The article “What Great Managers Do” by Marcus Buckingham uses the old aphorism “he’s playing chess while the rest are playing checkers”, but in a different light.
Here the phrase doesn’t represent managers who are simply more strategic in their style, but likens a checkers approach to management as one that treats all employees as uniform pieces toward a success goal. Meanwhile, chess is a more apt comparison, since employees are never homogeneous.
Some employees excel in types of projects, but struggle endlessly in others. A great manager exploits the strengths of each employee and can work outside the framework of an original plan by recognizing who should be working on what.
How many have seen people fired for failing in one aspect of their job when you’ve seen them excel elsewhere? I’m thinking about the “A for effort gets generous severance” from our Netflix recruitment slide deck in particular. Would a great manager be able to save that human capital and repurpose the employee where their strengths lie? Or is that kind of effort a waste of time and resources?
Article: http://hbr.org/2005/03/what-great-managers-do/ar/1
Edit: Here’s more on the topic, including info behind the research and the book by Marcus Buckingham. http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-be-a-great-manager-2013-8
I once had a boss tell me that he did not believe in treating everyone the same. At first, this sounds discriminatory. But in reference to your chess analogy, most people need to be treated differently. A ‘one size fits all’ approach rarely fits any individual person well.
I received a piece of advice from the corporate finance VP at my company this past week. He said, “do not manage people the way you want to be managed. Instead, manage people the way they want to be managed.” I thought that was a good piece of advice and quite applicable with this article. All people have different interests and are motivated in different ways. Key in on what drives different people and work to their motivations.