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“The art of communication is the language of leadership.”

Get your workforce engaged! (104)

In this fourth and final installment of our series on developing an “engaged” workforce, we’re going talk about the need for effective communication.  We touched on communication in the first installment of this series when we said, “Your values, mission, and vision need to be in writing, and they need to be disseminated, explained, and discussed.  They need to be repeated and reinforced regularly.”  But there’s more . . . much more . . . that needs to be communicated clearly, concisely, and effectively.  For more about the role of effective communication in developing an engaged workforce, please read below.

“The art of communication is the language of leadership.”
–    James Humes

Humes is an author, so he knows something about communication, and he has been a speechwriter for five presidents, so he also knows a thing or two about leadership.  And when you think about it, he’s right.  After all, if a leader can’t communicate to his people where he wants to take them, how can they follow her there?  Think of a battlefield commander yelling “Charge!” without telling people in what direction to charge.  Most likely everyone would charge off aimlessly in whatever direction they happened to be facing when the order to charge was given . . . not a very effective way to run an army, or a business.

When thinking about what you need to communicate, and to whom, think broadly of two buckets, one for communicating with your people collectively, the other for communicating with them individually.

From the collective bucket, you should be communicating:
•    the corporate mission, vision, values, and culture
•    strategic plans . . . where we’re going and how we intend to get there
•    changes in our marketplace, i.e., new competitors, disruptive technologies, etc.
•    organizational changes (changing the way people and departments interact with one another)
•    operational changes (changing the way we get stuff done)
Communications about these matters can take a variety of forms.  They can be verbal through all-company meetings, departmental meetings, or brown bag lunches.  Or they can be written through memos, emails, text messages, or signs posted in the lunchroom.  The medium can be whatever works best in your environment, but the key is, for whatever medium of communication you choose, the communication must be clear, concise, timely, and unambiguous.

From the individual bucket, you should be communicating:
•    performance standards.  An employee needs to know what is expected of him or her and what a “good job” looks like.
•    performance evaluations (not to be confused with annual reviews).  An employee needs regular feedback to know what’s going well and where he or she needs to improve.
•    the big picture.  An employee needs to know his job is important, and how her work impacts others and the overall performance of the company.
•    interest.  The people working for you need to know you’re interested in them as human beings, not just cogs in a wheel.  They need to know you will listen to them and will value their thoughts, ideas, and concerns.
•    recognition.  When an employee does something extraordinary, he or she needs to know it was both noticed and appreciated.

These are not intended to be comprehensive lists of everything you should be communicating.  You can probably think of things that should be added to them.  Just remember, people are information junkies.  Every employee satisfaction survey I’ve ever seen puts “knowing what’s going on” very near the top.  So if you really want to engage your workforce, you need to do it both collectively and individually with timely, clear, effective communication.

(*) To briefly review our series on workforce engagement:
1)    In our introduction to the topic, we tried to answer the question, “Why should I want an ‘engaged’ workforce?”  We said an “engaged” workforce is both efficient and effective, is more likely to deliver a high level of customer service, and will minimize absenteeism and turnover . . . all of which positively impacts your bottom line.
2)    In our first installment of the series, we talked about the need to have firmly established mission, vision, values, and culture in order for you to (in the words of best-selling author Jim Collins) get the right people on the bus.
3)    In our second installment, we talked about the role enlightened leadership plays in developing an engaged workforce.
4)    The third installment talked about the need to get all the people on our bus in the right seats . . . that is, to put them where their talents, skills, and interests will provide the most value.
5)    And finally, this fourth installment discusses the need to effectively communicate with your people, both collectively and individually.

So is this all there is to it?  No there’s always more.  This is not the kind of thing you put in place and forget about.  Developing and keeping an engaged workforce will always be a work-in-progress.  But the benefits of an engaged workforce, even if it is not perfectly engaged, are so enormous, so transformational, that it’s well-worth the effort.

(*)  If you missed any of the series, or would like to review any of them, they are archived at my website, www.rocksolidbizdevelopment.com.

 
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Put the right people on the bus . . .

This is the third installment of a series on developing an “engaged” workforce . . . that is, a workforce that energetically supports your company and its goals.

