Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen R. Covey (31 page)

These five elements give Win-Win Agreements a life of their own. A clear mutual understanding and agreement up front in these areas creates a standard against which people can measure their own success.

Traditional authoritarian supervision is a win-lose paradigm. It's also the result of an overdrawn Emotional Bank Account. If you don't have trust or common vision of desired results, you tend to hover over, check up on, and direct. Trust isn't there, so you feel as though you have to control people.

But if the trust account is high, what is your method? Get out of their way. As long as you have an up-front Win-Win Agreement and they know exactly what is expected, your role is to be a source of help and to receive their accountability reports.

It is much more ennobling to the human spirit to let people judge themselves than to judge them.

And in a high-trust culture, it's much more accurate. In many cases people know in their hearts how things are going much better than the records show. Discernment is often far more accurate than either observation or measurement.

Win-Win Management Training

Several years ago, I was indirectly involved in a consulting project with a very large banking institution that had scores of branches. They wanted us to evaluate and improve their management training program, which was supported by an annual budget of $750,000. The program involved selecting college graduates and putting them through twelve two-week assignments in various departments over a six-month period of time so that they could get a general sense of the industry.

They spent two week in commercial loans, two weeks in industrial loans, two weeks in marketing, two week in operations, and so forth. At the end of the six-month period, they were assigned as assistant managers in the various branch banks.

Our assignment was to evaluate the six-month formal training period. As we began, we discovered that the most difficult part of the assignment was to get a clear picture of the desired results. We asked the top executives the key hard question: "What should these people be able to do when they finish the program?" And the answers we got were vague and often contradictory.

The training program dealt with methods, not results; so we suggested that they set up a pilot training program based on a different paradigm called "learner-controlled instruction." This was a Win-Win Agreement that involved identifying specific objectives and criteria that would demonstrate their accomplishment and identifying the guidelines, resources, accountability, and consequences that would result when the objectives were met. The consequences in this case were promotion to assistant manager, where they would receive the on-the-job part of their training, and a significant increase in salary.

We had to really press to get the objectives hammered out. "What is it you want them to understand about accounting? What about marketing? What about real estate loans?" And we went down the list. They finally came up with over 100 objectives, which we simplified, reduced, and consolidated until we came down to 39 specific behavioral objectives with criteria attached to them.

The trainees were highly motivated by both the opportunity and the increased salary to meet the criteria as soon as possible. There was a big win in it for them, and there was also a big win for the
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company because they would have assistant branch managers who met results-oriented criteria instead of just showing up for 12 different activity traps.

So we explained the difference between learner-controlled instruction and system-controlled instruction to the trainees. We basically said, "Here are the objectives and the criteria. Here are the resources, including learning from each other. So go to it. As soon as you meet the criteria, you will be promoted to assistant managers.

They were finished in three and a half weeks. Shifting the training paradigm had released unbelievable motivation and creativity

As with many Paradigm Shifts, there was resistance. Almost all of the top executives simply wouldn't believe it. When they were shown the evidence that the criteria had been met, they basically said, "These trainees don't have the experience. They lack the seasoning necessary to give them the kind of judgment we want them to have as assistant branch managers."

In talking with them later, we found that what many of them were really saying was, "We went through goat week; how come these guys don't have to?" But of course they couldn't put it that way.

"They lack seasoning" was a much more acceptable expression.

In addition, for obvious reasons (including the $750,000 budget for a six-month program), the personnel department was upset.

So we responded, "Fair enough. Let's develop some more objectives and attach criteria to them.

But let's stay with the paradigm of learner-controlled instruction." We hammered out eight more objectives with very tough criteria in order to give the executives the assurance that the people were adequately prepared to be assistant branch managers and continue the on-the-job part of the training program. After participating in some of the sessions where these criteria were developed, several of the executives remarked that if the trainees could meet these tough criteria, they would be better prepared than almost any who had gone through the six-month program.

We had prepared the trainees to expect resistance. We took the additional objectives and criteria back to them and said, "Just as we expected, management wants you to accomplish some additional objectives with even tougher criteria than before. They have assured us this time that if you meet these criteria, they will make you assistant managers."

They went to work in unbelievable ways. They went to the executives in departments such as accounting and basically said, "Sir, I am a member of this new pilot program called learner-controlled instruction, and it is my understanding that you participated in developing the objectives and the criteria."

"I have six criteria to meet in this particular department. I was able to pass three of them off with skills I gained in college; I was able to get another one out of a book; I learned the fifth one from Tom, the fellow you trained last week. I only have one criterion left to meet, and I wonder if you or someone else in the department might be able to spend a few hours with me to show me how." So they spent a half a day in a department instead of two weeks.

These trainees cooperated with each other, brainstormed with each other, and they accomplished the additional objectives in a week and a half. The six-month program was reduced to five weeks, and the results were significantly increased.

This kind of thinking can similarly affect every area of organizational life if people have the courage to explore their paradigms and to concentrate on win-win. I am always amazed at the results that happen, both to individuals and to organizations, when responsible, proactive, self-directing individuals are turned loose on a task.

