Investing in Respect

For more than two decades, a number of companies have downsized, rightsized, reengineered, and outsourced. Yet, these techniques didn’t necessarily lead to long-term value. They may have increased the bottom-line in the short-run, but did little to generate distinctive competitive advantage. What’s been missing? R E S P E C T. It’s a key driver of success.

Studies have repeatedly demonstrated that employees at high performing companies score their employers ten or more points higher than counterparts at other companies on such things as working conditions, communications credibility and performance feedback.

Openly communicating with and actively valuing the work of employees produces results, notes motivational speaker, best-selling author and worker engagement expert Bob Nelson as described in Crain’s Detroit Business (http://tinyurl.com/ygfup8u)

Nelson reports that 95 percent of non-management employees in his research rate communication with their superior as their top priority at work. Additionally, 92 percent of employees want to be asked their opinions and 89 percent want to be involved in decision making.

How can you increase the respect quotient at your company? Two components are essential – actionable research and employee involvement in strategic planning. Here’s how.

Actionable research

Regular employee surveys are a must. With online tools readily available, it’s easier than ever to probe:

• Overall image of the company
• Perceived company strengths and weaknesses
• Ratings of morale, teamwork, performance systems and respect
• Internal communications, both actual and preferred
• A host of other specific inquiries to fine-tune the organization

As important as the survey is, it only represents the first step. Equally important, and the aspect most often forgotten (and the reason why employee surveys sometimes get a bad rap) is the action phase. Common action steps should include:

• Publishing the results
• Pinpointing ways to improve morale, respect and teamwork by assembling teams of employees to recommend solutions
• Setting and communicating goals for improvement
• Following up to measure progress

 Strategic planning

No one understands customers better than your employees. Involve them in your strategic planning and decision making. Think of the diverse points of view you will gain (and the respect you will demonstrate) by adding line and staff managers, new hires with fresh ideas and seasoned “old-timers” to the mix. Gaining the input of these valuable resources does not have to be difficult or time consuming. Tools, such as World Cafes (http://thecapstonegrp.com/Resources.aspx) offer simple and effective ways to solicit employee involvement.

For more about actionable research and employee-involved strategic planning, www.thecapstonegrp.com

Importance of a Strong Foundation

We have a place in the mountains and, for some time now, part of our deck had been in imminent danger of collapse. This past weekend, our son John offered to repair the damaged portion. It quickly became apparent that much of the trouble was due to the foundation having been poorly constructed when the deck was originally built. After carefully considering how the weight should be distributed, John built a substantial sub-structure that will support the newly laid decking for years to come.

As I watched him work, while schlepping boards to and fro, it occurred to me that success in most endeavors requires a firm foundation. High school students who are having trouble with math often did not learn the basic building blocks of computation – addition, subtraction, and times tables. Ask a struggling freshman what 9×8 is.. and you will probably see what I mean.

Or the adult who cannot read. Were phonics taught? Can he or she sound out words? Most likely, the answer is “no.”

A strong foundation is especially important in today’s uncertain business environment. Whether you are the owner of a small start-up company or an executive in an established enterprise, nothing is more important than strategic business planning to both build and maintain the structure of your organization.

A strategic business plan is a disciplined effort to produce fundamental decisions and actions that guide:

• What an organization is
• What it does
• Why and how it does it

Strategic planning is about having the right people in the room, working on the right (often difficult) issues. Planning is not something you do every 5 years. It should be a continuous process that you update every year. And, there is no time more important for planning than when times are tough.

I believe that strategic planning should be collaborative and iterative. Typical steps involve:

• Planning to plan – identifying a core planning team, the length of the plan (3 years, 5 years) and determining how decisions will be made (consensus, other)
• Creating the future state – developing core values, vision and mission statements
• Defining the roadmap for how the vision and mission will be achieved – the goals and strategies
• Developing critical success indicators (or key performance indicators) – quantifiable measures of success in achieving the organization’s vision, mission, and values on a year-by-year basis, and the dashboard that will report progress

These critical success indicators should be translated into the performance metrics for every employee in the organization. Without employees understanding exactly how they contribute to the strength and health of the enterprise, the results are likely to mirror those of my previously constructed deck – imminently subject to collapse. Construct a strong foundation and you’ll have the building blocks of success.

www.thecapstonegrp.com

A Recipe for Teamwork or Just Alphabet Soup?