In the first installment, we talked about the importance of clearly communicating the company’s mission, vision, values, and culture.  Essentially, those four things (with apologies to business guru Jim Collins) describe the bus we’re on . . . a metaphor for your company.  They tell us what the bus does, where it’s going, and how the people on it (your employees) are expected to behave.

In the second installment, we talked about the vital role leadership plays as you strive to have your workforce internalize and embrace your mission, vision, values, and culture.

Now we want to talk about how to put the people on your bus into the right seats.  That is, how do we position people so that they are able to do what they do best, and do the things they are most passionate about?  After all, if the object is to develop an “engaged” workforce, what better way to do it than have people coming to work each day to do something they enjoy and are excited about doing?  For more on this, please read below.

Put the right people on the bus, then put them in the right seats.
Get your workforce engaged! (103)

Research shows only 20% of employees report that they have an opportunity to do what they do best every day.  This research is validated by many employees spread over many companies in many industries and in many countries.  It’s not a fluke, it’s real.  So what does that say about the other 80%?  Well, they may be on the right bus in the sense that they are a good “fit” for the company’s mission, vision, values, and culture, but clearly, they are not seated where their work can have the most impact.  And while the 80% may do their work competently, how much more productive, creative, and energetic would they be if they were doing something that takes advantage of their best talents and that they really enjoy doing?

So how have we gotten so upside down with the vast majority of our employees placed in jobs they don’t particularly care about?  Lots of ways.  Hiring managers may not screen applicants as carefully as they should, or maybe they’re so desperate to fill a job that they’ll accept anyone who has a pulse and can fog a mirror.  From an employee’s vantage point, he or she may take a job that is less than an optimal fit with his or her talents because it does provide a paycheck, or because the company has a good benefits package, or because it’s close to home.

OK, so for whatever reason, most of the people on our bus are in seats that are not ideally suited for them.  What do we do about it?  In the short term, probably not much.  Obviously, we can’t fire 80% of our workforce and hope to replace them (quickly) with people who have real talents for the jobs we have available. If we’re lucky, we may be able to shuffle the deck a bit and put at least a few people into jobs that are right for them.  But in most cases, getting the right people in the right seats will be a long term, evolutionary process.

I would argue that there’s a difference between a talent and a skill.  A talent is a natural gift about which we are passionate and have developed to a high level over time.  A skill is something that can be learned and practiced with a certain amount of proficiency.  For instance, consider a bookkeeper who has a real talent for financial analysis . . . loves to dive into financial statements looking for inconsistencies, anomalies, or trends.  Sure, he or she has the skill to enter all the debits and credits correctly and produce an accurate financial statement, but that’s not where the talent lies, nor the passion.  For the most part, when we’re hiring, we do a pretty good job of identifying the skills an applicant would bring to the job.  Not so the talents.

So the key here is to do a better job of incorporating talents into our position descriptions, and into our screening and interviewing processes.  If we do that, and do it well, we will gradually put more of our people into the right seats.   Will we ever have 100% of our people in the right seats?  Not likely.  But each person we do put in the right seat has the potential to be a game changer for us, and the more people we have in the right seats, the more “engaged” our workforce will become.

 

 
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“Can’t lead from behind.”

Our previous posting was the first installment of this series on building an “engaged” workforce.  In that posting, we talked about vision, values, mission, and culture being foundational to a truly engaged workforce.  After all, we argued, employees need to know what the organization does, why it does what it does, what outcomes it hopes to achieve, and what code of conduct it expects everyone to follow.  Without that knowledge, employees can’t possibly make a commitment to the organization because they won’t have any idea what they’re committing to.

In this second installment of the series, we want to talk about the essential role effective leadership plays in building a committed, energized workforce.  Why?  Because no factor influences job satisfaction more (and therefore, commitment to the organization’s goals) than does effective leadership technique.  When managers are armed with the right leadership skills, the people under their care will strive to achieve the company’s objectives, because they want to, not because they have to.  And furthermore, when managers model effective leadership behaviors, those behaviors filter down to everyone in the organization and ultimately become part of the company’s culture.

For more on what effective leadership looks like, and how it is critical to building an engaged workforce, please read below.

