In 2013, lots of established organizations with good budgets will go to expert consultants the way my grandmother used to go to doctors.
Trouble is, experts pull a CEO and her/his strategic planning team in ten different directions. . . while they bill for time and intellectual capital.
Angelo M. Sanchez spent over a decade developing new verticals for NYNEX, predecessor to Bell Atlantic, (present-day Verizon), in emerging markets during the 1980s before today’s global economy existed.
“It was understood, both at NYNEX and even when I moved on to lead Electronic Data Systems in Houston, that information and how to obtain it were mission critical to opening new markets,” Mr. Sanchez iterates.
“Whether such expansion or vertical integration opportunities were in Santiago or Beijing mattered little. But if our business development and strategic marketing team had to go solicit third-party intellectual capital beyond local cultural advisory and standard logistics planning,” concludes the advisor to various technology multinationals and government agencies on three continents, “their heads would roll.”
A page out of military history from Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte of France on operations management:
“If I have to hire someone else to figure things out and motivate the men, what do I need you for?”
How does this apply to organizations in consulting, business services, technology, financial and insurance agencies today?
The department manager, a company’s metaphoric field marshal, must maintain the capacity for motivating staff just as she does with handling day-to-day business tasks. If such a manager has to hire outside experts to motivate her staff, perhaps this is a red flag. That is her job.
Imagine Napoleon or Douglas MacArthur enlisting motivational speakers to address their soldiers prior to battle. Maybe Josef Stalin hired Dale Carnegie for productivity coaching in the defense of the eastern front during World War II.
Highly unlikely.
Good employees motivate one another and thrive off their managers the way successful sports teams do.
“Always better to have one so-so leader calling the plays then two brilliant ones.” – Jerry Manas, “Napoleon on Project Management.” Nelson Business Publishing, April 2006.