MANAGERS ON MANAGEMENT:IN BUSINESS as in life, survival is all about the ability to adapt - especially when times are hard. Although they may claim to the contrary, adaptability is not a quality that comes naturally to managers in adversity.
Under pressure, people tend to revert to familiar habits and, typically, become less innovative and adaptable rather than more so.
Adaptability is a skill that has to be learned - and nurtured.
"There's no doubt in my mind that lifelong learning is the key to adaptability," says Paul Rellis, managing director of Microsoft Ireland.
"That's why it's something I'm always happy to champion both inside and outside the workplace. I've seen its beneficial effects so often . . . Continuously learning means continuously improving, and in business that means improving your product, improving the quality of your service, improving your profitability, but most of all improving yourself.
"And, yes, that does include CEOs," he smiles.
"Like everyone else, I have a personal development conversation with my boss in Paris once a year. I suggest the things I think I need to work on. I ask his opinion. He gives me his views and we agree an outline."
Rellis has found Microsoft's "70-20-10 philosophy" particularly practical.
"Basically it means that 70 per cent of your personal development comes through your work, learning as you go, gaining new insights and even making mistakes . . . which yes, I also do.
"Another 20 per cent comes from coaching and mentoring, while 10 per cent typically comes from learning in a classroom setting. Everyone gets that same access to personal development and it's not at all hierarchical."
Perhaps the most striking example, he says, of adaptability borne of the confidence that comes with lifelong learning has been the development of Microsoft Ireland itself.
"When I joined in 2000, we still manufactured software here in Ireland," he recalls.
"However, the senior management team realised that, whereas the company worldwide spent around half-a-billion dollars a year on manufacturing in locations like Ireland, which were starting to get expensive, it spent $6 billion or $7 billion a year on RD [research and development], and much more on new products and services.
"So over the past nine years we've migrated out of manufacturing. Today, Microsoft Ireland does no manufacturing at all. We have 500 staff at our RD centre and we have another 1,000 in our operations centre, which serves 130 countries across the Emea [Europe, Middle East and Africa] region."
He adds: "You hear a lot of talk about moving up the value chain - well, we actually did it."
In the current fraught economic climate, Rellis predicts that the key to success will be the ability of managers to adapt to a less certain business environment as successfully as they adapted to the past decade of record economic growth.
"That was then and this is now," he says.
"They're going to be two totally different management experiences. During the good times, we had to deal with all the challenges of rapid expansion and of people's heightened expectations, and those posed their own difficulties.
"Now, in many ways, it's about going back to basics. Just look at what we've just seen happen to the international financial system, for example. The future has got to be about going back to a more basic style of management."
That change will affect all aspects of how companies operate.
"It will certainly challenge our ability to adapt and to innovate. People will have to think differently. It will affect our products and services and how we deliver them. It will affect our investments and our costs. In fact, it's going to be a totally different business environment."
In this new environment, Microsoft aims to buck the downturn: "Our corporate position is clear - we don't intend to be part of the downturn. We intend to go out and win additional market share, even in this difficult climate, by being more competitive and offering better value. That's our focus."
Next week: Gary Collins, managing director of Cahill May Roberts, on managing a high- volume low-margin business
petercluskey@yahoo.fr
Name: Paul Rellis.
Company: Microsoft Ireland.
www.microsoft.com/ireland
Job: managing director.
Management advice: Keep lifelong learning among your top priorities and those of your team. It's what allows you to adapt.
