Archive for the ‘Managing Employees’ Category

Culture—The Ultimate Profit Tool

Friday, May 7th, 2010
© Madartists | Dreamstime.com

© Madartists | Dreamstime.com

For three decades, companies across the spectrum have talked about the need to convert to a sales culture.  Talk, talk, talk.  Yet for all the chatter, the number that has successfully converted to a sales culture is still well below five percent! Millions have been spent in an attempt to make the change.  So why have so many repeatedly failed?

Sales and service skills do little to change results UNLESS there is a strong base of people who love what they do.  It’s about the culture! Without the right spirit, no amount of training or hiring will get you headed in the right direction.

A survey by the Corporate Executive Board showed that employees who are “true believers”—who value, enjoy, and believe in what they do—displayed 57 percent more discretionary effort and were 87 percent less likely to leave, while Gallup says that for every $10,000 of payroll, $3,400 of productivity is lost due to “disengaged employees.”

That’s an ugly number.

So what makes people love their jobs, fully engage, and produce greater results? Contrary to what most believe, money has very little to do with it.  What does matter is the three overlooked “must haves” to rejuvenate your people’s passion for extraordinary results.

1.  Kick-butt Rituals of Celebration and Appreciation
Healthy cultures have appreciation as their cultural backbone. They create an environment where everyone, not just the managers, oohs and aahs over each other’s successes and contributions.  They create daily, weekly, and quarterly rituals of celebration and appreciate and coach their people to be positive coaches to each other.

Maybe you have a daily huddle before opening where each person briefly shares an accomplishment while the rest of the team cheers and claps.  Maybe you have a “positive” sharing at the beginning of each weekly strategy meeting and a quarterly awards ceremony filled with many awards and recognitions.  If you create a childlike energy of people high-fiving with joy, you can expect people to thrive under the recognition.

2.  Ironclad Values
Your defined values are your “true north” and a powerhouse of results IF you do them correctly. If your values could be listed as the values of any other company in the country, you haven’t done a good enough job of creating values that will guide you powerfully.  When you say “honesty” or “integrity” or “hard work,” you haven’t really said a thing.  And if people don’t have their quarterly project plans built around the values, guess what? They aren’t really your values.

3.  “We mean it” Behaviors
When an organization defines its behaviors well, then supports and coaches to those behaviors as if they really are to be followed consistently, miraculous transformations begin.

Besides sales and service behaviors, behaviors regarding how to treat and respect coworkers must also be defined, like “no excuses” or “no talking behind peoples’ backs” or “state things in the positive.”  When you are clear in expecting the best in others, people bring their higher selves to work—that part in all of us that knows the right thing to do and the willingness to do it.

Most of all, remember that EVERYTHING is a leadership issue. If you want people to thrive at work and bring their passion for extraordinary results, you must, as a leader, create the environment in which people can thrive.

Follow through to get the bang for your training buck

Wednesday, April 21st, 2010
© Jgroup | Dreamstime.com

© Jgroup | Dreamstime.com

One semester in middle school, we had the option of taking a bowling class for gym. And I remember clearly, as my ball headed into the gutter time after time—the instructor kept harping on one thing: “Be sure to follow through.”

Follow through? Why? It never made a lick of sense to me. Once the ball is out of my hands, what difference does it make what my arm does?

Finally I got sick of scoring in the low peanuts every game and thought I’d try it. I let the ball go and allowed my arm to continue in a perfect arc.

I can still hear the sound of that strike.

According to the American Society for Training & Development’s Benchmarking Forum, the average annual expenditure per employee on training was $1424 in 2005 (the last year of complete data). But the most successful and productive companies invest $1616 per employee.

Coincidence? You wish. Training provides the best ROI of any investment you can make in your business, period. But there’s something else those high-performing companies do—they follow through after the training is complete. The best way to get results from your training dollars is to expect and measure immediate application of what is learned. Measurement and celebration of the results from the training program need to start within 24 hours of a session or the application of the learned material drops like a stone.

When you work with a training consultant, make sure they don’t pull up stakes and head for the hills five minutes after the last session is over. Good training ALWAYS includes a specific, detailed follow-up plan—or it’s not training. It’s flushing.

Screw up? Chin up! ‘Fess up—then clean up

Tuesday, April 6th, 2010
© Nruboc | Dreamstime.com

© Nruboc | Dreamstime.com

You’re human, so you’ll make mistakes. It’s part of the bargain. You’ll miss deadlines. You’ll drop the ball in a hundred different ways.  No matter how hard you try, you WILL disappoint people by not meeting their expectations and living up to your commitments.

That’s why it’s crucial to have the ability to (1) admit your mistakes, and (2) clean up after yourself.

A clean-up has two parts—acknowledging the result wasn’t okay and committing to take corrective action. When you miss a deadline, you owe it to your team to say, “I’m so sorry I missed that deadline. There’s no excuse. It shouldn’t have happened. I’m putting a tickler system in place to remind myself earlier in the process so it won’t happen again.”

In a world of wall-to-wall denial and deflection of blame, just IMAGINE the reaction that kind of honesty will get.

