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Business Rules #17:
Give Direction, Not Directions
February 11, 2005
by Marlene Caroselli
“Give direction, not directions.” It was General George Patton who said it, not me. But I like it. I like it because it suggests people are smart enough to do what has to be done without having to be micro-managed…assuming that they care about the objective…and assuming that they understand the direction.
Last week, Angie McKnight began with a brilliant idea. You saw it. So did I. It inspired her team to take her general idea—America has a choice—and run with it. Team members did what they had to do and emerged victorious. Once Angie sold them on the idea, they sold themselves on its merits. By contrast, the first firee, Brian McDowell, hung over the shoulder of his budget manager, Kristen Kirchner, instructing her to handle the finances and then counteracting her every decision.
Most of these Street Smarters are self-starters. They've won two out of three times now. (This week, of course, there was no winner.) In fact, I've heard complaints that the show may be giving the wrong message: it may be implying you don't need a college education to succeed. I think it’s giving other messages that are equally important.
First off, you need to define success. It's not always synonymous with money. A woman who opts not to pursue a career but instead to devote her time and energy to the raising of her children is a success in her own right. Hypocritical, you say? Downright unliberated, you claim, to tell women not to have a career. Pulleeze. Don't misquote me. All I'm saying is that different people define "success" differently. As it should be. This is America, after all. We're all allowed to have our own viewpoints.
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The second message: these degreeless entrepreneurs have worked hard to achieve what they have. They may not have fancy educations to back them, but they’re not sheepish about promoting their ideas. Brian McDowell, for example, started a glow-in-the-dark products business and made himself a million. Entrepreneurs really are self-starters.
They are motivated by challenge, not conformity. If you're taking my lessons to heart, remember this: if you always do what you’re already doing, you’ll always have what you’ve already got. So explore, experiment, examine your current practices, and revise as necessary. There’s no future in living in the past.
If you’re not constantly improving yourself, your “shelf life” is only about three years. If you’ve always done something a particular way in the past, it’s probably the wrong way for the present and an even worse way for the future. You may not have to re-invent yourself every three years, but you probably will have to re-fashion some of your basic approaches. You have to make yourself more sellable.
I'm hardly the first person to realize that we all sell—no matter what we do for a living. Some people regard selling as pure confrontation. I encourage you to take a less adversarial approach. Think consultatively instead of combatively. Ask yourself how your product or service can best solve the customer’s problem.
Ponder this: what do Lee Iacocca, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, and Michael Dell all have in common? Well, according to a survey of sales professionals, these men are the greatest salespeople of our time.
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If you always do what you’re already doing, you’ll always have what you’ve already got.
