First, Break All the Rules

by Marcus Buckingham

  Selecting for talent is only the first of the Four Keys. In the chapters that follow we will present the others and describe how great managers focus, recognize, and develop the talents they have so carefully selected.

  CHAPTER 4: The Second Key: Define the Right Outcomes

  * * *

  Managing by Remote Control

  Temptations

  Rules of Thumb

  What Do You Get Paid to Do?

  Managing by Remote Control

  “Why is it so hard to manage people well?”

  “I am ultimately responsible for the quality of all teaching in my district. Yet every day, in every classroom, there is a teacher and there are students … and the door is shut.”

  Gerry C., a superintendent for a large public school district, captures the manager’s challenge perfectly: How can you get people to do what you want them to do when you are not there to tell them to do it? Gerry knows what all great managers know: As a manager, you might think that you have more control, but you don’t. You actually have less control than the people who report to you. Each individual employee can decide what to do and what not to do. He can decide the hows, the whens, and the with whoms. For good or for ill, he can make things happen.

  You can’t. You can’t make anything happen. All you can do is influence, motivate, berate, or cajole in the hope that most of your people will do what you ask of them. This isn’t control. This is remote control. And it is coupled, nonetheless, with all of the accountability for the team’s performance.

  Your predicament is compounded by the fact that human beings are messy. No matter how carefully you selected for certain talents, each of your people arrived with his own style, his own needs, and his own motivations. There is nothing wrong with all this diversity — it is often a real benefit to have a team of people who all look at the world in slightly different ways. But this diversity does make your job significantly more complicated. Not only do you have to manage by remote control, but you have to take into account that each employee will respond to your signals in slightly but importantly different ways.

  If it’s any consolation, great managers are in the tightest spot of all. They are further hemmed in by two fervent beliefs. First, as we described in chapter 2, they believe that people don’t change that much. They know that they cannot force everyone in a particular role to do the job in exactly the same way. They know that there is a limit to how much each employee’s different style, needs, and motivation can be ground down.

  Second, they believe that an organization exists for a purpose and that that purpose is performance — with “performance” defined as any outcome that is deemed valuable by either an external or internal customer. In their view, the manager’s most basic responsibility is not to help each person grow. It is not to provide an environment in which each person feels significant and special. These are worthy methods, but they are not the point. The point is to focus people toward performance. The manager is, and should be, totally responsible for this. This explains why great managers are skeptical about handing all authority down to their people. Allowing each person to make all of his own decisions may well result in a team of fully self-actualized employees, but it may not be a very productive team.

  So this is their dilemma: The manager must retain control and focus people on performance. But she is bound by her belief that she cannot force everyone to perform in the same way.

  The solution is as elegant as it is efficient: Define the right outcomes and then let each person find his own route toward those outcomes.

  This solution may sound simple. But study it more closely and you can begin to see its power.

  First, it resolves the great manager’s dilemma. All of a sudden her two guiding beliefs — that people are enduringly different and that managers must focus people on the same performance — are no longer in conflict. They are now in harmony. In fact, they are intertwined. The latter frees her up to capitalize on the former. To focus people on performance, she must define the right outcomes and stick to those outcomes religiously. But as soon as she does that, as soon as she standardizes the required outcomes, she has just avoided what she always knew was impossible anyway: forcing everyone to follow the same path toward those outcomes. Standardizing the ends prevents her from having to standardize the means.

  If a school superintendent can keep focused on his teachers’ student grades and ratings, then he need not waste time evaluating them on the quality of their lesson plans or the orderliness of their classrooms. If a hospitality manager can measure her front-desk clerks’ guest ratings and the repeat visits they created, then she won’t have to monitor how closely they followed the preset welcome script. If the sales manager can define very specifically the few outcomes he wants from his salespeople, then he can ignore how well they filled out their call-reporting sheets.

  Second, this solution is supremely efficient. The most efficient route that nature has found from point A to point B is rarely a straight line. It is always the path of least resistance. The most efficient way to turn someone’s talent into performance is to help him find his own path of least resistance toward the desired outcomes.

  With his mind firmly focused on the right outcomes, the great sales manager can avoid the temptation of correcting each person’s selling style so that it fits the required mold. Instead he can go with each person’s flow, smoothing a unique path toward the desired result. If one salesperson closes through relationship building, one through technical competence and detail orientation, and another through sheer persuasiveness, then the great sales manager doesn’t have to interfere … so long as quality sales are made.