Win-Win Performance Agreements

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Creating Win-Win Performance Agreements requires vital Paradigm Shifts. The focus is on results; not methods. Most of us tend to supervise methods. We use the gofer delegation discussed in Habit 3, the methods management I used with Sandra when I asked her to take pictures of our son as he was waterskiing. But Win-Win Agreements focus on results, releasing tremendous individual human potential and creating greater synergy, building PC in the process instead of focusing exclusively on P

With win-win accountability, people evaluate themselves. The traditional evaluation games people play are awkward and emotionally exhausting. In win-win, people evaluate themselves, using the criteria that they themselves helped to create up front. And if you set it up correctly, people can do that. With a Win-Win Delegation Agreement, even a seven-year-old boy can tell for himself how well he's keeping the yard "green and clean."

My best experiences in teaching university classes have come when I have created a win-win shared understanding of the goal up front. "This is what we're trying to accomplish. Here are the basic requirements for an A, B, or C grade. My goal is to help every one of you get an A. Now you take what we've talked about and analyze it and come up with your own understanding of what you want to accomplish that is unique to you. Then let's get together and agree on the grade you want and what you plan to do to get it."

Management philosopher and consultant Peter Drucker recommends the use of a "manager's letter"

to capture the essence of performance agreements between managers and their employees. Following a deep and thorough discussion of expectations, guidelines, and resources to make sure they are in harmony with organizational goals, the employee writes a letter to the manager that summarizes the discussion and indicates when the next performance plan or review discussion will take place.

Developing such a Win-Win Agreement is the central activity of management. With an agreement in place, employees can manage themselves within the framework of that agreement. The manager then can serve like a pace car in a race. He can get things going and then get out of the way. His job from then on is to remove the oil spills.

When a boss becomes the first assistant to each of his subordinates, he can greatly increase his span of control. Entire levels of administrations and overhead are eliminated. Instead of supervising six or eight, such a manager can supervise twenty, thirty, fifty, or more.

In Win-Win Agreements, consequences become the natural or logical results of performance rather than a reward or punishment arbitrarily handed out by the person in charge.

There are basically four kinds of consequences (rewards and penalties) that management or parents can control -- financial, psychic, opportunity, and responsibility. Financial consequences include such things as income, stock options, allowances, or penalties. Psychic or psychological consequences include recognition, approval, respect, credibility, or the loss of them. Unless people are in a survival mode, psychic compensation is often more motivating than financial compensation. Opportunity includes training, development, perks, and other benefits. Responsibility has to do with scope and authority, either of which can be enlarged or diminished. Win-Win Agreements specify consequences in one or more of those areas and the people involved know it up front. So you don't play games.

Everything is clear from the beginning.

In addition to these logical, personal consequences, it is also important to clearly identify what the natural organizational consequences are. For example, what will happen if I'm late to work, if I refuse to cooperate with others, if I don't develop good Win-Win Agreements with my subordinates, if I don't hold them accountable for desired results, or if I don't promote their professional growth and career development.

When my daughter turned 16, we set up a Win-Win Agreement regarding use of the family car.

We agreed that she would obey the laws of the land and that she would keep the car clean and properly maintained. We agreed that she would use the car only for responsible purposes and would serve as a cab driver for her mother and me within reason. And we also agreed that she would do all her other
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jobs cheerfully without being reminded. These were our wins.

We also agreed that I would provide some resources -- the car, gas, and insurance. And we agreed that she would meet weekly with me, usually on Sunday afternoon, to evaluate how she was doing based on our agreement. The consequences were clear. As long as she kept her part of the agreement, she could use the car. If she didn't keep it, she would lose the privilege until she decided to.

This Win-Win Agreement set up clear expectations from the beginning on both our parts. It was a win for her -- she got to use the car -- and it was certainly a win for Sandra and me. Now she could handle her own transportation needs and even some of ours. We didn't have to worry about maintaining the car or keeping it clean. And we had a built-in accountability, which meant I didn't have to hover over her to manage her methods. Her integrity, her conscience, her power of discernment and our high Emotional Bank Account managed her infinitely better. We didn't have to get emotionally strung out, trying to supervise her every move and coming up with punishments or rewards on the spot if she didn't do things the way we thought she should. We had a Win-Win Agreement, and it liberated us all.

Win-Win Agreements are tremendously liberating. But as the product of isolated techniques, they won't hold up. Even if you set them up in the beginning, there is no way to maintain them without personal integrity and relationship of trust.

A true Win-Win Agreement is the product of the paradigm, the character, and the relationships out of which it grows. In this context, it defines and directs the interdependent interaction of which it was created.

Win-win can only survive in an organization when the systems support it. If you talk win-win but reward win-lose, you've got a losing program on your hands.

You basically get what you reward. If you want to achieve the goals and reflect the values in your mission statement, then you need to align the reward system with these goals and values. If it isn't aligned systematically, you won't be walking your talk. You'll be in the situation of the manager I mentioned earlier who talked cooperation but practiced competition by creating a "Race to Bermuda"

contest.

I worked for several years with a very large real estate organization in the Middle West. My first experience with this organization was at a large sales rally where over 800 sales associates gathered for the annual reward program. It was a psych-up cheerleading session, complete with high school bands and a great deal of frenzied screaming.