Super Jobs for You

Every business can do better. Research suggests that there are 12 areas where a company might make slight changes and see dramatic improvement in a very short period of time. In no special order, here is my list.

Wrong people: Every company has someone who is not working as hard as he or she can, working at cross purposes with others, or not doing the job he or she was were hired to do. This person can be at any level of the company. Managers are not immune, and neither are owners.

If people are not working as hard as they should be, there is a motivation problem. If someone is working at cross-purposes with others, then there needs to be a clarification of goals. If they are not doing the job they were hired to do, they might have too much on their plate, they might not have clear objectives or they might not know how to do the job.

Clutter and mess: Nothing impedes performance like messy desks, stacks of papers, files and miscellaneous stuff in an office, warehouse or production facility.

Lack of processes, procedures and systems: The difference between the successful and unsuccessful is that the successful firms have enough systems in place to grow the business without killing innovation.

Winning is not defined: Too many organizations work toward something that is not clear, not prioritized and not orchestrated. What is winning in your organization? Does everyone know what that means? What are they expected to contribute to the effort?

Nonexistent performance evaluations: When a person who supervises a person says, “You’re doing okay,” the comment does not replace a formal, written performance evaluation. An evaluation is a process in which each employee has goals, is coached and is expected to achieve them as discussed and agreed by their immediate supervisor. If you want to boost performance, take the time necessary to perform scheduled, written evaluations of every employee.

Poor financial reporting: When key documents relating to the financial health of the company are either late or non-existent, it is pretty hard to run a business.

Lack of alignment: When departments are working at cross purposes, with objectives that are not in congruence, performance will suffer. Simply having each department have written goals that are shared across the company will help solve that inhibitor.

No prospecting system: If everything begins with a sale, every sale begins by identifying a prospect. Eliminating the wait-and-see approach and replacing it with a proactive, outgoing marketing program to efficiently identify and qualify prospects will save valuable resources and increase the opportunity for making the company money.

Wrong customers: Many companies have the wrong customers. These customers want more resources than the company can provide profitably, yet the company cannot identify those customers that are not worth doing business with.

No sergeants: Every successful organization has sergeants, individuals who preserve the values of the company, communicate and enforce policies and procedures, and most important, get things done.

No celebration of success: Performance is enhanced when organizations take time to celebrate things they have done right. Without these pleasant interruptions, people become disengaged and wonder why they should work so hard.

Concentrated decision making: High-performing organizations push decision-making to the lowest possible level. When all the decisions are made by a single individual, the entire organization suffers.
Despite the tough economy, many organizations are more successful than ever. Learn from those firms and make your business a better performing one.

Super Job For You gives information on how to get a job and how to hire good people. If you are looking for Cast Parts Jobs look at this website. This Castings Blog will give you more information you can use for manufacturing.

Tom Hill’s Eaglezine arrives each Friday morning via email. It’s a short, fast paced single page newsletter that always has at least one nugget of knowledge worth pondering.

Last week’s issue had an interesting excerpt from a book written by Dave Ramsey, owner of The Lampo Group. Dave writes from personal experience as a CEO about the Five Enemies of Unity: Poor communication; Gossip; Unresolved disagreements; Lack of a shared purpose; and Sanctioned incompetence. The company you lead may have none, some or all of these Enemies of Unity.

The phrase “Sanctioned Incompetence” literally leapt of my computer screen. Over the long Memorial Day weekend I pondered what I meant and how it happens.

It starts when a company hires a person without written criteria for the position. Often we laugh (or cry, depending) when we deal with other organizations that have hired someone clearly not qualified because the only visible requirement was that the person was breathing when they showed up for the interview. But are we guilty of doing this ourselves?

We perpetuate the problem by having the interviewee talk to others in the company without any type of standardized interviewing system to compare the answers given. We fail to perform background and reference checks. We fail to make sure that the interviewee has the competence, knowledge, skills, talents, interpersonal skills and passion to do the job.

The lucky person joins the company. However, once on board, there is no orientation program, no one to explain how things work, save his or her immediate supervisor. We assume that that the immediate supervisor will guide and mentor the new employee, because we think that is the role and responsibility of the supervisor. The supervisor, however, is already busy doing their own work and leaves the new employee to pretty much fend for themselves. Does this sound familiar?

