Comments on Gordon Housworth's note about sales organizations:
One of the problems I have seen with the type of system you describe is:
The best performers are engaged in improving there performance by
manipulating the internal system. That is they get very good at driving to
organization to serve their needs at the expense of the other parts of the
organization.
Instead of being good at selling they are good at forcing the system to
work for them. Senge address this with his system thinking circles.
Companies that do as you describe often do not understand the connection
between getting the next order and how well the system performs.
With my clients I have seen the "better" sales people destroy accounts for
other and the company lose sales in one area to serve the better
manipulator. These mangers failed to se how the whole process of serving
the customers is connected.
What you describe may work if the sales are totally independent of the
factory. The more connected the less likely the organization is to get
good at serving all it's customers.
Respectfully,
Gene
At 11:24 AM 10/20/97 -0400, you wrote:
>
>Please accept the following not as a "position for all cases" but a data
>point from my experience. While managing domestic and international sales
>operations (direct and distributor), I annually removed the bottom 20% of
>individual contributors (sales staff). Yes, I believe that the system is
>responsible for 90+% of the problem, the employees 10% or less, and as
>management controls the system, the burden falls (should fall) most
>heavily on management. Following is my restructuring of the system to
>support this culling:
[...big snip by your host...]
Eugene Taurman
interLinx ilx@execpc.com http://www.execpc.com/~ilx
What you are is determined by the thoughts that dominate your mind.
Paraphrase of Proverbs 23 Ch7
--Eugene Taurman <ilx@execpc.com>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>