Business Horizons (2013) 56, 635—642
Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
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All pain, no gain? Why adopting sales force automation tools is insufficient for performance improvement Ronald Jelinek School of Business, Providence College, Providence, RI 02918-0001, U.S.A.
KEYWORDS Sales performance; Technology; Coopetition; Productivity; Sales force; Automation; Customer relationship management
Abstract The dawning of the 21st century brought a wave of research into the phenomenon of sales force automation (SFA)–—technology tools aimed at enabling sales organizations to better practice customer relationship management. While the academic literature has offered great insight into how an organization can increase the likelihood that its sales force will adopt a new technology system, a great majority of research stops there. This is unfortunate in that companies mistakenly infer that use of an SFA system is the major hurdle and that simply motivating SFA use will be the key to unlocking improved performance. However, this is often not the case; many organizations are able to get their sales force to use an SFA system but do not see improvements in performance. As such, after briefly providing an overview of the factors affecting SFA use, this research provides insight into why use alone may not contribute to long-term improvements in a firm’s sales performance. Key empirical findings and theoretical arguments from the extant literature are considered and a list of best practices is offered here to help managers bridge the gap between SFA use and improved sales effectiveness and efficiency. # 2013 Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
1. A cure for all ills? Over the past 10 years, business-to-business sales researchers have expended a lot of effort tackling the issue of sales technology, and for good reason: sales force automation (SFA)–—the system of technology tools aimed at helping sales organizations better
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practice customer relationship management–—has been hailed as the panacea for what ails beleaguered sales forces. Having trouble tracking key information about clients? SFA. Difficulty crossselling and up-selling? SFA. Cannot leverage one rep’s success across the organization? SFA. The list goes on. As a result, sales organizations have been buying: AMR Research reports that customer management software revenues topped $14 billion in 2007 (Boujena, Johnston, & Merunka, 2009), and
0007-6813/$ — see front matter # 2013 Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.bushor.2013.06.002
636 the market is significantly more developed than it was 10 years ago, with newer players like www. salesforce.com competing with more established providers like Siebel-Oracle. Also, although the downturn in the economy has probably made some sales organizations reconsider their appetite for investing in SFA, the consequence for not investing might be greater these days. This is because when sales are down, a smart sales force does not retreat into the wilderness or take a long vacation, it digs in and uses the time to build relationships with customers–—costly time that it might not otherwise get when business is booming and reps are stretched thin trying to get face time with a market hungry for their product. However, while this sales force is smart to see opportunity in challenging times, the time it spends with customers can be for naught if there is not a system in place to efficiently mine the data obtained from them. In short, organizations may be leery to invest in SFA in a down economy, but it is in a down economy that sales forces can plant their seeds and sow their fields–—activities that a well-designed SFA system can help transform into a bountiful harvest when the economy improves. For these reasons, sales organizations have had a ready ear when talk turns to sales technology, and as both a science and as a practice, the sales field knows significantly more about SFA then it did at the dawn of the new millennium. Researchers have focused their efforts on two central questions: (1) what things can a sales organization do to improve the odds that its sales force will use a new SFA system, and (2) will using SFA improve performance? In truth, academics have armed sales organizations with a great deal more insight into the first question than the second. Quite frankly, this is rather disappointing in that it leads sales managers to infer that simply driving up SFA use will in turn drive up sales performance. However, what limited research there is into the second question actually shows that this inference may be wrong. The Gartner Group planted the seed of doubt very early on when it stated 61% of all sales force automation projects fail to show measurable benefit (Block, Golterman, Wecksell, Scherburger, & Close, 1996). In a classic article coming out of the academic literature, Speier and Venkatesh (2002) were among the first to show that technology initiatives often fail to improve sales performance. Shortly thereafter, Ahearne, Srinivasan, and Weinstein (2004) empirically demonstrated that it is wrong to simply assume a linear relationship between SFA use and sales performance; their study provided no evidence that motivating greater use of the system would result in greater sales performance. Collectively, observers were beginning to wonder if
