12th May 2009
Square pegs and round holes: Putting the right people in the right place.
In our neck of the woods, we often complain about the management of many of our beloved institutions: The West Indies Cricket Team, country national team of whatever sport, government committees, and other institutions.
There is one common thread that often gets me all fired up: if (insert name here) used to be a member of the (insert group here), they should be able to successfully lead it. Wrong!
As many people have heard me say “You may be a great artist, but that does not mean that you know how to run an art gallery”. Many sportsmen, businesspeople and professionals are technically proficient, but that does not immediately make them the best at managing an organisation.
An ex-MD once told us at senior management meeting, “that he was a career manager”. At the time, he was new to the company and we thought “he’s sounds like he’s copping out before he even starts!”
Years later, I finally understood what he meant, that he did not have a starring discipline or technical proficiency per se, but one thing he was deadly at – managing an organisation for success.
What this means for us is that whether you are a business owner or managing a team, you must look for people who have management competencies, not necessarily people who were good at the sport or profession.
Don’t get me wrong, technical competence, experience in the area in question are all important. They play a role in creating understanding and appreciation in the person selected, to create and smooth over change.
However, a winning record or professional accolades should never take the place of management and organisational skills.
What are these skills?
I like to call them my four principles of management. As a manager you need to:
- Ensure that your staff knows what they have to do.
- Ensure they know how to do it.
- Ensure that they have the tools to do it with.
- Make sure that they are motivated.
While there are many internal factors that will impact on the success of an organisation – environment, reasonable objectives, availability of resources and so on. But if these four are present, the impossible becomes possible.
Consider the following examples of great leaders who had little or relatively little success or proficiency in the organisations that they lead: