A Client Story

One of our client companies was founded by two highly creative and technically skilled individuals. Through the years, the company grew steadily and had become highly respected by both clients and employees. The owners were quite proud of what they’d built, and rightly so.

Along the way, as the company grew larger, the owners decided to hire an individual who would take a top management role and also might become an owner as well. The owners were not enthusiastic sales or marketing people, and the new individual was just that: a passionate marketer and salesman. Conversely, while the owners were creative and highly technical, the new individual lacked these skills.

The owners believed that the new individual had skills that were complementary to theirs, and that together they could be a strong team. The new guy and his team would bring in the work, and the owners and their teams would get the work done. And the company would grow, the new guy would become a partner, and the future would be bright.

As time progressed, however, so too did the complexities of the relationships between the owners and the new guy. The underlying question was whether these were differences of style or substance.

Quite simply, the owners had done things their way for quite some time, and now this new guy was upsetting the apple cart. Where the owners had relied on a collegial and harmonious culture at the headquarters, the new fellow was implementing strong aggressive tactics to acquire new clients, putting unusual and strong demands on the staff to support him. Additionally, he tended to operate in a more autonomous and autocratic fashion, rather than take the more traditional collegial tack.

This new approach often required short internal deadlines to produce the desired marketing and sales materials needed to impress a new client. Additionally, the new fellow’s manner could sometimes be abrupt, impolite, and even rude. His viewpoint was that he got the job done, he captured new clients effectively, and people were just too sensitive.

As time progressed further, the owners became increasingly upset by the way that the new guy treated the other employees. Whereas he might have previously acted impatient or sometimes rude, he now exhibited distain for other employees. He thought that they just “didn’t get it” and that his way was the right way. He continued to operate this way despite widespread feedback that he was alienating the other employees, who should be his allies.

This began to carry over in the relationship between the new guy and the owners as well. Through time there grew a wide gap in philosophy and approach to both clients and employees.

In the end, the owners parted ways with this new guy. In short, they did not share Principles, which in this case amounted to standards of behavior. The way that the owners treated fellow employees, and each other, was fundamentally different than the way that the new sales guy treated everyone.

Mike’s Company

“Think about the circle labeled Reliability,” Mike says. “I’m reminded of a friend who drove to visit me at my new home. I asked him if he found my directions satisfactory, and he replied: ‘I made a right turn exactly four miles after the interstate highway exit, just like you told me. Not surprisingly, there was a road there, exactly when I made the turn.’ He’s a great friend, but you get the idea. Your word must be good, time after time. You must do what you say, always, so that people can rely upon you.

“Building reliability reminds us of building a nice house. It takes real work to create it, but when you do, it has long-lasting value. As a practical matter, reliability often can be built through day-to-day interactions, and that is how we foster it here. We put people together in situations that require them to rely upon one another for the project to be successful.”

“Mike,” asks a fellow in the back row, “this one is a problem for me. I’ve got a fellow working at my company that everyone loves. He’s just a great guy, and he works very hard. And he tries to help everyone he can. The problem is that he often is late on his work and on his promises. But I really can’t ask him to work any harder.”

“Mike,” interjects a lady in the third row, “do you mind if I answer this? I had a situation just like this in my company.”

“Please go ahead,” he says.

“Well,” says the lady, “we realized after months of this behavior that we were at fault, not the employee. Oh sure, he was not meeting his deadlines, but we weren’t coaching him properly on setting expectations with his coworkers. He needed to really understand his own capabilities and the importance of meeting his commitments, and we needed to coach him on this. After a while, he learned when to say no, and he focused on meeting his existing commitments rather than trying to please everyone.”

“That’s a great success story,” says Mike. “Actually, we’ve found that the type of employee you’ve described is one of the hardest to manage. First, he creates a high level of good will with his personality and his willingness to help others. Then he leaves us disappointed, and sometimes in real trouble, when he doesn’t deliver. But his positive attitude continues to convince us that we’ve got a great employee on board. And he is a great employee, but only when we’ve coached him successfully as you described.”

A Client Story

One of our client companies was owned by several individuals with complimentary technical, administrative, and sales talents. On paper, they appeared to be a good team, with combined abilities that covered most of the essential functions of the business. In fact, if you just read their resumes, you’d likely conclude that this was a winning team.

Through time, however, the behavior of one of these individuals became increasingly problematic. And it had nothing to do with anything that might be on a resume.

More specifically, this owner was not reliable. When meetings were scheduled for 9:00 am, he’d walk in at 9:15, or later. When a deadline was established, he’d miss it.

Invariably, there was some excuse such as traffic, he needed to take Susie to school, a customer called, and so forth. His partners were highly frustrated, but they were not assertive enough to bring the issue to a discussion.

