I am not the advocate of headhunting “young titans” and putting them in a high and responsible position in an effort to gain a new impetus for management. It can be dangerous and management wants to play safe.
“Young titans” are marked by wanting to jump in the deep water and prove how good they are – and there is nothing wrong with it. Their freshness and vitality, however, can mislead one to believe that WHAT they will do will be something new and brilliant as well.
It is natural that management is constantly looking for new ideas and a new zest. And there is a way to gain new workable ideas and vitality indeed – but it is not exactly through the promise of young and fresh enthusiasm.
The answer lies in training, a specific strategy or way of training leaders!
“RAW MATERIAL”
Universities do not really prepare people for the actual life or actual business. By this I mean that what one learns is more or less academic, it does not have a close connection with real life. Graduates might have great ideas but more often than not these do not match with actual life.
They are missing an apprentice period and knowing the real “workable tricks” of business, thus the decisions of future leaders at this early stage will not match with your company.
We can regard them as “raw material”.
THE FIRST TRAINING STEP
The first task in training a newcomer is to make his thinking and know-how compatible with the company. As the first thing he has to learn how the company, the core successful actions and know-how applied in his area work.
An example would be – in case of a newly hired resource who wants to be a Marketing Director – to give him those policies to study that describe the company, its objectives, its products, the target audience, the successful marketing campaign patterns this company follows, the magnitude or scope that must be reached with marketing actions to create an effect on the market, some background data as to why, etc.
That should be the first thing a prospective leader learns.
One does not expect him to come up with new ideas at this stage. The concentration is on gaining an understanding of and an ability to do the traditional actions. His thinking and know-how have to match with the company. When he has demonstrated his competence in performing the existing workable methods and he can reach good results using them, that is the evidence that he has understood how the company and his area work.
This knowledge and experience serves as a solid foundation for any later development. It guarantees that he will be able to adapt and fit into this framework everything else he will learn.
The lack of this kind of training or “groove in” actually means that “we expect him to do something right without showing it to him”. This way things will not work too well. Skipping this training step accounts for the majority of failures, the “constant search for something better”, and a somewhat chaotic atmosphere.
Doing this step with every newcomer will make sure that the company will have a spine. The system of operation as described in policies will be in application and the company will be able to function accordingly. That is management will be in control through its policies!
IMPORTING INNOVATIVE KNOWLEDGE
It is pointless to undertake innovative training programs with those people who have not proved their competence in applying the already existing know-how.
On the other hand those ones who have will be able to adapt and turn any new idea or know-how into a workable system that does match with the company.
Training and learning new viewpoints will lead one to recognize good and bad points of the company. Training makes one to step back and see those mistakes that one could not see before. One tends to realize solutions to difficulties one could not solve before, and new ways of reaching objectives. Innovative training can be truly electrifying! It can enable one to overcome periods of struggle and keep moving toward reaching key objectives.
New thoughts evaluated in view of a thorough knowledge of the existing scene open the door to improvement, and one will easily figure out how certain objectives can be reached more easily using a new strategy, or a new principle.
Such cognitions in the hands of a seasoned pro will work.
NEW VITALITY FOR MANAGEMENT
The above principles have a specific use when they are being applied to management:
Managers and leaders have to work in agreement and full coordination with one another. Thus training one leader in something new will not result in any change or betterment. He will be happy about what he knows but he will not necessarily get the agreement of others.
Inspiring a team of leaders together by training them as a group, the same time in the same innovative materials, can however cause major resurgences! Wether it is an Insead program or the Cardone University or something else does not really matter providing it constitutes a relevant and proven workable body of knowledge and the team does it together.
A management body learning the same new strategy or management technology will be able to agree upon it and implement it as a team. When management gains a new mutual understanding and new tools for reaching key objectives it can be truly revitalized. Then it is capable of causing breakthroughs!
That is the new zest and vitality management is looking for!
Conclusion:
The way of injecting new life into the company is to revitalize management!
They possess wisdom and they will recognize new workable ways of reaching their key objectives. Train managers or leaders as a team, the same time, in the same materials and they all will be electrified, ready to cause a new expansion!
