Out of the Box

Is an Honest Self-Evaluation Possible?

By Menachem Lubinsky on May 27 2007

Barry moved up the ladder quickly at a medium size pharmaceutical company. At 33, he was named the Marketing Manager of the company with the task of devising marketing programs for some products that competed with the big boys. After a year and a half on the job, Barry’s boss Gil asked him to do a self-evaluation of his performance. This consisted of filling out a questionnaire that included such questions as “What would you say was your biggest success since you assumed your current title?”

Having generally performed well, Barry filled out the questionnaire with ease until he got to the question “Could you identify any weaknesses that you might have in carrying out your duties?” The perplexed young executive pondered the question like his life depended on it. If he wrote none, it would only invite further scrutiny. If he was too honest and really pinpointed one or two of his weaknesses, he might be shooting himself in the foot, but if he camouflages it, the reader might really question his honesty.

So Barry did what most people do when asked to describe their weakness. He picked strength and turned it into a weakness. “When confronted with many tasks at the same time,” he wrote, “I am not as organized as I would like to be.” In other words, Barry does a lot for the company, but his organizational skills while certainly adequate are just not as perfect as he would like them to be.

The inability to admit a weakness, it turns out, is not peculiar to middle managers like Barry. In a recent survey, Ad Age reported that senior executives find the question of what their weaknesses are to be the most difficult to answer. When they do answer the question, it almost always turns out to the way Barry filled out his, turning strength into a flaw.

Why is this story about Barry in a marketing column? Because marketing programs fail precisely because of a failure to identify and come to grips with weaknesses. “The ad failed not because the message was weak but because it was placed on a day when people’s attention was elsewhere.” Here again the logic is that the concept is really perfect except for a minor imperfection that can be blamed on timing.

Businessmen in general tend to commit this same manipulation of the truth. For example, a retailer who had suffered a 30% decline in sales in 6 months blamed his problems on the lack of parking. “It has gotten much worse in the last 6 months. I myself circle the block now 6 or 7 times before finding a spot.” The truth was that a competitor opened up 3 blocks from him and was selling the same merchandise for about 15% less. Sure the parking situation had not gotten better during that period, but it certainly was not the sole cause of such a dramatic drop in sales.

Barry’s biggest weakness, it turned out, was close to what he wrote. As the marketing manager, he is often asked to direct marketing campaigns for different brands that the company produces. In addition, he was also responsible for all of the marketing initiatives of the company as a whole. In the new modern vernacular, this is called “multi-tasking.” When the worked piled up and there was a great deal on his plate, Barry lost focus on some of the projects that may have been on the agenda for awhile. His boss felt that projects that were long ago assumed to have been completed were somehow buried or that Barry had totally forgotten about them.

It further appeared that Barry’s assistant was inefficient and that Barry compensated for his assistant by trying to do more himself. So how should Barry have answered the question about his weakness? I am sure that many people will differ, but here’s my opinion: “I am unable to maintain a focus on more than a reasonable number of projects, unless I am somehow fortunate to have a quality assistant who will follow through on some of the older projects on my agenda.” Brutally honest, but the truth.

Might such an answer endanger Barry’s future with the company? Possible, but it is more likely that his current course of cloaking the truth in cotton would eventually catch up with him and cut short his career at the company.

Marketing people like the executives who mask their real weaknesses frequently fail to pinpoint the flaws that may ultimately be the downfall of their products or whatever other campaign they may be coordinating. Wal-Mart recently launched a line of designer clothes, but after a considerable investment found that sales were flat. Initially, marketing executives offered all kinds of excuses as to why the discounter was not successful with the same line of clothes that was doing well in the pricier stores.

It turned out that Wal-Mart shoppers never shop the label as they would in other stores. In fact, they expected that if they did find the more upscale line, it would be considerably cheaper than it is in conventional retail clothes stores.

The Wal-Mart marketers should have been more cautious in making the transition from the inexpensive clothes that simply look good to the designer line. Again, being realistic with the weaknesses could have saved the marketers a lot of grief.

It seems like such a simple question, “What is your weakness?” that everyone should be able to answer, but apparently research shows otherwise. We can go on and answer question after question about our strengths, but stumble on the question about our weakness. And when we do, we still want to come out smelling like a rose. Marketing and human nature are all ways side by side and that is both its strength and weakness.

Out of the Box is a collection of strategic marketing articles that Lubicom has published on various topics, trends and ideas in the marketing world. The articles have been published in the Hamodia weekly newspaper circulated on three continents to a readership of well over 100,000.

The name, "Out of the Box" is a term used frequently in business nowadays to describe creative thinking that is not the norm. It is meant to help a business pull away from the pack or separate oneself from the competition. It is to some extent fraught with risk, simply because it is not the run of the mill thinking, but it is at the same time the key to reaching the next opportunity.