Productivity: The Missing Link
Companies have been improving the quality of their products and services for years. At the same time, many failed to invest enough time or money in productivity. Thus, even with better products and services, their profits aren’t skyrocketing, and their employees’ quality of life isn’t improving. There’s one simple reason: companies and employees need to learn to do more with their time.
Getting Ready to Be Productive
As a manager or executive, you probably know your company isn’t as productive as it could be. Why do you allow that? If your company was more productive, you would sell more products or services, and everyone would make more money and receive more benefits. Then, you could invest more in your products and services, making them even better (and of course making even more of them). Then, your employees and you would make even more money and receive even more benefits. Get it?
You already know that some of your employees are much less productive than others and are taking home the same paychecks. Why do you allow this? People who don’t pull their share are dead weight. If you can’t teach them to perform at least at the company average, you’ve got to let them go. You need a plan. Companies don’t get more productive by hoping for it. And the plan starts with you, the manager.
A Plan for Productivity
Take responsibility: To start, you must take responsibility for the performance of your group – no matter what. If you delegate a project to someone who screws up, you’re part of the screw up. Either you didn’t support the project sufficiently or you delegated it to the wrong person. Take credit when something works, but don’t take it all. Acknowledge employees’ efforts. The flip side of that is being willing to fire people who don’t make an effort. Tell employees that you will let nothing stand in the way of your group’s productivity. Project a sense of dedication and urgency, but help them any way you can.
Listen to the truth, tell the truth: To do this, you have to know the truth. Are your people afraid to tell you about mistakes? Do they sugarcoat the truth so you only hear part of it? If you want the truth, never (ever) get irritated when someone reports bad news to you. Stay cool and people will feel comfortable telling you anything. Then it’s your job to tell people what to do with the truth. The number one reason to have a firm grasp on reality (that is, truth) is to change reality. Share serious news with your group and explain how it affects their lives (salaries, benefits, continued employment, etc.). Since employees are likely to forget your pronouncements, repeat the important things. Then repeat them again.
Satisfy customers: Do you know how your customers feel about your business? How do they rate it compared to your competitors? Do they think your product or service is improving or getting worse? Do you know how your competitors could seduce your customers? Do you know why you’ve lost certain clients? These questions are crucial. If you can’t collect this data, you’re wasting a resource. If nothing else, ask direct questions to get direct answers. Listen to what you learn.
Build a great team: To be a great manager, you’ve got to have technical skills and cheerleading skills. To run the company, you’ve got to keep your people running. Do they know where they’re going? Do they have a firm grasp of your vision? It’s not enough to have a vision. You’ve got to be able to communicate it clearly and quickly – two sentences, max. Remember: You can’t change people. They are what they are. But you can create an environment that encourages people to do and be their best. That’s your job, in a nutshell.
Build productivity into your pay scale: Everyone wants a raise, but few people want to come face to face with the fact that funding raises requires increasing productivity. Tell people they will make more when they produce more, and they’ll rush to become productive. Of course, don’t implement a plan with a downside that rapidly deflates someone’s salary, but show people that the company’s success directly ties to their personal success.
To Be Productive, Leave the Past Behind
Bureaucracy must die: If rules, regulations, and routines block your company’s ability to serve customers (or management’s ability to serve employees), you’ve got a problem. Think back to your company’s original purpose and figure out what is impeding that purpose. Reason, not rules, should dominate your corporate environment. Your subordinates see things you can’t possibly see – they’re on the front-line everyday. Process is the key here. Ask them which rules make their jobs difficult, time consuming, or expensive. Everything should be process-oriented. Remind subordinates that they are serving their customers not their CEO’s and that you are a colleague, not a cop. Set people free; don’t lock them up.
Fan the flames of revolution: Talk to your people. Set up a meeting where they can get off the treadmill for a minute and think – really think – about how they could work better and how they could contribute more. Ask how they would make the company better. Ask which meetings waste time and which management requests seem nonsensical. Present their concrete suggestions for change to senior executives. Starting a revolution is a great way to refocus your staff, especially if the changes come from their suggestions.
