“How to manage people. Ways to Influence Others" Joe Owen

The art of making things happen

Scientific editor of the Russian edition Valery Nikishkin, professor, dean of the Faculty of Marketing of the Russian Academy of Economics named after. G. V. Plekhanova

The publishing house expresses gratitude to Yulia Kurylenko, Anastasia Kazakova and Roman Malakhovsky for their assistance in scientific editing of the book.

* * *

“Napoleon once said: “To manage is to foresee,” and Joe Owen claims that to manage is to bring something to a successful conclusion. The main thing is achievements, not activity. This attacking management ideology raises many questions. What results do I want to achieve? What results do my partners and clients expect? What should be done for this? How to motivate yourself and those around you to move towards the intended result together? With whom to achieve results, and with whom to abandon along the way? Who is needed today? Who will be needed tomorrow? And many, many others. But the author does not leave any of these questions unanswered, or at least advice on how to get it. Owen's level of managerial competence is determined by his ability to achieve results.

Read this book, try to apply Owen's principles to managing your business - and you will see that only focusing on results will lead you to achieve the desired results."

Vadim Marshev
Honored Professor of Moscow State University. M. V. Lomonosova, Doctor of Economic Sciences

Introduction
Real managers in real conditions

Management was once much simpler: managers led and employees worked. Managers sold their brains, and workers sold their hands. Thoughts and deeds were divided. These were good times for managers, but bad times for workers.

But over time, managers began to have problems. Workers began to expand their rights, and managers began to lose their privileges; workers now worked less, and managers had to stay late. The reduction in working hours, which gave employees all the benefits, turned into constant stress for managers chained to the computer, documents and telephone. Management has become not only much more difficult, but also more incomprehensible. Think, for example, about the secret to your organization's success and survival. It is unlikely that you will be able to find any formal criterion for her well-being.

What risks must I take to survive, and what risks must I take to succeed?

What projects should you work on and with whom?

When is it better to defend your point of view, and when to give in?

How does everything really happen here?

What pitfalls should you avoid?

No company policy manual or training program can answer these questions. You are left to your own devices when it comes to the most important things, and the manual only indicates the minor things.

The rules of survival and success are dictated by practice: we compare people who achieved success and survived with those who faced difficulties, and then analyze why they succeeded or failed.

Take a look at the successful people in your organization. I hope those of them who can boast of some achievements were among the winners. But in organizations with a horizontal structure, it is quite difficult to find out who is responsible for what.

Most rating systems rely on two characteristics, which are called completely differently.

Traditionally, it was assumed that managers (who had brains) were smarter than workers (who had hands). A high IQ, or intelligence quotient, helped. Many assessment systems are still focused on IQ: many business schools still accept students based on the results of an IQ test in the form of the GMAT (General Managerial Aptitude Test). A high IQ is believed to be a sign of problem solving, analytical skills, business thinking and knowledge.

Even if you are a genius, this is not enough to manage people. Managing is the ability to carry out assigned tasks, that is, to get things done. Many smart people with high IQs are too smart to do anything. Most companies require managers to have good interpersonal skills, or good EQ (emotional quotient). This involves the ability to work in a team, adapt, interact effectively with others, as well as having charisma and the ability to motivate employees, etc.

Now look at all your managers and try using IQ and EQ to check which of them in your organization have succeeded and who have not. There should be quite a few managers with high IQ and EQ: smart (IQ) and pleasant (EQ) managers exist, despite the established media stereotypes. But you will also find a lot of smart and nice people who are content with mediocre results somewhere on the margins of the company: everyone likes them, but they do not move anywhere from their “swamp”. However, there are many successful managers, perhaps not so smart and nice, who rise to the top by using intellectual managers as a doormat on the way to the executive office.

Something is missing here. High IQ and EQ are a huge plus, but they are not enough. Managers have one more hurdle to overcome. Their lives have become much more difficult, not easier.

The new obstacle concerns political experience, or PQ - the political quotient, which assumes, among other things, the ability to achieve power. Moreover, we are talking about the ability to use power to achieve tasks. Thus, PQ is the main aspect of management, which is to accomplish tasks with the help of people.

