Managing the multicultural workforce
John W. Thompson , CEO and Mentor
Operating in more than 40 countries, Symantec provides a broad range of information security and storage products that facilitate companies’ management of their IT infrastructure. Under the leadership of CEO and chairman John W. Thompson, Symantec has grown from a $632-million consumer antivirus company to an enterprise security player with $4.1 billion in annual sales. Today ,almost every Fortune 500 firm uses Symantec products.
John W. Thomson grew up in Florida, where his mother was a teacher and his father was a postal worker. “My mom and dad believed very much in the concepts of working hard for that you want and making sure you’re properly prepared for that you pursuits are,”he recalls. After college, he went to work as a salesman for IBM. By the time he left—28 years later –people were thinking he might someday be CEO of IBM. Thompson didn’t think that was likely to ever happen, however .Instead, he chose to become CEO of Symantec.
Thompson quickly refocused Symantec on its data security business. He sold or shut down several units and replaced more than half of the company’s original 2,300 employees, including most top managers. Within three years, he was being recognized as one of the country’s best managers, and BlackEngineer.com listed him as one of the 50 most Important African Americans in technology. During this challenging time, Thompson’s confidence and resolve served him well. “He did not back off [for] one moment on everything he said about Veritas and the need and the value of that acquisition, despite the pressure that he was under,” observed Bruce Chizen, CEO of Adobe in san Jose, who met Thompson through a Silicon Valley CEO peer group. “He did not cave. The leadership he demonstrated under difficult circumstances was admirable.”In fact, Chizen was so impressed with Thompson’s leadership skills that he later sought Thompson’s advice and support.”I continue to ask him to share with me his experience , and that has helped me form my own opinions on how to move ahead with Macromedia,”Chizen says.”I learned a great deal from the experiences he had.”
Thompson points to the important role of mentors in his own life.”I had the belief that if I could produce good results, the rest would take care of itself. But along the way, I also was fortunate enough to have support from some really well-placed people who took an interest in my career…..Success is a combination of hard work and a good support structure that helps to get you going, but it’s determination along the way that keeps you moving along. I had enough of all of those to get you going, but it’s determination along the way that keeps you moving along I had enough of all of those to get me where I am today.” With his own future secure, Thompson is spending more of his time encouraging young African Americans to pursue engineering careers. He takes this responsibility, personally inviting young talent to his home and treating them to a barbecue. Periodically he also coaches students at Florida A&M University, his alma mater.
Thompson’s approach to mentoring is friendly and easygoing. He’s a good storyteller, and the kid of person people describe as charismatic. Based on three decades of business experience, Thompson thinks he understands what it takes to be successful. In his mentoring he helps people understand that besides being able to work with number, personal integrity is essential. He also stresses the importance of taking time to rest and reflect. “You cannot run 24/7,365 days a year. You need to take time to enjoy the fruits of your labors.” Thompson shares these views with his employees and other mentees at so-called Bordeaux-and-barbecue dinners, where he might serve ribs and beans with a $500 bottle of Bordeaux wine.
The U.S Army also uses peer-to-peer mentoring. For managers and army officers, talking with mentors about how to develop more effective leader behaviors is important to career advancement. Mentors can help managers understand how others respond to their behaviors and point out weaknesses or blind spots. Mentors also serve as role models that individuals can emulate, and they provide valuable advice concerning the styles of leadership favored in the organization. Finally, mentors often assist managers in developing leadership capabilities by helping them obtain assignments that will foster on-the-job learning.
If leadership skills can’t be developed and improved through mentoring and other HR practices, all an organization can do is to search for good leaders and hop to find them somewhere. But most CEOs seem to believe that leadership can be improved by giving employees opportunities for development, and research suppers this view. That’s why CEOs invest both personal time and company resources in efforts to develop the leadership capacity of their employees.
At some companies, finding enough mentors to provide such advice is getting more difficult. As companies downsize and flatten their management structures, they find that the middle managers who once served as mentors are either no longer with the company or are too busy to spend their time on mentoring. Yes another challenge for mentoring programs is that the best mentor for a particular employee may be located in another state or even another country. To solve this companies are moving to electronic mentoring, which relies heavily on telephone call and meetings over the internet.
Coaching. For high-level executives and other employee who hold visible and unique jobs, traditional forms of on- the-job training are impractical. Yes these employees often need to develop now competencies to be fully effective. In recent years, and executives have turned to personal coaches to address their training needs. Personal coaches typically observe the employee in action and later provide feed feedback and guidance for how to improve their interaction skill in the future. Most coaches also encourage their”trainees” to discuss difficult situations as they arise and to work through alternative scenarios for dealing with them. Although coaching is rapidly growing in popularity, it’s a relatively new technique, and few guidelines are available are available to evaluate whether a potential coaching relationship is likely to succeed. Nevertheless the evidence of its effectiveness is beginning to accumulate. An effective coaching their organizations.
On-Site but Not On the Job
When the consequence of error is high, it’s usually r appropriate to conduct training off the job. Most airline passengers would readily agree that it’s preferable to train pilots in flight simulators rather than have them apprentice in the cockpit of a plane. Similarly, it’s typically useful to have a but driver practice on an obstacle course before taking to the roads with a load of schoolchildren. Training at the work site but not on the job is appropriate for required afterhours programs and for programs in which contact needs to be maintained with work units but OJT would be too distracting or harmful. It’s also appropriate for voluntary after-hours programs and for programs that update employees’ competencies while allowing them to attend to their regular duties.
For example, when a major Northeast grocery store chain switched to computerized scanners, it faced the problem of training thousands of checkers spread out across three states. The cost of training them off-site was prohibitive. Yes management also was fearful about training employees on the job, lest their ineptitude offend customers. To solve the problem, the grocery chain developed a mobile training van that included a vestibule model of the latest scanning equipment.
Checker were trained on-site but off the job in the mobile unit. Once the basic skill of scanning was mastered, employees returned to the store, and the trainer remained on-site as a resource person. According to one store manager, the program was effective because employees could be errors or slowness.