure.

The second customer that you have to satisfy is the external customer, the customer who has to use what your company or department produces. It could be an outside customer or it could be another department within the organization.

Your third customer is your staff. Good managers serve their people to help them be better in accomplishing their jobs. This idea is the reason for the popularity of what is called “servant leadership.”

Profit and Loss

The second key result area is economics. All organizations are constrained by economics of some kind. By that we mean that you’re continually working to either increase revenues or to decrease costs. You are continually thinking in terms of the cost of inputs relative to the cost of outputs. You are continually striving to increase profits, to increase the return on investment of time and money.

Strive for Excellence

The third key result area in business is quality. The quality of your work is absolutely essential to your success, as is the quality of the products and services your company produces. Quality improvement should be going on every day. The formula for business success is CANEI, which stands for “continuous and never-ending improvement.” You must emphasize quality, discuss quality, and continually ask how you can improve the quality of what you do for your customers.

Achieve More with Less

The fourth key result area is productivity. How can you increase your personal productivity, the productivity of your staff, and the productivity of your business while decreasing or constraining costs?

Faster, Better, Cheaper

The fifth key result area in business is innovation, continually seeking new ideas for products and services or ways to do the work faster, better, or cheaper. Innovation includes new ways of doing things, new approaches, new products, new services, and new methods and processes. You must be thinking about innovation and the future, and get your people thinking about it, all the time.

Grow Your People

The sixth key result area is people growth. How do you grow your people? According to recent research, the payoff in people training is as much as 20:1 or even 30:1. You get a $20 or $30 return for every dollar you invest in training. The top 20 percent of companies in terms of profitability in each industry spend 3 percent or more of their gross revenues training their people.

People growth is an essential part of growing your company. Almost 85 cents of each dollar of operational costs is spent on salaries and benefits. On average, companies spend less than one cent of each of those dollars in training the people who generate those revenues.

Grow the Business

The seventh key result area in business is organizational development. Organizational development means doing the things that create a positive and harmonious organizational climate. These factors are the ones that make people feel happy to work there and produce at their best.

You should be continually asking yourself what you can do to improve performance in each of these areas. Which of these areas constitutes the 20 percent of issues that account for 80 percent of your problems? What are the 20 percent of opportunities that offer the greatest potential for the future? Excellent managers focus their efforts on the most important key result areas that affect their business at the current time. What are yours right now?

Set Standards of Performance

You need standards of performance (SOPs) for each job and for each function in your area of responsibility. People can usually hit a target if they can see it, but nobody can hit a target they can’t see. These standards need to be specific, measurable, and time-bounded. When you ask someone to do something, you have to tell them exactly what it is that you want, how you’re going to measure it, and when you want it done by. One of the most important rules of management is “What gets measured gets done.”

Standards of performance must be the basis for rewards and promotion. Rewards in an excellent organization go to performance, to excellence, to sales, and to achievement. Rewards must be based on performance alone. Once you have established standards of performance, you must inspect what you expect. Inspect, monitor, control, and assure compliance with your performance standards.

You must recognize the difference between delegation and abdication. Even if you delegate the job, you are still responsible for its successful completion. It is therefore essential that you inspect what you expect. When you inspect what you expect, people see that you consider it important that they maintain those standards.

Managing by Objectives

Management by objectives is a vital tool you can use to increase your output and build the competence of your subordinates. Most managers don’t use MBO, or don’t use it correctly when they use it. MBO is effective with competent people who have already demonstrated an ability to do the job well. When you have a new task, you sit down with them to discuss and agree on the job that has to be done.

You agree on measurements and standards of performance as well as the schedule for completion. When you use MBO to assign an objective or goal you say, “This is what needs to be done. This is how we will measure it, and here is the timeline.” You make it clear that this person is responsible for the job, but if he or she needs any help or assistance, you are available to that person at any time.

You then leave the person alone to do the job. Allow the staff member to accomplish the goal using his or her own ideas, methods, and techniques. Even if you think that you would do it differently, you must give the person the freedom to decide how to get it done. And finally, arrange to review progress on a regular basis. Set a schedule for reporting. Get together once a week or once a month to catch up.

The management by objectives system is a powerful way for you to pass off critical areas of responsibility or key result areas to staff. It is also a powerful way to grow people in confidence and competence.

Managing by Exception

Management by exception is an excellent time saver and people builder. Once you have given an assignment and you’ve made it clear, measurable, and time-bounded, you then tell the person, “You only need to come back to me if a variance from what we’ve agreed upon occurs.”

If everything is going well and the job is on schedule, he or she doesn’t have to report to you. But if a problem or challenge does arise, that person can come back to you for comment or advice. In management by exception, “no news is good news.” This method of managing, to be used only with competent people, is a great time saver for you, and a people builder for your employee.

