95 days until Christmas…
If you are like most small business owners and managers, you started out 2012 with awesome plans:
We want to grow our business, install that new computer program that will save us time, survey our customers and improve the service they get, (insert your goals here)!
How did these work out? Did your company move those “rocks” to improve your revenue, profits, customer satisfaction? Or did you and your staff get bogged down in the day to day of the business?
First, don’t despair—you still have a bit more than 90 DAYS left this year to work on one TOP ROCK before the holidays.
Secondly, don’t blame yourself, blame your People systems. (Most) employees do not miraculously take your good idea, find a solution to best achieve the goal, and the run with the ball until the touchdown is scored. (If you have someone that does this, congratulations!)
The solution:
Change your Culture to one where your People focus on doing more than just their daily “job”:
How:
You need more than a one day strategic planning retreat or manager training, you need to implement the People systems that:
- focus the entire organization on priority goals
- identify the ROCKS it will take to achieve those goals (one per quarter)
- assign specific action steps to individual employees (delegate!)
- coordinate and monitor everyone’s efforts and deliverables to achieve those important ROCKS
- hold people accountable to complete their assigned responsibilities
- learn and improve the process
Most employees (and managers and owners) find themselves on the hamster wheel each day, taking care of customers and having meetings and putting out fires. Then each quarter passes while we wistfully think about all those projects on our “wish list.”
You have to expect every employee to contribute to implementing projects and solutions for process improvement. You need a management process and rhythm to let people know “what else” they can do and get them doing it.
How do you start?
Step One- Define your Strategy and Goals- Mastering the Rockefeller Habits is a good resource to identify your 5 year strategy and one year goals.
Step Two- Design, Define and Implement the 6 steps above that will change your organization’s habits to align everyone with achieving your goals
If you are in the Buffalo area, we are offering a three night workshop (Oct 3, Oct 17, Nov 14) to develop your People Plan™ that will put People systems in place to achieve your ROCKS.
Image courtesy of Danilo Rizzuti at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