The new employee, meanwhile, is excited to be part of something new and is very interested in making a contribution, to prove that the decision to add them to the payroll is a smart one, one that will pay dividends to the company and make the supervisor look good.

However, the supervisor does not have much time to spend with the new hire. A promised job description never materializes. Concrete goals and expected results are never communicated except only in passing and those are never followed up writing. Given to the nature of the oral communication, deniability is available for both parties.

When asked to see and organizational chart to see where they fit in, the new hire is told that one does not exist, that it isn’t needed and that anytime a question needs an answer, to speak to their immediate supervisor.

Formal performance evaluations are never conducted by the supervisor. The feedback that is provided is vague, communicated only in passing. When the supervisor gets mad or stops talking with his or her direct report, the new employee learns to recognize that they have done something wrong, but what was done wrong and what should be done differently is never explained.

The new hire notices that others in the company don’t show much enthusiasm for their jobs or the company. They observe that behaviors that should generate warnings, write-ups and termination go unnoticed, unpunished and therefore, are tolerated and acceptable.

What the employee soon learns is that path of mediocrity will keep his or her paycheck coming. To be bold and aggressive will eclipse their immediate supervisor and bring wrath; to do nothing at all risks the loss of the job. So the employee accepts the fact that staying in the sweet spot of safety is the best course.

All of this is part of the culture of the organization, established and perpetuated by the person at the top, who allows and permits sanctioned incompetence to flourish.

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It would be wonderful to believe that success is something that every owner strives to achieve. Success is a relative term, and most privately held businesses might consider survival in this economy a success.

Clues for business failure are always present, and most of time the person at the top is the one who has left clues for the detectives to piece together.

Workforce Management magazine highlighted a book entitled Why Smart Executives Fail. Written by Sydney Finkelstein of the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, the book states that failures of leadership can cascade into the collapse of a company, the loss of a lot of money, perhaps millions of dollars and the end of employment for hard-working well intentioned employees.

One way that the owner fails the business is to tolerate a weak business model. All too often the concept of having a solid product or service delivered through strong distribution channels to a committed client base, developed at a reasonable cost and sold for a profit with reasonable cash flow isn’t considered as a complete system; only individual parts are considered. When challenged, the owner goes into defensive mode, denying that anything could possibly be wrong with the fundamentals of the business.

The May issue of Fortune Small Business includes the story of Debbie Dusenberry, owner of Curious Sofa, a home furnishings store in Kansas City, Kansas. A review of her financials shows that for the last eight years her business has lost money, despite growing to almost $1 million a year in revenue. Her costs, including rent, are too high. Despite being in charge, Debbie has, apparently, not taken the time to gain the level of understanding and knowledge she needs to run her business financially. She continues to work hard, long hours in a broken business model.

A second way for an owner to fail the business is to have a leadership team at odds. This refers not just to partners who own shares but also senior managers who are at odds about how to conduct business. Usually one side is invested in the status quo and the other side is interested in challenging the current way of doing things and wants a fresh approach. Put another way, one side sees things broken and the other says it isn’t.

A third way to fail the business might be considered to run counter to the second, and that is the elimination of all those in the company who do not fall in lock-step with the leader. It’s one thing to disagree and then work through those challenges; it is another to resist and to continue on the fight against what was decided.

Allowing the fighting to continue is the fourth way to fail the business, and the fifth way is the elimination of those who bring fresh perspective to how the business could operate. Every business needs “insultants” who are willing to look at who things are and ask ‘why?’ and well as asking ‘why not?’ without fear of being branded disloyal.

Another way to fail the business is to refuse to address festering problems. Usually these fall into the personnel or human resources area, with the failure to address employees who aren’t doing what they are paid to do, or people who have outlived their usefulness to the organization, or people in management positions who clearly aren’t capable or interested in managing. But failure could also demonstrate itself with a lack of a clear vision, a hazy mission statement and shifting values and standards.