“Can’t lead from behind.”
Get your workforce engaged! (102)

In a scene from the Civil War movie, “Gettysburg,” Confederate General Robert E. Lee is talking to his next-in-command, General James Longstreet.  Lee is chastising Longstreet for venturing too close to the front lines.  “We cannot afford to lose you, General” says Lee.  Longstreet shrugs and replies, “Can’t lead from behind.”

That’s true, isn’t it?  A real leader has to be out in front, modeling the behavior he or she expects others to emulate.  Do-what-I-say-not-as-I-do never was a great leadership technique, but it’s even less so now that we have smarter, better-informed employees than ever before.

So what are the behaviors leaders need to model?  Since thousands of books have been written on leadership, it would be absurd to try to cover the subject here in a few paragraphs.  So instead, let’s consider some bullet points of the top behaviors effective leaders need to exhibit.

•    Develop and nurture trust.  Honor your commitments.  Not sometimes, not most of the time . . . every time.  Not just the big, important commitments, but the little incidental ones too.  Not just to your own people, but to suppliers, customers, and other stakeholders as well.  Do what you say you’re going to do, and do it when you say you’re going to do it.

•    Develop and nurture trust II.  You will probably have to demonstrate to your people that you trust them before they will return the favor.  Look for authentic ways to show that you trust their skills, their judgment, and their commitment to the company’s goals.

•    Be transparent.  While that term may be over-used and trite, it’s probably still descriptive.  Be honest about your weaknesses.  When you make a mistake, own it.  When you don’t have a ready answer, have the courage to say, “I don’t know.”

•    Be a coach, not a critic.  Make it your job to help the people in your care to be successful.  Using a whip and a chair is old school and not particularly effective.

•    Treat everyone with dignity and respect.  Not just the people above you on the org chart . . . everyone.  Think the Golden Rule.

•    Be a good communicator.  Adopt the “Doctrine of No Surprises.”  Tell your people what’s going on, completely, honestly, and frequently.  Make sure they are not blindsided by events you saw coming but they didn’t.

•    Be a good listener.  Good communication is a 2-way street.  Make sure your people know that you want to hear their thoughts, ideas, and opinions.  You won’t always agree with them, but they need to know their thoughts have been heard and given honest consideration.

As we’ve said, leadership is a very broad topic . . . way too broad to be treated here in more than a very cursory fashion.  Still, if you commit to really mastering the behaviors we’ve bullet pointed here, can you take your place as one of history’s great leaders?  Maybe not.  But you’ll be pretty damn good, and you’ll make a huge contribution toward a fully engaged workforce.

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Get your workforce engaged! (101)

In our last posting, we talked about the need for, and the benefits that flow from, an “engaged” workforce . . . that is, employees who are energized by their work and committed to supporting the company’s goals.  In that posting, intended to be an introduction to a series on workforce engagement, we described what an engaged workforce is, but not how to build one.  So that’s what this series will attempt to do . . . help you to understand the pieces that must be in place before you can have a fully engaged workforce.  For this, the first installment of the series, please read below.

First, we need to talk about your mission, vision, values, and culture because . . .

Wha . . . ??  I just felt a great disruption in The Force, like a whole bunch of people hitting “Delete” at the same time.

I know, I know.  A lot of you think this stuff is a bunch of fuzzy crap that has no real relevance to how you run your business . . . high-sounding words that you put on your conference room wall and nobody pays any attention to.  But if that’s true, if your mission statement and the rest have no relevance to your business, then you simply did a poor job of crafting them.  And they are necessary if you want a fully engaged workforce.  Why?  Let’s look at them one at a time.

Values.  These are just the rules of the road for your company.  They tell us how we’re supposed to behave around here.  They tell us how we’re supposed to treat one another, how we’re supposed to treat customers, suppliers, and any other stakeholders in our company.  When we practice our values openly, honestly, and consistently, we create a framework that helps guide decision-making throughout the company.  For instance, if one of our core values is “Extraordinary customer service,” doesn’t that give us some guidance when we’re trying to resolve a tough customer service issue?

OK, so what do our values have to do with an engaged workforce?  Simple.  If we expect our people to pull together, operate as a team, and strive to go in the same direction, they need to share the same values (rules).  Without shared values, there is chaos, and an engaged workforce  will never evolve.

Culture.  This is simply the sum of our values and the working environment we create when we adhere to them.  Again, if we have people amongst us who can’t embrace our culture (our values), they will be disruptive to an engaged workforce.

