It's All About Who You Hire, How They Lead...and Other Essential Advice From a Self-Made Leader by Morton Mandel & John A. Byrne

Author:Morton Mandel & John A. Byrne [Mandel, Morton]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Leadership, Business & Economics, Lang:en
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Published: 2013-03-15T21:28:02+00:00

There should be little or no variation on a theme. McDonald’s and Coca-Cola are two highly successful organizations that have benefited greatly by adhering to policies that provide remarkable consistency across borders. You can go into any country of the world and order a hamburger or a soda and feel reasonably confident that what you got in Cleveland will be almost exactly the same in London or Paris. That is the efficient result of policies and procedures that guide exactly what McDonald’s and Coca-Cola do in every setting.

Every idea doesn’t have to be your own. When I come across valuable articles or essays, I often toss them into the manual. Why? Because they reflect learning of a different kind that all of us can benefit from. For example, there’s a study from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on employee job satisfaction. It shows that managers rank compensation, job security, and promotion as their top three paths to satisfaction at work. But it’s a significantly different case for your basic worker, who first wants to feel appreciated, then feel that he or she is “in” on things, and finally feel that the organization is sympathetic and understanding about his or her personal problems. Understanding the needs of your employees is crucial learning. So we threw this into the management policy manual for all of us to think about all the time.

I believe that there should be a rule, guideline, or policy for pretty much everything a well-run organization frequently has to do—mainly because it makes “doing” easier for everyone in the organization. It’s being clear about what we do and why. With us, people are drilled and trained in these ideas, and, as a result, we can more easily delegate important responsibilities to them. At the same time, and very important, we give our managers and senior leaders the flexibility to adapt and change our policies and procedures. When a guideline doesn’t fit the situation, our managers are authorized to adjust our policies on the spot, right then and there.

At our Parkwood monthly management meetings, I’ll often have members of our team read aloud from the policy manuals we’ve created. This gives me, or anyone in our senior leadership group, the chance to explain why we do it this way, to reinforce the accepted behaviors in the company, and to continually define our culture. In other words, it makes the rules real—not just words written on pieces of paper and filed away in binders to be ignored.

When it comes to investing money, for example, Parkwood does not just select investments. We mainly select investment fund managers. Our analysts spend important time thinking about what to buy and even more time thinking about who to buy with. Again, the policies let us focus on the “who” rather than the “what.” We’ll meet with a potential fund manager and go through a series of standard questions based on our policies: What keeps you up at night? How are decisions made? Who are your

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