Delegate Effectively

Your ability to delegate will be a critical determinant of your success in management. Delegation allows you to increase your span of control from what you can do personally, to what you can control. Good delegators get more and more done, and are therefore assigned more and more people to whom they can delegate.

The first step in delegating is for you to match the task to the skills of the employee. One of the big mistakes in delegation is assigning a task to someone who does not have the skills, confidence, ability, or the motivation to accomplish it.

When you delegate, explain the results that you want and why you want those results. The why is often more important than the how. A person who knows why you want a certain job to be done will be much more capable of making decisions and more creative and innovative in accomplishing the result you desire.

When delegating, you also need to explain your preferred method of working. This approach is different from management by objectives. In delegating, you tell the person how you think it should be done based on your own experience. This method is just your preferred method and not engraved in stone. But it gives them a process to follow. Then make him or her 100 percent responsible for the task. Increased responsibility is a powerful way to build competence and confidence in people. Resist the temptation to look over the person’s shoulder. Resist the temptation to interfere. Once you have assigned the task, don’t take it back.

Finally, schedule regular meetings for review. In this way, you keep on top of things. You get feedback on how appropriate the task is for this person. Sometimes you might delegate a task that is beyond the person’s capability. You can then revise or reduce the scope of the job.

At other times, the task will be too much, and the person to whom the task was delegated will feel in over his or her head. You will need to reorganize the task, give the person additional input or resources, shift the load, or take back part of the task.

Achieving Managerial Leverage

One of your goals as a manager is to increase the quality and quantity of your output relative to your input. You can use any of several ways to increase or even multiply your productivity as a manager.

• Do things you are better at. Delegate things that you’re not good at. Do more of the things you do easily and well, those tasks in your areas of strength. Because you can do these tasks faster and more efficiently, you can make a bigger contribution.

• Teach, train, and delegate to others. The more you teach, train, and delegate, you more you can get done of your own work.

• Do more important things. Set priorities and concentrate on the most valuable use of your time.

• Simplify your work. One of the best ways to minimize the amount of work you have to do is to get rid of certain jobs or parts of jobs that are no longer essential. Eliminate unnecessary steps and consolidate jobs. Avoid activities that do not contribute to your key result areas. Always be seeking ways to get more important things done in less time.

Build Team Spirit

Team building is an essential skill of effective managers and a key ability required for promotion. The ability to build and work with an effective team is also one of the key qualities that companies look for when seeking out prospective CEOs. It is absolutely essential to your success.

Here are three ideas for building a top team:

1. First, mutually establish an overarching goal or mission for the team—something challenging and exciting. Make it an inspiring concept that makes people want to make a real contribution to the results desired.

2. Second, hold weekly meetings in which each person tells what he or she is doing. This simple activity creates better communication and interaction between the team members. Be sure that everyone gets a chance to tell everyone else what they are working on and how it is going. And especially, explain to everyone how his or her job fits into the “big picture” and how it affects others.

3. Third, celebrate successes. One of the key functions of the manager is to orchestrate celebrations for special occasions, birthdays, and achievements. When people are praised and celebrated they feel more committed and dedicated to the company, and so do the other team members.

Make Better Decisions

Decisiveness is a key quality of effective managers. No promotion or advancement is possible until a person develops the ability to make good decisions quickly. As a manager, you will spend 50 percent to 60 percent of your time solving problems and making decisions. Your ability in this area will, as much as any other factor, determine the success of your career as a manager. Fortunately, problem solving and decision making are skills that you can learn.

Begin by defining clearly what you’re trying to avoid, preserve, or accomplish. What are you trying to accomplish? What is your goal? When you are faced with a problem, get the facts before deciding. What exactly has happened? How did it happen? Why did it happen? What are all the possible solutions to this problem, or possible courses of action?

Once you have the information, decide quickly. Eighty percent of all decisions should be made when the question comes up. Only 20 percent of decisions require more information. If you cannot make an immediate decision, set a deadline. Resolve to make a decision on the subject by a certain time. Make a decision, assign responsibility for carrying out the decision, take action on the decision, and then follow up and make sure the action is carried out. Often, any decision is better than no decision at all. If you receive new information on the problem or decision, be prepared to change your decision or do something else.

Most of all, focus on the solution rather than the problem. The more you think about solutions, about what can be done, about what actions you can take, the more solutions you will come up with, and the more creative you will become.

Remove Obstacles to Performance

Every work process encounters obstacles that limit the amount of work that can be done. The removal of these “limiting steps” is often the fastest way to increase output. One of the primary jobs of the manager is to identify obstacles to job completion and find ways to remove them.