Of course, managers have always needed a certain level of PQ. But in the command-and-control hierarchy of the past, high PQ was not required to complete tasks; an order was enough. In the modern world of horizontal, matrix organizations, power is a vague and undefined concept. Managers will achieve nothing without the support of allies, without going beyond official responsibilities. Many of the resources they will need simply do not exist in their organization. Therefore, managers today, more than ever, need a high PQ to achieve their goals.

Successful managers have three qualities - IQ, EQ and PQ. Each of them involves skills that can be learned. To become a good manager, you don't need specific scientific knowledge (many academic institutions are full of smart people and bad management), but EQ and PQ skills that anyone can master.

This book teaches you how to develop the capabilities underlying IQ, EQ, and PQ that will help you survive and succeed in your transformation. By abstracting yourself from the day-to-day complexities of management and the chatter of management theory, you can focus on the critical capabilities needed to be a manager. The book tells you what you need to do and how to do it in a world that is tougher and more complex than ever.

The first step in understanding this revolution is to understand its causes and ultimate goal.

IQ: rational management

Management has been around as long as our civilization - even if no one realized it before. As an independent discipline, management originated during the Industrial Revolution: large-scale activities required large-scale organization. At first, management was based on military strategy and tactics: the classic command-and-control style.

Gradually, industrial management dissociated itself from the military. Like Newton, who discovered the laws of physics, managers were looking for a mysterious formula for success in business and management. Scientists are still looking for this formula, although successful entrepreneurs can do without theory. Scientific management was the first attempt to put success under a microscope.

A leading figure in scientific management was Frederick Taylor, whose Principles of Scientific Management (The Principles of Scientific Management) were published in 1911. The following quote illustrates his approach:

“One of the basic requirements for a man who is fit to work in blast furnace iron is to be so dull and phlegmatic that his mental faculties are more like an ox than anything else. That is why a reasonable person with a lively mind is completely unsuited for such monotonous work.”

Taylor disliked workers in general, believing that they would perform poorly if they were not punished. But his book was based not only on personal opinion, but also on direct observations. This led him to some ideas that were considered revolutionary at the time.

Workers should be allowed to rest so that they can be more productive.

People with different qualities should be given appropriate jobs because in the right position they will perform better.

A machine line that breaks a complex job (such as assembling a car or fast food) into parts increases productivity and reduces labor costs for workers who are required to have minimal abilities.

These principles continue to this day.

The world of scientific, or rational, management was created thanks to Henry Ford, who proposed the assembly line for assembling cars. Between 1908 and 1913, he refined the concept and began production of the Model T, which he called with great aplomb “a passenger car for the masses.” By 1927, an estimated 15 million Model Ts rolled off the assembly line, wiping out the cottage industry that assembled cars at very high prices.

Rational management is alive today, in the 21st century, it still exists on automobile assembly lines and telephone exchanges, in fast food restaurants, where hapless operators work like machines. However, many companies have already taken the next, quite logical step, completely removing people and forcing their customers to communicate with computers.

EQ: emotional management

The world of rational, scientific management was relatively simple: it relied on observation and cold calculation.

And then things got complicated.

At some point, someone discovered that workers are not just production units or even consumer units. They have hopes, fears, feelings, and sometimes even thoughts. They are, essentially, people. This confused the managers' cards. They had to not only solve production problems, but also manage people.

Over time, leading people has become more difficult. The workers, already more educated and professional than before, now had more to give, but also expected more. They became richer and more independent. The days of single-industry towns, where everyone worked at the same enterprise, were numbered: there were new job opportunities and higher benefits for those who could not or would not find work. Employers have lost their coercive power. They could no longer demand loyalty; they had to earn it. There was a gradual transition from a culture of submission to a culture of interest.

Managers had to create conditions for people to be highly productive and engaged by tapping into their hopes rather than their fears. 44 years after the publication of Frederick Taylor's book, Daniel Goleman released his work Emotional Intelligence: Why It's More Important Than IQ ( Emotional Intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ, 1995), becoming the father of the new world of emotional management. Essentially, he popularized principles that had been evolving for decades. As early as 1920, E. L. Thorndike of Columbia University wrote about “social intelligence.” Experts have long understood that intelligence (high IQ) is not directly related to success in life: other aspects are also important. As part of professional activities, experiments with emotional intelligence (EQ, not IQ) have long been conducted. In particular, the Japanese have made great strides in effectively engaging employees, even on automobile production lines, through a new movement called kaizen (continuous improvement). Ironically, they were inspired to do this by the American W. Edwards Deming. Deming's ideas were recognized in the United States only after the Japanese began to destroy the American automobile industry with their help.

