Sunday, August 6, 2006

Management lessons
from Tiger Woods

Golf fans who tuned into the treat of morning golf that is the annual British Open may have been a bit confused by what they were witnessing.

Tiger Woods, one of the longest drivers on the tour, pulled out the big club just once in the four days of the prestigious tournament.

Instead, Woods repeatedly pulled out long irons. His goal: to take those treacherous fairway bunkers out of play. The result was another major championship for the best golfer in the galaxy.

Woods' strategy is one that smart businesses may consider learning from, according to Kevin Burkholder, who has started Earth Asylum Consulting, an adherent of "Strengths-Based Performance."

Today's management is based on two premises, Burkholder believes. First, each person can learn to be competent in almost anything. Second, each person's greatest room for growth is in his other areas of greatest weakness.

Basing his philosophy on the work of Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton, who wrote the book "Now, Discover Your Strengths" in 2001, Burkholder says a better philosophy is: First, each person's talents are enduring and unique and, two, each person's greatest room for growth is in areas of the person's greatest strengths.

Instead of focusing on ways to improve an employees' weaknesses, companies should look for ways to capitalize on their strengths, Burkholder says.

He calls it the 80-20 rule, with 80 percent of the effort put toward an employee's strength and 20 percent spent on improving shortcomings.

Burkholder, of Honey Brook, started Earth Asylum last fall after spending 11 years as vice president and chief technology officer at American Telecast Products in West Goshen. Prior to that, he was a technology consultant serving as a project manager, software developer, systems analyst and technical-operations manager for companies in a variety of industries.

As his roles changed at American Telecast Products and he took on more management responsibilities, "I made a lot of mistakes" in managing people, the 46-year-old acknowledges. "This is very typical." But motivating others got in his blood, and he began taking classes and attending seminars offered by the Human Capital Institute.

"I did a lot of studying on my own," he says. "You're playing with people's lives when you manage them."

Not only are companies missing out on untapped resources with today's focus on correcting weaknesses, they are taking the spirit out of their employees, he believes.

"You know they're going to be more happy" when employees are doing what they're best at, he says.

For proof, one may have to look no further than Woods. In their 2001 book, Buckingham and Clifton offered the golfer as an example of what happens when you concentrate on your strengths. Prophetic, as it turns out.

Woods could have spent the majority of his time working on his substandard (a relative term, to be sure) sand game. In doing so, he'd more than likely have gotten better at it, but while he was spending that time on improving his weakness, he probably would have lost a bit in the parts of the game he was good at but not practicing as much.

"Good at many things but great at nothing," Burkholder says. "This is what we constantly do in our businesses and in our lives. We spend too much of our energy trying to fix what's wrong rather than building on what's right - and we become mediocre."

Better to go for the Claret Jug.