RIDE THOSE HORSES!
Many of you may have heard of the adage: Feed Your Tigers, Ride Your Horses, Shoot Your Dogs. The prescribed wisdom in this statement deals with the assumption that every organization has these characters in their ranks and that each of them needs to be treated differently.
Tigers; or the stars of your organization need to be fed… by whatever motivates them. As my friend Rita Davenport says, people work harder for Praises then Raises…. And while these folks can be motivated by money, I would argue like Rita, that they are actually looking for the recognition that money brings them. At the other end of the spectrum are the Dogs. These individuals go by various names including “time wasters”, “energy suckers” and other, believe it or not, even less flattering terms.
If we are to succeed both corporately and in the field, we need to make the hard choice to cut these folks loose. I have never once, in 25 years of leading and managing people, let someone go and later said, “wow I wish I hadn’t let that person go”. However, if I had a dollar for every time I said, “wow I should have let that person go sooner”, I would be considerably richer than I am today.
We all know who our dogs are and yet we continue to waste precious coaching time with them; allow them to affect our organization’s culture, and figure out ways to work around them. While I am not advocating shooting them or actual dogs as I am an incurable dog lover… we do need to know when to cut our losses. Horses are where it’s at! These are the doers! Notwithstanding the awe we have for the tigers… the horses are what any organization rides to its success. If more organizations focused on riding their horses instead of pandering to the tigers and wasting time with the dogs…. They would see infinitely more success!
Nowhere, in my opinion, is this more obvious than it is in the Direct Selling Industry. It would seem to me the concept holds true not just on our corporate teams but also in our field organizations. Many Direct Selling organizations measure themselves by how many of their field have reached the top of their pay plan. While this is an important metric, I would say it is nowhere near as important as the strength at the middle of the pay plan. As a matter of fact, I have had some success in constructing Bonus Plans for Corporate Regional Sales Managers that specifically target this level. Typically this would be your first real Manager level.
How many of these are you adding to your ranks each month? More importantly, how many of these individuals are you keeping? Once individuals get to this rank they are more likely to stay based on the recognition and pay that they are receiving, thereby increasing your retention numbers. Strong consistent numbers in your first few management ranks demonstrate a healthy organization. These are the horses that you can ride to victory. While the tigers are indeed the spectacle that draws people to your organization, a full stable of horses will (as odd as it may sound when you take analogies too far!), spawn the tigers. Don’t go looking for them.
Recently, in discussions with Larry Thompson, one of the founders of Herbalife, he remarked that too many organizations today are actually structuring their strategies around the tigers; the top 5%. Without taking into account that not everyone can do what the tigers can do, we see many try and fail. They then abandon the organization and many times the industry altogether.
This is not limited to the field however. In our corporate organizations we need to pay attention to the doers… the horses… the people we can count on. The tigers can be temperamental and often times we find ourselves weighing the amazing good they bring with whatever bad attributes that come along with them. Sadly, here the analogy is not too far off as often times their growl either scares or offends other people or they end up devouring other employees. Structure, strategize and develop around the horses, and by the way, make sure you have the right horse for your course (but that’s a whole different topic…coming soon!).
Feed those tigers with the recognition and motivation they require but not at the expense of the rest of the organization. Shoot those dogs and do it before they waste your company’s resources; time, energy and culture. Ride those horses as they are most suitable to take you over the finish line.