By the end of the 20th century, the job of a manager had become much more difficult than at the end of the 19th century. Managers of the 20th century had to be as smart as their predecessors 100 years ago. They needed EQ to interact with people as much as they needed IQ to solve production problems. Most managers have found that they are good at one thing: few have both high IQ and EQ. The bar for effective management has been raised high.

PQ: political management

There are no two-dimensional managers, except in cartoons. Real people and real managers are three-dimensional. High IQ and EQ are a big plus, but they are not enough to explain the success or failure of different managers. What is missing? The first step in finding the missing element is to recognize that organizations are designed for conflict. This is a revelation to some scientists who believe they are meant to collaborate. In reality, managers have to compete for their organization's time, money and budget, which are quite limited. There are always more needs than resources. The internal conflict has to do with the way priorities are set—with marketing, production, service, human resources, and the various products and regions fighting each other to grab a bigger piece.

For many managers, real competition does not take place in the market. The real competition is sitting at the next table, fighting for the same promotions and bonuses as them.

The second step is identifying who wins and who loses in this corporate battle over budget, time, salary and promotion. If you believe the concept of high IQ and EQ, then all smart and nice people should achieve success. However, in reality this is far from the case. The smart and nice don't always win: many of them disappear from the corporate radar or live the quiet life of people who have not reached their potential. At the same time, most of us know top managers who can hardly be called smart or pleasant, but in some mystical way they achieve power and recognition.

Obviously there is something beyond IQ and EQ.

A short conversation at the water cooler is usually enough to understand what is missing. There they often talk about those who rise or fall on the career ladder, about who does what and for whom, about promising opportunities, about disastrous projects and the ability to avoid them. Conversations like this show that humans are not only social animals, but also political ones.

Politics are inevitable in any organization. And this is not new. Shakespeare's Julius Caesar is a play about politics. Machiavelli's The Prince is a guide to successful political management during the Renaissance. Politics have always existed, but it was considered too dirty for scientific analysis and corporate training. The assassination of Caesar shows what happens when you don't understand politics well. When someone mentions Brutus telling Caesar, “I am behind you,” vigilant managers know they may be stabbed in the back.

In order to understand such politics, IQ and EQ are not enough. There is a continuous struggle for control and power. The never-ending need for change is not just about people, but also about the balance of power in an organization. This is a political activity for which a successful manager needs good political and organizational skills.

MQ: Managerial Development Quotient

It's time to recognize that real managers are three-dimensional. In addition to IQ and EQ, they need a high PQ. If there is a formula for success in management, it might look like this:

where MQ is the management quotient.

To increase MQ it is necessary to develop IQ, EQ and PQ. The formula for success is easy to formulate, but difficult to implement. MQ (Figure 1) is concerned with the practice rather than the theory of management. This book shows how to use MQ to define:

The level of your own managerial potential;

The abilities of team members and the ability to help them improve;

The basic skills needed for success and their subsequent development; rules for survival and success in your organization.

Rice. 1. MQ Components

There are many ways to apply the MQ formula and succeed or fail. Each person develops and applies IQ, EQ and PQ differently, depending on the situation. Every person has a unique management style, just like their DNA. In this book you will not find a method for producing managerial clones. You deserve better. We offer basic principles and tools to help you understand and solve common management problems.

Some people think of fundamentals as a prison: they apply the same formula to every situation. Others use the principles as the foundation for building their own, unique management style. This book, based on thousands of years of experience as practicing managers, helps adapt tools and basic principles, talking not only about theory, but also about the real effectiveness or ineffectiveness (which is more important) of certain methods. We all learn from experiences - positive and negative. With this book, you can develop your MQ to succeed—on your own terms.