Don’t tolerate poor performers: Revolutions demand strength and speed. Poor performers will slow the group down, physically and mentally. If your top performers have to pull dead weight, they go slower and tire more quickly. You must dispense with poor performers out of respect for your top performers. This doesn’t mean immediately firing people. Diagnose their performance problems and act fast to fix them. Maybe you can develop poor performers by designing an action plan with them to correct their failings.
Streamline your work processes: With input from those who do the work, diagram the ways things are done. Highlight wasted moments in the production chain, and change them.
Eliminate layers of organization: Bigger is not better. To emphasize productivity, concern yourself with your tooth-to-tail ratio. Real work produces tangible results: a product or a service. How many people are doing real work? If people aren’t producing products or paying attention to customers, what are they doing all day?
Forget the old standards and go for the gold: Find out who’s the best at what you do and try to catch them, match them, and pass them. When you set your benchmark against the best in the business, at the least, you will begin to internalize their successful practices. At the best, of course, you’ll surpass them. Having a benchmark is a useful motivator. If you show your people a company that’s doing exactly what they do, only ten times better, you won’t have to say much more.
Break out your stopwatch: Okay, your product or service is great. But to be truly productive, your organization has to produce them faster. The same is true with great ideas. If you sit on them, someone will beat you to the punch. Don’t get caught up in always being right. The best baseball players get less than forty hits for every hundred times they try – and they probably get paid more than you. If you make more right decisions than wrong ones, you’ll be a great leader.
Get the best people: You are only as good as your people. Find and hire the best; don’t compromise. Charge your HR department with finding the right people.
Hitch your organization to the stars: Identify your star performers and make their level of productivity your standard. Ask them to teach the rest of the company their secrets, make sure you reward them. They might be afraid to give away their secrets.
Never stop coaching: Your employees need feedback. They get lost in their jobs and can’t see ways to do them better. If you know your players and their potentials, you will be able to push them to be the best they can be.
To Be Productive, Embrace the Future
Big visions take flight on the wings of your people. Make sure their wings are broad enough. You can eliminate bureaucracy, streamline your processes, and set goals all you want, but if your employees don’t have superior skills, you’re wasting your time. Invest money in your workforce, and there is no limit to what you can do with your organization.
Training is the first step. Once you figure out what processes are fundamental to the success of your organization, begin to develop or seek out specific training programs. In the beginning, get your people up to speed. You’d be surprised how many people in your workforce could use some help with fundamentals or spend too much time on simple tasks.
If you really want training programs to take hold, require every employee to attend. Make sure the programs are teaching skills, and not feelings. People should be able to apply the skills they learn immediately. Finally, make sure that training programs are exciting. You don’t want your people to (A) fall asleep in their sessions or (B) forget what they learn because they were never fully engaged.
Education is another important, although less specific, factor in improving your staff. Encourage employees to take classes outside of work. People who are continually learning stay fresh and never forget how to learn. Clearly, this is of tremendous value to the future growth of your organization.
Teams Are the Wave of the Future
If you can organize effective teams within your organization, productivity will increase. This doesn’t mean developing teamwork. Teamwork can lead to teams, but it can never replace the real thing.
Competition within organizations is out. Cooperation and collaboration are taking over. To find out why, ask yourself: would you rather work in an environment where you have to keep things to yourself so you can outperform your colleagues? Or would you rather work in an environment where you engage with a friendly, intelligent group of people on a daily basis?
You can’t just build teams because you think they’re a good idea. You have to make sure that your people believe in them and are willing to commit themselves to them. Once people are interested, make sure they realize that they’re still expected to perform. Be sure you realize that you shouldn’t be telling teams what to do. To get the most out of your teams, you should be asking them questions and having them figure out what to do. Teams, for the most part, will manage themselves. Don’t get in the way. Instead, rely on your coaching skills, and on the trust you have established with your high-productivity employees. There, now, doesn’t that feel better?
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