In our early engagement with the owners, we stated that we expected them to start their meetings on time. To do otherwise was to be disrespectful of others’ time and commitment. They all agreed, and they all complied with meeting times and deadlines.

Through time, however, as it became increasingly clear that his partners would not hold him accountable, the wayward owner reverted back to form. Once again, he consistently arrived late to meetings, and he regularly missed his deadlines.

As a result, his partners merely repeated their discussions upon his late arrivals at meetings. And they became increasingly frustrated, but still wouldn’t discuss the issue with him.

Finally, after the frustration had sufficient time to sour the relationships and create a highly emotional state among the owners, they decided to dissolve their partnership. Even that didn’t look good on paper.

Mike’s Company

“The last circle,” says Mike, “represents Competency. This, of course, is critical to effective performance and to our willingness to empower someone. None of us would purposely put incompetent people in any position, especially positions of high influence.

“In our company, we put a great deal of thought and effort into our interview process in order to assess the competency of our prospective employees. We look for several things.

“First, we want them to have a minimum set of skills and knowledge to do the job. But we’re not necessarily looking for the person with the strongest set of skills.

“And that’s because what we really look for is a person who has naturally-occurring characteristics that will allow him to excel at the position. These are most important to us.

“For example, when we look for a new manager, we look for someone who loves to coach and who has a natural ability to work with others on an individual basis. They treat each person as someone special, because they are, and they love to coach that person to bring out their best.

“Similarly, when we look for someone to work in our accounting department, we look for someone who loves numbers. This is the person who will stay up all night to get the numbers to agree to the last penny. But this is something they love, and they’re very good at it.”

One of the ladies in the audience starts laughing. Everyone turns to see what the joke is.

“Sorry,” she says, “I’m just now aware that I couldn’t get a job in your accounting department. I let the bank tell me how much money I have in my checking account!”

“That’s okay,” says Mike, “you no doubt have other naturally occurring characteristics that would allow you to excel at some other position. One of our important jobs as managers is to fit you to the correct position.”

“Yeah,” says another lady, “this makes a lot of sense. We should try to find people that have naturally occurring characteristics that fit the requirements of the position. I’m thinking of your managers, the ones who love to coach and to treat each person as someone with individual needs. Since they love to do this, they probably do it consistently well. I know that’s the case with me. I love to eat chocolate, and I do it very well.”

“You’ve hit on an important point,” says Mike while still smiling broadly. “When we put people in a position that allows them to use their naturally occurring characteristics, we get naturally occurring high-level performance.

“This is in contrast, of course, with choosing folks who seem to have the right experience but lack the right attitude or lack some other naturally occurring characteristic needed. With these folks, we bring them on board as a top-quality hire and then later fire them as an incompetent.”

“So,” asks the lady again, “you’re saying that it’s our fault for hiring them in the first place?”

“It many cases it is, although sometimes the candidate can fool us. But we hired them for a position in which they were unable to perform. Sure, they had some experience, but they didn’t have the natural characteristics needed. So, they didn’t perform well. They had to force themselves everyday to compute that table of numbers, or someone else had to remind them. In the long run, it doesn’t work.

“The search for competent employees is a difficult one, and this topic could keep us busy for the rest of the night. But I urge you to focus on this activity, since there is little else of more importance to your firm than filling it with outstanding people.”

A Client Story

One of our clients was a highly technical consulting company that provided its customers with expertise in the design and oversight of their communications systems. They were real champs in their marketplace and they were sought by virtually all of the blue-ribbon companies in their city.

Most of the work done by the company was generated by word of mouth or by additional projects generated by current or past customers. This is fairly common in well-regarded service firms, who often do not rely upon new customers for a significant portion of their revenues.

On the other hand, in order to grow aggressively, the company did have a senior level salesperson whose responsibility was to generate work from new customers. As these customers came on board, the company was confident that it could turn them into steady customers who also would return regularly for additional services.

After more than a year of service with the company, the salesperson had not generated any significant new work. In discussions with this person, it was fairly obvious that she lacked competency for this position.

For example, when it was decided that companies in a certain market should be contacted, the salesperson wanted to collect ever-more-perfect information before making the contact. And when meeting about strategies, she would lean back in her chair and settle in for long discussions, which she would initiate and sustain.

This salesperson was not, of course, all bad. She was reliable. She did what she said she’d do (she just wouldn’t commit to doing what was really needed). She also shared the same principles as the other managers and owners.

What she lacked was competency. She simply did not have the acquired skills or the natural abilities to be a great salesperson.

The company parted ways with this person and put another individual in the sales position. The new person had the competency and natural abilities to excel, and indeed he did. The company achieved record sales.