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A Foundation of Trust!

“Trust is the glue of life. It’s the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It’s the foundational principle that holds all relationships.” – STEPHEN R. COVEY

I think this statement is essential for every leader to really understand and embody in the everyday relationships they have with their employees.   As a leader you will need to have difficult conversations with your team from time to time and if a foundation of trust is not in place before hand these conversations will be more difficult and less impactful.

I remember a situation I encountered as a young manager that stands out in my mind even today some thirty years later.  I managed a small team of employees in a relatively small company.  We worked hard together and often worked late into the night.  I counted on this team to respond to customer’s calls at two and three in the morning with a smile on their face and urgency for the task at hand.  We worked in the medical industry and our clients and their patients depended on us getting there quickly.  Customer satisfaction was a key performance indicator (KPI) I used to measure the impact my team was having in growing the business.  Happy customers called more often so it was critical that we kept them happy and calling.

One morning I received a call from a customer about one of my best employees.  The complaint was concerning his personal hygiene.  Simply put, he had body odor that was offensive to the staff at the hospital and if not corrected he would not be allowed to service the customer.  I look back at it now and we all knew this was a problem before the customer called.  I hadn’t had the courage to have the difficult conversation necessary to correct an ongoing issue in the workplace.

I went home that night and wrestled with how I would approach this with him in the morning.  Needless to say there was no sleep to be had that night.  In the morning I called the employee into my office and after much small talk about how important he was to the organization I dropped the bomb.  Unexpectedly, he was not upset and in fact he was not even that surprised.  He admitted he had struggled with this problem for a good portion of his life.  Immediately I jumped in and offered to help with some suggestions on ways he could improve the situation – I won’t go into the details here!

A week or two later I had a visit from his wife who wanted to thank me for being there for her husband and helping them both correct a situation that had been a problem for a long time.  I realized then that even though the topic and conversation were of a sensitive nature my team knew that I was coming at it from a place of trust and support.  My goal was to improve their lives and enhance their careers.  They understood I was not only looking out for the wellbeing of the company.

I later developed a saying that I would repeat again and again to all of the leaders in my company – “Lead from the front”.  My meaning was for them to be out there in front of their teams showing them the way by example.  Don’t be that manager that sits in the background letting their staff members take all the risks and do all of the heavy lifting.  Employees need to know first and foremost that you have their best interest at heart.  What you do every day is not for the good of the one but for the good of the many.  I have seen too many leaders get tunnel vision, focusing on their careers, forgetting that the people working for them are the fuel powering the career in the first place.

Trust is the foundation of every relationship.  Without trust there can be no open and honest communication.  My conversation could have gone very differently if my employee thought my goal was to terminate the problem versus resolve it with him as a team.

Feel free to comment below with your stories of how trust made your difficult conversations easier and more impactful!

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The differences between a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) and a Goal?

I would say this is the most frequently asked question I receive from our client base. The term goal is pretty well established in the business world. Companies have revenue goals, customer satisfaction goals, productivity goals and the list goes on. More often than not however, there is a void or even a lack of understanding on the part of management as to what exact performance measurements can be used to monitor the success of the initiatives put in place to achieve these goals.

Goals are often too lofty or grandiose for the everyday employee to get their mind around. Everyone knows the company needs to grow in revenue and profit to ensure the future employment and the financial growth of the staff. What they don’t understand is how they directly impact the company’s ability to achieve this. Most employees want to work for a successful organization and will do their part if they clearly understand what their part is. Let’s take a minute and better define the differences between goals and KPI’s.

So as not to overcomplicate the conversation we will start with the basic need of a corporation – revenue growth. A typical goal for an organization might be 10% growth in revenue within the next fiscal year. We have all heard of the term SMART goal. A S.M.A.R.T. goal is defined as one that is specific, measurable, achievable, results-focused, and time- bound. Let’s put our goal to the test.

Specific: a 10% growth in revenue is very specific. It is best to do the math so everyone understands what the 10% means.

Measurable: It is most definitely measurable unless you don’t report out revenue.

Results-Focused: Again very result focused

Time-Bound: Yes it is our desire to achieve this goal within fiscal year 2017.

