In every organisation, there are four kinds of colleagues, employees/people out there. They are
1. Dumb and lazy (loyal yet uninspiring and not ambitious)
2. Smart and lazy (creative)
3. Dumb and ambitious (cunning)
4. Smart and ambitious (high-flyers)
Which one are you?
I have a personal ideology, that no one should be promoted for being hard working; people should be promoted for being productive.
We see this in Biology, through Darwin’s Law of Natural Selection. Even in the animal farm, a lion sleeps 18 hours in a day while a donkey works 18 hours in a day? If it’s by hard work, the donkey should be the king of the jungle.
I am a crude talent manager, I look out for good people and I add tremendous value to them while around me. And over the years, I have come to grade them into four categories and each of them has their pros and cons:
1. Dumb and lazy
2. Smart and lazy
3. Dumb and ambitious
4. Smart and ambitious
Let me break it down
When you have
1. Dumb and lazy (that is, not ambitious) : They will drain you. The good news is, if given simple, clearly stated directions, bumblers will perform day-to-day routine tasks well enough, but not in perfection. This is fair enough, but if you’re the leader, it will reduce you to the position of a mere supervisor. You’d become so operational to details that takes you away from the big picture, strategy and out of work networking where real growth happens. These kinds, usually because they are not ambitious, they will be content with token raises and will be among your most loyal employees.
2. Smart and lazy: They must be continually prodded and they will produce. Because they are lazy but smart, they will find shortcuts to what must be done. So they bring innovation. They have high potential energy but low kinetic energy. With this kind, he lacks the inner fire to turn his brains into personal power, but he has the brains to do well as a supevisor. This kind of people can be extremely useful.
3. Dumb and ambitious: They are insecure and will always flatter you. They can’t be trusted but can be used for a purpose just perfectly with care before the snake in them crawls out. They are pretty useful. The truth is, any ambitious person is basically disloyal. So you can do the maths.
4. Smart and ambitious: For people like this, keep them busy. Give them harder tasks to do and keep rewarding, celebrating and promoting when they succeed and your organisation will see magic. Because they are smart and ambitious, they will only stay if your organisational chart helps their aspiration or they can branch out into ownership. Provide both. The truth is, they are also not loyal to you but their needs that have to do with you. So tie theirs to yours.
Success isn’t really by hardwork . Ask Julius Berger Bricklayers and Bus Conductors
There are a few tricks to being a good talent manager. Look around great leaders and sports coach and you’d find some. We have listed a few over the years in our masterclass and our HBC platforms. For example, why does Arsene Wenger always sell good players after they rise to buy young ones? Why did Alex Ferguson sell Eric Cantona, Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes, David Beckham and even Cristiano Ronaldo in Manchester? Well, there’s a trick for all good talent managers. Know what type they are and never allow your star players to over stay their welcome. But first you need to know their position in the classic Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs.
To read more on this, visit https://hbc.org.ng/…/06/20/why-i-love-inexperienced-peo…/
Eizu Uwaoma,
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