The Secret to Business Success, Strength Through Codependency
Business’s and their employees are codependent- The business needs to communicate clearly and regularly what they want to achieve and always set an example. Teaching people how to be a success is helping them help you and your business.
ARE YOU TEACHING YOUR PEOPLE?
I recently rung up the local timber supplier about placing an order for fencing materials and needed to get the right size nails for the retaining boards to run along the bottom. I asked the guy taking the order, how long do the nails need to be relative to the width of the retaining boards? He said, “you will have to go online to find that out”, so I guessed (how wrong could I be?)
The order was for about $2,500 and was for 10 items, but the guy taking the order was clearly not well trained with how to do a cash sale, the trade card they promote and the search features on their point of sale system. The whole process was frustrating and while he was polite, he was very slow and not well trained which resulted in it taking just over 30 minutes. His parting comment was ‘I will ring you back with a confirmed delivery time.’
Later that day, when I realized that hadn’t happened, it was past 5pm and they were closed for the day. The following morning, I rang them back only to find the order hadn’t been saved into the system which meant it took nearly the same amount of time all over again.
This story is not about my poor customer experience, which was indisputably bad, but rather about the loss of opportunity and efficiency through poor training and dysfunctional systems.
ARE YOUR PEOPLE TEACHING YOU?
People bring initiative and improvement into a business in many different ways. Sometime it may be that an employee wants to take a short cut, use an unapproved app, do a work around. As frustrating as it is when you find someone is not supporting your designated business
process, you have a choice of how you act. A smart business will always try to find out “why?” and establish what was the reason for someone not doing what they are supposed to. Often it is lack of SUFFICIENT training and understanding the consequence of them not following the correct process. Sometimes it will be that they don’t know the correct process or they are frustrated because the process isn’t good. Then other times it will just be laziness. Always look for any cause, that will result in you being able to improve your business. Equally, don’t shy away from communicating. Sloppy practices, disinterest and laziness has no place in your business and could result in a disciplinary process.
ARE YOU BOTH WORKING TOGETHER?
Is your business listening to its employees? Is it asking employees what customers mostly want? What they complain about? What problems they have with internal systems that cause them or your customers the most inconvenience? What processes are the most inefficient? What costs the company the most in time, lost customer sales, anything that adds cost, etc? The key to finding out this valuable information and nurturing a positive employee culture is to ask the right questions, really take time to understand the answers and then make sure you take action to implement improvement.
This is the long game and you really need to be consistent in your approach and repeat this process over and over. Continually support this by communicating to everyone exactly what the goal is and how you are going to measure that you are making progress and on track. Share success generously but don’t tolerate sabotage or lack of effort.