A Key Performance Indicator is a measurable value that demonstrates how effectively a company is achieving key business objectives. Organizations use KPI’s at multiple levels to evaluate their success at reaching targets. High-level KPIs may focus on the overall performance of the enterprise, while low-level KPIs may focus on processes in departments such as sales, marketing or a call center. For the purposes of simplicity I would like to discuss how this goal will be viewed by three departments – Sales, Customer Service and Production.

The key word at the department level is performance. What are they doing to contribute to the company achieving this goal? Most times these are called initiatives at the department level. How will these departments change their daily activities to achieve a higher level of performance? The sales department is probably most accustomed to this discussion due to the fact that their world revolves around numbers – more leads – more meetings, more meetings – more presentations, more presentations – more proposals, and the more proposals the more revenue booked. Simple, right? Your vice president of sales will more than likely know off hand what these ratio’s look like.

Typical Sales Funnel


The sales department therefore has already established the KPI’s that will help them monitor the success of their team in meeting the goal. The marketing department might be responsible for generating the 100 leads needed (i.e. Marketing Goal).


 

 

 

 

The sales department’s goal for booked revenue will differ from that of the company in that booked orders don’t invoice until they can be shipped. Obviously this is where customer service and production come in. If these two departments don’t meet their KPI’s the goal for the company will be missed. Production cannot produce the product until the order is processed and the company cannot book the revenue until the order is shipped. The KPI’s will measure the success of the initiatives undertaken to achieve the increase in revenue. If any of these departmental KPI’s fall below the expectation for the initiative implemented immediate action can be taken. This allows the department leaders to tweak the program along the way to ensure its overall success.

The sales department is in most cases a little more straight forward than the other two departments we have selected. However, every department should know what they must do to achieve the overall goal of the organization.

Customer Service has to take the call and process the order in coordination with the sales team. If there is a delay in the processing time the revenue for the month or quarter will be missed. The KPI’s of the customer service group might revolve around processing time or number of calls handled per day. But the goal of the department is to process the number of orders booked by the sales group within a specific period of time that will allow production the time they need to produce and ship the product needed to meet the revenue goal for the company.


 

 

 

 

In the same way the production department will need to set their goal to be in line with what the customer service department can process. In some cases they might over produce if there is a high confidence level on the part of the sales VP. See if you can draw out a KPI chart for the production department. If not send me and e-mail (pat@tecresourcecenter.com) and I will work through it with you for your company.

Successfully run companies know that engaged employees who understand how they directly contribute to the goals of the organization will lead to the improved implementation of the strategic initiatives and faster growth year to year. Does your team understand the KPI’s for your organization? Is there a reporting process to monitor the success of your strategic initiatives? I will discuss balanced score cards and KPI dashboards in upcoming blogs. Sign up for our monthly TEC Talk update ( https://tecresourcecenter.com/contact-us ) to ensure you receive future discussions.


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Not Spending Enough Time Managing?

One of the greatest challenges for managers is having the time to manage. Everyone is busy. Managers are consistently being asked to do more with less. So what can you do to manage your time most efficiently? Here are a few tips to help save time and reduce stress!

Change your to-do list into a real time management plan:

Do you actually plan your days out? I know, what’s the use in planning, there’s always a fire to put out? There just aren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done anyway. Stop making excuses. You are right, you can’t add more hours to your day, and emergencies will come up, but having a real plan, allowing for time to put out fires will help. Start by listing everything you have to do and then prioritize your list to the things that absolutely must get done tomorrow. Then order them in a way that makes sense for you and the task. So if you work best in the morning, do the tough stuff first. If you are preparing for a 3PM meeting, clearly the prep time must be scheduled for before.   Figure out how much time you will need and make sure you schedule it well in advance. And I mean schedule it! Block out time on your calendar to prep for the meeting. We all put our meetings on our calendars, but how many of you block out time to prep? Prep time should not be scheduled for 5 minutes before the meeting.   As we know, emergencies do come up, but if you have scheduled your prep time well in advance, you will have time to attend to the emergency, and still be able to get back in time to prep before the meeting. I’m a big believer in Outlook or some type of electronic calendar. I’ve got reminders going off for everything, so nothing falls through the cracks. And I don’t dismiss something until it is complete. If I can’t do it right then, I’m committed to going back to my calendar and finding a place to reschedule it.

