My daughter, Katy, starts cheerleading practice soon. As the lead cheerleader, she wants to wear a great outfit on the first day. She looked high and low for her favorite pair of cheer shorts, but to no avail. Bitterly disappointed, she bought another pair, but still, she wanted to find her favorites.
Then, it struck her. They might be in the trunk of her car. “My trunk is the new junk drawer,” she exclaimed! “I throw everything back there.” Sure enough, upon searching her trunk, there were her beloved shorts along with 2 blankets, a shirt that had also she “lost”, a curling iron, a pair of shoes, and some Valentine’s Day wrapping paper that she doesn’t remember buying.
Katy took a few hours to get everything back to where it was supposed to be, and life appears to have calmed for my teenage daughter.
Does Katy’s struggle sound familiar? Often, we spend an immense amount of time looking for things we already have, only to repurchase and rediscover the item along with a series of other things you had forgotten about. The same can be true for your office, talent pool and business processes.
You know when it is time to clean up when EVERY little task takes way more time than it should. You look for a document but can’t easily find it due to an unorganized filling system. You look for a colleague’s phone number, but it was not entered into your contact database. All these little tasks end up taking an inordinate amount of time; time that could be spent on business activities.
This time of year, I encourage you to shake out the rugs in your business departments, clean up job descriptions, re-organize the filing cabinets, create new habits to prevent the loss of information and start the spring with a new, ruthlessly organized…trunk. You will be glad that you did.
I am learning how to box. Unbeknownst to me, much of the work in boxing is in your legs. You must be able to avoid the competitors swing by moving around. “Float like a butterfly; sting like a bee,” said Mohammed Ali. And he was right! While to the observer, boxing looks like punching is the top priority, it isn’t. The boxer wins, not through the jab but by not running out of steam in his or her legs.
My instructor coaches that the secret to not running out of steam in your legs is to recruit the hamstrings to do their part. They are the largest muscle in the body so making your quads do all the work is inefficient. You must invite the hamstrings to engage, to participate, and to do the heavy lifting. Do you know how HARD this is? I am so used to letting the front of my legs carry the load that I don’t have any idea how to recruit my hamstrings!
Ugh.
The word ‘recruit’ of course inspired me to think about how we engage our employees. We all have those few people who carry the weight of the team, and we let them. It is easier in the short term to rely on those that you have relied on before. But, as my boxing instructor says, “This is bad mechanics.” When you rely too heavily on one small group (of employees or muscles), you end up burning out them out. This is how we end up with injured muscles or people who quit. You have to recruit others on your team to take on new challenges in order to be a well- rounded, balanced organization. Encourage cross training and sharing of ideas that create efficiencies. Maybe the quiet one in a meeting has the idea that will carry the business forward in entirely new ways! You won’t know until you ask.
As you are assigning tasks and duties on your team, remember to mix it up. Have people lead the way that don’t normally take on leadership responsibilities. Ask someone who never volunteers to complete a special task. When you recruit the large muscles to do the heavy lifting, you are a better leader. And boxer.
Today, September 6th, marks my 20th wedding anniversary. My husband Randy and I celebrated the milestone last weekend by going to the restaurants where we dated. It was an epic way to celebrate!
But 10 years ago, we woke up on the morning of September 7th – a day late – both realizing at the same time that we had forgotten our anniversary… our 10-year wedding anniversary! Holy moly! Though it turned out to be a funny story that we can look back on and laugh about, we also realized how close we came to that funny story being a painful memory: How would we each have felt had I forgotten our anniversary but Randy didn’t… or vice versa?
For the past several weeks, I have asked employees of various companies how long they have been in their current position and when they started. Do you know that most of the people I surveyed can tell me the exact date that they started at their current position? However, when I ask their supervisors to tell me when their valued employees started at their job, most can’t give the correct answer.
Remembering someone else’s work anniversary might not seem like a big deal to you, but it might be a big deal to them. At the very least, it’s a missed opportunity to recognize a milestone and boost the morale of one of the people who make your organization what it is. What’s more, it as easy as setting a reminder in your calendar, and the recognition can be as simple as a card, a gift certificate for a coffee shop or a box of donuts. This is an easy and inexpensive way to let your employee know how much you value them, and a little recognition goes a long way.
