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Teaching Ineffective Managers What Their Own
Experience Has Failed To Teach Them
As difficult as it
may seem, getting managers who have learned the wrong lessons from
their experience to change is not as hopeless as it may seem.
It does require new methods of management training and
development, however. What
needs to be done requires five steps.
The first
step is to identify specifically what ineffective managers need to
learn in order to make effective use of the talents of the people
available to them. Fortunately,
experience has already taught the most effective managers in every
industry and in most companies how to achieve outstanding results.
What needs to be done, therefore, is to identify the
differences in the practices employed by the least effective and most
effective managers. This
can be done with reasonable accuracy by asking their employees to
respond to anonymous questionnaires about the practice of their
managers. After all,
employees know whether they have a clear idea of what is expected of
them, whether their work is well planned and whether they have the
freedom to do things the way they believe is best.
They also know whether they are criticized and penalized
unnecessarily and unfairly, whether they are part of an effective team
and whether good work is rewarded or not.
Above all else, they know whether their talents are being used
effectively in the achievement of desired results.
The second
step is to develop instructional materials that will teach the
least effective managers what their experience has failed to teach
them. This requires the
use of new methods of instruction that compress experience so that
managers can observe both the short-term and long-term consequences of
their decisions and actions. Ineffective
managers learned to use criticism and treats to get results, for
example, because they were not forced to consider or live with the
long term consequences of their actions.
This can be done by the use of simulations that hold them
accountable for both short- and long-term results.
One method that has
been used successfully to enable managers to learn from both the
short- and long-term consequences of their actions is Sterling
Institute’s Accelerated
Experience Method™. It
is currently being used to assist general managers and managing
directors of multinational advertising agencies to develop their
skills in managing short-term and long-term profit growth and in
building the competitive strength of their agencies.
This simulation
compresses into one week the decision-making experience general
managers and managing directors need at least three years to get on
the job. There is
considerable evidence that it teaches general managers and managing
directors to avoid the mistakes commonly made in maximizing short-term
profits at the expense of long-term revenue and profit growth.
There is also considerable evidence that it teaches
participants what the most effective general managers and managing
directors have learned from their experiences in building successful
advertising agencies.
Another simulation is
also being used by a large pharmaceutical company to compress into one
week the experience new managers need at least a year to get on the
job. This simulation
teaches new managers the lessons the company’s most successful
managers agree would require at least one year on the job.
The third
step is to conduct the simulation and to assess the understanding
and willingness of all managers to adopt the practices that have made
the most effective managers successful.
This is relatively
easy to do when computer-based simulations are used because the
computer automatically scores participants on their decisions and
records the practices they use to get results.
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