  Third, this solution encourages employees to take responsibility. Great managers want each employee to feel a certain tension, a tension to achieve. Defining the right outcomes creates that tension. By defining, and more often than not measuring, the required outcomes, great managers create an environment where each employee feels that little thrill of pressure, that sense of being out there by oneself with a very definite target. This kind of environment will excite talented employees and scare away the ROAD warriors. It is the kind of environment where a person must learn. She must learn the unique combination of plays that work for her time and time again. She must learn how she responds to pressure, how she builds trust with people, how she stays focused, how and when she needs to rest. She must discover her own paths of least resistance.

  Defining the right outcomes does expect a lot of employees, but there is probably no better way to nurture self-awareness and self-reliance in your people.

  Temptations

  “Why do so many managers try to control their people?”

  If defining outcomes rather than methods is so elegant and so efficient, why don’t more managers do just that? When faced with the challenge of turning talent into performance, why do so many managers choose, instead, to dictate how work should be done? Every manager has his own reasons, but in the end it is probably that the allure of control is just too tempting. On the surface these temptations seem justifiable, but play them out, and each one soon saps the life out of the company and shrivels its value.

  TEMPTATION: “PERFECT PEOPLE”

  This first temptation is very familiar.

  Imagine an expert, a well-intentioned expert. He wants to help all employees rise above their imperfections. He looks at all the fumbling inefficiency around him, and he knows, he just knows, that if only people would learn his simple steps, the world would be a better place. And everyone would thank him.

  This expert believes that there is “one best way” to perform every role. With time and study, he will find this “one best way” and teach it to all employees. He will make them more efficient and more successful. You, the manager, will simply have to monitor each person to ensure that they are all sticking to the regimen.

  Many managers can frequently be seduced by t
he idea that there is “one best way” and that it can be taught. Thus they dispatch the salesperson to learn the ten secrets of effective negotiation and then evaluate him based upon how closely he followed the required steps. They send the budding executive off to acquire the twenty competencies of successful leadership and then grade him on his ability to demonstrate each and every one. And, with the best of intentions, they encourage every employee to develop the nine habits for effective living.

  Although their areas of interest differ, these scientific experts all base their ideas on the same premise: namely, that each person’s uniqueness is a blemish. If you want to make your people perform, they say, you must teach the perfect method, remove the blemishes, and so perfect the person.

  Frederic Taylor, of the infamous time-and-motion studies, is considered the father of “one best way” thinking, but despite some formidable competition of late, the most influential “one best way” expert is probably a woman by the name of Madelaine Hunter.

  Virtually every educator in the United States knows her name. Having studied effective teaching practices at UCLA’s University Elementary School, Madelaine Hunter identified what she considered to be the seven most basic components of an effective lesson:

  Step 1: A brief review

  Step 2: Introduction

  Step 3: Explanation

  Step 4: Demonstration

  Step 5: Check for understanding

  Step 6: Q&A session

  Step 7: Independent study

  She gave each of the steps a unique moniker (for example, step 5 she called “Dipsticking”; step 6 became “Monitored Practice”). But by her own admission all she was basically doing was repackaging what talented teachers had always done. Not that there was anything wrong with this. In fact, for any educator interested in learning from the best, it was an extremely valuable analysis.

  If she had left it at that, she would probably have attracted a little less attention and much less criticism. But she didn’t leave it at that. She couldn’t. She had become convinced that her seven steps were not just a perceptive summary of what most good teachers did in the classroom; they were a formula, a strict formula. Anyone who took the time to learn and apply her formula would be transformed into an excellent teacher. She was sure of it.

  “I used to think that teachers were born, not made. But I know better now,” she claimed in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. “I’ve seen bumblers turned into geniuses.”

  It is doubtful that she had, but since she believed that her formula could indeed transform “bumblers into geniuses,” then couldn’t she fix the entire education system? Couldn’t she make a better world for teachers and students and parents? Well, in her mind, yes, she could. She was on a mission.

  Beginning in the late sixties and continuing until her death in 1994, she expanded her formula into books and videotapes. She raced around and around the lecture circuit. She courted school superintendents and administrators. She spread her good word. “At University Educational School,” she announced, “we identified the nutrients required for a successful school situation. We showed teachers what those learning nutrients are, how to put everything together to make a nourishing meal. We have made some darned good cooks.”

  As you can imagine, these optimistic claims were a sweet song for many embattled educators. Thousands of school administrators became disciples. They decided not only to train teachers in the seven steps, but also to evaluate each teacher based upon how closely and how well he or she followed the required sequence. What began as a thoughtful message about great teachers quickly became a creed that every teacher was forced to recite. Today hundreds of thousands of teachers have been indoctrinated in the “Madelaine Hunter method,” and sixteen states still, to some degree, officially embrace her methods.

  However, the tide is beginning to turn against the scientific doctrine of Madelaine Hunter. Some critics point out that her research was faulty — she didn’t study thousands of great teachers; she studied a few teachers working at her school at UCLA. Some comment on the unimpressive results of Hunterized school districts — over the years, student achievement scores were either no higher than regular school districts or, in some cases, significantly lower.