R. Jelinek such findings were evidence of the infamous information technology (IT) productivity paradox: the observation that technology investments do not always produce productivity gains (Brynjolfsson, 1994; Brynjolfsson & Hitt, 1998). Despite making significant investments in SFA tools and working hard to motivate the use of such systems, could sales organizations be headed toward the grim realization that use does not improve sales performance? Maybe so, according to Accenture’s 2012 Sales Performance Optimization Study. The report offers the sobering news that 85% of organizations that deployed new sales technology tools in the past year did not improve their sales performance (Accenture, 2012). These firms are joining a long list of others who previously found the same. For example, back in the late 1990s, Hershey famously invested $112 million into a new customer relationship management (CRM) system (Bligh, 2004). In 1999, the company thought the system would help it win market share from rivals Mars and Nestle during the traditional ‘candy season,’ which runs from October to December and typically accounts for 40% of a candy maker’s annual sales. However, the system reached the height of its failure during that time. Although Hershey’s 1,200person sales force was using the technology, the business process change was too significant for the company to manage: production and delivery schedules were off, distributors did not get their orders, and the brand suffered a severe blow. Hershey lost $100 million in sales during a stretch when it expected sales to increase 4%—6% from the previous year. Lexmark, Agilent, and Carsdirect each suffered similar fates following their CRM rollouts. What about the remaining 15% of companies in the Accenture report? What distinguishes those companies from the other 85%, and how are they able to translate technology use into improved sales performance? This is our focus. Based on a thorough review of the rather limited literature on the useperformance linkage, we offer a set of best practices to improve the likelihood that a sales organization’s SFA use will in fact produce improvements in both the sales force’s effectiveness and efficiency. Before beginning, we more carefully define SFA.
2. Connecting SFA and CRM SFA is defined here as the set of technology tools that better enable a sales and marketing organization to practice CRM. CRM itself has become a buzzword over the past decade. In fact, it has probably become a more popular term than SFA. At its core, CRM refers to the processes organizations put in place to better acquire customers and
All pain, no gain? Why adopting sales force automation tools is insufficient for performance improvement
build two-way relationships with them, in an effort to make the customers more profitable to the sales organization. At the heart of CRM is the concept of the two-way relationship. Beginning with Dwyer, Schurr, and Oh (1987), business sellers were told that the key to effective selling was the ‘relational exchange’ whereby sellers would not simply peddle products to buyers but would endeavor to thoroughly understand buyers’ needs in an effort to respond with solutions that fit those needs and solve other foreseeable problems. With the possibilities provided by technology, practicing CRM has become infinitely easier these days, and for a business-to-business sales organization, SFA systems have been at the leading front of this advance.
3. Motivating SFA use Thankfully, the academic literature has offered sales organizations great insight into how they can drive up SFA use. Researchers have empirically demonstrated that the presence of facilitating conditions (Jones, Sundaram, & Chin, 2002; Venkatesh & Davis, 2000) is critical. The sales force needs to believe that the appropriate resources and support have been put in place before they will rally behind a technology initiative. Accordingly, a key predictor of use is up-front training. Research shows that reps are more likely to use a system when they feel initial training sessions are relevant and meaningful (Jelinek, Ahearne, Mathieu, & Schillewaert, 2006). Research has also motivated recruiters to consider technical aptitude when hiring new reps. Salespeople who perceive themselves as IT-capable are considerably more likely to fully use technology to facilitate their selling than those who are technophobes (Mathieu, Ahearne, & Taylor, 2007). Jones et al. (2002) contend that recruiters should look for ‘innovators’–—people who are early adopters and willing to embrace new ideas–—if the sales organization wants to get the most out of a new technology initiative. Sales researchers have discovered that individuals’ goal orientation can also play a role in whether or not they use a technology (Jelinek et al., 2006). Specifically, when salespeople rate high in learning orientation and view their sales role as an opportunity to master and continually improve sales skills, they are highly likely to embrace new technologies. In addition, when salespeople are high in performance orientation and aim to be evaluated as high performers and stars, they will use sales technology as a way to gain an edge over competitors. Research has also demonstrated that environmental pressures can encourage reps to use SFA. When reps are made aware that customers expect
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salespeople to use technology when selling to them, salespeople will respond accordingly. More specifically, when it is clear that buying center members are using technology, salespeople feel they need to use sales technology to interface and build relationships with them. In effect, customers ‘pull’ technology into the sales process (Jelinek et al., 2006; Jones et al., 2002). On the sales side of things, when managers single out and praise high-performing reps who are using a sales system, other reps are likely to respond and mirror such behavior (Jelinek et al., 2006). Finally, researchers have also empirically shown that sales manager behavior influences the sales force’s technology usage. When reps see managers using a sales system, they are more likely to use the technology themselves (Mathieu et al., 2007). Thus, management commitment appears to be critical if SFA initiatives are to succeed.
