Page 133 - The Bible On Leadership

Performance Management 119

Soup, CEO David Johnson has turned encouragement into a religion.
Posted throughout company headquarters are scoreboards that compare
the company’s net profit increases to those of other food companies.
And Johnson constantly reminds his executives and employees of the
company’s ‘‘20–20–20’’ goal: 20 percent earnings growth, 20 percent
return on equity, and 20 percent return on invested cash.
These are ambitious goals, and when achieved, they are not taken for
granted. When a major target is hit, Johnson hires a brass band and
holds a celebration that would rival the celebration after Solomon’s
building of the temple.
But in monitoring performance, negative results have to be acknowl-
edged and corrected as well. The Bible instructs us that the best way to
correct is: ‘‘if someone is caught in a sin, you . . . should restore him
gently.’’ (Gal. 6:1) Charles Wang, chairman of Computer Associates,
believes that a leader who does not correct people is squandering a
precious resource.
‘‘I think one of the things leaders forget is that people look to us to tell
them the truth in terms of how they are doing.’’ He acknowledges the
difficulty of doing this gently and positively, but adds that if correction is
not given, ‘‘you’re worse off because you don’t know where you stand
. . . As management, we must tell people what we expect. And if they
don’t meet expectations, we have to tell them, and tell them why, so
they can improve . . . If managers don’t do it, they are not really taking
ownership.’’ 15
Carol Bartz, CEO of Autodesk, a producer of CAD/CAM software,
also believes in the power of gentle correction. ‘‘I frequently say, ‘what
you don’t inspect, they don’t respect,’ ’’ observes Bartz. So she does a
lot of inspecting. ‘‘I do that with my daughter’s homework and I do it
at the company.’’ She encourages people to keep their commitments,
but she also encourages them to let her know quickly if something may
interfere with the keeping of those commitments: ‘‘Whatever it is, I
expect it to be delivered . . . And I always tell them the bad news better
come out real fast. The faster we can figure out that something either
has changed or needs to change, the quicker we can reassess and get
going again.’’ 16