Mission.  I have found very little agreement among business writers about what should be included in a mission statement, or about what separates a good mission statement from a bad one.  Personally, I think a good mission statement is very short (preferably only one sentence, no more than two) and answers the question, “Why does this company exist?”  It doesn’t have to be clever, funny, or flowery.  It doesn’t have to rhyme.  It just has to give a straight forward statement about what your company does.  Consider the mission statement for a pump manufacturer: “We make the most durable, dependable marine pumps on the planet for the largest commercial ships afloat.”  Short, sweet, and direct with a little bragging thrown in for dramatic effect.

Why is this important to an engaged workforce?  Because everyone needs to have the same understanding about what we do around here, and because everyone needs to be able to uniformly articulate what we do to the outside world.

Vision.  This gives most of us trouble.  Even George H.W. Bush, when he was criticized for failing to clearly articulate policies, said in exasperation, “Oh, that vision thing.”  Like a mission statement, I think a vision statement should be short and to the point, but it also needs to create some excitement.  If a mission statement describes the bus you’re driving, then a vision statement describes where you want to take the bus.  When you’re asking your workforce to get on board your bus, they need to know where you think you’re taking it or they won’t be able to help you get there.  And the destination needs to be one that unifies and excites your people.  Who’s going to want to get on your bus if all you’re going to do is drive it around the block.  If you need help with this, Google on “corporate vision statements” and all sorts of stuff comes up.

Your values, mission, and vision need to be in writing, and they need to be disseminated, explained, and discussed.  They need to be repeated and reinforced regularly.  And if you need to revise these documents, or if you don’t have them at all and need to draft them, don’t be afraid to involve your people . . . they’ll be more likely to support them if they have a hand in creating them.

Next up in this series, we’ll talk about some leadership concepts that will help you down the road toward an “engaged” workforce.

 
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Want an “entangled” workforce?

A lot has been written lately about companies developing an “engaged” workforce, meaning employees who are energized by their work and committed to helping the company achieve its goals.  In fact, I blogged about becoming a “winning workplace” a few months ago that touched on this subject.  In their book, “It’s My Company Too!  How entangled companies move beyond employee engagement for remarkable results,” authors Kenneth R. Thompson, Ramon L. Benedetto, and Thomas J. Walter suggest that a workforce can go beyond “engaged” to a higher level of dedication and commitment they call “entangled.”  They recognized that the word “entangled” usually carries a negative connotation (does for me!) but argued that in the context of their book, “entangled” is both appropriate and positive.  So I tried to keep an open mind, but I just couldn’t get there . . . by the end of the book, I was still cringing every time I saw that word.  Nonetheless, the book uses eight case studies to demonstrate the results companies can get when they engage their workforces at very high levels.  For more on “engaged” workforces, please read below.  If you want to read more on “entangled” workforces, buy the book.

In the first place, why should you be interested in an “engaged” workforce in anyway?  Maybe because it’s more satisfying to create a place where people are excited about their work and committed to the company’s goals than it is to preside over a sweatshop.  Or maybe you should be interested for more hardheaded business reasons, like:

•    Lower turnover.  It’s just common sense that people will stay longer at a place where they feel included as a valued member of a team than they will at a place where they are treated as just another employee.
•    Higher productivity.  When turnover goes down, productivity goes up because you’ve got experienced people doing the work instead of trainees.
•    Higher profits.  When turnover goes down, profits go up because you’re not wasting a lot of money on recruiting and training costs.
•    Better customer service.  Your customers will get a better experience with energized, committed people than they will from people who are just putting in their time.  Simple as that.

There are lots of other benefits to having an engaged workforce, but those should be enough to get your attention.

So where do you begin?  If you feel your people are not fully engaged, how do you create an environment that supports and nurtures a fully engaged workforce?

Since whole books (like “It’s My Company Too!”) have been written on this subject, it won’t be possible to give a full answer here in just a few paragraphs, so consider this the introduction to a series on workforce “engagement.”  Even spread out over several postings, the subject is too broad to cover fully, but hopefully we’ll be able to cover some basics and peak your interest to learn more.

Stay tuned for the first installment.  We’ll talk about the foundational piece of the puzzle that must be in place before any of the other pieces will fit.