When a document slips through with errors—and you know it will sometimes—your boss expects to witness a duck-and-cover drill.  Imagine instead if she hears, “I can see that I made mistakes in this document and I know that’s not acceptable. I will put a reminder at my desk to checklist each document before I submit it to make sure they are double-checked and accurate. I want you to be able to trust me.”  It’ll stand out like a stallion in a herd of mules.

If someone DOES react badly to your honesty—and again, sometimes they will—just grin and bear it, knowing you are not responsible for the reactions of others.  Make an honest willingness to clean up your messes a way of life, and 99 times out of 100, the world will beat a path to your door.

The Chat that Launched a Thousand Transformations

Thursday, February 11th, 2010
© Nruboc | Dreamstime.com

© Nruboc | Dreamstime.com

Of all the transformative tools in all the coffee joints in the world—search ye in vain for anything more effective than The Conversation.

The Conversation is not an hour-long lecture.  It isn’t a debate.  It isn’t complicated to learn or deliver.  In about 15 seconds, The Conversation can take someone with a crummy, destructive workplace attitude and turn them completely around.

Say you’ve got a co-worker who never misses an opportunity to grouse about management, or peers, or underlings, or the furniture, lights, weather, health plan, the pattern in the break room floor tiles…I can see by your expression that you know who I’m talking about.

If I’m right, and you DO know someone like this, a pure vortex of energy-sucking dark matter who seeks only to derail any hope of progress, then it’s time for YOU to engage this person in The Conversation.

Here’s how it goes:

“I’m so excited about where our team is going. And I could be wrong, but my sense is you don’t share that excitement.  That’s okay, because maybe this isn’t your thing.  But if this isn’t your thing, you have to go find your thing!”

That’s it.  That’s the whole thing.  But take a moment to see what’s packed into that tiny paragraph.  You’re excited, and you’ve noticed she isn’t.  You validate that (“That’s okay”), then invite the person to find her bliss—wherever it is!

You don’t need to be the boss or even in the same department with this person to have The Conversation. It is extremely direct yet exceptionally loving because it demonstrates that you care enough to get them to make a choice between bringing their whole heart to their current situation or going to find a new situation that makes them happy.

Delivered well, The Conversation has transformed a lot of people from being miserable blamers to on-fire contributors. And the beauty is that it works in an instant.  Ninety percent of the time, the bad apple person says, in these or other words, “You’re right. I’ve been a jerk”—and then becomes a star performer because the boundless energy they were using to manipulate their coworkers into joining them in their misery is now channeled to productive use.

As for the other ten percent—well, anyone who refuses to respond to an intervention that gentle and reasonable has essentially fired himself.  The pink slip is just a formality.

Dealing with the Low Performer

Friday, December 4th, 2009
© Elenathewise | Dreamstime.com

© Elenathewise | Dreamstime.com

No doubt the phrase “low performer” brought someone bubbling up from your past.  Right?  Let’s call him Frank.  Maybe you were a youngster, learning the business, working your way up the best you could—and there was Frank, working as hard as he could to avoid working as hard as he could.

He knew all the shortcuts, Frank did.  He was the one pulling his coat on at 4:56 one day and 4:55 the next, putting in the absolute minimum effort required to get by, watching the clock and complaining endlessly about…well, everything.

What about the Franks hiding out in your organization today—low performers sucking the energy (I call these energy vampires) and profitability out of your company?

Not everyone can be a star, you might say.  True enough.  But did you know that low performers are the #1 cause of the downfall of unsuccessful CEOs, and that leaders who keep and coddle low performers are 13 times more likely to be fired than those who address the problem?

Low performers drain resources, create additional work for the high performers, and poison the culture.  Worst of all, they send the message that low performance is an acceptable path through your organization.

It isn’t.  If success is really important to you, it CAN’T be.  So let’s assume you agree.  How can you take the low performers by the horns?

1.  Confront the problem directly and immediately.  Don’t suggest, don’t imply, and don’t delay.  Once you have solid evidence of a habitual low performer, schedule an immediate meeting.

2.  Be specific and clear.  Tell the person (1) what you have observed, (2) that it is unacceptable, (3) what you expect in its place, and (4) what consequences will follow if corrections are not made.

3.  Make expectations crystal clear.  It’s easiest to hold someone to a standard that has been clearly spelled out, both verbally and in writing.

4.  Base your comments on measurable things.  Vague criticisms about “not pitching in” or “dragging your heels” are too easily deflected.  “You are expected to produce X leads per quarter and you produced less than half that amount for two quarters running”—hard to wiggle out of that one.

5.  Follow through.  If the person’s performance turns around, a word of appreciation can go a long way to keeping it on track.  But if there’s little or no improvement, you MUST follow through on the consequences you promised. 

Remember that there’s always an audience for these things—other low performers testing your resolve, and high performers silently cheering you on.  Consistency is crucial.  Ramp up the consequences for the next infraction, and follow through again.  You’ll not only correct the behavior of one person, but establish a “no excuses” culture that benefits everyone.

And when its time to terminate the low performer, make sure your ducks are in a row, then PULL THAT SWITCH.  It’s never easy, but knowing when to say ENOUGH is one of the marks of a genuine leader.