Most, yes, sadly most, organizations get so busy doing the urgent things that they forget to do the truly important ones. Sometimes they even forget to do the most important thing of all – develop their people.
I believe it’s most important because when it comes right down to it organizations, companies and teams are about the PEOPLE who make them up. Your company can have the best technology, the best systems and the best process but if it is staffed by overwhelmed and under-appreciated people it will struggle to succeed.
Great companies and great leaders are intentional in developing their people. They build the whole developmental concept right into their business plan. They know that success rarely happens by accident and neither does people development.
Pull out the plan for your business or organization right now. Go to the section on developing your people….can’t find it? Then get yourself a new plan and get it immediately before you waste anymore time struggling in areas that you don’t need to.
Developing your people begins with an understanding that most people simply don’t know how to be successful. A very few people can succeed by being told what to do but almost all people need to be shown. Most people need a model of success. They need to see successful behaviors in action. They need to see that if they put in the effort that they too might succeed.
How conscious are you of your role as a model for your people? How do you make certain that you are the model they need?
Great companies and leaders know that most people are naturally motivated. YES, you read that right. Most people are motivated until somebody comes along and de-motivates them.
Clearly, no leader in their right mind would do that intentionally but they do it all the same. The number one way to de-motivate a member of your team or organization is to micro-manage them. Micro-managing sends the message that they can’t be trusted. It says they just aren’t good enough to do the job on their own.
People have a built in need to be valued and trusted; micro-managing sends the message that they are neither. If you feel the need to micro-manage your people there can really only be two possibilities: either you hired the wrong people or you’re not giving them the skills they require to succeed. Micro-managing exposes the weakness of the leader, not the weakness of their people.
Great companies and leaders know that developing their people takes time. There are two types of mindsets in business; one says that we “spend time on” our people and the other says we “invest time with” our people.
If you see your people as a time “expense” you’ll likely never do what it takes to develop them. If you see your people as an “investment” then you have a chance to develop them into your organization’s leaders of tomorrow.
Let me be clear about this; if you really want your business to thrive, if you want to build a world class organization then you simply MUST develop your people. It really isn’t optional.
The most current research available shows that less than 25% of employees describe themselves as “fully engaged” and nearly a third say they are “completely disengaged.” Some may even be “actively disengaged” meaning they actually look for ways to damage the organization.
Employees who believe they don’t matter and employees who believe they are not trusted tend to disengage pretty quickly.
Do you really think you can grow your business and be successful when 75% of your people are at best just sort of engaged?
Do you still think developing your people is optional?
I didn’t think so!
I could go into almost any company in the world and ask the leadership of that company what their greatest asset is. Almost without exception they would say their people.
They would say their people make the difference. They would say their people are their “strategic advantage” and they would say developing their people is critical for their long term success.
They say all the right things.
Unfortunately saying it doesn’t get it done. Merely saying it doesn’t accomplish much at all. Companies that want to be good say the right things. Good companies do the right things. Great companies know why they do them and they do them intentionally.
Great companies know that their people NEED to feel worthwhile. They know that even their top performers need positive feedback from time to time. Great companies provide their people with constant and consistent recognition. They don’t recognize their people in their “free time” or “when the have a chance.” They are incredibly intentional about it, they plan for it and they make recognition part of every company gathering.
How do you feed your team’s need for significance?
Great companies regularly offer encouragement to their people. They coach constantly and they coach with a spirt of approval. They make mistakes seem easy to correct and they offer real suggestions on how to do better next time. Companies that develop their people don’t criticize their people without using compassion to soften the blow. They know there is no reason, ever, to tear their people down.
Do you coach your people with an attitude of approval or criticism?
Great companies know that people don’t follow leadership, they follow a leader. Authentic leadership is a “person to person” kind of thing. If the leader doesn’t care about the people they lead then the people they lead won’t care to follow that leader. Authentic leaders never just say they care, they show it and they show it intentionally. Frequently!
How do you show your followers that you care about them?
We’ll continue this topic in the next post. Until then ponder these questions and remember, if your people don’t think you’re a leader then you’re most likely not.
I am not a big fan of sayings or clichés. Two of my least favorite are the saying that says ”plan your day and work your plan” and the cliche that says “if you don’t have a plan to succeed then you do have a plan to fail.”
The problem with both of those, as with many sayings and clichés, is that they happen to be true.
I’m also a big believer that you should avoid using the words “always” and “never.” Those are pretty big words and there are usually exceptions to both of them.
That said, I would say that if you don’t have a plan to succeed you’re almost always going to fail. I’d also say that if you don’t have a plan for your day then your day is never going to go according to plan.
Now, here’s the problem with this whole planning thing: it takes time. If you’re like most people, you would much rather be out there “doing it” then sitting around planning to do it well.
The most successful people fight the urge to “just do it” and instead first develop a plan to do it well. Here’s one thing that almost all successful people have in common – they see planning as an investment of their time and not an expense of their time.