The seventh way to fail the business is not having a plan. Successful businesses have plans and measure their progress towards their goals on a regular basis. It is the businesses way of keeping score in business. It is also a useful management tool to provide direction for those employed by the company, much better than saying “Blindly follow me, everyone!”

The last way, and perhaps the most devastating, is the clear display of a lack of passion or energy for the business. To demonstrate through word and deed that the business is no longer of interest to the owner, no longer has a place of priority and is more of a bother or nuisance than anything else sends a clear message to the employees that it is perfectly acceptable for them to have the same feelings about their employer that their employer has about them.

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The current issue of Golf Digest has an article by Dr. Bob Rotella titled, “10 Rules for how to win your major (golf tournament).”

These rules apply to golfers at every level as well as those running organizations and those seeking to become leaders.

Of course, golf is not business, but there are some similarities. First, golf is highly competitive; a golfer plays against those in the foursome or tournament and against his or her own record. In a public firm, that means increasingly better quarterly results.

A second similarity is to be as efficient as possible, using available resources to achieve the lowest score (fewest shots) to win. So it is in business. If you ever wonder why decision-makers in companies are reluctant to add more staff, it is because people come at a cost. Too many people create bureaucracy, slowing down decision-making and the ability to execute quickly.

The third similarity is that those who practice more tend to win. Talent is great, but even a not-so-great golfer (and there are many) knows that to improve from bad to fair to good, requires taking time to practice. In business, it is the same thing: Ask any solid sales person how they got to be that way and they will respond that they practice. If they don’t, the skills drift away.

In Bob Rotella’s article, he writes about what a person needs to do to win. These same rules apply to businesses.

The first rule is to believe you can win. The second rule is that winning is defined for your organization. The two are linked.

Rotella tells his own story about finishing third-from-last in the 1985 Charlottesville, Va. city championship. Out of curiosity, he followed the leaders to compare his game to theirs. He watched for 18 holes and realized that these individuals hit the ball farther and straighter, hit better bunker shots, and chipped and putted better.

He left the golf course believing that if those guys could win so could he, if he practiced and got better. Rotella did just that, winning that same championship in 1993 with a 12-foot putt on the 18th hole. He kept his eyes on the prize.

The third rule is not to be lulled into thinking nothing matters but results. Why? Results aren’t the same as having a solid organization. How many organizations succeed in spite of themselves? Sometimes the results hide problems that can kill a business. Look at the auto industry as a recent example.

Patience is the fourth rule. Golfers who get overly aggressive tend to make mistakes. Golfers who take their time and play for the long haul, succeed. Whether on the golf course or in the boardroom, patient play wins.

Everything counts. That’s the fifth rule. On the golf course, the only true measure of success is when every stroke is counted. Things like “Mulligan” and “do-overs” aren’t real in golf. In business there are very few, if any, second chances.

The sixth rule is to find peace. A golf course should be a place of sanctuary. The game of golf is something to enjoy. Otherwise, what is the point of playing? The same is true in business. Those that dislike the industry, clients, vendors or the products and services, need to find another place where happiness will prevail. The most successful enjoy what they do.

Embracing personality is the seventh rule. Successful people in golf and in business know who they are. They don’t try to be someone or something they are not.

From time to time everyone gets unsolicited advice about how to do better on the golf course. It might be a comment about how the golf club is gripped, or the proper stance, swing or putt, or how to clean the club. In business it is the same way. The eighth rule is to avoid these well-intentioned people.

Having a routine in golf and business is important. That means having processes and procedures that work to achieve the desired goals. The ninth rule is to have a routine to lean on because having the foundation helps when tough times happen, on the golf course or in business.

Finding someone who believes in you is the 10th rule. Successful people have a mentor of some sort who sees things in us that we did not see ourselves. They then coached us to take full advantage of those strengths. They empower us with belief.

Ben Hogan, one of the best golfers of all time, considered quitting several times early in his career because he did not feel he was providing for his wife the way he should have. His wife Valerie wouldn’t hear of it, and she encouraged Ben on. The rest is history.

Super Jobs For You gives information on how to get a job and how to hire good people. If you are looking for a Die Casting Job look at this website. This Die Casting Blog will give you more information you can use for manufacturing.