The boss and the pessimist view of humanity.
How do you get a company or organization to perform at a high level? The simple and more traditional approach has been to push performance externally usually via the boss or a boss like manager. This is why most people don't like their boss. The boss is the guy who is constantly on their back, micromanaging methods, being pushy, annoying and essentially acting like a slave driver who does not trust his peons to do their work without coercive pressure. This mentality is based on a viewpoint about human nature. Its the idea that low maturity individuals cannot be trusted with responsibility and stewardship and must be monitored and managed like parts of a machine because in the end they don't really care about the success of the business, they care about themselves. The traditional "boss" thinks to himself, "if I push them harder my business will grow." What's funny is that they are right to a certain extent. By pushing your employees you will get more performance but there is a catch. Because this model ultimately relies on one person (the boss) its growth will never go beyond him and this is why you see so many businesses that only grow as big as the owner and the people he directly pushes. It also creates a low trust culture and a environment that is unpleasant, stressful, toxic and leaves the boss wondering why he always has to be the driver behind any growth in the organization.
It is important to realize however, that the boss mentality is not entirely without merit. We don't live in a world thats all sunshine and rainbows. There are low maturity individuals out there in the world who have no ability to take responsibility unless someone is constantly riding them and there are instances where a person has to be the boss. However, I have observed that low maturity employees are not as common as many think and employers jump to the "bad employee" conclusion way too quickly. In short, the mistake employers make is assuming that people are less capable or worthy of responsibility than they actually are. I once had a COO of a billion dollar company tell me to always first assume first that the problem is in the process, not the people. I have found this to be some of the best advice I have ever had and have found that it is true in 90% of the cases. Most people actually want to do their job well and are not trying to take advantage of their employer (please note I say "most" there are some crappy people out there). While there certainly are low maturity or downright dishonest people out there, if you are careful in who you hire these should be rare. Don't join with other "bosses" distorted view of humanity that assumes people can't be trusted. Don't say to yourself "if I could only find/afford the right people". Perhaps the right peoples are already on your team and are just waiting for you to unlock and set free their potential. Perhaps these other guys are not finding great people, perhaps they are creating them.
A leader comes from a very different paradigm than a boss. A leader sees human beings as the key, not processes. A leader realizes that human beings are a marvel and have unimaginable potential that just needs to be unlocked. I once heard a story about Steve Jobs (which may or may not be true) but someone told me that when Steve Jobs interviewed people he didn't ask them if they wanted a job he ask them if they wanted to change the world. Have you ever noticed how many extraordinarily successful business people say the key to their success was with surrounding themselves with great people. Some assume they have a magic way of finding amazing people, but perhaps they have a way of unlocking the amazing in people. The model these people seem to employ focuses on bottom up buy-in and top down service. I think it can be summed up in 3 steps.
Step 1- Create an overall vision and preach, preach, preach.
The first and most important thing a successful leader must have is vision. The organization needs to have a story, a specific purpose and real meaning. The entire organization, it's processes, it's brand and everything about it should all come back to this clearly defined purpose and vision, the first role of a leader is to be a constant preacher of this vision to the members of the organization so that they see the big picture and not only understand what they do but why they do it and why that is important. People are not as much inspired by what they do or how they do it, as they are inspired by why they do what they do. The point of this preaching is to ensure that the members of the organization have bought in, or as one of my team members said "that they have drank the kool-aid." You need to always ensure that your team are believers in what they do and why they do it. If they believe then they will care about achieving their objectives and be willing to work and sacrifice for it.
Step 2- Assign stewardships with specific objectives, not methods.
With a firm grasp and understanding of the overall mission of the business the next step is to divide up that mission into functional objectives. These large functional objectives are then entrusted to members of your team as their area of stewardship. At this point your job is to inspire in them a belief that their objective can be accomplished and the accomplishment of that objective has real significance and importance as it relates to the overall vision and mission of the organization. This should not be stupid wordplay it should be heartfelt and you should let them know that you will be there doing everything you can to help them reach that objective.
Lets imagine I promoted a new customer service manager, here is what I would say.
"Jim our customers are our most important resource, without them our business dies and all the people in our teams families will be affected. I am having you be our new customer service manager because I have seen how well you treat our customers as a sales rep and I trust that you will do an amazing job of coming up with ways to keep our existing customers happy. Ultimately, your objective and stewardship will be to ensure that any customer that has an issue has it resolved quickly and professionally so they are retained as a life long customer who trusts us. You will have full authority to do whatever you think is best to accomplish this objective. Tomorrow, I will show you the resources available to you and how I would do things if I were running it, but in the end I want you to know that this is your baby and I am putting my trust in you to make judgement calls to accomplish this objective. Also tomorrow, we will collaborate on some specific metrics that you will report on a monthly basis so we can measure performance"
You may notice that beside just giving an objective you also will have to give guidelines. CAUTION! Give as little guidelines possible. This is where people go wrong. They don't just give an objective and a few guidelines, they give an objective and then basically tell the person exactly HOW to accomplish it. The key is to be a resource, not a commander. I usually let the person know how I would do it if I were trying to accomplish the objective but let them make the final call and let them know I want them to try and constantly find ways to make it better and that they have full authority to make changes because I trust they have good ideas to.
Lastly, you will notice that Jim was made accountable. I love the phrase "Trust... but verify". Show people trust but then have in place a method to objectively measure performance. Get them involved in this process. Ask them what metrics should be used to see if the objective is being accomplished. Ask them what goals they think are realistic. If in time you both find out those are not realistic goals then readjust them month after month. What I do with my key people is work together to come up with specific measurable metrics. They determine their goals for those metrics. We brainstorm ways to accomplish those monthly goals and then when they feel sufficiently empowered, I walk away for a month and trust they are doing everything they can to reach their goals and accomplish the objective. Then we review what happened next month, we discuss challenges, we revamp the goals and we repeat the process- "Trust... but verify". If performance is good then I don't get very involved. If performance is not good I get more and more involved in helping the person come up with ways to overcome challenges in order to accomplish the objective and ensure they still believe it can be accomplished.
Step 3- Serve and empower.
After an employee has been given their objective and you believe that they want to accomplish that objective, your job is to serve and empower them in accomplishing that objective. Your primary role will be to provide tools, training, financial compensation, non financial compensation, recognition and occasionally a little kick in the pants like a good coach does from to time to time. You will need to do everything possible so that your team believes their objectives are realistic and worth their time and efforts. As a Christian and member of the LDS church I believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ who said, "he who is greatest among you will be thy servant." What you may not realize is that this is great business advice. Your team exists to serve your customers, you exist to serve your team. Your team needs to know (and in their hearts believe) that you are an extremely valuable resource and fully available to help them when they run into challenges and roadblocks to their objectives. They should know that you are willing to jump into the trenches and help them accomplish their goals.
If human history teaches you anything it should teach you that human beings are amazing. When you don't feel like you can trust people around you just keep in mind that you are not responsible for all of the amazing things in our modern world. It was largely created by ordinary people like the ones in your organization. The amazing movements and organizations came about not because someone found the perfect team but more likely because certain leaders were able to unlock the creativity, capacity and talents of others. If you feel like your organization depends entirely on you, you probably are right and you should take steps to change that. You should get the point where you are managing objectives, not methods. This is not an easy transition and it requires trust but if you want your business to grow beyond you I don't know of any other way. Entrepreneurs take chances, take a chance on your people and they just might surprise you.
