John Linton .....something Exetel has never considered.
Throughout my long commercial life I have had only one good manager and a large number of bad ones. I have worked for four multinationals in my first years in the industry (NCR, IBM, Univac and Fujitsu) from the age of 18 to 35 and I think that length and breadth of experience enabled me to judge fairly accurately the 'goodness' and 'badness' I experienced across the years. I think it would be fair to say that the universally awful quality of level 1, 2 and 3 management at those companies (and, of course in those days from the mid 1960s to the early 1980s) did not prevent any of them from 'prospering' in some senses but it's equally true that the awfulness of the management at Univac from level 1 to the CEO did cause that company to close down and the genuinely terrible management at Fujitsu, from MD to level 1 meant it wasted almost ten years before it began to make headway.
If I look back at my level 1, 2 and 3 management years (sales management, branch management, national sales management) I could say I was an excellent manager judged in terms of consistency of results produced (uniformly excellent over almost two decades), personnel retention (close to 100% over the same period) and the fact that so many of the people I managed in previous companies applied to work with me again when I moved to a new company. Although I had attended both sales management and more general management courses at IBM (never at any other employer) I don't recall ever learning anything of any importance other than the 'plane crash object' type games that demonstrated to overly self confident people in their own judgments (such as me) that group decisions involving people summarily judged to be of inferior intellect invariably produced better decisions than the ones the brightest individual in the group could achieve....something I have never forgotten....a chastening experience.
As our number of personnel move slowly, but inexorably, upwards and will pass 150 professional employees in the not too distant future how the various aspects of the company will be managed in the future is something that needs to be addressed. With almost no exceptions we have built Exetel by employing new or recent graduates and relying on the 'command economy style' of management common in start up companies of the founders/directors providing 'global' management of all aspects of the business. Over the years, as the first people we have hired grew in experience and knowledge they assumed the various management roles though the people management skills were restricted to what, as highly intelligent people, they learned as they went. Pretty much like multi-national companies have always done and still do - and as IBM continues to demonstrate - that works just fine.
As a person who made a handsome living from running management schools up to MBA level back in the old days I have never actually changed my mind about how someone becomes a good manager which was crystalised for me by the only good manager I ever met when I was about to go to my first IBM management school. Jim Gallagher, the best manager I ever worked for or met, gave me this advice. "Have a good time and maybe there will be something new you will learn. Always remember that there are only three characteristics of being a good manager and they are all inherent traits and no-one can teach you them. Only pick people, after they have met the criteria you can check in their resume, who you like instantly and you are prepared to love like a brother (we had no girls in IBM sales in those days so no gender attraction could compromise the meaning ) - never compromise. Once you have employed someone always give them whatever they need from you to be successful in their current job and then also help them develop the abilities to be successful in their future career....everything else is irrelevant.
I am not sure how you actually 'run a management school' to put over those points.....though I used to spin it out over four and a half days and charge mega money for the privilege of attending.
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