Are you a member of a team? Unless you’re a hermit living in a cave, you’re undoubtedly part of a number of different groups – work, social, religious, family. Does everyone always see eye-to-eye? Probably not. That’s because each of us views the world a little differently.

Using the research of Carl Jung, Katharine Cook Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers, a mother-daughter combo, developed an instrument to measure16 personality preferences, which they designated with letters, such as ISTP, INFJ, ESFP, ENFJ, and so forth. The initial questionnaire, designed during World War II, grew into the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), first published in 1962.

The duo described two ways a person can react on a set of four dimensions.

• Extraversion vs. Introversion (E or I) — how you interact with the world; where you prefer to focus your attention
• Sensation vs. iNtuition (S or N) — how you gather information; what you pay attention to
• Thinking vs. Feeling (T or F) — how you prefer to make decisions and reach conclusions
• Judging vs. Perceiving (J or P) — how you structure your thoughts and attitudes

For example, suppose you are an ESFP. The “E” means you like to talk out loud in meetings to build on your ideas, while the “S” suggests you prefer evidence to be presented first, before discussing broad issues. The “F” part of your personality makes you want to be personable and in agreement with others and the “P” implies you’ll postpone decisions while searching for all available options. Your team mate who is an INTP will be entirely different in his/her thinking and potentially a thorn in your side. And visa versa.

Knowing the personality traits of fellow team members can be a real enabler of teamwork. I have experienced this firsthand. A client of mine regularly employed Myers-Briggs to help strengthen its group dynamics. Before its strategic planning sessions each year, anyone new to the team would fill out the MBTI and have his/her results posted in one of the 16 squares.

With this updated team profile, members were better able to interact with each other. And, the process allowed for a “team profile” to be created. In the case of my client’s team, we were collectively an ESTJ, meaning we liked to share ideas, preferred a continuation of “what is” with just some fine tuning, used logical analysis to reach conclusions and concentrated on task completion.

If you’re reading this post and were a member of the team I am describing, you know how accurate this assessment was! You also know how much we accomplished because understanding each other promoted and fostered acceptance, laughter and occasionally, good-natured teasing.

To learn more, Myers-Briggs (http://www.myersbriggs.org/) has a comprehensive site. If you’re interested in taking the assessment yourself, there are a number of options. FaceBook has an application. I’d also suggest checking out Team Technology, online publishers of quality resources and articles, whose aim is to improve business performance through better teamwork. A free test for individuals and excellent examples of how to work and play well together are at http://www.teamtechnology.co.uk/mmdi-re/mmdi-re.htm.

By way of full disclosure, I am a ENFJ…

www.thecapstonegrp.com

When Less is More

Peggy Noonan is a graceful writer. She also clearly understands the importance of “focus.” In her June 26 Wall Street Journal piece, she talks about how Barack Obama’s to-do list should fit into one sentence, not 10 paragraphs.

She explains it this way. “The Sentence comes from a story Clare Boothe Luce told about a conversation she had in 1962 in the White House with her old friend John F. Kennedy. She told him, she said, that ‘a great man is one sentence.’ His leadership can be so well summed up in a single sentence that you don’t have to hear his name to know who’s being talked about. ‘He preserved the union and freed the slaves,’ or, ‘He lifted us out of a great depression and helped to win a World War.’ You didn’t have to be told ‘Lincoln’ or ‘FDR.’”

Ms. Noonan goes on to note that “new White Houses are always ardent for change, for breakthroughs. They want the sentence even when they don’t know the sentence exists, even when they think it’s a paragraph. The Obama people want, ‘He was the president who gave all Americans health care,’ and, ‘He lessened income inequality,’ and, ‘He took over a failed company,’ and other things. They want a jumble of sentences and do a jumble of things. But an administration about everything is an administration about nothing.”

