Management Leverage Blog

As a management educator, it pains me to tell you this. But an MBA won’t ensure you an enviable career. Neither will memorizing all the latest business books. At least that is what I told some of our incoming MBA students this week.

Careers are built on performance, which is made up of technical skills, management leverage (time, influence, power), social capital, and political capital. Period.

If you want to get an MBA, or memorize the latest business books, make sure you understand this formula

MBA (or books) =Enviable career IF

MBA (or books)=Education=Performance

The sad truth of the matter is that you can get a degree without getting an education. And just because you have letters behind your name (or an enviable library) and an education, does not mean you will perform better than someone without letters behind their name and whose library consists of the complete set of Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books.

So how can you, or your direct reports, make sure an MBA, or a business library, leads to the career of your dreams?

Instead of thinking about what won’t work, think about how each pearl could help your career .  For example, imagine you are a finance person sitting through a marketing class, or reading a marketing book. Rather than ruling out everything as useless, think about what aspects you could alter and use in your career.

If you spend your time trying to figure out what the professor wants you to know for the test, your education is in ‘test taking’, not in business.

So even if you are not getting an MBA, go out and get a leading book in another field. Don’t just read about what you already know. Branch out. What aspects can you embrace? For example, how does Good to Great apply to marketing?

I had a manager who ruled by metaphors. And it was extremely effective way of getting me to do things.. First of all, his metaphors often made me laugh. “I can feel for you but I can’t reach you,” was his way of telling me to leave him alone and figure out the solution myself.

Metaphors appeal to our emotions. But because they also leak our perceptions of the way the world works, they provide openings to persuade. If you hear a colleague say “business is war,” for example, you have not only discovered something about the way he or she may perceive the world of business, but also what behaviors are acceptable in that world.

Suppose I notice that ‘business is war’ describes the world as you see it. If I want to influence you to do something consistent with this metaphor, I would just use words you already identify with, such as ‘compete’ or ‘attrition’.

But that’s the easy part.

What if I want to delegate some of my CRM duties to you. I can’t just say, “Business is about building relationships with our customers”, because you will say “No it’s not. It’s war.” Then we will go back and forth like my 3 and 5 year-old sons—“No it’s not.” “Yes it is.” “No it’s not”. But in a much more refined fashion, of course.

But if I first use your metaphor, I can guide you where I want you to go, because I have unconsciously tapped into what you already believe. I could say something like “We spend more time fighting with our suppliers than we do building relationships with our customers.”

Now, I have gotten your attention. And freed up some of my time.

The key is to simply listen.

What metaphors describe your boss’s view of the world? Your colleagues’? Your direct reports?

As a kid, when it came to picking members for a kickball team, I learned to either be the one doing the picking, or be picked last. So I got to be a pretty good picker. Or so I thought. I picked those people who could kick the ball the furthest. It was all about offense.

We do the same when putting together a project team. If I am building a widget, I want the best widget minds in the room.

While the best widgeters may be critical for the success of the project, so too are people with organizational knowledge. Every organization has people who know how to get things done within their specific organization. And no matter how important your project team, it’s not self-sufficient. It depends on the rest of the organization for funding, time, supplies, etc.

Don’t forget about defense! Make sure you include at least one person with know-who. If your team lacks the know-who factor, it will eventually starve.

No matter where you find yourself on the organizational chart, the ability to influence people you can’t fire counts as one of the most important skills in a manager’s repertoire.

The ability to influence up, laterally and down, draws from several different bags of tricks. If you want to do this well, here’s what you need to learn.

1. Authentic networking skills—you’re not looking for targets, but for people you truly like, and whom you want to help succeed.
2. Negotiation skills—you’re not trying to win, but to look for ways where both can benefit. Think long-term here, not short term manipulation.
3. Advocacy skills—although door-to-door selling may play a part, effective advocates know how to build coalitions to do their selling for them.

These skills are even important for your boss’s boss’s boss. He or she must influence their peers, their boards, and even you to do things they have no formal authority to ask you to do. No one is born knowing how to do this. It has to be learned. And lucky for you, it can be. And the earlier in your career you begin the better.

I didn’t invent this stuff. Lucky for you we know quite a bit about influencing without authority. I suggest you look at Jay Conger’s work to start, and then take formal training in networking, negotiations, and advocacy. And then practice, practice, practice.

Reut published the following Dr. Seuss quote in her most recent blog entry:

“You will come to a place where the streets are not marked.
Some widows are lighted. But mostly they’re darked.
A place you could sprain both your elbow and chin!
Do you dare to stay out? Do you dare to go in?
How much can you lose? How much can you win?
And IF you go in, should you turn left or right…

…Simple it’s not, I’m afraid you will find, for a mind-maker-upper to make up his mind.”

When you look at creative masterpieces, the same painting, or sculpture, will look different from different parts of the room. I’m experience the same with this clip from Dr. Seuss. So let’s just focus on one angle—the windows that are lit and the ones that are dark.

As managers, it’s the lighted windows that get us into trouble. The lighted windows, heuristics, are the simple rules of thumb that we use to make decisions. We use them to find our way. If it were completely dark we would treat obstacles with a little more respect. We would overcautiously fumble through the workday. If all the windows were lit, we would be bombarded with so much information it would render us paralyzed.

So heuristics serve a valuable purpose, without decision making rules of thumb, managers couldn’t manage. But, although heuristics serve a very useful purpose, by relying on heuristics, managers also make mistakes in very predictable ways. And the busier we are, the more likely we are to rely on heuristics. So idle managers are less likely to ‘sprain an ankle’, than busy ones.

So if you can just manage to free up your day….

In today’s hectic work environment, that advice won’t help much. Instead, research shows that managers, who are simply aware of the heuristics they use, are much less likely to confuse the “light” with the “dark”. Or as Dr. Seuss says,

“Just never forget to be dexterous and deft
And never mix up your right foot with your left.”