4. Coming up empty: When SFA use fails to improve performance That said, sales organizations often learn that encouraging SFA use is only the first of two hurdles. Many firms are confused when their reps appear to be using the system, but the system does not appear to be improving the two performance outcomes on which most sales organizations focus: efficiency and effectiveness. With regard to efficiency, sales managers are always trying to minimize the resources used to achieve a given level of output. In this way, a sales technology system’s opportunity management application enables reps to manage very detailed information about customers with little effort. While a salesperson regularly has to toggle between multiple accounts in a given day and could potentially lose a lot of time while doing so, a contact manager embedded in an SFA system allows the rep to call up key information about one account after signing off with another–—a transitioning task that would have previously taken a lot more of the rep’s valuable time. Similarly, an automated sales configurator allows a rep to input an account’s needs on the fly and promptly see how a slight change in a customer’s features and preferences match up with various offerings in the seller’s catalog. In addition, when the configurator interfaces with an automated proposal generator, the rep can deliver a prospective customer multiple offerings with all of the relevant pricing information in minutes. Whereas efficiency means improved use of time and resources, being more effective means reps are able to win more business and sell more. SFA tools
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like marketing encyclopedia systems arm reps with key information that allows them to present convincing arguments to potential customers. As a central repository that gathers the latest press releases, spec sheets, feature/benefit lists, and competitor comparisons, a marketing encyclopedia system enables the rep to be more prepared to respond to customer questions and to demonstrate the superior attributes of the product offering. Table 1 provides a quick overview of popular components included in most SFA systems. A quick review can elicit additional insight into why using SFA should improve both sales effectiveness and efficiency. So why, in some cases, does it not? Why do some sales organizations invest in SFA systems and wrestle with getting reps to use them only to find that use does not end up translating into improved performance?
4.1. The organization’s definition of ‘use’ and the sales force’s definition of ‘use’ are not aligned While sounding perhaps simple, this issue is not trivial. What does the sales community mean when it says ‘use’ will improve sales performance? Using what? SFA systems can be very complex and, as evidenced in Table 1, can include various tools with multiple functions. So when we say ‘use’ will improve performance, do we mean using every part of Table 1.
the system, or using only certain parts of the system? The truth is that only the individual sales organization can determine what parts of the system it deems critical (and, of course, the SFA provider should thoroughly understand the way the sales organization sells and should use this understanding to educate the reps on what parts of the system will significantly improve the company’s odds of success). However, the organization has to identify and communicate which parts of the system are critical. Without conveying this in training, the organization will leave reps to identify what they think is critical by themselves, and if the organization and reps do not have a mutual understanding of what use means, the reps may believe they are using the system while the organization may not. As such, in order for organizations to determine what should constitute use, a Pareto rule for SFA should be kept in mind: 80% of the system’s benefit will be derived from using 20% of the system’s tools. Therefore, certain applications should be the focus. For example, heavy training and use of the opportunity management system’s contact management feature will likely prove to be very impactful. This application gives reps a condensed snapshot of all interactions with the customer, a gateway to names of buying center members and their relevant input into the deal, and even random relational detail about customers (e.g., birthdays, important dates). It is therefore imperative that training sessions
Typical SFA components
Opportunity Management System (OMS)/Contact Manager
The central nervous system of most SFA systems. This tool gives salespeople the ability to track all of their interactions with an account from inception through the prospect stage and continuing to the point at which the prospect becomes a customer and is targeted for cross-selling and up-selling. It can log information about members of the buying center (e.g., names, positions, and even personal details for rapport building) and can enable reps to update information from sales call to sales call.
Marketing Encyclopedia System (MES)
A web-based central repository (accessible via the sales organization’s intranet) that consolidates various marketing and sales-related information (e.g., corporate brochures, product fact sheets, features/benefits lists, press releases, price discount schedules, contracts, best practice sales presentation materials, etc.) for sales team members. Frequently, the MES links to social media so that sales team members can better communicate and share information across the organization.
