Monday, March 18, 2013

Education on Good Management Practices - Why Doesn't It Stick?

A short video featuring Harvard Business School historian Nancy Koehn makes the point that in the past, entrepreneurs were driven by their own personal philosophy of doing good for people and helping to make their customers successful. But it wasn't until the '60s that modern management science began to teach students in universities that same philosophy. Today, there is excellent data, both qualitative and quantitative, indicating that a company's successful relationships with people is positively related to its financial performance.

Maslow, Drucker, McGregor and Nash overwhelmed the academics with evidence that relationships are critical to success. Peter Drucker said in 1998, "But to this date, very few other people have paid much attention."

McGregor's book The Human Side of Enterprise had a profound influence on education practices.   According to McGregor, "Any attempt by management to enforce behaviour that is contrary to human nature is pre-ordained to fail. Conversely, management methods that compliment human nature are sure to provide wealth and well being for all concerned."

After all his experiments and research, Nash summarized his important lessons as follows: "1) more profit is created through cooperation than through competition," and "2) people who care about others get cooperation and finish first."

Despite the fact that these ideas were slow to catch on - even though Dale Carnegie wrote about them in the '30s - today's modern, upper-echelon management professionals strive to find creative applications for these principles.  I (along with many others in our world-wide organization) was tutored by Whit Whitlow and Luvane (Boo) Bue from California - our organization's masters as far back as the sixties - on how to coach and train managers about these insights and their applications.  Our trainers were marvellous at helping us to motivate, engage, and support the managers of our client organizations in applying and reporting on their application of these principles as well as the results they produced.

Because we are not an academic organization, we focused on outcomes, changed habits, and results. These are the effects that our clients wanted then, and still want and pay for today. One way to distill the essence of all this research is by saying: If you want to earn more, become a better leader.    


mmm-insight

If you want to develop habits, not just knowledge, register for a program that includes practice, coaching, job application projects, and reporting on results with feedback, all in an open, engaged group.  People don't change because they intend to. They do what less successful people never get around to doing such as improving their leadership habits. You know the difference between habits and information.   Today, we can Google information. Don't confuse information with skills or habits. We call that the "knowledge trap."  Under fire, it's your training and habits that will show up, and that you will depend on.

Across the years we've come to realize that quite a number of managers, including those who studied management principles at good schools, had a difficult time making theory practical to their work.  Most of their courses didn't fully impact their behaviour and they really didn't get the fact that profits are maximized when the human side of enterprise is applied.

Why wouldn't they be able to grasp such straightforward ideas? Do you remember your experience in school? Too many of us just tried to pass a test rather than learn, and treated the content as information never to be used again. Some of us were jaded then, and some of us are jaded now. Maybe because we are inundated with politics, bureaucracy, greed, and ego at the places where we begin our work lives, we may actually lose our belief that the principles of people-focused management styles can work.  Instead, the drive for new technology is paramount, as if people and customers have dropped in priority.  In general, too many managers aren't as good as they think they are, and their people see it and enterprises pay for it. This can change.    

You and I can maximize profits and create a great future for ourselves by working on the application of these principles. We can turn them into habits that we practice and find success with, every day.    

MMM Action
  1. Think about your blueprint for building your leadership skills and habits. Make some notes about what you can do.    
  2. Consider attending our short workshop on leadership strategies. It's a start to set you in the right direction! You can enrol here.   
  3. What else can you do? 
Have a great week.

kdc sign
Kevin D. Crone
Chairman
Dale Carnegie Business Group

kdcrone@dalecarnegie.ca
(905)826-7300 ext. 223
Sign up for the weekly Monday Morning Mentor. Email your request to: info@dalecarnegie.ca