Chapter 1
IQ abilities: problems, tasks and money

Being a smart manager does not mean being an intellectual. Brilliant scientists rarely make great managers. Conversely, many great entrepreneurs today did not waste money and time on an MBA with its conformist mindset: for example, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Richard Branson and Steve Jobs.

Asking the most successful managers what makes them the most successful is the same as practicing flattery and ingratiation. This only leads to banal answers and narcissism. I tried and realized that it was not worth doing. Managers mostly talk about “experience” and “intuition.” And this is completely useless. Intuition cannot be learned. And experience is the way to keep assistant managers in assistant positions until they have enough gray hair to join the management club. I had to go a different route to figure out how managers think. I decided to watch them work.

Watching people work is always much more enjoyable than doing it yourself.

Every person is unique and every day is different.

Some people prefer face-to-face communication rather than email correspondence; Some days are overloaded with important meetings, some people work more and some work less. But if you remove all these differences, you can identify something common to managers:

Severe time fragmentation;

Simultaneous work on several tasks;

Managing different groups of people and competing projects;

A continuous flow of new information requiring response, change, adaptation;

Lack of time to work alone.

There is an example familiar to most managers - trying to juggle balls and at the same time run a hundred meters without dropping a single ball. It's a world where it's easy to be busy, but very difficult to achieve anything. Activity does not guarantee success. Today, managers are faced with the challenge of achieving the greatest results with the least effort. Let’s take a short break and think about what’s missing from a manager’s daily routine:

Decision making using formal methods such as Bayesian analysis and decision trees;

Solving problems after deep reflection alone or through group work using formal problem-solving techniques;

Formal strategic business analysis.

Many MBA methods are notable for the fact that they are absent from the daily practice of most managers: organizational and strategic theory has disappeared; financial and accounting instruments are related only to finance and accounting; Marketing remains a completely mysterious area for production and IT employees.

The fact that most managers do not use these tools in their work does not diminish their importance. They can be used carefully, at the most critical moments. Most organizations would not survive long if all their managers were constantly engaged in strategic business research. But a good strategic review, conducted by a CEO every five years, can transform a company.

So, the search for principles of thinking for managers has come to a standstill in the whirlwind of activity that fills their typical day. It seems that successful managers do not need to be great intellectuals and master the standard intellectual and analytical tools that are offered in the relevant literature and in special courses. But you have to be a very brave person to accuse Bill Gates and Richard Branson of stupidity. All the leaders and managers we interviewed were smart enough to achieve power and influence. They are smart, but not in the traditional, school sense. Managerial intelligence is different from scientific intelligence.

We decided to dig deeper, breaking the golden rule: “If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.” I hope we haven't dug ourselves a hole. We are simply trying to unearth the basic principles of managerial thinking. And in the end, we found these fundamental principles, which will be discussed in this chapter, which any manager can master.

1. Start with the end in mind: Focus on the outcome.

2. Achieve results: work and understanding.

3. Make decisions: quickly develop intuition.

4. Solve problems: methods, schemes and tools.

5. Strategic thinking: basics, features and classical approach.

6. Determine the budget: policy for achieving the goal.

7. Managing the budget: an annual battle.

8. Manage costs: with minimal costs.

9. Spreadsheets and calculations: guesswork, not math.

10. Know your data: manipulation of numbers.

If we were precise and scrupulous, not all of these skills would be included in the chapter on IQ management. But behind the apparent randomness there is a certain method. A focus on results and achieving results is included in this chapter because these principles underlie effective management. An effective manager is driven by the desire to achieve results and achieve goals. This creates a certain style of thinking - very pragmatic, impetuous and completely different from those described in books and studied in institutes. The main thing is achievements, not activity.

Decision making, problem solving and strategic thinking are classic IQ abilities. There is a huge difference between the way textbooks tell managers to think and the way they actually think. Textbooks are looking for the perfect answer. But the ideal solution is the enemy of the practical solution. The search for an ideal leads to inaction. Practical decisions lead to what good managers need: action. For many managers, the real problem is not finding the answer, but asking the question. In fact, successful managers spend far more time searching for a question than searching for a pragmatic answer.

