THE HABIT THAT EVERY MANAGER SHOULD FORM.

Part of my job and duty is corporate training. Corporate training is joined at the hip with management consultancy. I can attest that it is full of challenges, thrill but most importantly, the praxis lessons that I gain while interacting with different professionals is priceless. I recently held an in-house training for all branch and different level managers for one of my clients. This was to be a very relaxing moment for them, but was it? I have to agree that one outstanding and glaring facet among managers is their undisputed strength in technical expertise. Is it because managers are promoted of hired by their strength in technical expertise? Item for another day.

So my training started well and from my experience, you cannot have a good time with managers if they aren’t feeling challenged. They have to see the trainer’s knowledge and application and how it is likely to help them in their immediate needs. I won’t call it a quick fix but good managers know their problems and challenges, black and white and, they want solutions. Clearly any successful manager will tell you how that method only serves for the two day training and does not help in the success of their long-term career needs. So what did I do with my team of managers?

I had to dig deep. From my experience, most managers lack of bench-marking and calibration skills. I am not talking about firm to firm bench-marking, no. I am talking about man to man, lady to lady. Has it been done before? Who did it and failed? Who did it and succeeded. What were the circumstances? Pragmatically, those who don’t benchmark themselves always start from zero. Fail a few times before they succeed, if at all. They lose the benefit of learning from peer experience. My question is, why fail or try while you can “copy” and learn. Bad managerial decisions should not be repeated. It is simply a waste of company resources. They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. To imitate someone is to pay the person a genuine compliment- often, unintended compliment.

Here I was with my managers and the thing that made them tick was case studies. Sorry managers, allow my innocuous accusation; most of you lack interest in relevant reading. I am not only talking about books but also, articles magazines and journals. What are your peers dong in the industry? I provided several case studies where we were able to analyze the strategies applied by different managers elsewhere, add to their undisputed strength in technical expertise and a dose of soft skills and boom! My job was done.

If you ignore the environmental analysis of your field and industry, there will always be something missing in your career strength. The internal career morbidity that goes unnoticed until collapse. Your good papers and years of experience may suffer this form of disability and someone else who is attentive enough is learning new methods of doing it faster, using less resources and yes in a way that your employees find refreshing. By the time we were done with our 3rd of 4 sessions, the hall was in total silence. Pin drop silence whenever a case study was being projected. The epiphany happened! No one wanted to miss out, some taking photos of the slides despite the assurance that the slides would be shared at the end of the training.

Events like; what happened to Uchumi and Nakumatt? Enron scandal, the subprime mortgage crisis? Do we understand what really happened? What went wrong, could it have been avoided? Kenya Airways, the study, the numbers behind the problems, the managerial decisions. The success story of Safaricom, what are they doing right? Equity Bank, can we dissect their model? Questions like; which companies are rewarding their shareholders more? Best employers? What decisions made the difference? Get it? Thank you.

Bottom line, we challenged ourselves to a new culture. A culture that whatever happens within and outside our environment is our business. The team agreed to share industry articles and journals and carefully analyze them during our team meetings. I also took up the challenge of poking holes on their strategic decisions based on past events. This would help us implement strategies better without the open weaknesses or avoid the obvious flops.

My opinion; technical knowledge is important; however without learning from your peers, the manager may end up facing resistance from subordinates for his lack of diversity. Ignorance of soft skills may lead to intractable situations for a manager who is uninformed. Subordinates too don’t want to go through many trial and error moments. They want to enjoy winning. Losses can be very demotivating. If you want to inspire growth and passion in your team, train them on peer experiences. This may not be the only way, but it is practical, different and forever fresh.