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ISSUE #55
September, 2003
September means back to school; back to business. Even the stock market started off the month with a bang. Everyone I know is optimistic and entrenched in their own plans to generate more business before year end.
For anyone who is feeling stuck or would like the benefit of an objective, experienced opinion to help them make a tough decision, I'm offering FREE Just-In-Time coaching on Thursday, September 4th or Friday, September 5th. Details are at http://www.primestrategies.com/coaching/#1JustinTime. It may be just what's needed to break through a barrier and is a great way to experience coaching without having to make a long term commitment.
As your company grows, you're going to be focusing more on how to get it all done. I often see entrepreneurs who, like the pie-maker in The E-Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber, have added staff without thinking through how the roles interface with each other or whether skill-sets and personal assets complement each other. The feature article, "How to Attract and Keep Productive Employees", is a straight forward, no nonsense guide for creating the infrastructure needed to grow a healthy, productive business. The article supports and simplifies much of what is currently being written on the topic.
For September's Telephone Roundtable we're using an Open Forum format. This format encourages high participant interaction and is great for exchange of ideas and problem solving. Do check it out and sign up if you'd like to participate in September's Open Forum. Details are below.
Have a productive month!
To your success,
Marian Banker
Publisher
Small Business Leader
mailto:marian@primestrategies.com
http://primestrategies.com
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FEATURE ARTICLE: How to Attract and Keep Productive Employees
A productive employee is a satisfied employee. Productive, satisfied employees create successful businesses. It's your job to create the environment that enables employees to feel satisfied on a consistent basis.
What do people want from a job? The consensus reached from my reading and my personal experience in working with clients is that, regardless of the job title and duties, an employee in any business wants the following - in descending order of importance or weight.
Pleasure - Job pleasure includes looking forward to going to work and feeling satisfied when the day is done. What that means will be different for each employee. It may come from being creative, successfully carrying out an assignment or task, seeing a positive result from their actions, knowing they've contributed to someone else's good or receiving respect and recognition from others.
A creative person will be most productive being creative. A detail oriented person will enjoy digging into the minutia. Moving a technical genius into an administrative position probably isn't going to be productive - anywhere. Job duties and individual personal qualities need to come together in order to maximize productivity.
Money - For most employees, money is only important when it feels like the pay does not match perceived value. Money can add to job pleasure, but does not replace or supercede it. Those who are driven by money alone may have trouble aligning with the rest of the team.
Comfort/Time-Off - Everyone has a different definition of comfort. For some people working close to home is a comfort because of family needs. Flex time or extra time off may be needed for a variety of reasons. Feeling in a bind because of conflicting demands takes away from productive focus. Willingness to negotiate is the key to success here.
Security/Benefits - No one wants to feel like they may be the next to go or that the company is in dire circumstances out of their control. Benefits are more important to some than to others. Benefits that fit the needs of each individual is ideal and may be negotiable. Make sure the employee understands their benefits and their responsibility in order to receive them.
These are the prerequisites needed to experience job satisfaction. Any time an employee spends thinking about, talking about or pursuing any of these is unproductive time.
The guy who goes home at the end of the day feeling satisfied will look forward to coming to work tomorrow. He will not only stay on board, he will be highly productive while he's there.
How do you create an environment where employees can feel satisfied? And how do you find the right people for the jobs to be done?
Here are the steps I recommend.
Present your Vision, Mission and Goals
People are attracted to those who know where they're going and how they're going to get there. Before considering hiring anyone, make sure your Vision and Mission are clear and written in a way that will attract those who can get excited about being a participant in your plans. Share this with applicants, together with long and short term goals so they will know exactly what they're buying into. You only want employees who can enthusiastically adopt your Vision, Mission and Goals.
Write Your Own Job Description First
Since you can't do it all by yourself, determine how YOU can be most productive in your business? What are your own personal values, your strengths, your assets? How can you best apply these to your business? If you're good at sales and like selling, that should be a good part of your job. You want and deserve to get pleasure and satisfaction from your job also. You'll hire others whose talents and interest more closely fit the remaining jobs to be done. Jobs you dislike or have trouble doing either won't get done or will be done poorly. Your business can't afford that. I've seen businesses fail because the owner was trying to do jobs for which they were totally inept.
Write a Description for All Other Jobs
Organize the tasks that you will not be carrying out, think through the work flow and relationships and write a clear job description and prerequisites for each. Consider what qualities, values and behavior is most suited to each set of tasks and use these as guidelines for recruiting and interviewing.
Present the Job Description to Applicants
Share and discuss the job description with applicants. Ask them to tell you how they would carry out the job. Listen for their level of passion and ability to commit as well as to their competence. You're looking for their ability to think through and deal with the issues at hand and how well they see the future possibilities.
Create a Team Environment
In a small business each "position" is dependent to some extent on others. In order for the group to function as a team, each person must know their position and know how they will relate to all others. Have final candidates meet with other team players to make sure the chemistry is right.
Provide an Organized Communication System
People want and need to know what to expect. Provide written guidelines, train where needed and reinforce desired behavior. Keep all staff informed about areas that affect their work, ask for their feedback and thank them for keeping you and others informed. Everyone should ultimately be working toward the same business goals and be gaining pleasure from carrying out their individual actions to achieve them.