To increase your chance at true, long-lasting success you should have short, medium and long-range goals and plans to achieve all of them. Your plan for tomorrow does not have to be elaborate, it could just be a couple of bullet points. Your long-range plan should be as detailed as you can make it.
Whether it is a one-day plan or the plan for the rest of your life, the key to making it work is to include action steps along the way. No plan, not even the best plan, succeeds if it is not implemented.
Each day you should be getting closer to a goal and as each day begins you should know specifically what you will accomplish that day in order for that to happen.
You should also know that almost certainly your plan will not survive intact. It will require changes along the way. Circumstances, events and even people in your life will change and you will likely want and need to make some adjustments. The fact that your plan will change on your path to success is not a valid reason for not making a plan.
If you’ve never had much success at developing plans then start small. Just make a plan for one day this week. Adjust it as required throughout the day. Do that a few weeks in a row and then make a plan for an entire week. You’ll quickly discover that your plan will seldom stay together exactly as you had in mind. You will also discover that you still had more control over your day then if you had no plan at all.
Here’s the bottom line: if you’re planning to succeed then you had best be planning!
I once worked with a guy who managed someone much older and more experienced than him. The more experienced guy was always offering suggestions and sometimes professionally challenging the ideas of his manager.
This was very frustrating to the younger less experienced manager and when the older employee finally retired, the younger manager announced to no one in particular, “The next person I hire for that job isn’t going to know anything about it.” “They won’t have any ideas and they won’t challenge anything I say.”
Well it turns out he wasn’t actually kidding. He hired a very inexperienced person who meekly did as he was told. The inexperienced new employee failed in his job.
So did the much more experienced manager.
Without saying it in so many words, what the manager was saying was that he wanted to hire someone who was functionally stupid. They might be very smart but not about the task they were hired for. They would just do the job and not “get in the way” of a busy manager.
A pair of Swedish professors are trying to make the case that these functionally stupid people are the best team players because they just “do want they are told” and never disrupt workflow by asking questions.
Isn’t that crazy! Who in the world would want to hire someone that never had ideas, was afraid to suggest solutions or even offer an occasional differing opinion.
A person like that would be considered “disengaged” by most leaders. They would bring little additional value to the team beyond completing whatever tasks they were assigned. They are the kind of employees that growing companies cannot afford to have on the payroll.
Most managers and leaders will tell you that they want people around them who will ask questions and even challenge them. They say they want people who can think on their feet and offer solutions to problems. They claim to want people who have the courage to “tell it like it is.”
Yet experienced managers and even some experienced leaders hire very smart people and unintentionally turn them into functionally stupid people.
They do that by not really listening to their employees ideas, by criticizing their ideas when they do listen and just subtly sending the message that it’s my way or else. Many times the manager or leader isn’t even aware that’s what they are doing.
Research shows that as a result only 31% of people will express their ideas, thoughts or suggestions to their boss. Far fewer than that will ever dare to actually challenge their boss. They have just learned over time that the boss “isn’t really into that” kind of interaction.
If you’re a leader who is hoping to grow your organization then you must know you can’t afford functionally stupid and disengaged people on your team. Some might sneak past the interview process and others may develop those tendencies after being hired through no fault of yours.
The one thing YOU can’t afford to do is turn a productive, engaged employee into a functionally stupid one by ignoring or devaluing their ideas and suggestions. Think about it like this: you put up a “suggestion box” and then criticize some ideas and simply ignore the others.
How long do you think it would take before the “suggestions” stopped coming? Well guess what – if you are a leader you have a “suggestion box” sign hanging around your neck and it works just like one hanging on the wall.
If you ignore the well intentioned ideas and suggestions of your team they will go away… if you’re lucky. If you’re not lucky they will stay and become functionally stupid.
Which would you prefer?
How good are you? Are you so good at what you do that you no longer need to practice or prepare? If you even thought about answering yes to that important question then you may want to rethink your answer.
I’ve written before about a very, very successful salesperson named Tom. The truth is, he wasn’t just a successful salesperson, he was a successful person. In every area of his life.
He sold insurance for over 40 years and for each and every one of those 40 years he was his company’s top salesperson. He once showed me one of his quarterly commission checks that was well over $1,000,000. A quarterly check! He averaged over $6,000,000 annual income, selling insurance!
Now he didn’t show me that check to brag or boast about his success. He showed me that check so I would understand what was possible if I was willing to work for it.
Years ago I ran into Tom at a large office building in Downtown Minneapolis. This was about a year or two before Tom would retire and he was standing in a hallway talking to himself.
Being the kind sensitive guy that I was my first thought was “the poor old guy, he’s talking to himself, he ought to hang it up.”
I walked up to Tom and asked him what he was up to. As was often the case his answer surprised me. He said that he was getting ready to make a sales call and he was practicing what he was going to say.
