Q. How do you react if your
team is married to the data,
but you want to go in another
direction?
You have an organization
that, in many ways, you’ve educated to look at the numbers in
their decision-making. Then
what happens is, you have to
come back and you have to sit
them down and coach them
and say, ‘OK, here’s all the numbers. But what, for instance,
would be the impact on that
employee you are talking
about? Or, what would be the
impact — I know we’ve
worked hard on that, I know
we’ve overcommitted the
hours on a project for a client— but what’s the impact? I
understand what the numbers
are, but what’s the long-term
impact?’
Many times, it’s just coaching
and also educating our employees and senior management
team, that, yes, they have decision-making authority, and yes,
we want them to be aware of
the numbers, but, at the same
time, they have to look beyond
that. There’s a balance between
those two, and we highly
encourage that for them to
make those decisions. Again,
you might have an executive
VP or senior VP from an operating unit, they’re going to follow the numbers, and it may
end up that you lose a client
over it, or you lose a key
employee over that.
I’d rather see somebody
make that type of decision and
see the consequences of the
decision because that is going
to be the best learning tool,
rather than if I am always just
making decisions for people.
Q. How do you handle mistakes?
I’m a big believer that, many
times, you have to fail in order
to succeed because you learn
from your failures. It’s more of
a coaching.
The numbers allow you to
provide analysis. If you have
failed, well, why did you fail?
Let’s look at it from an analytical standpoint first, and then
bring in the empiricals. From a
coaching standpoint, I don’t
mind failure because that
means that employee is trying
and, at the same time, developing that learning curve that
we all have to work on every
day.
HOW TO REACH: FocusMark Group LLC, (513) 583-4660 or www.focusfgw.com