Use Staff Feedback to Create a Plan
Use what you learn from staff, plus all your other information gathering resources and create a plan that everyone can embrace.
Accept and Share Responsibility
Take ultimate responsibility for business results and allow others to take responsibility within the scope of their position. Make sure they know they have both the responsibility and the authority. Responsibility without authority will lead to frustration very quickly.
Celebrate Wins; Give Recognition Freely
Take time to celebrate success and give recognition for a well played game even with a losing outcome. One of the most important acts a leader can do is give recognition. People follow and stay with those who give recognition freely.
Reap the Reward
The reward of creating a productive and satisfying employee environment is being the owner of a strong and profitable business that SUPPORTS YOU in every way. Many entrepreneurs complain that they are supporting their business. Isn't it time your business supported you? It can happen only when you attract and keep productive employees.
Daniel Goleman, developer of the concept and author of the book, Emotional Intelligence, suggests that leaders and staff function most effectively when they reach a state he calls resonance. This happens when leaders encourage ongoing communication at all levels and focuses this communication around the vision, mission and goals of the business.
More than anything else workers want their voices to be heard, says Richard B. Freeman & Joel Rogers who based their book, "What Workers Want", on survey results. They desire a greater role in the workplace, and have strong ideas about how their involvement could improve not just their lot but also their companies' fortunes.
Jim Collins, in his book, Good to Great, emphasizes the importance of hiring the right people. Your business can't afford the wrong people taking up the space of the right people. In the entrepreneurial classic, The E-Myth Revisited, Michael E. Gerber devotes several chapters to hiring and developing a productive team.
I've seen small businesses with employees that are totally out of control. When the owner puts up with unproductive employees who disregard policies and procedures and are disinterested in the business, the result is resentment, negative behavior and chaos. There's no chance such a business will succeed.
It's been shown time after time that there is a high positive correlation between employee commitment/productivity and reduced turnover. A stable, low turnover work force produces significantly more.
One client recently summed it up very well: "I used to feel like I was the adversary with my staff - always pushing to achieve results. Since I've learned what it takes to attract and keep the right people, I now have a team that's working with me. We all know where we're going. Achieving goals is much easier and I'm enjoying my business as never before".
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QUOTE:
"Success is the result of steadily taking action on our most important goals. When we consistently focus our energies and our efforts upon what matters most, we can't help but be successful."
From "Life at a Glance" by Michael Angier, http://WorldClassBusiness.com
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September Lunchtime Telephone Roundtable
Topic: "Open Forum"
Date: Thursday, September 18, 1 to 2 p.m. EDT
Moderator and Discussion Leader: Marian Banker, MBA, Business Leadership Coach
Guest Experts: This month you are all guest experts. You, the participants, get to select topics for the call, allowing us to be on the pulse of the issues that are important to you NOW. In the Open Forum format, you get to ask the questions or share from your own knowledge and experience. It's a great format for exchange of ideas, testing concepts and solving problems. You can come to participate or just listen and learn. This format allows for a lot more group interaction than the one-topic format. It should be a lot of fun for all. I'm really looking forward to it.
There is NO CHARGE for the Roundtable.
To register and receive the call-in number, send an e-mail to marian@primestrategies.com with the Subject as Roundtable 9-18-03
Here's just one of the many positive comments from a previous Roundtable...
"I enjoyed the whole experience and hope to be able to participate again in the future."
Ellen DePasquale,, The Systems Shop
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ARTICLES:
SUCCESS STORY
From waitress to $15 million business owner. Carolyn Gable tells the story of how she built a strong business that's poised for an even bigger future. An inspiring story to energize your own dreams and intentions.
http://www.bcentral.com/articles/krotz/154.asp?LID=33292
GENDER SELLING
Since men and women tend to communicate differently, it's important to understand responses when you're making a sales presentation. Get the big picture and learn some techniques in Selling Power.com's Presentation Newsletter article, "Mars and Venus in the Boardroom", http://www.sellingpower.com/html_newsletter/presentations/article.asp?id=987&nDate=August+25%2C+2003
VIRUS, VIRUS
Were you among those who had to deal with the recent havoc of the SoBig-F virus? The worst of this one may be over, but the horizon is not clear. Read the Small Business Computing article about what we might expect in the future and the best way for a small business to be prepared.
http://www.smallbusinesscomputing.com/webmaster/article.php/3067891
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ABOUT THE PUBLISHER:
Marian Banker has been publishing Small Business Leader since January, 1999. Her focus is on bringing to the busy entrepreneur a quick look into the current world of small business from the perspective she's gained from coaching, consulting and training entrepreneurs in both service and product based businesses.
Marian offers individual coaching, business support groups, seminars and workshops on topics of critical interest to small business owners. Her monthly Lunchtime Telephone Roundtable has proven to be a popular way for business owners to come together around a specific business topic without leaving their office. See notice about this month's topic in the content above.
To learn more about her services, visit http://primestrategies.com.
FEEDBACK:
Your feedback is always appreciated. Please write to marian@primestrategies.com.
COPYRIGHT 2003 SMALL BUSINESS LEADER
A publication of Prime Strategies
http://primestrategies.com
Notice and Disclaimer:
Of course, I'm open to your including my content in your publication with proper credit. You must, however, obtain my written permission first. Thanks!
Content in the SBL is for information purposes only and should not be construed as specific advice.