 
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Don’t sell goods or services. Sell solutions.

It’s always been tough to differentiate ourselves in the marketplace, to give customers reasons they should do business with us instead of our competitors.  And now thanks to the internet, it’s gotten even tougher.  At one time, there was some mystery, some mystique about what we did and how we did it.  No more.  People now know, or can find out, just about anything they want to know about us, our business, and our industry.  And with that knowledge, all of us start to look more or less alike.  In short, we’re in danger of becoming commoditized.

We need to understand that nobody wants to buy our stuff, they just want to buy what it can do for them.  It’s the old story that nobody wants a drill, they just want a hole.  So the answer to commoditization is to be the company that comes up with unique, creative, elegant solutions to customer problems.  If your company is focused on that, and not on simply pushing  products or services, differentiating yourself will be easy, and commoditization will be a non-issue.

Below is a case study about a company that sells the commodity of all commodities . . . dirt.  Well, not exactly dirt, sand and gravel to be more precise.  Still, it’s pretty tough to convince a customer that your sand and gravel is any different than the other guy’s.  If you want to see how a creative solution really differentiated an otherwise totally commoditized business, please read below.

Bob’s Awesome Aggregate (a fictitious name) is a California company that provides sand and gravel to large road building and commercial construction projects.  Bob founded the company and had done reasonably well with it, but he struggled to grow it to its potential.  The problem was a fiercely competitive marketplace.  Whenever a building contractor would put out a bid for sand and gravel, there would be a dozen companies bidding for the job, and the building contractor wouldn’t really have any way to distinguish between them.  They all had access to dependable supplies of material, and they all could deliver the material to the job site promptly when it was required.  So everyone got a share of the available jobs, but nobody could really break out of the pack, including Bob.

It was the industry practice at that time to sell only full truckloads.  So if the engineering calculations showed that a project would require 99 ½ truckloads, a building contractor would have to order 100 truckloads because no supplier could afford to send a truck and driver to a job site with only half a load.  That meant that the contractor would have to buy half a truckload he didn’t need, but also, when the project was complete, the contractor would have to pay someone to haul away the excess material.  Still, nobody really saw this as a problem.  It’s just the way things worked.  It’s just the way things had always worked back to the days of horse-drawn wagons.  Full loads only.

As Bob thought about ways he could differentiate himself from his competitors, he began looking at this old industry practice of delivering full loads only.  What if he could find a way to deliver partial loads to a job site . . . two thirds of a load, half a load, a third of a load . . . whatever the contractor wanted.  The contractor wouldn’t have to pay for material he didn’t need, and wouldn’t have to pay someone to haul away the excess material later.  But how could he send an expensive truck and driver out with only a partial load and not lose his shirt?

Maybe he could operate smaller trucks for those smaller loads.  But no, they would still be too expensive to operate.  They would still need a licensed commercial truck driver to drive them, the cost to insure them would be about the same, and he wouldn’t get as much use from them as he would get from his regular trucks.

He thought about dividing a load up among several contractors, but the logistics of getting fractional loads from the same truck to several different job sites, and getting them there when they were needed was just too daunting.

So, Bob thought, maybe this is why the industry grew up around the practice of full loads only.  Maybe this is the only efficient way to do it.

Bob had originally rejected a pricing solution because just as he couldn’t afford to send a partially loaded truck to a job site, so a contractor couldn’t afford to pay the true price of that partially loaded truck.  But then he started rethinking a pricing solution, this time incorporating the contractor’s cleanup costs to have excess material removed.  He was able to come up with a pricing scheme for partial loads that charged a premium for the material, but that premium was more than offset by the cleanup savings the contractor would realize.  So everybody wins.  The contractor saves money overall, and while Bob didn’t make much money on the partial loads, being able to offer partial loads gave him the edge he needed to win more bids and to differentiate himself from his competitors.

Now it may seem like Bob’s solution should have been obvious, but because the practice of full loads only was so ingrained in the industry, it was overlooked.  So as you think about ways to differentiate yourself, think about time-honored practices in your industry that don’t work to your customer’s advantage.  Think about things people dislike about doing business in your industry, and then be the company that does those things differently.

If you’re trying to stand out in your market, stop selling your stuff.  Nobody’s interested in it.  But they do want, and are willing to pay for, smart, well-crafted solutions to their problems.