Can you imagine that! Here’s a guy who in his career had probably made thousands of sales calls, with tremendous success. Yet he was still preparing, still practicing his craft. Still doing everything he could do to get better.
He went inside to make his sales call and I walked away once again amazed. I couldn’t help but think to myself that his dedication to preparation was one of the keys to his success. He simply wouldn’t think of making a presentation without proper preparation and practice.
How about you? Do you “wing it?” Do you “know your stuff” so well that you no longer require preparation?
Really?
What Tom taught me that day was that no one will ever be that good. No one will ever be that smart. If you’re “doing it on the fly” then you’re hurting your chances for success. That’s true no matter what the “it” is. That’s true if the “it” is in your personal life or your professional life. You must be prepared to succeed!
So… let me ask you again. How good are you?
I read with great interest a story in the Sunday paper about the success of a local company. This is a huge, very well known company that has been very successful for a long time. The story highlighted their recent success in a relatively new market for them, specifically the snack market.
One of the representatives from the company cited the following reason for their unprecedented growth in this market: ”The snack market is growing globally because of the increasing time poverty among consumers. We all have less time to prepare proper meals at home.”
The words “time poverty” instantly caught my attention. I had never seen a lack of time described that way. My first thought was “what a load of you know what.” Time poverty certainly had to be the invention of some clever marketing person hoping to give poor time managers “permission” to pig out on food they probably shouldn’t be eating.
So I did a bit of research on “time poverty” and discovered that not only is it a problem in the United States it is in fact a “crisis.”
Now THAT is ridiculous!
Much of the research said that people today are over-loaded with choices on how to spend their time and lack the ability to choose what they do and when they do it.
Now THAT is completely ridiculous!
Poverty is defined as: The state of being extremely poor or the state of being inferior in quality or insufficient in amount.
There simply cannot be an ever increasing crisis of Time Poverty because there is not an ever decreasing amount of time!
What we do have is an ever increasing level of poor judgement. We play the “victim” because we have so many TV channels that we just don’t have time to watch it all. We complain of a lack of time…to our “friends” on Facebook for 3 or more hours a day.
We have companies like the one in this story telling people it is so normal and acceptable to be a crappy time manager that we make “snacks” just for people like you.
The subtle message there is that you can’t succeed at managing your time. You’ll never be capable of “choosing” so just give up and pig out.
Well guess what – YOU DO have a choice, lots of them in fact and you do have the full ability to make them. Don’t buy into this garbage about “time poverty” because it just ain’t so!
No one in the world has more time than you. No one in the world has even one more minute in the day than you. Not one single person.
What someone may have is the ability to prioritize better than you. They may have real goals and plans that help guide those priorities. You can give yourself those tools too.
It’s just a choice you have to make. I’d urge you to make it today.
Now that’s NOT ridiculous!
I wasn’t going to write a post for Monday this week. Monday is a holiday in the United States and I figured no one in the U.S. would read it anyway.
Then I figured there were a lot of unbalanced people who won’t unplug even on a holiday. So I’m writing this for the people who will be reading it. If you’re not reading it that’s okay too because I didn’t write it for you.
I remember years ago asking for some advice from one of the most successful people I’ve ever met. He was an insurance salesperson. Not just any insurance salesperson mind you but perhaps the most successful salesperson in the history of selling.
He sold insurance for over 40 years and for each and every one of those 40 years he was his company’s top salesperson. He once showed me one of his quarterly commission checks that was well over $1,000,000. A quarterly check! He averaged over $6,000,000 annual income, selling insurance!
Now he didn’t show me that check to brag or boost about his success. He showed me that check so I would understand what was possible if I was willing to work for it.
The advice I was seeking was in regards to an upcoming presentation that was of great importance to me. I asked what I could do to improve my odds of success. His advice confused me until I asked him for further explanation.
The advice he gave me was to go home and take a nap each day until the day of the presentation. I remember thinking “that’s it, a nap” – that’s the best you got? That’s bizarre!
I asked him to explain and he responded with a series of questions. He asked if I knew what I was talking about – I answered “of course”. He asked if I had succeeded with this type of presentation in the past – I answered “frequently”. He then asked when I was most likely to make a mistake – I answered “when I’m tired”.
He just smiled.
It was in that moment that his “bizarre” advice made perfect sense. He went on to explain that the most successful people he knew had balance in their lives. They worked hard but they also worked hard at not working. They very intentionally stopped what they were doing from time to time in order that they might do nothing. Or at least do something very different than they did to earn a living.
So if you’re on holiday I hope you’re not reading this. If you’re on holiday and you’re reading this I hope you relax and enjoy the rest of your day.
If you just can’t make yourself stop then ask yourself this: if you can’t stop working long enough to enjoy your success are you really successful?
That’s it for this little post – I’ll be busy doing nothing until Tuesday!
BTW….I’ll write more about my friend Tom, the insurance salesperson. Every conversation with him was filled with life lessons I’ll share in future posts.
