How to Manage Your Manager
Implement this success strategy at IBM
While a trainee at IBM, I was assigned to give a talk at a meeting in the Topeka branch office. The talk was to be titled, “How to Manage Your Manager.”
I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. I decided to interview senior marketing reps, systems engineers, and their managers. The talk morphed into the value of management. Before going into that, let me give you some background.
Corporate management set goals for the corporation. Those goals trickled down through levels of management to the Topeka branch. We were expected to meet targets for growth. Topeka management was not told what to sell or to whom. Management looked at the possibilities and set out a plan.
Marketing reps were paid a salary plus commission on sales. Their incentive was to sell more products to increase their income.
Systems engineers were paid salary plus some bonuses. It was the systems engineers’ responsibility to make sure products were ordered properly and customers could use the products. Systems engineers wanted a smooth installation that well. Ordering hardware or software that did not work for the customer was a problem for the systems engineer and there was no commission upside.
Marketing reps and systems engineers were really a team. Marketing reps talked to management. Systems engineers talked with the programmers and operators. Systems engineers were the technical side of the marketing team.
There were two marketing managers and one manager for systems engineers. After talking with the managers and the top marketing reps and systems engineers, I created a talk. There were a few surprises.
What do you want from your manager? Senior marketing reps and systems engineers used management to talk with higher levels of customer management and to talk with management of other divisions of IBM. For example, I was part of the Datal Processing Division. We were responsible for selling medium to large computer systems. The Field Engineering Division was responsible for installing hardware and maintaining the hardware and software. Management of one division would talk with management of the other division. Although as a systems engineer I would often talk with field engineers, I couldn’t tell them what to do. That was up to their manager.
How did the managers see their role? Managers were an interface to corporate. They were responsible for attaining corporate objectives. Although they were the bosses, managers saw themselves as servants of the people under them. One manager said, “They get the work done. My job is to remove any obstacles that get in their way.”
How can a manager just trust people to get the job done? Hiring top people was a start. While being interviewed, one manager said, “Twenty people will be sitting in the chair you are sitting in. In two words, why should we hire you?” I had already been through one interview and taken a test before being narrowed to one of twenty. It was more than just hiring top people.
The first 18 months at IBM was training. Management had weekly meetings to train us. We had coursework to complete. We helped in the branch where we could. We attended a two-week course and a three-week course in New York. Then we attended a three-week course and a four-week course in Dallas.
What was the overall success story at IBM? Hire top people. Train them well. Promote some to management. Train them well. Remember who gets the job done. Remove obstacles that get in their way.
Apply that system to your business and see what happens.