  Some are quite forgiving of the woman herself: “I don’t think that Madelaine meant for all this to happen,” said Gerry C., the school superintendent. “Her seven steps were meant to be ideas that each teacher could then incorporate into his own style. They were never meant to be rules which everyone had to follow.”

  Others judge her more harshly. Here’s Amy F., another school superintendent: “I think Madelaine suckered us into it. We liked the teach-by-the-numbers feel of it all. Teachers can be insecure, and she made teaching seem like a science, a real profession. We forgot that the essence of great teaching is to treat every child as an individual. You can’t train that. There aren’t seven steps to discovering that Billy learns by doing, while Sally learns by reading. It’s a talent. Madelaine distracted us from this. She led the whole of teaching astray.”

  Whatever the criticism, most educators agree: In ten years’ time her theories will still be known, and probably revered, as a perceptive study of great teaching. But they will no longer carry the force of dogma that they do today.

  This is a teaching example, but it could apply to any role. Any attempt to impose the “one best way” is doomed to fail. First, it is inefficient — the “one best way” has to fight against the unique, grooved four-lane highways possessed by each individual. Second, it is demeaning — by providing all the answers, it prevents each individual from perfecting and taking responsibility for her own style. Third, it kills learning — every time you make a rule you take away a choice, and choice, with all of its illuminating repercussions, is the fuel for learning.

  Adrian P., the manager of two thriving car dealerships, describes it this way: “The hardest thing about being a manager is realizing that your people will not do things the way that you would. But get used to it. Because if you try to force them to, then two things happen. They become resentful — they don’t want to do it. And they become dependent — they can’t do it. Neither of these is terribly productive for the long haul.”

  In your attempts to get your people to perform, never try to perfect people. The temptation may be captivatingly strong, but you must resist it. It is a false god. What looks like a miraculous cure-all is actually a disease that diminishes the role, demeans the people, and weakens the organization.

  Perhaps George Bernard Shaw was just in a particularly bad mood when he commented, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” But when it comes to attempts to perfect people, he wasn’t entirely off the mark.

  TEMPTATION: “MY PEOPLE DON’T HAVE ENOUGH TALENT”

  As we discussed in the previous chapter, it is tempting to believe that some roles are so simple that they don’t require talent. Hotel housekeepers, outbound telemarketers, and hospital service workers are all examples of roles that conventional wisdom suggests “anyone can do.”

  Misled by this wisdom, many managers don’t bother selecting for people who have talent for these roles. They hire virtually anyone who applies. Consequently they end up with a hopelessly miscast workforce — thousands of employees who see their role as demeaning and who can think only of getting out of it as fast as possible. Thus cursed, their managers respond with strict legislation. They impose a Bible-thick procedure manual on their people in the hope that they can make the role “idiotproof.” Their rationale: “If I give these people the chance to make choices, many of them will use that freedom to make the wrong choices.”

  Faced with this scenario, you can’t really fault these managers their need for control. If you don’t select for talent, then you shouldn’t give people leeway. You should dot every “i” and cross every “t” and you should monitor every employee’s performance to ensure tha
t it meets the step-by-step guidelines. This is a time-consuming approach that, unfortunately, turns managers into policemen, but why leave anything to chance? Since your employees weren’t carefully selected, who knows which way they would jump if the restraints were loosened?

  Of course, a more productive solution would be to start by respecting the role enough to select for talent in the first place.

  TEMPTATION: “TRUST IS PRECIOUS — IT MUST BE EARNED”

  Even when they have selected for talent, some managers are hamstrung by their fundamental mistrust of people. This mistrust might be a product of some deep-seated insecurity, or it might be couched as a rational conclusion — “I think the human race is basically driven by selfishness, and therefore most people will cut corners if they think they can get away with it.” But whatever its source, their mistrust means that these managers are extremely reluctant to let each employee find his or her own route to performance.

  Plagued by the nagging suspicion that someone, somewhere, is taking advantage of them, a mistrustful manager’s only recourse is to impose rules. They spin a web of regulations over their world. Only through regulation, they believe, will they be able to protect themselves from people’s inevitable misdeeds.

  For a mistrustful person, the manager role is incredibly stressful. The ambiguity — “What might that employee be doing!?” — and the suspicion — “Whatever it is, I’m sure it’s bad” — must be excruciating. Unfortunately for managers like this, the rules and regulations they impose rarely succeed in quelling their suspicions. They succeed merely in creating a culture of compliance that slowly strangles the organization of flexibility, responsiveness, and, perhaps most important, goodwill.