And, if you forgot an anniversary like Randy and I did, make sure that the next one has an EPIC celebration attached to it.
Last week, I interviewed a woman who had previously been an Office Manager for a thriving company. She understood that her job was one with wide-ranging responsibilities that required many and various tasks. When I asked what prompted her to resign, she replied, “When I had to sell the owners’ roosters on Craigslist.”
Had this woman’s job had been at a farm working with animals, this request might not have seemed so egregious. Once again, she was working in an office setting with many other employees, so a request like this was quite a bit outside the normal boundaries of the job and she felt taken advantage of.
This is just one example of the importance of having an accurate job description for every position. The job description helps the employee know what is expected of them, and gives them guidelines on how to be successful in the role. When an employee is asked to do something far outside the boundaries of the job, they can feel uncomfortable, uneasy, and unsure on how to proceed. This is not the way to build a productive and satisfying relationship with your employee.
I know, I know… writing a job description is boring, boring, boring! My clients tell me this regularly, and it is usually coupled with an eye roll. However, having a document that accurately describes the job can benefit both the employer and the prospective employee by laying out the tasks, responsibilities and expectations beforehand, in black and white. So if you don’t own a farm and aren’t in the animal husbandry industry, don’t ask your employee to sell your roosters (unless you write it in the job description!)
Then when the rooster crows, everyone knows what to expect.
This week, I wanted to share some success numbers with you. I have a client, MEP Engineering, who I have worked with for some time. They have embraced A-list Interviews and the Response Analysis System™ wholeheartedly. In fact, in their latest newsletter, they highlighted their hiring process as one of the reasons their firm has been so successful this year. This graphic is their own, featuring their statistics from 2016:
In using A-list Interviews’ 3 Step Interview Process, they’ve been able to efficiently screen an average of 50 candidates for each offer they make. They’ve achieved a 21% growth rate in 2016; whereas this source reports the average employee growth rate for their industry is 3.5%. In addition, while the average staff turnover rate for their industry is 13.3%, their turnover rate is 1%.
Figures like that show a rapidly expanding organization whose hiring process not only keeps pace with increasing demand, but is finely tuned to identify quality candidates.
That’s what success looks like.
Congratulations to MEP Engineering on your tremendous growth! It’s been a pleasure to continue working with you. May 2017 be just as prosperous and successful!
In my early 20’s, I worked as a manager in a retail store, and one of my co-workers was a middle aged woman with three children. After working there for some time, her husband was offered not only his dream job, but also the opportunity to move back to California near both of their families. It was a perfect fit for everyone, and my co-worker and her family were beyond ecstatic.
Our boss, however, was less than thrilled. Rather than share in her excitement, she was furious at my co-worker for leaving the organization. “How could you possibly leave me now?! I depend on you!” This woman gave my co-worker the silent treatment for the remaining 2 weeks of her notice. On her last day, my co-worker hugged me tight and told me, “Don’t stay here for much longer. This is a toxic place to work.”
During that time, I learned one small lesson of what NOT to do as a boss.
I made a vow that when my staff turned in their notices, I would handle it differently. I would tell them how happy I was for their new opportunity and I would ask them how I could help them leave on a good note, with the door left open for the future. Most of all, I would thank them for their service to my business. This commitment to my staff even as they were leaving my employment has served me well in countless ways, not the least of which is the fact that allowing someone to exit on a good note feels good to all parties: you, them, their co-workers, your clients, etc.
Everyone has had a bad boss. Not all bad bosses stay bad bosses; in the case of my former boss, she was under extreme stress at the time, so her behavior had a lot to do with that. (In fact, the business ended up closing several years later.) Today, she and I are on great terms, and I adore her.
Tell me what lessons you learned from your bad boss! Inquiring minds want to know…
Our boss, however, was less than thrilled. Rather than share in her excitement, she was furious at my co-worker for leaving the organization. “How could you possibly leave me now?! I depend on you!” This woman gave my co-worker the silent treatment for the remaining 2 weeks of her notice. On her last day, my co-worker hugged me tight and told me, “Don’t stay here for much longer. This is a toxic place to work.”