Last week, on a trip to Norway, I had the joy of meeting and travelling with Franz Muller who is Managing Director for Reader’s Digest Nordic. Turns out that he is a really shrewd operator where it comes to managing knowledge workers for sustained productivity.

It was really evident that despite his jobs many challenges, Muller loves what he does and he is good at it.

On communication it is Muller’s view that you don’t call a meeting of very able and intelligent people so you can tell them what to do. No. Rather, it is wise to harness their brain power and commitment so as to achieve business priorities.

In practice, this flies in the face of some managers’ favoured way of interaction: I say and you do. Which reminds of a company where a Director told me, ‘I can live with our chosen strategic priorities but I can’t say I am truly wowed by them’. Acquiescence rather than engagement is the word that comes to mind.

I got the impression that Muller was not a man to settle for acquiescence. Neither would he bully people into line. Rather, he works jolly hard to performance manage these individuals and groups he so respects. How many Muller-type managers does your business have?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 24th, 2007 at 3:59 pm and is filed under Communication, Engaging People. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.