MANAGING PEOPLE IS ENVIRONMENTALLY CORRECT! Part II

Where We Left Off

In the first half of this article, it was suggested that the concept of “managing people” was not only an implausible notion in the 21st Century but also a maddening way to waste time and sap your morale.  You were asked to consider all of the people you’ve been powerless to “effectively manage” in your personal life (spouse, teenage children, parents, in-laws, etc) and use those spotty results to see the folly in attempting to command a group of free-thinking adults in your employ where often the only bond between you is a paycheck that holds no promise of life-long continuation and an at-will agreement that underscores the fragile nature of workplace relationships.  Not much, is it?

Instead, you were urged to consider an immense conceptual mind-shift.  It went like this. 

1. Human beings possess free will and really enjoy demonstrating their ability to resist even the most well-intentioned attempts at managing them.  Since employees are almost always human … well, you get the picture.

Next came The Philosophy of P.A.N.G. – yet another synaptic scramblerthat may have twisted violently against your experience with unruly employees who you found “hard to enjoy.”  We asked for your buy-in anyway. Simply put, P.A.N.G. (“People Are Naturally Good”) acknowledges humanity’s better angels and asserts that most people are naturally good and share a strong desire to come to work on-time, ready to produce and contribute, ready to smile and be well-liked – hoping for approval and a sense of belonging.  

Believing this, we pleaded for the creation of a bold new internal manifesto focusing your management time toward your business environment rather than your people.  To make it work you had to build a remarkable team through the consistent hiring of extraordinary people who possess the exact traits and values that you have identified as essential for success.  The rest came down to your ability to plot out the most rousing inclusive environment to engage and motivate your staff.  The balance of this article sets out the right path for those wishing to find that emerald city where staffers embrace their accountability and owners avoid the sink holes that dot the way.

What Is The Right Environment?

Obviously, there can’t just be one just right environment for all businesses - each needs to be a custom and comfortable fit.  It’s important to observe other firms and “the home” they have built in their offices, warehouse or shop.  You could tour hundreds of other companies but the very best blueprint will be your own.  The only thing worse than a bad environment is a false one.  With 2008 bearing down upon us, it’s safe to say that certain environments are more conducive to attracting today’s extraordinary people that you must attract to make this work.  The “Employer of Choice” companies that outperform their peers often share these basic, but critical, human practices:

1. Caring by sharing – if you’re not offering equity and promoting ownership, then bonding dollars to delivery is the next best thing – share your sales data, financial trends, industry happenings, long-term strategies, market share and growth goals. Information bonds people to one another.
2. Burning the thrones – keep all doors open to all people all-the-time and publicly tear down the poisonous and resented hierarchies with their not-so-secret secret pay and perks – if you’ve purposefully kept too many doors locked, hand out keys along with some sincere apologies for any inequities. 
3. Praising for profit – catch people doing something right at least as much as when you hear of missteps, reward noble failures and use the too-safe, too-slow worker as yesterday’s model    
4. Protecting the flock – the best part of corporate enlightenment happens when the boss realizes for the first time that “the sheep” are not there solely for the benefit of the shepherd.  Banish the wolves and in tight times make your sheep chow with even more love
5. Lifting all boats/WE, Not ME – no one wins unless everybody wins, promote unity, give safe harbor in your little cove and foster a celebratory team spirit.  Make your company a WE, Not ME company.

You may notice one important quality that each of the above practices share … their inception is not dollar-dependent. Clearly, the adoption of these modern mindsets – across all industries – simply underscores our collective realization that people (remember – the ones who resist being managed?) and not property or raw materials, are the source of all revenue, profit and productivity gains.  If everything begins and ends with people then is there any focus more worthwhile than the creation and recreation of the environment your people encounter and interact with?  The answer is an emphatic “NO!”

Managing People vs. Motivating People

Lots of companies hang up motivational posters and famous quotations meant to magically energize the spirits of their weary staffs who have been told, over and over, to do more with less.  Turnabout being fair play, perhaps the workers of the world would enjoy seeing cleverly-worded quotations above the desks of “people managers” everywhere, urging them to raise their game?  Two quotations immediately come to mind – Zig Ziglar, a business author and trainer once said, “People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing … that’s why we recommend it daily.”  Charles Schwab, billionaire brokerage founder, made it resonate when he said, “I have yet to find the man, however exalted his station, who did not do better work and put forth greater effort under a spirit of approval than under a spirit of criticism.”