Sales Configurator/Quote Generator
A query tool whereby the salesperson inputs the customer’s requirements and the system proposes a sales configuration by matching the products/services in the company’s offerings catalog with the dependencies or constraints expressed by the customer. Final configurations are assigned updated pricing and converted to the appropriate pricing.
Sales Management and Analysis System
This tool is primarily used by sales managers and enables them to run queries on specific customer data items, provide graphical analysis, enable extraction of certain key data (e.g., outstanding receivables from specific customers), track performance, and forecast sales.
Note: While branded SFA systems typically assign the above components brand-specific labels, generic names for these components are provided here. These names are borrowed from Khandpur and Wevers (1998), who produced one of the earliest templates for SFA design.
All pain, no gain? Why adopting sales force automation tools is insufficient for performance improvement
focus reps’ attention on when and how to populate this application with good information and how to call it up during pre-call planning. If reps do not receive such training and support, they may actually find that their use of the system results in weaker performance (Ahearne, Jelinek, & Rapp, 2005).
4.2. Salespeople rely on the system for the wrong things SFA is sometimes referred to as ‘technologyenabled’ selling, and this description probably best describes the role technology can effectively play in the sales process. Technology is meant to augment the salesperson’s abilities, improve organization, and sharpen communication and presentation, but the system itself will not destroy old, bad sales habits. In fact, in some cases, it is entirely possible the system will mask such things. For example, a rep who is having difficulty with what Bill George (2012), Harvard Business School professor of management and author of True North, calls ‘‘the last three feet’’ might fail to personally connect with the buyer and resort to automating critical areas that really require face-to-face interaction. This rep is not using the technology to augment his/her abilities; he/she is using it to supplant the things he/she should be taking the time to personally do him/herself. In effect, salespeople may be using the system–—even using it a great deal–—but relying on it to perform the wrong sales tasks. Interestingly, Ahearne et al. (2004) demonstrate that past a certain point, more SFA usage decreases sales performance, speculating that this could be because reps are spending too much time with the technology and less time personally engaging the buyer. For this reason, good managers should audit each of their reps’ sales processes prior to a technology intervention so that both the manager and the salesperson are aware of areas of deficiency. The salesperson should be cautioned against the temptation of using the system as a crutch to avoid building critical skills. An underperforming rep who does so will likely see his/her performance worsen rather than improve. At the end of the day, SFA systems are only as good as the reps that use them; the salesperson is still responsible for executing. Hunter and Perreault (2007) suggest that technology should generally be used to enhance relationship-forging tasks, and sales reps should discern which components of the system enable them to add value for the buyer. Specifically, they suggest that reps should use SFA to enhance information sharing and the ability to craft more integrative solutions for customers. However, given that salespeople have to serve many different customers with different technology preferences, a fair
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question remains: how should a rep use technology to interact with a specific customer? If the account has a stated technology preference (e.g., the customer is averse to technology or is an apparent technophile), that information should obviously steer the rep’s behavior. However, in many cases, the rep’s path will not be so clear. In such cases, the organization would be smart to have a segmentation framework in place to strategically guide the rep’s technology behavior. One segmentation approach might be to use two common metrics: share of customer and the account’s strategic importance to the organization. Share of customer refers to how much the sales organization sells to the customer relative to how much the customer buys from all providers in the product or service category. Strategic importance refers to how valued the customer is to the sales organization’s business. While this can be a rather subjective determination, sales organizations often make such judgments in order to shape how the company will behave with a particular account. In a case in which the sales organization has attained only a small share of an account that is of little strategic importance, the sales rep should be encouraged to make extensive use of automated repositories for capturing pre-made presentation templates and product-comparison sheets. The goal here would be to use technology to maximize efficiency and avoid duplication of routine tasks and over-customization. In a case in which the sales organization has attained a greater share of this same type of account, the sales rep might benefit from doing more customizing if the account shows growth potential that could make it more strategically important to the sales organization over time. Here, the tactic would be to regularly review the contact manager and use embedded predictive modeling tools to gauge the likelihood and willingness of the customer to consider new products and additional solutions. Perhaps the most critical type of account is the one that is both strategically very important to the sales organization and relatively under-developed. In terms of the seller’s technology usage, the goal here is less about efficiency and more about improving effectiveness. In this case, the contact manager is the sales rep’s best friend. The salesperson should study it during pre-call planning, use embedded predictive modeling tools to guide in-call questioning, and supplement automated post-call ‘thank you’ emails to the buying center with personal phone follow-up to key decision makers. Here, the salesperson has to practice great caution to avoid over-using technology in the parts of the sales exchange for which personal forms of communication would be more appropriate. When the sales
640 organization has achieved a high share of a strategically important account, the salesperson should look for ways that technology can further cement the relationship. If, for example, the buyer-seller exchange involves a channel relationship, the salesperson should be encouraged to initiate discussions about a bilateral account-specific investment in a vendor-managed inventory system. In all highshare/high-importance situations, the salesperson should use the sales technology system to produce customized, fully scalable industry/competitor/ market reports that will deliver real value for the buyer. The target should be to direct technology toward activities that will make both the seller and the highly valued buyer more efficient and to enable the seller to create more actionable, insightful solutions for the client.
