June 2014

How to get employees to be more creative and drive continuous improvement

Jun 25, 2014 Comments

Continuous improvement and creativity go hand-in-hand. Entrepreneurs and business owners are typically creative people in the business sense and usually craft their businesses from an idea. It often takes a lot of trial and error to develop a winning formula for your business. Even though there are best practices that can be followed from a business strategy and management perspective, each business has its own personality and thus there is really no cookie-cutter approach.

As businesses grow and take on more employees. The business owner can no longer be involved in every aspect in detail of the business. He or she must rely on forward thinking employees who care enough about the business to want to make improvements.

There are three key components that affect the ability of employees to be creative, and continuously improve how they do things.

The first component is their human type. Certain types of people enjoy change and other types prefer keeping things as they are.

The second component is the level of self esteem and self confidence of the person. The higher these elements are in the employee, the easier it is for them to take risks and try new things.

The third component is the culture of the company, based on the leadership style of the business owner and top management. It is not enough to expect people to come forth with suggestions for improvements. The business leader must create a platform for people to engage in continuous improvement discussions so they can draft well thought out proposals to management.

In fact, the essence of teamwork is not only to have the right synergy among team members in order to execute well on a project. Equally important is for team members to be able to meet together and find opportunities for improvement that will keep the organization more nimble and effective.

Even the types of people who don’t like change, often have good ideas for how to improve things. They’re usually reliable dependent workers who you know will perform their tasks in a consistent fashion.

To have all employees contribute to continuous improvement business leaders simply need to organize regular problem-solving or continuous improvement meetings that uses a structured approach that is efficient and gets everyone to participate.

Business leaders can also raise people’s self-esteem and self-confidence by coaching them to do more challenging work and then giving regular positive feedback.

The more that the business leader delegates responsibilities and decision making. The more people will fill engaged and committed to the business and will want to ensure the company success.

If management is going to encourage employees to contribute their ideas for continuous improvement management must act on these ideas or let people know why they can’t. Even with all the new applications for sharing information amongst employees and management, is still in some ways, just like the old suggestion box. People do not see their ideas taken seriously. They will just develop a poor attitude towards management and the attempt to have them participate in idea generation.

In today’s global economy is imperative that every organization utilizes all its resources to continuously improve and find new ways to do things. If your competition is doing it. And you’re not. You are to big disadvantage and risk becoming insignificant to your clients.

Everyone can improve something every day that does not require approval from management. It could be just how customers being served to learning a shortcut on a computer program that will save time. We just need to have the mindset to want to improve and look for opportunities that are all around us.

Stephen Goldberg

How to Establish Personal and Organizational Values

Jun 18, 2014 Comments

When personal and organizational values are aligned and shared by key stakeholders great things can happen.

In my last video and article I spoke about two business leaders who claimed their company success was in great part due to their well communicated corporate values.

Creating corporate values is a pretty straightforward affair. You of course need to afford the time it takes to do it. And this is where many businesses fail, as a high percentage of business owners and leaders are too busy dealing with the day-to-day business matters.

Once you understand the benefits and the importance of defining your corporate values will set aside the time it takes to get it done.

Just last week I facilitated a values definition meeting for customer service department. Within two hours they had shared their key personal values and agreed on their five top departmental values.

The next step for them will be to define what each of those values means so they can be lived by the team members. Here are the steps to go through to set the values for your organization. It is imperative to have a skilled facilitator run these sessions. I good facilitator will set ground rules to make sure that the participants stay on track and come to a consensus.

Here is the process I use:

Personal Values

The first step is to meet with your team and brainstorm the personal values of each team member.

I like to start with a long list of personal values and have each person classify the values by order of importance using high, medium or low importance.

From this list. I then have them rate the high importance, values on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the most important. Then I asked them to choose their top five most important values from the weighted list.

I then have each person share their top five values and write them on a flipchart. We then can see what the most common shared values are. Next I ask each person to choose one of the values and write down why that value is important to them. I have each person then share what they wrote and asked for comments from the others. This helps each person understand how each one thinks and helps build mutual understanding and communication.

Organizational Values

I follow the same process for setting the organizational or departmental values as I did with the personal values. The differences I start with a list of values that are different than the personal values. If you do not start with a list of values, you can always have the group brainstorm a list and then go from there. Having a prepared list facilitates the process and saves time.