Defining a budget, managing budgets and expenses, preparing settlement documents and knowing the numbers can be called FQ - financial quotient. We believed that finance and accounting were 100 percent IQ skills. And they turned out to be 100 percent wrong. In theory, financial management is an objective and intellectual activity in which there are two types of answers - right and wrong: either everything fits or it doesn’t fit. But for managers, the intellectual task is only a small part of the real task. The main challenge is not about intellectual ability: it is political. Most financial discussions and negotiations are political discussions about money, power, resources, obligations and expectations. In many ways, financial management belongs in the chapter on PQ (political intelligence). Out of respect for financial theory, we included it in the chapter on IQ.

In subsequent sections we will do justice to the theory. It is not without its benefits: good theory provides a framework for structuring and understanding unstructured and complex issues. However, the main attention should be paid to the practical side of the development and application of IQ abilities.

Bayesian probability theory is one of the main theorems of elementary probability theory, which determines the probability that some event occurred (hypothesis), having only indirect evidence (data), which may be inaccurate.

How to manage people. Ways to influence others

The art of making things happen

Scientific editor of the Russian edition Valery Nikishkin, professor, dean of the Faculty of Marketing of the Russian Academy of Economics named after. G. V. Plekhanova

The publishing house expresses gratitude to Yulia Kurylenko, Anastasia Kazakova and Roman Malakhovsky for their assistance in scientific editing of the book.

* * *

“Napoleon once said: “To manage is to foresee,” and Joe Owen claims that to manage is to bring something to a successful conclusion. The main thing is achievements, not activity. This attacking management ideology raises many questions. What results do I want to achieve? What results do my partners and clients expect? What should be done for this? How to motivate yourself and those around you to move towards the intended result together? With whom to achieve results, and with whom to abandon along the way? Who is needed today? Who will be needed tomorrow? And many, many others. But the author does not leave any of these questions unanswered, or at least advice on how to get it. Owen's level of managerial competence is determined by his ability to achieve results.

Read this book, try to apply Owen's principles to managing your business - and you will see that only focusing on results will lead you to achieve the desired results."

Vadim Marshev Honored Professor of Moscow State University. M. V. Lomonosova, Doctor of Economic Sciences

Introduction

Real managers in real conditions

What risks must I take to survive, and what risks must I take to succeed?

What projects should you work on and with whom?

When is it better to defend your point of view, and when to give in?

How does everything really happen here?

What pitfalls should you avoid?

No company policy manual or training program can answer these questions. You are left to your own devices when it comes to the most important things, and the manual only indicates the minor things.

The rules of survival and success are dictated by practice: we compare people who achieved success and survived with those who faced difficulties, and then analyze why they succeeded or failed.

Most rating systems rely on two characteristics, which are called completely differently.

Something is missing here. High IQ and EQ are a huge plus, but they are not enough. Managers have one more hurdle to overcome. Their lives have become much more difficult, not easier.

The first step in understanding this revolution is to understand its causes and ultimate goal.

IQ: rational management

“One of the basic requirements for a man who is fit to work in blast furnace iron is to be so dull and phlegmatic that his mental faculties are more like an ox than anything else. That is why a reasonable person with a lively mind is completely unsuited for such monotonous work.”

How to influence

The Art of Making Things Happen

Scientific editor of the Russian edition Valery Nikishkin, professor, dean of the Faculty of Marketing of the Russian Academy of Economics named after. G. V. Plekhanova

The publishing house expresses gratitude to Olga Kotova for her assistance in scientific editing of the book.

“In this world, a lot, if not almost everything, depends on the interaction of people, on their personal qualities, on the ability to behave adequately in each specific situation and quickly make the most correct, and often the only correct, decisions.

Probably, in any field of activity, a person’s success is determined by the presence of a certain core, based, first of all, on his intellect, will, desire to achieve more, and secondly, on professionalism - knowledge of the subject, strategic thinking and growth opportunities.

Rudolf Zagainov

Professor of St. Petersburg Polytechnic University, Doctor of Psychology, psychologist of the Russian Olympic Committee

Introduction

The Art of Influence

From a century of reverence to a century of influence

Thirty years ago, a pair of gray socks created a real revolution. Procter&Gamble top managers came to the company conference. When they took their seats, everyone present was literally speechless with indignation, believing that one of the top managers had broken the rules: he was wearing dark gray, not black socks. He was suspected not only of being revolutionary, but also of being unpatriotic.

