Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter (26 page)

When Investors stretch the role, they stretch the person in it. This bigger role creates a vacuum that must be filled.

II. Invest Resources

The moment Investors establish an ownership position, they step in and begin investing. They protect their investment by infusing the knowledge and resources the person will need to successfully deliver on their accountability.

Teach and Coach

When Jae Choi at McKinsey inserts himself into the discussion with the project team, it isn’t to show-and-tell what he knows. He “grabs the pen” so he can teach and coach. It is a simple distinction: Diminishers tell you what they know; Multipliers help you learn what you need to know. Jae is not only a business leader but also an avid teacher who looks for the teachable moments when a team is spinning or has suffered a setback. In these moments, minds are most open and hungry. He contributes a relevant insight or asks just the right question to move the group forward.

K.R. Sridhar, CEO of Bloom Energy, who has been described several times in previous chapters, is another masterful teacher. K.R.’s teaching doesn’t occur in a classroom or in a corporate training center. It occurs in the face of very real problems. When the team is wrestling with a technical setback, K.R. engages, not with a solution, but with a thought-provoking question. He asks, “What do we know about what doesn’t work?” and “What assumptions led us to these outcomes?” and “What risks do we face now that need to be mitigated?” His team
pursues these questions in turn, unearthing their individual knowledge and building a collective body of intelligence.

K.R. says, “You are teaching by helping your team solve real problems. Even if you know the solution, you don’t offer it. If you do, you’ve lost the teaching moment. It has to be Socratic. You ask the question and tease out the answer.”

Although K.R. focuses on immediate problems, his investment in these teaching moments returns far more than just solutions to these problems. When leaders teach, they invest in their people’s ability to solve and avoid problems in the future. It is one of the most powerful ways that Multipliers build intelligence around them.

Provide Backup

When you think of investing intellectual capital in your direct reports, it is easy to assume that you are the one who needs to provide the capital. But this limits the investment options to what you know and what you have time and energy to invest.

Michael Clarke, the president of a $12 billion division of Flextronics, was facing market consolidation, and he urgently needed to develop an M&A strategy for his business. He had assigned the process of developing that strategy to his very capable vice president of strategy and new ventures, Becky Roller. She worked tirelessly across nine different divisions, pulling together the best of their thinking for a joint two-day strategy session and decision-making forum. But ten days before the event, the entire process was interrupted when they found out an external consulting firm was leading a company-wide strategy initiative that would complicate their M&A strategy and take it in a different direction.

Michael could have jumped in to give extra support, but he suspected he would be more disruptive than helpful. Instead, he asked Greg Keese, his vice president for business development, to work “two-in-a-box” with Becky. He didn’t reduce Becky’s ownership; Becky was still fully responsible for the project. But given the latest complexities
of this project, having two people’s perspective and brainpower would be essential. Greg joined Becky for key planning meetings, acted as a sounding board, and offered his support as they navigated the waters. At the completion of the strategy session, Michael praised Becky’s leadership and thanked Greg for his backup on this critical project. Watching the management team in action, you could easily imagine the roles reversed next time, with Greg accountable and Becky in the box with him providing backup.

When leaders define clear ownership and invest in others, they have sown the seeds of success and earned the right to hold people accountable.

III. Hold People Accountable

In working with hundreds of business executives, there is something I’ve noticed about the finest of these leaders. They all appear to have slanted tables in their offices. Sure, the desk they sit at (with their computer and phone) is perfectly flat. But their meeting table has a distinct slant to it. Perhaps you may not have noticed it, but surely you have seen how accountability for action rolls from their side of the table down to other people—and often to you. It may look flat to the unsuspecting eye, but if you placed a marble on one side, that marble would surely roll right off the opposite end! These leaders have a natural leaning to give accountability to others and keep it there. When their people push problems over to the manager’s side of the table, by the end of the conversation, those problems slide right back to where they came from. The leader helps, offers suggestions, asks great questions and may escalate a critical issue, but the accountability slides back and rests with their staff. Their tables slant in the direction of other people.

One senior executive I worked for carried a small leather notebook with him in every meeting. Strangely, he never took meeting notes in it. But in every meeting, he was mentally present and fully engaged, listened intently, and offered carefully dispensed insight. During these meetings, I
would furiously take notes, making careful notation of my action items. Others did the same. On rare occasions, I would see him write a single note in his book. These occasions were reserved for when he alone was accountable for an action. This was the slanted desk in action. This leader knew how to keep the accountability with his people. He was fully engaged, but he did not take over. And because he assumed accountability with careful restraint, when he wrote an action down in his little leather book, you could be sure it would be done by the next day.

Give It Back

Investors get involved in other people’s work, but they continually give back leadership and accountability.

John Wookey is an executive vice president of development at SAP, a veteran of the applications software business and a Multiplier who builds organizations with know-how. He knows that delivering software on time and with quality isn’t a hands-off job. But he sees a clear distinction between micromanaging and being involved in the work people are doing.

One of the breeding grounds for micromanagement in the software development business is the user interface review meeting. A typical software application has about 250 screens whose usability can make or break the product in the marketplace, so most executives are keenly interested in getting this right. By the end of a user interface review meeting, the micromanaging development executive will have seized the pen, sprung to the whiteboard, and redesigned the screens himself in front of the group as an impressive show of his design savvy.

John has seen his former peers and bosses do this countless times, but he makes the investment instead. When John sees problems in the screens, he makes suggestions, discusses options and tradeoffs, and then asks the team to go back to their “lab” and figure it out. John says, “I give people feedback as guidance rather than an order because I assume that someone who has been working on something full time, for many weeks, has insight into it that I won’t have after a few
minutes.” John does offer his insights, gained from decades of building business applications, and reminds his team to think about what real users need from the software. He keeps his guidance focused on what they all can do to build a product they can take pride in.

