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The Michelangelo Effect-Part B: Practical Application

michelangeloIf you read Part A of the Michelangelo Effect, you know it dealt with steering our AV businesses into the waters of AV/IT convergence.  The words of Michelangelo seem to extremely relevant in defining just what attitude we need to adopt in order to be successful in that endeavor.  In many ways, adopting that attitude and contemplating some of the questions asked in that blog can really help you create a vision for the company you want to be in 5 years.

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Courtesy of www.despair.com

As with any vision however, there always has to be a group of people on the ground that make that vision a reality. We can throw labor at the problem, hoping that the sheer mass of it carries us to our goal, (the pyramids were pretty much built this way), or we can take a strategic approach to getting there.

It is the latter that I obviously want to focus on in Part B of The Michelangelo Effect.

There has been a lot written lately about transforming our employees.  I never begrudge anyone furthering their own careers or those of the ones that they employee.  I do believe that we have to be careful that we don’t try to put ourselves or our employees in roles that diminish our chances of success.

“Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.” -Michelangelo

Every person is a unique piece of stone with innate qualities and strengths and weaknesses.  If we try to carve against the grain or ignore the natural veins in the material, we end up with cracking and crumbling and cannot achieve a good end result, let alone a masterpiece.

I say this because I think that technicians, engineers, sales people, administrative staff, and executive leadership all have equally important roles in integration companies.  Somehow though, there is a stigma that some of these roles may be superior to others.

I’ve seen a lot of talk lately about trying to transform someone who is amazing at one role into another role completely.  I think that this may be a huge mistake.  

It would be hubris to think that you could carve a marble Kouros out of a piece of Jade.  Why not transform it into the best version of itself instead?

Let me give an example based on recent history.  I was at a client appreciation event recently where an integrator had invited all of their clients to a day of brunch, golf, and dinner.  At the cocktail reception, I was speaking with several of these clients, and asked them what they found most compelling about the integrator’s business.

You know what the answer was?  Great people-facing technicians and engineers.  The general feedback was that this integrator had a unique advantage in the personal touch didn’t end with the sales cycle, but continued on through the design, installation, and ongoing service phases because they had great people facing engineers and technicians.

There may be a temptation to try and place these employees in more traditional customer facing roles, but why?  They are gold to the company in their current capacities.  If you are going to provide a career path to these individuals, it seems that helping them become lead technicians, trainers, mentors, or even Project Managers and Sales Engineers are much more intuitive and valuable paths, that leverage the strengths of the raw materials at hand and steer away from their weaknesses.

As Michelangelo said of The David-

“I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.”

Wouldn’t becoming one of the Masters in our industry entail the same, releasing the potential of our companies and employees in a way that leverages strengths?

This same philosophy may help us to determine what type of business we should be in the future.  What are our inherent strengths?  Where are our weaknesses?

If we take the idea that the material dictates its own use, then we have to extend that to understand that if we want to pursue emerging markets we may need to bring in new materials to do that.  That could mean new employees with different strengths.  That could mean new tools to better hone employees we already have. Our job is to know when one is better than the other.

An honest and critical view is the only thing that will allow us to see where there may be natural extensions of our businesses that allow us to increase our successes with minimal effort.

In most cases criticism is used to tear down, and not to build up.  Michelangelo had a unique take on criticism.

“Critique by creating.”

If you truly want to illustrate the difference between good and great, then take something good and make it better.  In other words create the ideal to show the flaws in the old.

A final thought, reflecting back on Part A of this blog.  

Michelangelo would have much rather sold the Church a sculpture than a painting.  He loved sculpting.  He thought it superior to painting in that it was three dimensional and could almost freeze a character in a moment in time.

He realized however that they did not want to buy a sculpture.  They wanted to buy a painting.  So he sold them one, and a rather magnificent one at that.

I’ll leave you with a last anecdote based on my experience as an integrator.  I had a client who wanted to buy a touch panel interactive, complete with content creation and programming.  It was a $100,000 project for one screen based on the scope of work this entailed.  It was quite an artistic endeavor to create all the content and layout to tell the story the client wanted to tell.

As such, the company saw this as an artistic project, especially the owner.  When I related that the customer wanted a way to incorporate coupons for local businesses in the system, it did not go over well internally.  Every time that part of the project came up there was grumbling and it seemed to be put off over and over.

Finally, I had to speak up.

“I know you don’t like the idea of the coupons in this interactive and its not the way you envisioned building it. I also know the client wants to buy an interactive with coupons in it.  The question really is, do we want to sell it to them?”

It’s ok to use our vast knowledge and experience as a way to bridge the old and the new.  In fact, even Michelangelo interpreted his new craft of painting through his traditional work in sculpture.

“Good painting is the kind that looks like sculpture.”

We have to make a decision though in our businesses.  Do we want to try and sell our clients the systems we want to build, or do we tailor our companies to sell the systems they want to buy?  

If we do the former we may end up as starving “artists, and if we do the latter, we may just find ourselves creating masterpieces we never dreamed of creating.

So lets get moving.  In a final quote from the Master himself-

“There is no greater harm than that of time wasted.”

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