So, if you have an organization that is led by a person that is a 6 on a scale of 10, the law would tell you that the organization will never be any more than a 6. I have to tell you, I spent my early management years not truly believing this.
What changed? When I was at Payless, we had a store in the region that just couldn't gain any traction. The manager was a nice enough person and we had "stacked" the team in there with some of the best people that we had in the region. And still, the store would not flourish. After many visits and a great deal of angst, we decided that the problem was with the manager. Not that he was bad, he was just not the best. One of the best indicators of this was that in the middle of everything else, we lost a really top-notch assistant manager there for no real reason. He just wanted to go to a different store. We made the decision to change out the manager in that store and almost overnight, the everything changed. Customers seemed to appear from nowhere and the sales accelerated to a level not before known.
A couple of weeks ago, Fred Hoiberg, Iowa State's head coach spoke to our Rotary. He was very interesting and a good story teller as well. The story that went the farthest with me, though, was about when his years as a professional basketball player. He told about a year that the team struggled, winning barely half of their games. The coach had been a task master, focusing on the little things, even when things went well. The following year, the only thing that changed was the head coach. The new coach took the position that the players were professionals and should go out and do their job. Guess what? The team won virtually all of their games that year.
With this background, what have I really been thinking about this week? I wonder if the Law of the Lid applies to our educational system? And even more than that, does it apply in a couple of ways. First, is our system putting people in charge that limit the degree that an individual school, and therefore the children in the school can be successful? It seems to me that in education, the people that come to the most senior levels of the organization are there only based upon seniority. I wonder if this is best for the students, or is it applying a "lid"?
The second thing that I wonder is if things like "common core curriculum" and "No child left behind" are adding a lid. Are we limiting the children that can truly fly based upon the way our system works? I completely agree with everything that these programs are trying to accomplish, but I wonder if we are actually pulling the group down? So, when we teach or train to the "lowest common denominator," are we limiting the way that the rest of the group can soar? I have spoken here of education, but we see this in business all of the time in the way that we bring employees up to speed on a new procedure, or roll out a new program. The odds are that there are people in the affected group that could do more with the new training than ever imaginable, but because we are teaching and training in such a way that a lid is applied, we will never see it. I really wonder what would happen if we took the position that we were managing professionals and that they know the right thing to do. Just like the team that Coach Hoiberg played on, the results could amaze.
Well, that is probably enough from me today. I certainly don't have all, or maybe any, of the answers. It seems to me like it is time to get smart people around a table and decide what the right thing to do is, and then get out there and do it. I can tell you that from my perspective, I want to be able to work with and hire people that are elevens on a ten scale. That is the way that you really move a team forward. Make sure that your lid is never an obstacle. And, if the time ever comes when you recognize that you are in the way of your team, figure out how to make a lateral move and get out of their way. I know that I never want to be "the lid."
Have a great week.
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