4.3. Expecting too much, too soon When it comes to implementing SFA, reps can grow impatient pretty quickly. This is in part because sales organizations often oversell technology. They promise salespeople too much in exchange for adopting the new system, which can lead salespeople to become disaffected rather soon. While the organization should be clear and not shy about the benefits SFA can bring to a disciplined, well-motived rep, it should caution the salesperson to be patient when working through the transition period. For example, the genius of an opportunity management system is that it captures customer data aggregated over several client meetings and can signal attentive reps when a particular product might be ripe for a cross-sell or upsell. However, this part of the system will only show its benefit after several meetings with a client and after the rep puts in the effort to populate the call report data. As such, it could take weeks or, more likely, months for the rep to see the benefit. Some reps–—particularly those who are struggling and looking for a quick fix–—will simply not give the system sufficient time. As a result, they might report that they were using the system for a while and are still not seeing any benefit. In terms of managing the initiative and the sales force, this can be problematic in that it can breed pessimism and disengagement. So what to do? As is often the case, managers have to proactively anticipate the bumps in the road during an SFA intervention. Much like trying to satisfy customers when selling products, management cannot oversell the benefits of SFA to the sales force as over-promising tends to lead to under-delivering. So as Speier and Venkatesh (2002) explain, if management wants to navigate the minefields of an SFA intervention, it should clearly communicate the purpose of the new technology, make the benefits
R. Jelinek realistic, and emphasize patience. This sounds simple in theory but requires both a very disciplined manager and a willing rep.
4.4. Too much command and control Salespeople often greet new technology with skepticism, even cynicism, believing that the system is more Big Brother than it is a helping hand. There is good reason for this: most system functions arm sales managers with greater ability to monitor sales action and effort. When reps update their call activity in the opportunity management system, managers can see it. When they pull down product information from the marketing encyclopedia system, managers know. When reps are regularly using the system, managers can quickly yet critically assess salesperson productivity by running analytics. For example, if a rep is using the SFA system, the manager can see how responsive the rep has been with a new prospective customer by tracking the number of days between the time the lead was routed to the rep and the time the rep made the first call to the prospect. This practice is neither wrong nor unreasonable: sales organizations must understandably demand accountability and take steps if inappropriate or unacceptable salesperson behavior is suspected. However, if the system is perceived as being more about tracking and oversight than it is about empowering the rep to become more effective, the rep’s attitude toward it will likely sour pretty quickly. A recent study revealed that some salespeople feel micromanaged by the monitoring aspect of their SFA system and unable to sell and negotiate the way they want to. One person even complained that his manager likely monitored how much time he was spending on personal matters and did not feel comfortable calling his wife from his company-issued cell phone (Bush, Bush, & Orr, 2010). Given such wariness, some salespeople may choose to game the system. If there remains a lot of internal pressure to use the system, they might use the technology enough to give managers comfort that they are doing their jobs but not enough that the system will provide any benefit. In this way, the reps are checking a box but not really viewing the system as an asset. Organizations would be smart to anticipate this behavior in advance and spend significant time in initial training sessions providing tangible proof that when used appropriately, the system can provide real benefit to the individual rep. Showcasing successful salespeople who are heavy SFA users can provide first-hand evidence that technology can enable better individual performance and not just give managers insight into the work salespeople are doing.