 
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“Make no little plans.”

Sometime around the last holiday season, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos announced a plan to home-deliver merchandise within 30 minutes of the order being placed . . . by a little helicopter drone.  That’s right.  He claims, when the system is ready some years in the future,  you’ll call Amazon, place your order, and 30 minutes later your stuff will be plopped right on your front doorstep.

At first, I thought  it was a gag . . . maybe some sort of publicity stunt.  I mean, c’mon, little helicopter drones flying all over the place dropping packages at peoples’ homes?  I bet the FAA just loves that idea.  But then I thought, maybe there’s actually some method to the madness here.  After all, Bezos is, if nothing else, a world-class innovator.  So maybe there’s a clue here about how innovation can take place.

For more on this, please read below.

“Make no little plans.”

Famed architect and urban planner Daniel Burnham said that, and apparently Jeff Bezos took Burnham’s admonition to heart.  Wouldn’t you love to have been a fly on the wall when Bezos announced his 30-minute delivery plan to his staff?  I imagine it might have gone something like this.

BEZOS:  OK everybody, listen up.  We’ve got to improve our delivery times.  When people order stuff from us, they don’t want to wait a day or two to get it.

STAFF:  We dunno, Boss.  It’s pretty tough as it is to get people their stuff in one or two days.  What do you have in mind?

BEZOS:  Thirty minutes.

STAFF:  You want us to improve delivery times by 30 minutes?

BEZOS:  No, 30 minutes total from the time the order is placed until it is delivered.

STAFF:  Seriously?

BEZOS:  Yeah, although I was hoping we could use the Star Trek transporter and beam stuff to people within just a few seconds, but I don’t think that’s going to work out.  Still, I think 30 minutes will be OK.  People want their stuff fast, but I think they’ll wait 30 minutes.

STAFF:  Holy crap, boss, how’re we supposed to do that?

BEZOS:  I have no idea, but you guys will think of something.  Give me your plan by the end of the week.  Oh, and by the way, have a nice day!

So what’s this got to do with innovation?

It seems to me that when you set a relatively modest goal . . . let’s say to increase year-over-year sales revenue by five per cent . . . what’s the message?  The message is, just tune things up a bit, nothing drastic, just a tweek here, a tweek there.  And what’s the message when you set an impossibly high goal, like delivery in 30 minutes?  The message is, no amount of tweeking is going to get us to this goal.  We have to go back to the drawing board, completely rethink our delivery system, and come up with something totally new.  In short, we’re going to have to innovate.

To paraphrase the old axiom, necessity really is the mother of innovation.  As long as our old ways are working just fine and getting us where we want to go, there’s no incentive to rock the boat.  It’s only when there’s a compelling need for change that innovation happens.

But here’s the problem.  By definition, innovating is trying something new, something that hasn’t been done before.  Therefore, it’s not just possible that you will fail, it’s probable.  You may not fail entirely, but you will probably fail to fully achieve the impossibly lofty goal you set for yourself . . . at least not on the first try.  So how do you keep the spirit of innovation alive in your organization when the slam dunk, flat out victories are few and far between.  Winston Churchill once said, “Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”  Great, but how do you do that?

If you want an organization that embraces innovation, your culture needs to move beyond a fear of failure.  Tom Watson, legendary leader of IBM, told his people, “The way to succeed is to double your failure rate.”  As he struggled to invent the first light bulb, Thomas Edison put a positive spin on it saying, “I haven’t failed.  I’ve found 10,000 ways that don’t work.”  The point is, we learn more from our failures than from our successes, and it’s just as important to understand what doesn’t work as it is to understand what does.

If your culture accepts failure as the price for being a learning, growing organization, then innovation will stay alive and well.

 
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Judge by results, not by effort or activities

It’s an easy trap to fall into.  We get seduced by a great work ethic.  “Look at Johnson over there . . . salt of the earth, I tell ya.  He’s in early, stays late, doesn’t complain, and you never find him goofing off.  I wish I had a hundred just like him.”

Actually, no you don’t.  In fact, a hundred Johnsons would sink you.  Why?  Because Johnson is task-oriented, not results-oriented.  All his activities throw off so much smoke and dust that they may obscure the fact that he’s not getting the results we need.

For more on this, please read below.