Once we have listed the most important organizational or departmental values on the flip chart, it’s often easy to see the shared most important values. Often, there may be three or four that stand out and then you have five or six that may need prioritizing. I would suggest having between four and six key values and not more.

One way to prioritize the list of remaining values is to have the group go through the same exercise of waiting each value as before. This usually narrows down the list to two or three top values.

Values Definition

Once the top organizational department values are determined ask each person to write down a description of each value. I ask the question, what would other people see happening if everyone in your organization or department was putting into practice these values?

Depending on the size of the group. You can then have people pair up and take one value and summarize the definition of the value based on hearing what others had to say about that value. Or you could assign one person per value to take what each person wrote and summarize this in a statement. They would do this is an assignment and report back at the next meeting.

Broadcasting Your Values

It is important to broadcast your values and make them visible. A good example is Zappos who proudly showcases their values in their work setting and publicizes them. This creates a culture that strives to live the values and results in a better workplace as well as superior organizational performance.

Strategic Vision.

Defining organizational and departmental values that are linked to personal values is a key step in creating a strategic vision and plan. It’s a great way to engage people and rally them behind a purpose and mission.

It is also a key element in building an autonomous team that practices continuous improvement.

Stephen Goldberg

Are Happy And Engaged Employees More Productive?

Jun 05, 2014 Comments

Last week I attended the C2MTL event on creativity and commerce in Montréal. This event was packed full of information, education and entertainment on innovative ways to do business. There were great speakers from all over the world and many spoke about how to use the latest information technologies to better plan and manage businesses and organizations.

Two of the speakers spoke about the importance of company culture and values towards creating not only a fun and happy workplace, but also how it impacted the performance and bottom-line of the company.

The first was Tony Hsieh of Zappos. One of Tony’s most important values is to have fun at work. In fact. He sold his first business LinkExchange to Microsoft for $265 million mainly he claims because it was no longer fun going to work. He obviously has changed that Zappos and fun is a core value that all employees embrace. But of course fun is not enough to make a profitable business and their other values reflect more the focus on the customer. Zappos are famous for their customer service and Tony claims this flows out of the values of the company.

Here’s a video of the employees talking about the company and its values.

Here is an interview with Tony Hsieh by Barbara Walters

Ray Davis is the CEO of Umpqua Bank and he also spoke about the importance of company culture, values and connection with the community. After all Umpqua Bank is a community bank with a strong focus on being different, and providing a unique customer service experience.

Umpqua Bank is clearly a bank like no other on the planet and it plainly shows how stepping out of the ordinary can produce extraordinary results.

Here is the Umpqua Bank video

Here is a video of Jeanne Bliss interviewing Ray Davis, CEO of Umpqua Bank

In this article from the New York Times titled, “Why do you Hate Work?” , there is clear evidence based on studies that employee engagement has a tremendous impact on organizational performance and business results. Happy employees are more engaged employees and this article and the studies referred to clearly indicate there is great room for improvement.

Maximizing Your Return on Training and Development of Employees

Jun 01, 2014 Comments

Training and development is an essential element of organizational performance. Often, though training does not produce the expected results, which means improved performance of the employee on the job. This is especially true for behavioral skills, which is often harder to change and to measure.

Three steps to success

There are three things management needs to do in order to ensure that the desired results is achieved from the training of employees.

The first thing is to clarify expectations by setting goals and defining what the expected outcome of the training will be. This needs to be communicated to those receiving the training so they understand what is expected of them, as well as the benefits to both the organization and themselves.

The training program.

Training works best when it is spaced over time, rather than a one day a workshop. This approach allows both the trainer and the trainee to adjust themselves to sure that they will meet the expectations and goals the training program and of the organization.

Follow-up plan.

The third component of a successful training program is to plan a follow-up schedule in order to measure if the desired skills and behaviors are being applied on the job. Follow-up plan should include measurement of results that are linked to the original objectives of the training program.

Management needs to communicate the follow-up schedule with the employee and set specific goals to be achieved within that timeframe.

By following the simple plan of setting goals and expectations for the training, monitoring the progress of the training and then putting in place a follow-up system, you can ensure that your training program will produce the desired results.

Monthly Archives: June 2014