Thirty years later, all of Skype's top managers gathered at a conference in Estonia. Everyone, including the CEO, was wearing the prescribed “uniform” - jeans and T-shirts. Well, almost everything. I was speaking at that conference and felt overdressed in a regular shirt and pants. Surprisingly, those present were wearing socks of a variety of colors, and there was nothing revolutionary about it. Some even wore tights - not out of love for women's clothing, but simply because they were women. Being a middle-aged white man is no longer a requirement for success.

In one generation, the dress code has changed beyond recognition, as have the rules of survival and success. In the past, there was a clear hierarchy and the attributes of power were quite obvious. It was a caste system in which the upper caste people had their own parking space, their own room in the cafeteria and private elevator, the largest desk and office, the freshest flowers and soft carpets. This was the unspoken agreement, which was happily accepted by the entire top of the organizations.

The world of hierarchy was also a world of control and management. The workers worked and the managers managed. The workers had to do what they were told. At best, firms and governments looked after workers and voters the way fathers care for their children, and at worst, the system led to strikes, disputes, and conflicts between those who had everything and those who had nothing.

The old world is leaving. Black socks are no longer a must-have item, and respect for hierarchy is disappearing. Public trust in politicians, business leaders, journalists, union leaders and lawyers is at an all-time low, according to polls in the US and UK. The self-proclaimed elite may still believe in themselves, but no one else shares that belief. We are more likely to trust our favorite musical group or favorite brand than people in suits.

Even within organizations, the outdated command-and-control style of management is becoming obsolete. The era of obedience is giving way to the era of commitment and loyalty: it is impossible to command people to be loyal. Loyalty and voluntary commitment must be gradually achieved. And voluntary commitment, as opposed to control, is a two-way street.

The old world of command and control empowered people and at the same time limited them. Power and position went hand in hand. Success was achieved by slowly climbing the career ladder. Power grew in accordance with new positions, but was also limited by position. This system was subject to patient people who were willing to build a career for 30 years in order to achieve power, prestige and influence. However, this principle is completely unacceptable to those entering the working world today. Thirty years ago, at the beginning of the “gray sock revolution,” Freddie Mercury from Queen sang: “I want it all and I want it now.” It was revolutionary rock. The difference is that today we want more, as quickly as possible.

Just as people want to break free from the constraints of the command-and-control style of management, organizations need people who are able to move beyond the command-and-control style of management. The administrative and command structures were basically a functional silo. Now the corporate structure is much flatter and more fragmented. In such complex organizations it is easy to hide, but difficult to shine. And it’s even more difficult to achieve your goals. In flat organizations, you cannot have much control, because it is not always possible to control people: they work in different positions or even in different branches. Instead of using power, you need to use influence: building coalitions, winning loyal supporters, creating the right action plan, strengthening networks of trust and support. It's not just different skills from the administrative-command style, it's a different worldview.

The age of influence opens up enormous opportunities. It frees us from hierarchical dependence. By creating our own connections and conditions for success, we can achieve what we want, realize our plans and satisfy our ambitions. We can control our own destiny. To do this, we will have to master a completely new art - the art of influence.

The invisible hand of influence

When the attributes of power are visible, the skills of influence are hidden. We see that some people have influence. But how they achieved this influence and how they use it is not so obvious. The signs of influential people are easy to spot: they have loyal allies, they are always in the right place at the right time; they turn a crisis into a conflict and the opposition into supporters. Lack of control does not lead to lack of progress: a network of connections allows them to achieve much more than a lone hero trying to do everything on his own.

At first glance, influence seems to be one of those inscrutable qualities, like charisma or inspiration: you either have it or you don’t. Fortunately, this is not the case. Influential people have certain skills and engage in certain types of behavior that anyone can master. Behind this behavior is a specific worldview: this is the invisible key to influence. We don't know what people think. But if we understand how they think, we can use the same thinking style and achieve the same results. The way powerful people think differs from “normal” thinking in many ways. For example, influential people:

They prefer not friendship, but trust, not friends, but allies;