Judge by results, not by effort or activities.

With apologies to mothers everywhere, there’s an old saying, both crass and inappropriate, yet very descriptive: “Don’t tell us about the pain, just show us the baby.”  The Johnsons of the world don’t buy that.  They believe that solid effort and hard work should be their own reward and should deliver to them the keys to the kingdom.  And sometimes we may be inclined to agree with them.  After all, who doesn’t like a guy with a nose-to-the-grindstone approach to his work?  But in the end, all the long hours and hard work only count for something if we’re getting the outcomes we expect.

There’s a flipside to this.

Some years ago, I was talking with a business owner who was angry because one of his sales people spent most afternoons on the golf course.  “I’d like to play golf too,” he fumed, “but
no-o-o-o, I’m stuck here in the office trying to keep this business going!”  I asked if the salesman was on his numbers.  “Yeah, in fact he’s way over them, but that’s not the point!  His behavior sets a bad example for everyone else.”

“So he sets a bad example for the other sales people who aren’t making their numbers?,”  I asked.  The owner said nothing.  “It seems to me,” I said, “he sets a very good example for his colleagues.  He’s showing them what can happen when you produce results.”

The point is, it makes no sense to begrudge our high performers just because they make it look easy.  It would make more sense to hold them up as role models for everyone else.  Likewise, it makes no sense to reward our under-achievers just because they’re working at it so darn hard.  While it pains our sensibilities, if someone tries really, really hard but can’t produce the results we expect, the kindest thing we can do may be to let that person go someplace where his or her hard work can lead to success.

In the best of all worlds, determination and hard work would always guarantee success.  But they don’t.  Not always.  We want to see good work habits, particularly among new employees who are just learning the ropes, but ultimately, our focus needs to be on the results they achieve, not on the methods they use or the effort they put forth.  Be a results-oriented company by making sure everyone . . . from the front office to the loading dock . . . understands and is focused on the results they are expected to achieve.

 
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“I don’t care if people don’t like me as long as they respect me!”

Respect is a key element of leadership.  That is, it will be extremely difficult for a leader to lead without earning the respect of his or her followers.  Followers may do what the leader demands because they must in order to earn a paycheck, but their work will lack energy, and it will lack commitment.  So how does a would-be leader earn this all-important respect?  There are lots of different leadership styles that can bring respect to the leader, but there’s one that I believe is the most certain and most gratifying path to respect.  To learn more about that one leadership style, please read below.

“I don’t care if people don’t like me as long as they respect me!”

That has been a time-honored mantra among some leaders.  Maybe you’ve heard someone say it.  Perhaps you’ve even said it yourself, but I hope not because it’s total, unadulterated BS.

Let’s face it, as human beings, we want to be liked.  You can try to deny it if you want to, but it’s true.  The desire to be liked and accepted is buried deep in our DNA and we couldn’t get rid of it if we wanted to.  Think about how it would feel to be in a position where you’re surrounded by people who dislike you for eight hours every day.  How long do you think you’d last?  So when I hear someone utter the above BS, I chalk it up to someone who is behaving like a jerk and trying to justify that behavior.  I don’t know about you, but I can’t think of anyone I dislike and yet still respect.  That doesn’t mean we have to be best buddies, or that we can’t disagree, or that we can’t even annoy each other from time to time, but if your overall persona is not likeable . . . if I can’t find something in you I find admirable, some character trait that I want to emulate, then I don’t see how I can respect you.

So what leadership style is most likely to produce respect?  I believe it is “servant leadership.”

Robert K. Greenleaf  coined the phrase “servant leadership” in his 1970 essay, “The Servant as Leader,” but the concept has been around for millennia.  Perhaps you’re familiar with the biblical admonition, “He who would be first must be last.”  The idea is that, whether you’re a CEO or a department manager or a line supervisor, your job is to serve the people for whom you are responsible, not the other way around.  Your job is to train, coach, mentor, discipline, support, and in all other ways work for the success of the people entrusted to you.  And you know what?  If you make all your people successful, guess who else is successful?

A servant leader is also focused on the “greater good.”  That means she places the welfare of her people above her own, and it means he places the best interest of the overall company above the parochial interests of his department.  On the other hand, when a leader sacrifices people for his or her own selfish interests, trust and respect . . . and therefore the ability to lead . . . are gone.

