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must have some ability to sell that idea or it may be lost forever. If Peters,
Nonaka, Tacheuchi and the rest are right, and they most certainly are, the
thoughts, hunches and ideas of your committed people are the key source
of competitive advantage. You are not, I assume, gifted with the ability to
read minds, so they have to be willing and able to describe their ideas to
you and to others in a convincing and inspirational way. That too requires
sales skills of a high order.

It will come as even less of a surprise when, having written the above,
I confirm that professional salespeople apart, most businesspeople baulk at
developing sales skills and some actually believe that such skills are
beneath them. Engineers have been known to tell me: “if they can’t see the
merit of that, they are idiots and don’t deserve to enjoy the benefits”. Some
years ago what was then called Personnel and is now rather more grandly
spoken of as HR was going through a bad patch. We were just emerging
from one of the cyclical business downturns that characterized the “eco-
nomic miracle” of the 1980s and 1990s. During the tough times many man-
agers had assumed, as an economy measure, the functions and role of
personnel. As Bob Townsend would undoubtedly predict they were might-
ily pleased with the result. They had sought staff as it suited them,
recruited in a downturn with ease, interviewed cogently in their own esti-
mation and had attracted people at least as good as those usually provided
for interview by the expensive personnel operation. As to most managers
recruiting and screening applicants for jobs was all that personnel seemed
to do, there seemed little, if any, reason to retain such a department when
it appeared obvious that line management could do the job equally well.
The result was that in many firms the Personnel Department has been
downgraded. Personnel directors lost their seats on boards and the depart-
ment was fighting, without much success, to regain recognition.

I was invited by the Institute of Personnel Management (soon after my
appearance to become the Institute of Personnel and Training) to speak at
a conference. I chose as my theme “Marketing the Personnel Function in
the Firm”. I delivered a brief and, I hope, witty (you can never be sure with
HR people), overview of marketing and how to adapt it to promoting an
activity internally. After the morning session each speaker was to conduct
a workshop in the afternoon. Delegates could choose where to attend. After
a pleasant lunch I returned to find that something like 85 per cent of
delegates were crammed into my small room. Never put out of counte-
nance I addressed the group.

“Are we agreed that it is essential to market ourselves so that others
understand and want to use our expert services?”

Much nodding of heads and even verbal indications of enthusiasm
greeted the question. Encouraged I continued.

“So what specifically are we going to do?”
Answer came there none – so I paraphrased the question and repeated
it. After a long silence one delegate spoke.
“We are going to set out our stall.”
“Great, so what are we going to set out on that stall of ours?”

178 Key management questions