The Exuberant Accountant - Scott Heintzelman

The “most powerful" discovery from the research is that talented employees need great managers. The talented employee may join a company because of its charismatic leaders, its generous benefits, and its world-class training programs. How long that employee stays and how productive he is while he is there is determined by his relationship with his immediate supervisor.

Conventional wisdom is conventional for a reason:  It is easier to believe that each employee possesses unlimited potential. It is easier to imagine that the best way to help an employee is by fixing his weaknesses. It is easier to treat everyone the same and so avoid charges of favoritism. The revolutionary wisdom of great managers is not conventional or easy. There is no prefabricated formula. It demands a discipline, focus, trust, and perhaps most important, a willingness to individualize.

Measuring the strength of a workplace can be simplified to twelve questions. These twelve questions do not capture everything you may want to know about your workplace, but they do capture the most information and the most important information. They measure the core elements needed to attract, focus, and keep the most talented employees.

Here they are:

1.               Do I know what is expected of me at work?

2.               Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right?

3.               At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?

4.               In the last seven days, have I received recognition or praise for doing good work?

5.               Does my supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about me as a person?

6.               Is there someone at work who encourages my development?

7.               At work, do my opinions seem to count?

8.               Does the mission/purpose of my company make me feel my job is important?

9.               Are my co-workers committed to doing quality work?

10.             Do I have a best friend at work?

11.             In the last six months, has someone at work talked to me about my progress?

12.             This last year, have I had opportunities at work to learn and grow?

The way in which the questions are phrased makes it much more difficult to say “Strongly Agree” or “5” on a scale of 1 to 5. This is exactly what the questions are designed to do. It discriminates between the most productive departments and the rest.

These questions are designed to measure the core elements needed to ATTRACT, FOCUS and KEEP the most talented employees. They are the simplest and most accurate way to measure the strength of the workplace.

The Four Keys

“How do great managers play these roles?”

By applying great managers’ insight to the core activities of the catalyst role, this is what you see:

·       When selecting someone, they select for talent… not simply experience, intelligence, or determination.

·       When setting expectations, they define the right outcomes… not the right steps.

·       When motivating someone, they focus on strengths… not on weaknesses.

·       When developing someone, they help him find the right fit… not simply the next rung on the ladder.

Great managers make it all seem so simple. Just select for talent, define the right outcomes, focus on strengths, and then, as each person grows, encourage him or her to find the right fit. While it certainly is not this simple, First, Break all the Rules provides a clearer perspective on what you are doing, why you are doing it, and how to do it better.

The intersection of two forces – each company’s search for value and each individual’s search for identity – will change the corporate landscape forever. New organizational models will emerge, new titles, compensation schemes, careers and measurement systems. All will be designed around the mantra “Don’t try to put in what was left out. Try to draw out what was left in.”