Minimize your “time robbers”:

Speaking of those emergencies and fires you have to put out…….stop thinking they are all unavoidable. Probably only about 1/3 of them are true emergencies. The others are what I call time robbers; the interruptions that come in many forms. They could be your staff that feel they can interrupt you anytime they have a question. They could be meetings that you really don’t need to be at. They could be time you spent looking for things because you are not as organized as you can be. And the list goes on. First identify your time robbers. Then think about ways to at least minimize them. Learn key phrases that encourage people to respect your time such as:

  • “Can you give me 30 minutes to finish up what I’m doing and then I’ll give you 100% of my attention.”
  • “How much time do you think we need to discuss this?”
  • “Can we agree to meet until 3PM and then schedule more time at a later date if we’re not done?”

 

All these phrases let people know, I want to help you, but I have other pressing things I need to take care of. If you respect your time, others will start to as well. For those real emergencies you have to attend to right away, start looking for patterns. Do the same things keep coming up day after day? Is there someone who can be a resource for these issues other than you? Is there a systemic problem that, if addressed, could decrease these types of emergencies from coming up?

Learn to delegate effectively:

Managers often forget one of the most effective time management tools – delegation. There are many reasons people don’t delegate, but many times it is because they are not successful (or are afraid they won’t be successful,) when they do it. Nine times out of ten, they fail because they did not delegate the task to the right person, or they did not give the person the support they needed to be successful. The first step it to change our mindset about delegation. It should not be you dumping your work on someone else. That’s not delegation. You should think of it as an opportunity for that person to learn something new, and to take something off your plate to leave you time to do other things your staff cannot do. Things that help move the department forward. Delegation should be a win / win and needs to be presented that way. People want to know what’s in it for them, so be prepared to tell them. Of course, you also need to be confident that the task will get done. Just because you delegated it, does not mean it is NOT your responsibility anymore. When you are a manager, the buck stops here. So take time to analyze the task and your staff competencies. Then determine, based on how much experience the person has with this task, the level of involvement you need to have with them. Remember the more time you put in in the beginning, the faster that task will truly be off your plate with minimum supervision needed. If you’re having trouble trying to think about the types of tasks to delegate, try some of these:

  • Clerical Tasks
  • Repetitive Tasks
  • Information Gathering
  • Representation in Meetings

They are the easiest types of tasks to delegate and can save you a good amount of time and stress in the long run.

E-Mail me to include your management challenges in our upcoming blogs – abbe@tecresourcecenter.com

 

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How do you measure performance?

We have all heard the saying – “if it is not measurable it is not manageable.”  Why then do we spend so much of our time managing the softer side of our employees rather than the results they actually achieve throughout the year?  In some businesses it’s all about the statistics of achievement.  In the sport world for example, each member of the team is evaluated on each aspect of their game and ranked against others in the same field.

In the business world some would say that’s just not possible.  I say that’s due to the fact that not everyone on the team understands how they contribute to the overall success of the organization.  Okay, in the sports world it’s easy, right?  Everyone knows what the vision of the organization is – win the championship of course.  There are clear parallels in business but they might not be as easy to define.

Vision

Most businesses have a vision for the organization.  The question is – can it be as clearly defined and understood as winning the championship?  The easy part of the sport world is that the path to the championship has been well defined.  Rules have been set up that allow the manager or owner of the team to build a clearly understood strategy that can then be passed on to the coaches and players.  In your business you can do the same thing!

The first step is to determine your vision for the organization.  Keep it simple!  Keep it measurable!  If it’s not measurable it cannot be managed – Right?  If it’s too complex no one will understand how to break the vision down into departmental and then individual goals.

Vision Statement

In the next Timeframe the company will Attainable Goal by Differentiator!

Most sports teams set out to win the championship but not all of them have the tools and resources to win it this year.  So their timeframe might be to win the championship within the next three years by rebuilding the existing team.  The same goes for your organization.  You might not have the tools on board today to attain the ultimate goal but everyone should understand that’s where you are headed.