Management Flash Cards – MOTIVATION

Searching for more ways to motivate that will never go out of style?  Here are some management flash cards that might help: 

1. Give people responsibilities, not jobs.  The way you see them is the way you treat them.  The way you treat them is the way they become.  Imagine if everyone were treated as champions?  
2. Reign in any company policies that are irrelevant or unnecessary.  Don’t let policies become so restrictive, personally intrusive or infantile that your adult employees actually regress into childish behaviors (e.g. A Running with Scissors Zero-Tolerance Policy would be a tip-off that you’ve gone too far). 

Tie at least 15% of your staff’s pay to the achievement of certain holistic “lifting of all boats” goals.

3. Unleash an informal process for managers to spontaneously recognize and reward a great employee performance.  Cash works best. 
4. Pride begets pride; always keep the physical environment (shop, office, trucks, property, etc.)  fit to work in. There’s a simple way to tell if your place is looking good and adding to your environment:  Would you be proud to show your own parents around your facility – including the bathrooms?
5. Don’t lie to anyone who represents you … ever. 
6. Watch your employees to see what inspires them and encourage them to do more of this.
7. Every single year, send your employees a confidential opinion survey.  Find free samples on the Internet.  Measure the results and work like mad to make the changes.
8. Create standards and give your people clear expectations so they always know exactly what they are supposed to do and never wonder “if” they’ve failed or “why” they’ve failed.
9. Minimize all unnecessary “slow it down” permission steps and other roadblocks built in to your system that teach your people that every idea of theirs is subject to veto or massive revision.  

Traits & Values – Some Final Thoughts
Look hard at your company.  How did you fair with the motivational flash cards above? A solid score means you’ve been actively managing your environment.  It will make hiring and keeping the remarkable people you need far easier.  You are more prepared than before to see which traits and values really make a difference in your organization. 

For instance … in building the perfect display booth for a trade exhibition, is it technical skill that matters most or is it the ability to build in actual talking points to facilitate the selling process on the trade show floor?  You know what’s best for your firm and it’s you who can now tailor your recruitment practices to find that person.  Act on what you know.

The following observances are all about traits and values and their impact on the business that you have worked so hard to build.  Hiring people with the right traits will lift your dream while the wrong traits can burn it down.  Every behavior has a clue and a consequence. Great detective work will bring you positive consequences.

Studies show that the most promoted employees have high job performance, exhibit good corporate citizenship behavior and are committed to the organization. 

1. Additional research reveals that promotions occurred where the employees viewed the organization’s problems as their own.
2. Happy people are more often promoted than neutral or negative people. (They are also healthier)
3. Humor goes hand-in-hand with happiness – can you think of a quality more important than a “sense of humor” in these times?
4. There is a direct relationship between your employee’s attitude, customer service and employee turnover but it gets really out of hand when people with shared negative attitudes get together and “party.”  It becomes a brush fire on a dry, windy day. In those “meeting of the minds” you will find the real kind of trouble that hijacks morale and crashes your productivity. 

There aren’t so many big revelations shown above but far too often we overlook the obvious.  Have you found a way to get your employment candidates talking about these important topics?  Do you ask situational interview questions about loyalty, volunteerism or how they work to improve (or even measure) their own productivity?  It’s perfectly legal to ask someone if they’re happy or what it would take to make them act as if your company were their company.  This is how you find remarkable people even if you don’t have a big company, a fancy conference room or the biggest paychecks in town.

To further emphasize what you’ve heard here before, great hiring has great impact.  Many candidates are overlooked or discarded for the wrong reasons. If you want to continue managing people more than your workplace environment, then rededicate yourself to working hardest at managing your selection of new employees – make it a sacred mission.  Remember, a perfect step reached at an early stage (“hiring perfection”) is elemental and has a greater impact on your world than a perfect step performed at a later stage (i.e. withholding a raise from a poisonous employee is “late stage perfection”).  Get good earlyandyou will always manage to be successful!