Rent-to-own pioneer Bud Holladay explores the opposing angle to a popular business bestseller.
President Bill Clinton invited him to Camp David to discuss how his business management theories might be applied to the business of running a country. And seekers of the Management Holy Grail have snapped up more than 17 million copies of his watershed 1989 book describing the common attributes that separate the successful from the unsuccessful in almost any endeavor. Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People remains one of the most influential business management books ever published.
But what about the largely ineffective people whom we have already hired, the ones who seem unable to leverage the talent or experience that led to their hiring or promotion in the first place? You’ve experienced them- the loyal and congenial pluggers who just manage to hang on, disguising activity as work, pushing the boss’ happy button, the first to decorate the store for holidays and always ready with a suggestion on how to save 12 bucks a month on cleaning supplies. They make up the Great Middle, a large and frustrating pool of experience that remains mired in mediocrity in spite of new training, incentives and new opportunities.
Managers in this strata are career killers for bosses who place overly high value on stability and predictability (read: low turnover, low risk, low reward) while demanding more and more from the tiny sliver of high achievers (read: high risk, high reward). The bottom-tier players in any organization are less detrimental to growth and profit than this middling group of competents for the simple reason that they don’t last as long, existing in a fish bowl with termination papers already filled out for the next screw up. Unfortunately, the Great Middle tends to hang around, creating allies instead of new customers and setting the standard for new hires while the company meanwhile is changing strategies like it changes underwear and slicing overhead to offset drops in revenue. The fact that you are reading this means you probably have some of these folks in your own organization, so let’s identify the seven habits of largely ineffective people and discuss ways to spot them early.
BUCK PASSING instead of taking responsibility. If write offs are climbing, it’s because (pick one): this area, this economy, this location, the guy who was here before me. If the customer count is heading the wrong way, it’s because (pick one): this area, this economy, this location, the guy who was… Well, you know. Largely ineffective people view themselves as helpless victims of the unsuccessful people they have been forced to keep, or the unreasonable bosses who supervise them. So they soldier on, marching down the path of least resistance. You can spot this tendency early if you ask candidates to describe in detail how other people have helped them succeed-at anything. Then ask them to describe the biggest failure they own and what they learned from it. You will know what to do when you hear the responses.
FUZZY GOALS that don’t address core issues or reflect reality. Ineffective people are convinced that most goals will never be met anyway, so they never bother to break the goals down into required steps that can be well-executed, monitored daily and tweaked as required. Calls for growth mean throwing everything out the door with a prayer, if not a payment. Pressure to clean up delinquencies means reducing the customer count until the magic number is either achieved or proved impossible – just in time for the next big drive for growth. One company has an interesting and effective means for combating the fuzzy-goals mentality. Enterprise, the country’s largest privately owned rental car firm, requires anyone seeking a promotion to write a business plan detailing how he or she will contribute to stated company goals in the areas of people development, profit and revenue growth in the new position. At Enterprise, tenure means nothing; understanding what drives the company – no pun intended – is everything.
SELF DISCOVERY IS ABSENT and in its place is acceptance. “Because I know everything, I can accept any outcome, secure in the knowledge that I was right and unseen or uncontrollable forces are what threw everything off.” Such people never analyze past actions to help prevent repetition because acknowledging that they were wrong conflicts with their primary goal: always be right. To paraphrase a former wartime defense secretary, largely ineffective people don’t know what they don’t know. Because they don’t, when they are beyond the limits of their capabilities or competencies, they never ask for help. This personality will berate someone for changing his mind or changing directions because he doesn’t believe that new information requires new thinking. Largely ineffective people believe that leadership is not about wise guidance based on past success and past failures, but protecting the current status. Ask several key managers what they learned about themselves over the past six months that most surprises them. If you get blank stares or an uncomfortable silence fills the room, do some self-discovery of your own. Another benefit of self-discovery is learning that your people want you to be better, because it will make them better, too.
I- WIN- YOU-LOSE THINKING. If someone outperforms me, they win, and I lose. It is never, “Wow! If she keeps going like that, we will all be better off. How can we do that here?” If I gain more BOR or add more revenue than the other six or seven in my district, I am the hero, they are goats. Largely ineffective people never share a great idea and never fail to gloat following any degree of success. Rather than playing a supporting part in a well-orchestrated effort, the people in the Great Middle prefer to wait for their solo. Ask the next candidate for promotion or hiring how the success of a colleague or coworker improved his or her own output and opportunities.
SLOPPY COMMUNICATION that leads to misunderstandings, mistakes or lost business. Whether it’s failure to return phone calls or reply to emails on a timely basis, or lack of good listening skills, largely ineffective people are notable for relaying the same information to different people with totally different understandings on the part of each. This can be attributed in part to their desire to say what others want to hear as a way to avoid conflict and deflect responsibility. Ask any candidate for promotion to write a simple one-paragraph memo notifying the group of an impending change in the way first-payment defaults will be handled based on his own preferences and nothing else. Warning: this provides a brief peek into that person’s head and it might disturb you.
FRATERNIZING INSTEAD OF SYNERGIZING. Fred knows who to call to learn the latest rumored change at headquarters, but has no idea what his account managers are doing at the moment or where his revenue is compared to last month. Julie knows the personal email and favorite social media of every employee in the district and frequently adds posts to their sites. She doesn’t know that her staff routinely ignores her directives, nor does she realize that a new manager a few miles away has implemented a wildly successful guerrilla marketing plan using social media. Julie and Fred believe that staying close to their buddies keeps them well informed, and being informed is the key to being promoted. Julie and Fred are wrong. At your next meeting, keep quiet. In the first five minutes, ask everyone to create a plan for improving the company’s B0R and revenue at a stated rate over the next six months and then sell it to the others. Let them attack each other, team up, work it out and try to come to an accord of sorts. You will like what happens and you will see true leaders emerge.
LACK OF LEARNING comes from a belief that the rent-to-own business is so different from everything else that only rapid immersion in the nuts-and-bolts, followed by strict adherence to collection guidelines, can prepare one for success. Like a canoe being carried downstream by the current, early success in a wide-open and unregulated industry gave many the idea that they were driving the boat. As the business environment changes, they just work harder, relying on old information, outdated skills and ineffective methodologies that upper management too often accepts as seasoned experience. The daily routine and priorities of largely ineffective people don’t reflect the marketplace or the changing needs of the company so much as they do things learned in their first job years ago.
They are highly qualified for a job that no longer exists and reluctant to learn the new one. They don’t read much or explore new ideas. Their only outside influence comes from a circle of friends, same-thinkers and family who already know how hard the manager’s job is and agree that it is a permanent situation. The largely ineffective believe that others who are moving up really don’t deserve it because they haven’t been around nearly as long as Ted, who knows more about rent-to-own than just about anyone in this district. Ted believes there is no point in reading self-help books; they don’t apply to his business because his business is so different. He never reviews manuals on new products because they are too complicated and his customers don’t care about all that. And APR0 is only for guys who own companies, not people like Ted, who pounds the phones and gets the deliveries and closes day after day. Ted’s district manager routinely praises Ted’s work ethic to others because Ted routinely puts in 65-hour weeks and has to be urged to take vacation time. Ted will never be at the top in his district or region, but neither will he ever be on the bottom. He is firmly entrenched right there in the middle – The Great Middle.
Bud Holladay, one of the founders of APRO, lives in Carrollton, Texas.
