Read Taking People With You: The Only Way to Make Big Things Happen Paperback Online
Authors: David Novak
Once you have a good idea of who you need to lead, the issue then becomes, how do you motivate them? The question to ask yourself here is the same one I used to ask as a marketer when selling customers on a new idea or product:
What perceptions, habits, or beliefs of my target audience do I need to build, change, or reinforce to reach my goal?
Consider what their objections will be. It might be that your idea has already been tried and failed and they’ll be thinking “been there, done that.” If that’s the case, you’re going to have to overcome the belief that the idea is dead on arrival by making it clear why things can be different this time around. Or maybe your Big Goal will seem like a lot of work for your target audience without a lot of payoff. That’s a perception you’re going to have to address by showing people what’s in it for them.
During the recent task of preparing for my investors meeting, I used this same process and answered all three of these questions for myself:
Leadership is
the art of getting someone to do something you want done because he wants to do it.—
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
To counteract this notion, the first thing I wanted to reinforce for investors was that we have a track record for driving results year after year. Here’s where I pointed out that we’ve generated at least 13 percent earnings-per-share growth for each of the last nine years. This gives us credibility and gives investors a basis to believe that we will do what we say.
We wanted to change the perception that we may not be able to keep it going, so we elected to emphasize for investors the segment of our business that is growing the fastest: our international business. The focus of our presentation was “On the Ground Floor of Global Growth” and we found exciting ways to show that even though our restaurant brands are already thriving in global markets like China, India, and Russia, we have just hit the tip of the iceberg. China, which is a hugely profitable segment of our business, currently has just 3 restaurants per million people. Compare that to 60 restaurants per million in the United States, then factor in the growing population in China and their rapidly expanding middle class, and you can see that the growth potential there is enormous. We also talked about the potential for expanding in emerging markets like Southeast Asia and Africa.
We currently have a
strong presence in both these areas, arguably the strongest foothold of any quick-service brand in existence, and there are ample opportunities to build from there. KFC is thriving in South Africa, for example, where in 2010 it was rated the third most-loved brand in the entire country, and the most popular retail brand of all. From that starting point, we are just beginning to branch out into new countries in Africa, like Nigeria, Ghana, Angola and Zambia. Many of these countries have stronger and more stable economies than people realize and are practically without competition in our category.
We showed investors the data, we laid out our plans, and by the end of the meeting it was clear we’d made a good start on taking the people in that room with us. This was verified by all of the positive analyst reports published the next day, which reflected confidence in our ability to grow over both the short and long term … just what we wanted to hear from our target audience.
The bottom line is this: If you can accurately identify the people you need to make something happen and then get inside their heads, then you will have the best chance of convincing them to help you accomplish big things. This may seem like common sense, but the thing I’ve realized about common sense is, it’s not all that common. Too many people simply overlook this essential leadership ingredient.
So let’s go to work on your
initiative. Spend some time thinking about these three questions and filling out the following work sheet. The answers to these questions are your starting place. The goal you decide upon in this first chapter is the one this book will help you reach by showing you how to take people with you. What follows is a road map for making it happen.
David Cote, CEO of Honeywell International, started his career as an hourly employee, so he thought back to those days when trying to understand what his target audience, his plant workers, were thinking when management decided they wanted to introduce a new operating system. “Having been an hourly employee, I know there is a strong tendency to just be viewed as a pair of hands and not really engage people in thinking. So what we’re doing is starting to engage our forty thousand [hourly employees] in that thinking process. And it takes time. You don’t go to somebody who’s been working in a factory for twenty years and tell them, ‘Through Tuesday, you just keep doing what you’re doing; Wednesday, we’re starting this new program, so you need to start thinking completely differently.’ There’s a maturation process that you have to go through. So for us to actually convert
a plant to a Honeywell Operating Plant—it takes two years. Because it starts with leadership, it starts with discussions, it starts with engagement. Sometimes you have to go slow to go fast.”
What Is Your Single Biggest Thing?
The single biggest thing you’re working on
must
be step-change. It’s not something you can easily accomplish in the next few days, weeks, or even months.
Who Do You Need to Bring with You?
Who is your target audience? Who are the people you most need to bring with you in order to achieve your step-change goal? Complete the TPWY People Map Work Sheet to answer this question.
