4: Making Strength Productive
To achieve results, one has to use all the available strengths—the strengths of associates, the strengths of the superior, and one’s own strengths.
To make strength productive is the unique purpose of organization.It cannot, of course, overcome the weaknesses with which each of us is abundantly endowed. But it can make them irrelevant. Its task is to use the strength of each man as a building block for joint performance.
STAFFING FROM STRENGTH
The area in which the executive first encounters the challenge of strength is in staffing.
Whoever tries to place a man or staff an organization to avoid weakness will end up at best with mediocrity.
There is no prouder boast, but also no better prescription, for executive effectiveness than the words Andrew Carnegie, the father of the U.S. steel industry, chose for his own tombstone: "Here lies a man who knew how to bring into his service men better than he was himself."
Effective executives know that their subordinates are paid to perform and not to please their superiors.
Effective executives never ask "How does he get along with me?" Their question is "What does he contribute?" Their question is never "What can a man not do?" Their question is always "What can he do uncommonly well?" In staffing they look for excellence in one major area, and not for performance that gets by all around.
To look for one area of strength and to attempt to put it to work is dictated by the nature of man.
The really "demanding boss"—and one way or another all makers of men are demanding bosses—always starts out with what a man should be able to do well—and then demands that he really do it.
To try to build against weakness frustrates the purpose of organization.
What this man - and many others like him can do is pertinent in an organization. What he cannot do is a limitation and nothing else.
Achievement must be measured against objective criteria of contribution and performance.
Structuring jobs to fit personality is almost certain to lead to favoritism and conformity. And no organization can afford either. It needs equity and impersonal fairness in its personnel decisions. Or else it will either lose its good people or destroy their incentive. And it needs diversity. Or else it will lack the ability to change and the ability for dissent which the right decision demands.
And by staying aloof they were able to build teams of great diversity but also of strength.
How then do effective executives staff for strength without stumbling into the opposite trap of building jobs to suit personality?
1. They do not start out with the assumption that jobs are created by nature or by God.
The rule is simple: Any job that has defeated two or three men in succession, even though each had performed well in his previous assignments, must be assumed unfit for human beings. It must be redesigned.
It is its capacity to make common people achieve uncommon performance.
2. The second rule for staffing from strength is to make each job demanding and big.
The ones who are enthusiastic and who, in turn, have results to show for their work, are the ones whose abilities are being challenged and used.
3. Effective executives know that they have to start with what a man can do rather than with what a job requires.
The appraisal interview is the crux of the whole system.
Effective executives, therefore, usually work out their own radically different form. It starts out with a statement of the major contributions expected from a man in his past and present positions and a record of his performance against these goals. Then it asks four questions:
(a) "What has he [or she] done well?"
(b) "What, therefore, is he likely to be able to do well?"
(c) "What does he have to learn or to acquire to be able to get the full benefit from his strength?"
(d) "If I had a son or daughter, would I be willing to have him or her work under this person?"
(i) "If yes, why?"
(ii) "If no, why?"
There is, therefore, nothing more corrupting and more destructive in an organization than a forceful but basically corrupt executive.
By themselves, character and integrity do not accomplish anything. But their absence faults everything else.
4. The effective executive knows that to get strength one has to put up with weaknesses.
They are above all intolerant of the argument: "I can’t spare this man; I’d be in trouble without him." They have learned that there are only three explanations for an "indispensable man": He is actually incompetent and can only survive if carefully shielded from demands; his strength is misused to bolster a weak superior who cannot stand on his own two feet; or his strength is misused to delay tackling a serious problem if not to conceal its existence.
It must be an unbreakable rule to promote the man who by the test of performance is best qualified for the job to be filled.
Staffing the opportunities instead of the problems not only creates the most effective organization, it also creates enthusiasm and dedication.
A superior has responsibility for the work of others. He also has power over the careers of others.
Staffing for strength is thus essential to the executive’s own effectiveness and to that of his organization but equally to individual and society in a world of knowledge work.
HOW DO I MANAGE MY BOSS?
Above all, the effective executive tries to make fully productive the strengths of his own superior.
The effective executive also knows that the boss, being human, has his own ways of being effective. He looks for these ways. They may be only manners and habits, but they are facts.
The adaptation needed to think through the strengths of the boss and to try to make them productive always affects the "how" rather than the "what." It concerns the order in which different areas, all of them relevant, are presented, rather than what is important or right.
Few things make an executive as effective as building on the strengths of his superior.
MAKING YOURSELF EFFECTIVE
The assertion that "somebody else will not let me do anything" should always be suspected as a cover-up for inertia.
Temperament is also a factor in accomplishment and a big one.
If one disciplines oneself to ask about one’s associates - subordinates as well as superiors - "What can this man do?" rather than "What can he not do?" one soon will acquire the attitude of looking for strength and of using strength.
The effective executive looks upon people including himself as an opportunity.
In human affairs, the distance between the leaders and the average is a constant. If leadership performance is high, the average will go up.
-- From "The Effective Executive" (Peter Drucker)
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