SMART Goals

Thankfully the hard part is done right?  Wrong!  Countless businesses I work with have the vision of where they are headed well in hand and simply cannot understand why they haven’t gotten there already.  The long term goal (The Vision) needs to be broken down into yearly, quarterly and even daily goals for each member of the team.  This is a very difficult task and can only be accomplished through strong communication and teamwork within the leadership of the company.  Obviously, the real long term goal of a sports organization is to build the value of that organization by driving up revenue attained from broadcasting rights and game attendance.  Can you imagine if that is what was communicated to the offensive line on a football team?  They would have no way of relating their performance to that high level goal of the organization.  So winning a championship becomes the goal.  Every athlete can relate to this goal and understands what it means to their financial future.

But winning the championship is still too broad a goal to drive performance on the team.  So that goal is broken down further in to win this week’s game and then again into scoring the touchdown.  But it doesn’t stop there!  It’s about first downs – achieving them for the offense and preventing them for the defense.  “If you control the line of scrimmage you win the game.” 

So what are the SMART goals for you team?  How can you break them down into bit size measurable indicators that can be monitored and improved upon each day?

I like to use the example of the airline that wanted to improve on time performance (Goal) in order to raise the overall rating of the airline.  Anyone who travels can understand how this impacts their lives and therefore they pay attention to this rating when selecting their airline of choice.  In turn this will drive revenue for the airline.  So increasing revenue is the high level goal but the employees cannot directly relate to this goal.  Not everyone in your business understands business and therefore you need to make the goals at the employee level relatable to the worker.

But on time performance was still too broad a goal.  This goal was in turn broken down further in to Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) for the baggage handlers, maintenance workers, gate attendance, pilots and flight attendants.

Baggage Handlers: Have all bags loaded 20 minutes prior to the flight’s departure

Maintenance Workers: Have all flight checks completed 40 minutes prior to flight departure

Gate Attendants: Have all passengers loaded 10 minutes prior to departure

Pilots and Flight Attendants: Arrive at the plane 30 minutes prior to departure

Of course there is more to it than this but for the purposes of our discussion today you can see my point.  These are KPI’s related to the goal that can be reported and monitored to better understand where the weak points in the operation are.  Once identified you can put improvement plans in place that might include training or improved technology to report problems ahead of time.

So start today.

  • Make sure your vision is clear and relatable
  • Ensure the strategy to attain the vision is well thought out and documented
  • Breakdown the goals into (KPI’s) that can be measured at the department and even employee level.

When differences are discovered through the reporting process, don’t shoot the messenger.  Sometimes the process is to blame for good people achieving poor results.  Ask them for their help in fixing the problem.  If you hired the right people, and they understand what they need to do to achieve the goal you will be surprised at what can be resolved if you are willing to listen with an open mind.

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Five Things Strong Managers Know!

 

Managers are key contributors in an organization. They have many responsibilities, but here are 5 responsibilities that effective managers pay close attention to:

  1. Carry out assigned duties: Know and understand what is expected of you from your boss. That means asking questions, checking in, and making sure you are aligned with his/her priorities at all times.
  2. Keep your manager informed: There’s nothing worse than being blind sighted by someone who seems to know more about what is going on in your department than you do. Make sure you do not put your boss in that position. Let him/her know if something is going wrong and how you intend to handle it. If you’re not sure, ask to brainstorm together for possible solutions.
  3. Build employee morale: If your people are disgruntled, you need to address it immediately. One bad apple does spoil the whole bunch. It’s the manager’s responsibility to monitor what is going on in their department, including at the water cooler. If you hear something negative, don’t ignore it and hope it will blow over. Interject yourself. Get to the bottom of it and let the negative person know, that doesn’t fly with you. If they are uncomfortable or know they will be called out for negative behavior, it is less likely they will continue.
  4. Give clear instructions: Communication is a 2 way street. When you give a directive, you are responsible to make sure people really understand what you expect. Of course it’s clear to you; it’s in your brain. But everyone else doesn’t have the same brain. Instead of asking closed questions like, “You got it?” or “Any questions?” try open ended questions like, “So where do you think you’re going to start on this?” Or “What obstacles do you anticipate that might interfere with us completing this on time?” People tend to answer closed ended questions with the yes or no they think you are looking for. You really have no idea whether or not they understood and if you are going to get the results you want.
  5. Cooperate with other departments: Successful managers play nice in the sandbox, even if there’s a bratty kid in there. Focus on the issues and results you want, while keeping in mind that others have responsibilities and goals as well. Listen actively. Find the common ground. Work as a team.

Develop your Manager’s Toolbox by attending one of our public training classes!

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