And finally, the servant leader aims to spawn other servant leaders.  By modeling the behavior and using appropriate training, a CEO should make servant leaders of his or her direct reports, who in turn teach servant leadership concepts to their direct reports, and so on until everyone in the organization with leadership responsibilities is carrying them out as a servant leader.

To me, servant leadership is a more authentic, comfortable, and ultimately rewarding leadership style than any alternatives.  As human beings, we like to serve, don’t we?  That’s why we volunteer our time to charitable organizations, that’s why we help little old ladies cross the street, and why we help a complete stranger whose car is stuck.  We like to serve because it makes us feel good about ourselves.  We get a feel good rush that we can’t get any other way.  At the end of a long workday, don’t you think you’d feel pretty good about yourself knowing that you helped your people take a few more steps toward success rather than simply exercised your right as their boss to impose your will on them?

This isn’t about being wishy-washy or soft or tolerant of poor performance.  You can be a strict disciplinarian and a demanding boss without damaging the trust and respect of your people as long as they know your focus is on their success and on the greater good.  After all, how can you dislike someone who is actively helping you succeed and who is willing to put your welfare above his or her own?

Serve well and serve often.

For more on servant leadership, visit the Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership at www.greenleaf.org.

 
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“It’s best to be Attila the Hun every day rather than every other day.”

Consistency is a concept that gets a bad rap from time to time.  Playwrite and poet Oscar Wilde once wrote, “Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.”  Author Aldous Huxley was even more blunt when he said, “Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life.  The only completely consistent people are dead.”  So some very bright minds trash talk consistency, yet for many of us, consistency is an essential part of what we do.  Consider, for instance, a brain surgeon who has a sign above his door that reads, “Ya win some, ya lose some.”  Is that someone you’d want poking around in your skull?  Obviously not.  Professional athletes need to perform at a consistently high level.  Likewise professional musicians.  And for those of us in business, consistency plays a vital role in a variety of situations.  For more on where you need to be consistent in your business, please read below.

Actually, it’s best not to be Attila the Hun at all, but that’s not the point.  The point is to be consistent.

Leadership plays a critical role in every business, and consistency is an integral part of good leadership.  Consider a boss who is inconsistent in his actions and behaviors.  Sometimes he enforces policies, other times he doesn’t.  Sometimes he’s easy-going and personable, sometimes harsh and explosive.  Maybe he doesn’t always follow through on the actions he announces he will take.  Employees can’t trust him if they never know what he’s going to do, and trust is the bedrock of leadership.  People aren’t going to follow a leader they can’t trust.

How about quality control?  Whether your business involves products or services, don’t your customers expect consistent performance?  McDonald’s is a prime example of this.  If you order a Big Mac, it’s going to taste exactly the same, regardless of the time of day, day of the week, in Portland or Miami.   They get the concept of consistency.  Airlines, on the other hand, may understand the concept, but they are often unable to practice it.  Sometimes flights depart and arrive on time, sometimes they’re late . . . maybe even hours late.  Sometimes luggage ends up where it’s supposed to, other times it ends up some place we’ve never even heard of, much less been to.  Are you satisfying your customers’ needs with the consistency of a McDonald’s?  Or more like an airline?

Are your field sales people, inside sales people, and customer service people all in lockstep, communicating a consistent sales message?

Are your employee policies, payroll procedures, and benefits administration consistently applied?

Are you consistently living up to your commitments to vendors and suppliers, and requiring them to do the same?

As a leader of your organization, you need to be vigilant for output that is inconsistent.  Such output may be within a department or between one department and another.  It may occur laterally between employees, from the top down, or from the bottom up.  It’s anywhere, really, that an individual or group of people is dependent on the output from another individual or group.  In those situations, when the quantity, quality, or timeliness of the output is inconsistent, friction will occur and teamwork will start to breakdown.

Obviously (at least I hope it’s obvious), all this consistency stuff only has value when we’re talking about positive activities and behaviors.  That is, there’s little value to consistently delivering a crappy product, consistently late.  Nor is there much value in management consistently saying one thing and then doing another.   But applied correctly, consistency breeds efficiency, cooperation, and trust.  And I’d say that’s a way better payoff than consistently being Attila the Hun.

 
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