All pain, no gain? Why adopting sales force automation tools is insufficient for performance improvement
4.5. From competition to coopetition By nature, successful salespeople tend to be competitive. The extant literature details how being competitive breeds a desire to outperform (Brown, Cron, & Slocum, 1998). It should therefore come as no surprise that sales organizations have traditionally sought individuals who demonstrate a competitive nature (Jelinek & Ahearne, 2010). That said, intra-firm competition is now frustrating some technology initiatives. Traditionally, competition among reps has bred a ‘me’ mindset, where reps are empowered by the information they themselves have, and beating out a fellow salesperson has meant keeping one’s best practices secret. However, a driving force behind any successful technology effort is the concept of salesperson cooperation. For the SFA project to be successful, reps need to cooperate and learn how to use the system from one another. This means not only coaching and encouraging each other but, in some cases, making previously closely guarded trade knowledge more transparent and available to colleagues. For example, a system’s marketing encyclopedia component makes use of the company intranet and enables reps to pull down various pieces of information. Aside from product fact sheets, contracts, and general sales info, many organizations encourage reps to communicate with one another using this tool. In an effort to disseminate best practices, firms often ask reps to post successful presentations so that other reps might learn from them and even modify and reuse them. However, when competition between reps is encouraged by a compensation system that features competitive rewards and recognition, information sharing is anathema. Without such information sharing, however, the company will not realize the across-the-organization gains for which it is aiming. Unfortunately, while this dilemma has been acknowledged, researchers have not yet provided a real solution. At its core, the challenge is cultural. As organizational psychology researchers know well, culture shapes organizational behavior. Among other things, culture informs the way people within an organization relate to one another. In this case, the organization has changed a major system–—its sales technology system–—but failed to change the culture. The research community reminds us that when organizations engage in what is called business process management, culture can play the role of both an independent variable as well as a dependent variable. That is, it can factor into whether a technology system is adopted and it can also be shaped by the adoption of a technology system (Vom Brocke & Sinnl, 2011). In the scenario described above,
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salespeople may have adopted the system to some extent, but the presence of an outdated culture is impeding the system’s full-scale success. Specifically, the sales culture needs to migrate away from its old hyper-competitive ‘me’ mindset toward a more cooperative ‘us’ mindset. Given the long association between competitiveness and selling, this may sound heretical. However, it should not: for the better part of the past two decades, researchers have been urging companies to foster greater cooperation among salespeople, and organizations have acknowledged the benefit of having good organizational citizens. When salespeople help each other and actively seek to de-escalate intra-organizational conflict, they help the sales unit’s performance (Podsakoff & MacKenzie, 1994). A sales technology initiative provides yet another example of how a more cooperative sales culture can help advance the organization’s objectives. For insight into how companies might strike a healthy balance between intra-firm competition and cooperation, sales organizations might turn to the still-emerging literature on coopetition. While this research is still in a stage of relative infancy, ‘coopetition’ can be conceptualized as an arrangement whereby two parties endeavor to simultaneously compete and collaborate in an effort to create value for both themselves and, in many cases, some additional party, such as a customer (Bengtsson, Eriksson, & Wincent, 2010). While the bulk of work on coopetition deals with arrangements between multiple organizations as opposed to multiple individuals, there is some evidence that coopetition can be fostered among individuals by changing incentives and rewards (Hatcher & Ross, 1991). Accordingly, while sales organizations may want to maintain rewards that incentivize individual salesperson performance, they may want to add an office-wide or region-level reward to the compensation mix if they want to simultaneously encourage reps to share information and help each other both use and benefit from the SFA system. While some organizations structured around sales teams may already be implementing something along these lines, organizations using the more traditional, individual salesperson structure are probably not.
5. Final thoughts In the final analysis, there is a critical distinction between management encouraging technology use within the sales organization and management administering a successful technology initiative that improves sales performance. Fortunately, many sales organizations today are armed with enough
642 information about how to increase adoption rates, but unfortunately, fewer understand that that this information is sometimes insufficient. In these cases, the failure seldom lies with the SFA system itself; it rests with an organization that mistakes a new system for a simple solution. Improving performance requires more than strapping a tablet to a salesperson and hoping for the best. It requires clearly communicating both what technology is and what it is not and differentiating between what it can do and what it cannot and should not do. It requires the discipline to disentangle worthwhile oversight from excessive monitoring and the wisdom to understand that cooperation and competition must coexist. In a word, it requires managing.
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