This everything/nothing notion doesn’t just apply to political leaders. How often have you seen a corporate mission statement that promises to do everything from cure cancer to end world hunger? Or gone to a restaurant that offers so many diverse choices that selecting what to order becomes a test?

It’s about focus. Do a few things very well and the sentence will write itself.

www.thecapstonegrp.com

Pens are not Cheerios

These words of wisdom from my favorite “almost 3-year-old”, Harriet Sammis, pretty much sum up my feelings about trying to implement a strategic plan without giving serious consideration to cultural understanding and transformation. You’re likely to get something you didn’t intend.

Perhaps your strategic plan requires you to significantly change the way you do business. You need to reengineer your processes, reduce costs - maybe even reduce the number of employees. If your employees are not part of the solution, even the most compelling, well-written plan is never going to owned and adopted. It might as well just stay in that pretty binder on the shelf.  

How do you first understand and then transform the culture of your company? To identify the dynamics of your workplace, consider tools like employee opinion surveys, 360 feedback and cultural assessments. Look for industry norms to help you weigh your scores against similar companies in your industry. Measure regularly and then work to make improvements where your results fall short. In capitalizing on areas of strength and shoring up aspects that are weak, no one is more important than your front-line supervisors. Be sure each one “naturally” reflects the culture you want to create. Then, train, communicate with and regularly re-recruit these valuable role models.

All this employee involvement and cultural understanding seems like a lot of work doesn’t it? Especially when what you really want to do is sell more of your product or service. But studies have shown that productivity and profit are boosted significantly when employees are aligned and in support of a company’s strategic business plan. 

For a number of years, I worked with a client whose major priority was the involvement of ALL employees in owning and operating the business. When the tough times came, and some very difficult decisions had to be made, what happened to employee opinion scores? They actually went up!  What everyone had been working on together was recognized – not only in the findings of the survey, but in the results this organization was able to deliver despite the challenges and uncertainty.

www.thecapstonegrp.com

Tips for the Turnaround

Things will get better. Really! History has proven time and again that no matter how bad the economy gets, ultimately it turns around. Will you be ready? 

Jason Boles, CEO of Fans Created, a consulting firm specializing in speaking, training and consulting services, writing about credit unions (with a message applicable across the board), notes “My biggest fear is that credit unions won’t be ready for [the turnaround.] It’s the guest we invited for dinner but didn’t think would actually show. We want a recovery to happen, and we know one will happen, but we get caught up spending most of our time and energy focusing on the pains of today versus the joys of tomorrow… what concerns me most are the decisions we are making (or failing to make) today will have a huge impact on our business in the future.”   

Here’s a few ideas for what you can be doing while waiting for the economy to regain its footing:  

1. Train yourself and your people. There’s no better time than a slow down.. or slow period… to cross train your employees.. and yourself.  Companies that rely on a group of “specialists” – each doing his or her own unique thing – are just not ready to compete in today’s global economy. Train Assembler A to do the work of Assembler B. Train your accounting clerk how to do payroll. Ask the buyer of office supplies to learn about shipping and logistics. Perhaps your employees will balk at first, ”It’s not my job.” Ultimately they’ll thank you for giving them the opportunity to learn new skills that will position them for the next job – either at your company or another.

2. Learn how to use news releases, blogs, podcasting, viral marketing and online media to reach buyers directly. Get a copy of David Meerman Scott’s book, The New Rules of Marketing & PR.  He’ll explain how to leverage the potential of Web-based communication to build a personal link with your market. No matter what business you’re in, you must harness the power of the net.

3. Become more efficient. What are you doing right now that adds no value to your business? Still producing that report that no one reads (just because you’ve always done so)? Are manufacturing employees having to walk clear across the floor for a part that they need a dozen times a day? Are you ordering (and then having to store) supplies weeks before you need them? This is the time for re-thinking and re-engineering any process that isn’t as efficient as it could be.

When will the recession end? No one knows for sure. But by using the time wisely now, you’ll be ready to cash in when it does.

www.thecapstonegrp.com