Begin by developing absolute clarity about your most important goal. Then ask, “Why haven’t we achieved this goal already? What is holding us back? Of all the factors that are holding us back, what is the biggest obstacle, and how could we remove it?” The answer is called your “key constraint” or “limiting factor.” Once you have identified what it is, you then focus single-mindedly on alleviating this constraint or limit. You focus day and night until you have solved the problem or removed the obstacle that is holding you back from achieving greater success. Get rid of it and get it out of the way.

Employ the 80/20 rule. One or two problems or obstructions cause most of your problems in achieving results. What are your main obstacles to accomplishment? Sometimes by removing the number one obstacle in your path, whatever is standing between you and your most important business goal, you can make more progress in a week or a month than you could make in a year doing other things or solving smaller problems. As Goethe said, “The main thing is to make the main thing the main thing.”

The obstacles between you and outstanding business success usually have to do with product or service quality, or they have to do with people skills and abilities. Sometimes the major obstacle to the growth of your company is the lack of a key person or the presence of an incompetent person who should not be in your company any more.

Communicate with Clarity

Eighty-five percent of managerial success is determined by the manager’s ability to communicate effectively with others. Fortunately, the ability to communicate well one-on-one, in meetings, and in front of a group is a learnable skill. You can take specific actions to be a better communicator.

First of all learn how to write well. Written communication requires clarity, brevity, simplicity, and accuracy. Your writing skills can be improved through learning and practice. Numerous excellent courses and books on business communications are available to help you in this area.

Second, learn how to speak on your feet. Learn how to stand up in front of an audience and speak effectively and persuasively. You can join Toastmasters International, go to Dale Carnegie, or take a course in professional speaking. People who can speak on their feet advance more rapidly in their careers as managers than people who cannot. Learn how to speak well and give good presentations at meetings within the company and outside the company.

Third, learn how to sell your ideas. All top managers are good at selling ideas. When you are selling your ideas to others, begin by asking what is in it for them. Always present your ideas in terms of benefits for the listeners, in terms of improvement of some kind, and doing things better.

Whenever you introduce a new idea to others, expect resistance at the beginning. Instead of rushing to your recommendation or conclusion, you say, “I’ve been thinking about ways that we can improve how we do things in this area. I’ve come up with an idea that might enable us to save money or cut costs. What do you think of this idea?” Then give them time to think it over.

The average person needs 72 hours to incorporate a new idea into his or her way of thinking. If you present a new idea and demand an immediate decision, almost invariably the answer will be no. But when you allow people to think about it for two or three days, they will gradually begin to see the possibilities in it.

Achieve Personal Excellence

Commit to excellence and personal pride. Nothing is more likely to affect your career more than your committing to becoming personally excellent at what you do.

Every organization has two routes to the top. One route is through performance. The other route is through politics. And every study we’ve seen in the past few years says that, if you try to get to the top through politics, you will almost invariably be derailed somewhere along the way. But if you work to get to the top through excellent performance, almost everyone in the organization will help you. These people include those above you, others at your level, and people below you. Your high road to success is always for you to commit to becoming the best manager you can possibly be.

Set standards of excellence for yourself and for everyone under you. Encourage, recognize, and reward quality work. Remember that you will always be judged on the basis of the quality of the work of people who have been entrusted to you to manage or supervise.

Celebrate success and achievement. Give rewards and prizes. Catch people doing something right. Praise people whenever they do something well or when they go the extra mile in their work.

Most importantly, lead by example. Look upon yourself as the standard bearer of your department or unit or company. Always walk, talk, and deal with people as you would like them to act toward each other. If you look upon yourself as a role model, you will put yourself on the high road to leadership in your organization and in your life.

Leadership Is Learnable

Successful managers are made, not born. You can become an excellent manager and leader in your work and your life if you learn and practice the behaviors, methods, and techniques of other successful managers and leaders.

The ideas contained in this book are based on more than 30 years of research and experience in large and small companies. If you recognize that you are deficient in any of these areas, resolve right now, today, to do something about it. Read a book, take a seminar, listen to an audio program, or ask for advice from someone you respect. Your career success may depend on it.

Action Exercises

1. Decide today to become an excellent executive. What one skill would help you the most to get better results in your position?

2. Decide today to become an excellent public speaker and communicator. What would be your first step?

3. Manage your time more efficiently. What could you start doing more of, or less of, to be more productive?

4. What tasks should you delegate to free up more of your time, and to whom should you delegate these tasks?

5. What is the most important decision you have to make right now, and what are you going to do?

6. What is the most important key result area of your position or your business you should concentrate on improving?

7. Practice management by objectives with your competent staff. What large task or area of activity should you turn over completely to someone else?