Page 165 - Executive Warfare

The People You Have to Motivate

Sometimes, you even have to make less-than-perfect decisions to keep
all the diverse and competitive members of your team together. For exam-
ple, I have put out financial products in my career that I thought might
be slightly riskier than they should be.
But it was important to have a product
that the marketing people felt strongly IF IT APPEARS THAT
they could lead with. YOU MAKE ALL
On the other hand, there’d be times YOUR DECISIONS
when the people in another discipline IN ONE
would convince me that we were taking DIRECTION—IF
on too much risk, and I wouldn’t allow THEY ARE ALWAYS
a product to go out with certain fea- MOTIVATED BY
tures. At other times, I would put out a SHORT-TERM
product early, knowing full well that the FINANCIAL GAIN,
technology people were right when OR BY EXTREME
they told me that if we waited four CAUTIOUSNESS ON
more months, we could produce some- THE LEGAL FRONT,
thing better and more profitable. But I OR BY NIFTY
did it anyway because our sales force TECHNOLOGY AT
was about to abandon us if we didn’t THE EXPENSE OF
deliver something. ALL ELSE—YOU
As long as you don’t consistently WILL NOT RISE.
make decisions in favor of one disci-
pline over another, you will be able to
gather a strong, balanced team around you. Creating a diverse but loyal
team is a way of proving to your superiors that you are not biased in
favor of your own discipline and are capable of the broad outlook
required for higher management. That’s watched very carefully from the
top of the house.
If it appears that you make all your decisions in one direction—if they
are always motivated by short-term financial gain, or by extreme cau-
tiousness on the legal front, or by nifty technology at the expense of all

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