Together with Bill Hewlett, in 1939 David Packard (1912–1996) founded the Hewlett-Packard Company, with seed capital of just $538. In the manner befitting a high-tech legend, Hewlett-Packard began in a garage in Palo Alto, Silicon Valley. The garage is still standing today, at Addison Avenue 367, near Stanford University and is a historic landmark, whose memorial plaque bears the venerable words “Birthplace of Silicon Valley.”
Right from the start, the two founders of the company gave their employees tremendous room to maneuver, which was anything but typical for the form of management practiced at the time. “We recognized that employees achieve more if they are given the opportunity to make use of their talents and abilities,”1 David Packard said, looking back at those early days. The extensive powers he gave the company’s employees made him a pioneer in what would today be described by the buzzword “empowerment.” However, it is more appropriate, and in many respects simply better, to say that Packard fostered a corporate culture of performance and responsibility, long before such a culture was adopted by the majority of effectively and efficiently managed companies. In the corporate culture he and Bill Hewlett established, he always attached great importance to nurturing people. The fact that these individuals were given important assignments and great responsibility was a key element of this approach.
For this chapter I could have picked any one of a huge number of leaders to epitomize the nurturing of people, because it is such a fundamental part of good management. For instance, one of Winston Churchill’s strong points was that he vigorously nurtured young politicians right up until the end of his life. Likewise, the celebrated conductor Bruno Walter, who was admired for his interpretations of Mozart, Bruckner, and Mahler, was well known for his commitment to strongly encouraging the musicians in his orchestras, a characteristic common to all exceptional conductors. Many musicians, too, are deeply devoted to encouraging their peers and emerging stars. For example, the world-famous “wonder violinist” Yehudi Menuhin was an extremely active teacher who sought to pass on his own perfect technique to his students, while at the same time giving them invaluable guidance on maximizing their personal interpretation. General George Marshall was another possible candidate, having forcefully advocated the nurturing and development of people on countless occasions. For instance, one of Marshall’s decisions with extremely far-reaching consequences was taken in the mid-1930s, when he quite deliberately arranged for the still young Major Dwight Eisenhower to be posted to the War Department. Although Eisenhower’s work there did not turn him into an excellent strategist, it did help him develop a systematic, strategic understanding and make him respect strategy and appreciate its importance. Subsequently, when Eisenhower was a general and later on president of the United States, this previous experience helped him to appoint the country’s best available people to teams working on strategic issues. Generally speaking, one of Eisenhower’s great strengths was his ability to put together excellent teams.
There are countless examples of people deliberately and successfully being nurtured. In fact, one characteristic of good, effective managers is that they personally deal with the issue of nurturing people. People constitute the most important resource an organization has. What makes David Packard a particularly pertinent example above all is that almost every organization in the world has a product that could not have come about without what he did or without following his principles.
But let us now turn to their actual implementation. The following elements should always be kept in mind when you are nurturing and developing people:
If people are nurtured within their organization, they have a chance to develop in a positive way. However, if the organization neglects to nurture their development, then their skills, talents, and ultimately their attitude will atrophy, and they will develop in a negative way.
Organizations cannot escape exerting an influence one way or another. In fact, it is in the interests of organizations and individuals alike that people be properly nurtured. For organizations always depend on hiring independent, competent managers for their own effectiveness, strength, and growth. At the same time, people’s performance, self-improvement, and success all hinge on their organization’s willingness to attribute high importance to nurturing its employees. When all is said and done, people can only develop themselves; they have to motivate themselves and produce their own performance and results. Nonetheless, organizations can create an environment conducive to these individuals’ development.
People grow with the tasks assigned to them. Consequently, which tasks are assigned is the key element when seeking to nurture people and encourage their development. This is far more important than any course they could be sent to complete. Courses are complementary instruments for ensuring that an assigned task can be fulfilled.
The assigned task should be bigger and more demanding than previous tasks completed by the person in question. The task should prove demanding and urge the person to question previous performance limits. Whenever there seems to be a chance of exceeding these limits, this is precisely when it is worth making additional efforts, for example, by providing an accompanying training program.
