DUKE'S RULES

Presented at ENG on July 13, 2006

by Duke Ehemann

Summarized by Jens H. Ovesen

Duke Ehemann, “The Duke,” presented his experience as a successful executive in a 45 minutes or so presentation.  Below are some of his thoughts and conclusions he chose to share with us.

The Duke’s experience comes from

• ·         80%: See how not to do it
• ·         10%: From two of his greatest managers
• ·         10%: Own inspiration

Be people oriented:  Duke’s Law of Counter-Intuition: “When you have all your eggs in one basket, you better take good care of the basket,” originally proposed by Mark Twain.  “Develop people.”

What keeps managers from becoming good managers:

• ·         Not coached, mentored, or held accountable for developing people – only bottom line (short-term) results are used as measure for performance.
• ·         Their own manager does not develop people
• ·         Crush of day-to-day pressure
• ·         Organization not rewarding “how,” only “what.”

The 4 Horsemen of Apocalyptical Thinking:

• ·         Passion: You are not Oral Roberts
• ·         Attitude: A strong one covers many sins, a poor one is cancer
• ·         Managers manage people – not numbers
• ·         People make numbers – managers make people

Our enemy is ourselves:

• ·         Poor hiring decisions
• ·         Not dealing with underperformers and/or lousy attitude
• ·         Poor coaching/mentoring/developing
• ·         Poor prioritization
• ·         Yellow card: expediency not to be confused with efficiency or sound business decisions

People want:

• ·         Job description: What do I do, and what am I measured on?
• ·         Training
• ·         Feedback
• ·         Respect: Tactful feedback on screw-ups
• ·         Recognition: Tell me what I’m doing right
• ·         Context: Where am I in the big picture?
• ·         Appreciation
• ·         Communication: What’s going on
• ·         Consistency: Walk the talk.
• ·         Clarity: I’m not a mind reader

Hiring decisions:

• ·         Know what you are looking for
• ·         Hodi’s story: Talk to N people, but all stinks:  Don’t pick any of them!
• ·         Prevention: A bad hire is 3 years of pain
• ·         Medical Advice: A bad hire is like having herpes

Staffing decisions:

• ·         One Duke is plenty; hire people with strengths that are your weaknesses
• ·         Two ways staff can mess up:
• o        Sit like a mannequin
• o        Sit on bad news; bad news gets worse with time

Weeding the garden: Underperformers is the Rule of Lousy Alternatives.  If you don’t deal with them, your credibility is hurt

How to deal with an underperformer:

• ·         Clarity
• ·         Understanding, not necessarily agreement
• ·         Half of them don’t know how to improve
• ·         Duke’s nasty little secret: You are above the bar or you are out.  Don’t think you are below radar just because you are only just below the bar; you go too!
• ·         You are empowered now go do it.
• ·         I am in on your nasty little secret: “I like you, you’re great guy, but that is not good enough!”
• ·         Show up 30 days later – fair, but firm.

Improving skills, modifying appraisal:

• ·         Prepare next years PA begins day after last PA: Manila folder on each person
• ·         Performance against goals: Short and sweet
• ·         Strengths: 6-8 of them, minimum of one single spaced page per strength
• ·         Developmental Opportunities: TWO of them, tops.
• ·         Improvement plan you both commit to

Presentation:

• ·         E-mail it a week in advance
• ·         Everything is fair game
• ·         Block entire day for PA

Tactical Execution:

• ·         A & B list
• ·         Let some fires burn (B)
• ·         We all gravitate towards the easy stuff