Page 159 - Executive Warfare

The People You Have to Motivate

When I worked for the computer
giant Control Data in the 1970s, the company had developed a
mainframe-based software system called PLATO that was supposed to be
the answer to all forms of education throughout the United States, from
elementary schooling to management training at the highest levels.
So, if you were a manager at Control Data, you were a PLATO guinea
pig. You were required to spend a certain number of hours in front of a
terminal answering a series of personnel questions, such as, “If an
employee comes to you and says she’s pregnant and is not sure she wants
to work after she has the child, what would you do?”
The machine would offer you four choices.Wow, multiple choices! How
innovative! Management, according to Control Data, was a check-the-box
problem.
Actually, management is just the opposite kind of problem. There is no
mathematical matrix intricate enough to describe the challenges you will
face in higher management.
You may now have thousands of peo-
ple underneath you, who work in THERE IS NO
dozens of different fields. This is very MATHEMATICAL
different from supervising a department MATRIX INTRICATE
of 10 like-minded souls who all do sim- ENOUGH TO
ilar jobs. Managing at this level is a DESCRIBE THE
CHALLENGES YOU
tremendous test of your humanity, your
WILL FACE IN
discipline, and your ability to handle
HIGHER
highly complex relationships.
MANAGEMENT.
The absolute best management train-
ing you can have is working for good
managers. Unfortunately, given the pressures of organizational life today,
good managers are all too rare. So let me tell you a few things I’ve learned.
The good news about managing at a higher level is that many of your
direct reports will now be as ambitious as you are. Ambitious people are
easy to motivate. They want to get ahead.

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