What Perceptions, Habits, and Beliefs Most Impact Your Challenge?
What perception, habit, or belief of your target audience do you need to build, change, or reinforce to reach your goal? It may be different for different groups or individuals.
Having your head screwed on right is the foundation for any success you will ultimately achieve. In fact, there is no question in my mind that before you can be effective as a leader, you have to think like a great one.
Your ability to reach your goals has as much to do with how you choose to see the world as it does with your level of education and intelligence. And this is totally within your control because your mind-set is up to you.
Some mind-sets are good and powerful; others are bad and limiting. Consider this scenario that John O’Keeffe shared with us:
Two shoe manufacturers arrive in a new country looking to expand their markets. The local people, however, are very different from the customers they sell to at home. In fact, they don’t wear shoes at all, preferring instead to walk about barefoot in all kinds of weather, at all times of year.
The first shoe manufacturer assesses the situation and says, “There’s no market here. These people don’t wear shoes!”
The second one looks around and says, “There’s a huge market here. Not a single person is wearing shoes!”
The difference here is as obvious as night and day. How you view a situation or task at hand can dramatically affect the actions you take. The chapters in this section will give you the keys to thinking in a more powerful way about yourself, the people around you, and the work you want to get done.
What is a mind-set? It’s a prejudice, a bias, a fixed way of looking at things. We all have them, some good and powerful, some bad and limiting.
Limiting Mind-set
Powerful Mind-set
The key, when applying this tool to your own way of thinking as a leader, is to remember that a mind-set is something you choose, not something that you leave up to chance.
To Use This Tool
© John O’Keeffe, BusinessBeyondtheBox.com
be yourself, know yourself, grow yourself
Just be yourself.
I bet you’ve heard that advice many times before. I know I have. And I bet you’ve been told that, in business as in life, being yourself means being trustworthy and authentic and that if you don’t come off as those two things, then you’ve failed already, because no one is going to follow you very far.
It’s interesting how casually people often deliver this wisdom. They’ll tell you to be yourself before a job interview or on a first date to help calm your nerves and take the pressure off. The implication is that you don’t have to try so hard. Just relax.
Be yourself.
Easier said than done. In reality, it’s much harder to be yourself than most people are willing to admit.
Think about how often you’ve watched or listened to someone you don’t even know that well, maybe a colleague or someone on television, and you could just tell that that person wasn’t being authentic. During the 2008 presidential primary season in the United States, I remember watching the news on multiple occasions and shaking my head as the various candidates, trying hard to find their footing, flubbed in this regard over and over again. I remember a news clip of Barack Obama in Pennsylvania, where he was behind in the polls, donning bowling shoes and taking to the lanes in an attempt to connect with working-class voters. It was cringe-worthy watching him throw a pretty pathetic gutter ball, not so much because of his lack of skill, but because he
looked so stiff and uncomfortable while he was doing it. By contrast, he was much more relaxed and relatable at a subsequent event where he played his
favorite sport, basketball, with local voters. It was his game and you could just see it. And by the way, he’s got a heck of a jump shot.
Around the same time, the press took Hillary Clinton to task for doing shots of whiskey and drinking mugs of beer at a bar in Indiana. The Web site Gawker, for one, mocked her for assuming the only way to appeal to blue collar voters was to drink “like a frat boy” (not to mention her choice of a
Canadian
whiskey). At a different event in New Hampshire, when a voter asked how she managed to keep on going day after day, she got choked up and responded, “It’s not easy, and I couldn’t do it if I just didn’t passionately believe it was the right thing to do. I have so many opportunities from this country. I just don’t want to see us fall backwards.” This display of emotion struck people as genuine. After the clip was replayed in the media, she went up in the polls and went on to win the New Hampshire primary.
And lest you think I’m showing political bias with these examples, let’s also pick on the Republican candidate, John McCain. The man was known as a “maverick” who stood up for what he believed in, sometimes even offending his own party in the process. But when he chose Sarah Palin as his running mate after it had been reported that he favored the independent senator Joe Lieberman, he lost some of his credibility. His attempts to convince Americans that she had been
his
choice and that he hadn’t been pressured into it by members of his party just didn’t ring true.