[Note: This article originally appeared in the April issue of Accounting Today]
Are We Promoting the Wrong People?
What Porn, Public Education, and the Peter Principle Can Teach Us About Finding and Promoting Great Managers
[Names have been changed for the sake of anonymity] Erica is in her third year at Kerrigan-Moss, a $20M regional firm headquartered in Normal, Illinois. She’s whip-smart, ambitious, and classified as a “high potential employee.”
Asked to name her favorite manager, Erica quickly responds, “Roderick.” She explains, “Rod pushes us. Our last engagement was scheduled to last 5 weeks and wrap up right before a holiday. Before the engagement, he gathered the team and asked, ‘How can we get this down to four weeks?’ We brainstormed ideas, and implemented two: batching the work based on everyone’s experience, and designing a schedule where we worked longer hours most days, but all of us got one extra day off during the engagement. Those decisions really fired us up and gave us a sense of focus.”
Rod did “nice things,” too - like keeping a stockpile of breakfast foods at the client’s site - “but he wasn’t easy on anyone,” Erica added. “He pulled me aside twice during that engagement. Once, he gently - but firmly - encouraged me to stay focused, because he could tell I was getting bored. The second time, he thanked me for catching an error that one of my coworkers made. Rod’s the kind of guy you want to work hard for.”
Soliciting input. Keeping the team focused. Taking care of the “little things.” Coaching.
Defining a Great Manager
Defining a great manager is simple. Isn’t it?
When asked to define pornography, Chief Justice Potter Steward said that he couldn’t define it, but “I know it when I see it.”
Many of us think we can define what makes a great manager. Or a great coach. Or a great teacher.
But can we really, or do we just know it when we see it?
Consider the following list of factors that do not predict whether a teacher will succeed: a graduate school degree, a high score on the SAT, an extroverted personality, politeness, confidence, warmth, enthusiasm, and having passed the teacher certification exam on the first try. (Source, “Building a Better Teacher” New York Times Magazine, March 7, 2010)
Turns out that the things that actually make a teacher great (based on her class’s achievement scores) are a series of little things that are imperceptible...unless you study over 3,000 hours of videotape. Doug Lemov did and discovered that great teachers do things like stand still while giving instructions, and ask specifically for what they want their class to do, e.g. “Turn your paper over and take out a pencil,” not, “Let’s get ready to learn.”
In public accounting, we don’t have 3,000 hours of film of our best managers. But maybe we should, because our current methods of scouting and promoting talent may not be working. Allan Koltin observes, “Our firms are filled with great technicians, but the bench of up-and-coming leaders is light.” Great managers are our first line of defense in keeping great talent like Erica, and shaping the future of our firms. How are we finding and growing them?
Finding Roderick
It’s not easy to spot a Roderick in your firm. Most firms promote employees based on “merit” that’s based on past performance. But past performance is a crappy predictor of future performance in a new role. Roderick was an average auditor. But he’s a helluva manager.
In 2009, a team of Italian scientists proved that merit-based promotions are less effective than random promotions. Clive Thompson writes in “Random Promotions” (New York Times Magazine, Dec. 13, 2009), “They created a computer model of a 160-person company and programmed it with Peter Principle-like logic: the best performers were promoted, but they had only a random likelihood of being good in their new jobs. Sure enough, the firm was soon cluttered with incompetents, and its efficiency plunged. But then the researchers tried something different: they reprogrammed the firm so that it promoted people entirely randomly, and the overall efficiency of the firm improved. They also tried promoting the absolute best and absolute worst performers. That too, worked out better than promoting on merit.”
The Secret Sauce
We don’t have 3,000 hours of videotape of our profession’s best managers, but several years ago, Gallup found and surveyed over 80,000 great managers like Roderick and made some astonishing conclusions. Great managers share four simple - but unconventional - techniques:
1. When selecting someone, they select for talent, not simply experience, intelligence, or determination.
When choosing his engagement team, Roderick thinks first about the needs of the engagement, and then combs through the roster of available people. He carefully selects those with the talents the job requires. Research proves that when people work in their talents and strengths, they are ten times more effective in their jobs. This is how Roderick is able to keep his teams engaged, and finish jobs ahead of schedule.
2. When setting expectations, great managers define the right outcomes, not the right steps.
In his kick-off meeting, Roderick asked, “How can we get this engagement done in four weeks?” This open-ended question played into his team’s natural instincts to get done ahead of schedule, before a major holiday. Roderick didn’t tell them how to get the job done sooner, he engaged them in thinking about the outcome - finishing in four weeks - and let the team figure it out.
3. When motivating someone, great managers focus on strengths, not on his weaknesses.
Roderick - like other great managers - doesn’t believe that you can change people. “Erica gets bored easily,” he admits, “so my job is to help her make it through the ‘boring’ parts and reward her for the things she does well - reviewing work papers and keeping the team’s energy high.”
4. When developing someone, great managers help him find the right fit, not simply the next rung on the ladder.
Roderick admits, “I wasn’t a great auditor, but I’m good at managing these teams. If John (a partner) hadn’t seen my potential and advocated for me to get this job, I’d probably still be stumbling around as an auditor.”
Sounds like Roderick had a great manager, too.
Read more about great managers in First Break All The Rules. Learn your top talents - and those of your teammates - in Now Discover Your Strengths.