John does jump in but, like the partner at McKinsey in Seoul, he hands the pen back. By doing so, he signals that he is interested and engaged, but he isn’t in charge. He gives it back and the accountability for designing and building a great product stays with the other person, who incidentally is also built up in the process.

Michael Clarke, the president of infrastructure at Flextronics, has a clever little two-step process for giving accountability back to people in a way that encourages their continued intellectual contribution. He listens to a presentation or an idea with interest, and then with a wry smile and a thick Yorkshire accent, says, “Hey, that is good thinking.” He begins by praising the edge of great thinking. Then he affirms their ownership of the business problem at hand by saying, “I’d love to know whether we should invest in X or Y. I mean, you’re smart. You can figure this out.” These words are heard again and again by his team: “You’re smart. You figure it out.” Their ideas are validated and the onus for solving the issue is back with them.

Expect Complete Work

It was the summer of 1987, and I had just landed the internship of my dreams. I would be working for Kerry Patterson, a former professor of organizational behavior at the business school that I attended, who was now running a management training company in Southern California.

Kerry was known for his brilliant but slightly demented mind. Kerry is what happens when you pack an Einstein-size brain into a Danny DeVito–size body. Everyone wanted to work for Kerry, but I managed to get the job through some combination of faculty recommendation and advanced Jedi mind tricks. I eagerly drove to Southern California to work and study under his mentorship.

As in most internships, I did an assortment of odd jobs. I created training content and did computer work and even handled a few stray legal issues. But my favorite job was editing anything that Kerry wrote. Sometimes it was a training manual, sometimes it was a speech, but my job was always to edit and find and fix mistakes. On this particular day, I was editing a marketing brochure that Kerry had written. I did the usual edit. I found and fixed typos and grammar errors. I rewrote a few sentences that were awkward. I then stumbled onto a particularly troublesome tangle of words. I tried a couple times to rewrite the sentences, but I couldn’t think of anything better than what Kerry had written. It was too big of a mess for me to fix. I figured Kerry, with his great big brain, would know best how to fix it, so I labeled it as awkward by noting the standard editorial term, “AWK,” in the margin. I completed my work and returned the document to Kerry’s desk.

About an hour later, Kerry returned from a meeting to find my edits on his desk. I suspected he had read them because I could hear him marching down the hall toward my office. His pace indicated that he wasn’t coming to say thank you. He burst across the threshold and marched right up to my desk. Without so much as a “hello,” he dropped the document in front of me with a dramatic thump, looked me straight in the eye, and said, “Don’t ever give me an A-W-K without an F-I-X!” With a twinkle in his eye, the consummate teacher turned and left my office.

Point taken. I worked a little harder, applied a little more brainpower, and I fixed the awkward sentences. I snuck back into Kerry’s office and returned the now-complete edit to his desk. Kerry continued to teach and to write prolifically, and is the author of three best-selling books (
Crucial Conversations
,
Crucial Confrontations
, and
Influencer
). I completed the internship, finished business school, and then made my way in the corporate world having learned from Kerry one of the most important professional lessons: Never give someone an A-W-K without an F-I-X. Don’t just identify the problem; find a solution.

Throughout my management career, I’ve told this story to dozens of people, perhaps hundreds. I’ve shared it with virtually every person
who worked on my team and dropped a problem on my desk without an attached solution. I passed along, “Don’t give me an A-W-K without an F-I-X!”

When we ask for the F-I-X, we give people an opportunity to complete their thinking and their work. We encourage them to stretch and exercise intellectual muscles that might otherwise atrophy in the presence of other smart, capable people. Multipliers never do anything for their people that their people can do for themselves.

Respect Natural Consequences

Sarah’s dad stood up behind his large desk and said loudly with his Australian accent, “I’m not standing for that!” Sarah had expected him to be disappointed with her choice to skip orchestra practice that day. She was tired of wasting two to three hours of rehearsal when she only had one violin solo at the end. She knew it was mandatory to be at every rehearsal but thought she wouldn’t be missed. When they skipped ahead to her part, she wasn’t there and the conductor had cut her from the concert. But if Sarah’s dad was bothered by her choice to go to the gym, he didn’t show it. Instead, he said, “That conductor can’t just throw you out. And what are you thinking, just accepting it!” He drove her back to see the conductor.

When they arrived, the conductor emphatically reiterated her position. She said, “Sarah is smart. She knew the rules and made her choice.” Sarah’s dad tried one tactic after another but he simply didn’t have a case. Sarah didn’t say a word. She felt foolish standing there. Having her father make excuses made her feel smaller and less capable. She hadn’t liked being cut, but she enjoyed being treated like an adult. She preferred being “cut and smart” over being “saved and dumb.”

Many corporate managers are like this father. Their well-meaning attempts to help can accidentally diminish people’s intelligence and development. They protect people from the natural consequences of their actions, which delays and dilutes the potency of learning. They might step in at the last minute and rework a key presentation a direct report
is responsible for producing. They intervene when an internal customer is dissatisfied. All of this subtly tells people they are not smart enough to figure things out on their own. The next time around the employee might exert even less effort, knowing their manager will step in.

Allowing consequences to have their effect allows natural forces to inform intelligent action. It communicates that the manager believes people are smart enough to figure things out. People become more independent because they feel they own both their actions and the result or consequences of those actions. Investors want their investments to be successful, but they know they can’t intervene and alter natural market forces. By providing the possibility to fail, these leaders give others the freedom and the motivation to grow and succeed. Elaben Bhatt captured this well when she said, “There are risks in every action. Every success has the seed of some failure.”