Remember, aspirations about performance can easily be lowered at any time, while raising them is nearly impossible. If high standards have already been firmly set and people are accustomed to try to meet them, usually an organization’s employees will urge each other to do so.
To cite but one example, Gustav Mahler used to make extremely high demands on his musicians, and still did so when he was placed in charge of the Vienna State Opera. Once, when Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria, who was also King of Hungary, attended an orchestra rehearsal directed by Mahler, the composer placed such inhumanly high demands on his players that the Kaiser called out to him, asking, “Don’t you think you’re overdoing it?” to which Mahler replied, “Your Majesty, my demands are nothing compared to the demand the musicians now make on me because they play so much better.”2
Facing up to an extremely demanding task is another common feature on the résumés of successful people.
To nurture people, you need to constantly draw on their existing strengths. Since there is no way of knowing what children at school will be doing in 10 or 20 years, it is important to make sure that they adequately master all the basic skills. As a result, schools make intensive efforts to iron out any weaknesses in their students. By contrast, organizations hire people to deploy their strengths with a view to attaining goals. There is no other path to achievement. So, when nurturing people, care must be taken to ensure that they develop their strengths and therefore enhance their skills, know-how, and conduct—not in a general sense, but with a view to enhancing those existing strengths. On the other hand, efforts to diminish weaknesses should be made only if these weaknesses prevent individuals from fully developing or deploying their respective strengths.
Closely linked to the task and strengths is the question of which type of post will be most conducive to a person’s development. Posts should be chosen to fit their occupants’ personality. And for the purposes of nurturing and development, consideration ought to be given to whether an employee will perform most effectively in a line position or a staff position. Does the person in question need plenty of routine or a highly innovative and frequently changing environment? Is the individual good at handling details or better at working with concepts and fundamentals? Does he or she work well alone or does this person function better in a team? Last, but not least, a person’s designated superior exercises considerable influence over the subordinate’s subsequent development. Younger employees in particular will tend to model themselves on a successful superior, so integrity is absolutely essential, as is always the case when managing people.
Many successful people had idols whom they set out to emulate. As this role model exerts such a strong pull, it is essential for people’s individual development to make sure that their superior sets an example worth following. Not in a general, overall sense, but rather with respect to the tasks to be fulfilled in the organization and with an eye to professional management, specifically the superior’s expertise, commitment, professionalism, attitude toward the company, readiness to assume responsibility, trust of others, and—last, but not least—the integrity mentioned above.
As stated above, people develop themselves. So the responsibility for that development lies primarily with the individual in question. However, the organization can create favorable conditions that facilitate personal development. For this reason it is well worth sitting down together at regular intervals with the people who are being nurtured to assess their progress. Key questions to ask in this connection are:
“What did you take upon yourself a year ago, and how much of it have you achieved? What was a success for you and us, and what should we therefore build up further in the future? What do you need to learn in order to draw on your strengths even more effectively?”
Although the points listed above have been proven valid a long time ago, not all organizations give nurturing and development the status they deserve, even though it is crucial that all managers accept measures in this domain as part of their basic duties and should systematically endeavor to promote them.
Today, Hewlett-Packard is one of the world’s largest companies and has for years figured near the top of the Fortune 500 list. In the 1990s the company went through a difficult phase, and even though the corporation’s two founders, Bill Hewlett and David Packard, were already nearing 80, they both heavily involved themselves in initiating HP’s recovery. By implementing a back-to-basics strategy, the company sought to regain the power to innovate that had made it so strong in the first place. This involved the company’s founders personally falling back on the tried-and-tested method of their early years in business: management by walking around. Is there any better example of the fact that not everything has to be new to be good?
Nurture and develop your employees. Make sure that they are assigned demanding tasks, and deploy their strengths, check that they are well matched to their post and superior, and regularly assess their performance and development.
If you set yourself personal development targets, regularly assess your progress. What will you do based on what you learn from this?