Business Owners will often tell us that their employees “don’t care as much about the business as I (the owner) care about it.” The underlying issue to this statement is employee performance. Our experience with hundreds of business owners has revealed that poor performance is usually a mix of three distinct problems.
1. Wrong employee, or right employee in the wrong role:
Employees must be a fit for the values and culture of the business, no training or technical prowess will overcome this truth. On the other hand, we may have an employee with a ‘great fit,’ and still have performance issues. Frequently this is because their job description is not a good match for their personality style or their natural strengths. Use a simple DiSC profile and Gallup’s Strengthfinder to assess your team. Then create alignment between the employee’s natural gifts and the roles and responsibilities you assign.
2. No job descriptions, lack of written expectations or processes
Owners and Entrepreneurs, get the job assignments, process and procedures out of your head and on to paper. We must be able to measure good vs bad outcomes, and show our teams how they are doing with daily or at least weekly progress reports. If our employees are not performing well, and they don’t know it, the leaders are the problem.
3. Poor Leadership; no vision, weak delegation, ineffective communication
Listen we all know about Vision, Values, Planning, Goals etc. If we can’t pull out our written Vision for the year, then we don’t have one. Fix this first. Next, if we find ourselves saying, “It’s just easier if I do it myself,” we probably haven’t done item #2 well. We must master delegation and holding people accountable. Fix this next.
Lastly employee effectiveness, “caring about the business,” rises significantly when they have clearly communicated roles and goals, and timely and effective feedback on how they are doing.
Simple, but not easy. If your employees ‘don’t care’ enough, start working on these today.
XM Truth: Employees will care as much about the business as we lead and inspire them to care.
Leaders, we must address these issues if we are going to spend any time on the Xtra Mile.