Tag Archives: Empower

How Do You Encourage Employees to Take Full Responsibility for their Jobs? Five Points

Situation: A CEO is discouraged because employees are neither taking initiative nor holding themselves accountable for results. They see potential problems, but don’t act to either prevent or resolve them. They continually bring situations to the CEO and expect the CEO to solve the problem or save the day.  What have others done to shift responsibility and accountability to staff? How do you encourage employees to take full responsibility for their jobs?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • There are two important questions to ask:
    • Is this a situation that includes a large number of employees or just a few? If it’s just a few then these situations can be handled individually. If more than a few then systemic changes may be necessary.
    • Are all employees clear on their responsibilities and what is expected of them? Is there written documentation on responsibilities associated with specific roles or individuals? Has this been communicated to individual employees during performance reviews?
  • It is essential that direction and individual responsibility be clearly stated and understood. Encourage dialogue once direction or instruction is given to test understanding. Important direction should be documented in writing.
  • Have clear core values been established that guide both the company and individual responsibility and decisions? Have these core values been publicized and posted in break  areas as well as work areas? Use the core values to assess employees’ work to reinforce emphasis.
  • Assure that employees are clearly empowered to make decisions. This is particularly  important if employees have been subjected to micromanagement in the past.
  • Ask for and encourage dialogue, both in one-on-one situations and in team and company meetings. Make employees part of the decision process so that they feel ownership over their responsibilities. Assure that excellent performance is recognized, rewarded and publicized.

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How Do You Develop and Train Leaders? Ten Suggestions

Situation: Many CEOs face challenges developing and training leaders within their ranks. What guidance can the group give to help guide them improve leadership development? How do you develop and train leaders?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • On the hiring end, pick good people and support them.
  • Empower employees and encourage self-management.
  • Constructively manage the company’s growth rate rather than just “grow as much as you can.” Some growth rates are unsustainable.
    • Estimate the risks and rewards.
    • Consider the pros and cons of growth and manage growth to maximize the pros while minimizing the cons.
  • Respect personality types – not everyone is or wants to be a potential leader.
  • Mentoring – pair leadership candidates with proven leaders.
  • “Response to error” is one of the key values to define. If errors are always used to evaluate individuals, people tend to hide their mistakes or deflect blame. If errors are viewed as a “company resource”, people are more willing to bring them out into the open. Furthermore properly addressing errors are the best opportunity for correction and improvement.
  • Design the compensation system to reward both innovation and leadership.
    • Focus rewards on long-term results. For example, reward sales people on follow-up and quality of service or product actually delivered rather than on just booking the sale.
    • Align rewards with company culture and objectives. This may include profits, sales and production. Alternatives to consider – team vs. individual goals and bonuses, process improvement vs. focus on dollars, and percent of salary represented by bonus or award.
  • Ask the employees what is important to them. Don’t try to guess.
  • Evaluate and adjust the company’s career growth opportunities.
  • Make management thoughts and goals visible. Mentor the next level of management by demonstrating executive thought patterns rather than just sharing the final decision.

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How Do You Maintain a Culture Focused on Quality? Five Points

Situation: Quality is a CEO’s #1 objective for his company. As the company has grown and processes have become more complex with more people involved, consistent quality is becoming an issue. The CEO wants to refocus and reestablish a quality culture to support future growth. What have others done to increase the quality of their product or service? How do you maintain a culture focused on quality?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Trust is a company’s most important commodity. This trumps financial exposure. In case described, the client trusts the company to produce and deliver a quality service upon which they can rely.
  • Go all of the way back into system design – or how any particular product system is set up.
    • Assemble a diverse group to review both the company’s deliverables and the system inputs.
    • Brainstorm everything that can break.
    • Prioritize the list based on potential exposure to the company.
    • Do a deep-dive analysis of the top 5 or 10 exposure areas.
    • Reprioritize after the deep dive has been completed.
    • Fix all issues identified in order of exposure.
    • Repeat the exercise periodically to assure that quality is maintained.
  • Empower and reward anyone who develops improvements in quality control.
  • Shield the company from any exposure over which it has no control. This can be accomplished through language in the company’s service agreements, and through language covering service deliverables.
  • Once the company has shielded itself from an exposure, set up flags in the monitoring systems that will alert the company of events or situations that will impact clients. This allows the company to inform clients of situations that may impact them without making recommendations as to how the client should handle the situation.

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How Do You Improve Communication Skills? Four Strategies

Situation: A CEO wants advice on how to strengthen his communication skills. In particular, he is concerned that occasionally his direction of subordinates is misunderstood. What are the best techniques to communicate clearly and assure that the other party understands not only the direction given, but responds positively to the way that direction is given? How do you improve your communication skills?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • When Delegating equals Empowering, this immediately eases communications.
    • In part because the empowered employee will be more at ease talking and working with the person who delegates.
    • A quick read – The One Minute Manager by Kenneth Blanchard – provides excellent techniques for communicating effectively with subordinates.
  • Before concluding any conversation involving the delegation of a task or responsibility, make sure that both the delegator and the person delegated to repeat back their understanding of the task/responsibility and what is to be accomplished.
    • When a subordinate provides information, say “Let me be sure that I understand you. What I heard was _______. Did I understand you correctly?
    • This helps assure both parties that understanding is mutual.
  • When assigning a task or responsibility to another take one of three tacks:
    • “So that we are on the same page, please repeat for me your understanding of the (task/responsibility) and the deliverables.”
    • “Based on our discussion, what do you see as the next steps? When do you anticipate that you will be able to complete them?”
    • (After the individual has demonstrated that you both have the same understanding, or any discrepancies in understanding have been cleared up) “Thanks, would you please send me an email documenting this?”
  • If a documentation hand-off is involved, go back to the broad task or objective. Ask for their understanding of what is to be accomplished and when this will be done.

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How Do You Boost Intensity and Accountability? Five Solutions

Situation: A CEO is concerned about the intensity and accountability of her team. An employee stock ownership program is in place, and employees are rewarded with bonuses for meeting or exceeding objectives. HR reports that there is a lack of decision-making; employees just sit and talk instead of moving forward. How do you boost intensity and accountability?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Does the current bonus structure include revenue growth? If revenue growth is not part of the incentive program, then this won’t be the focus.
  • What happens when the CEO is away?
    • Assure that the #2 who’s in charge has the same sense of urgency as the CEO and has the confidence to make decisions.
  • The company is at the point where it needs seasoned professionals to run key operations and functions.
    • Ideally this would be an internal promotion, but if there is no internal candidate look to hire from the outside. Hire two new managers – for different teams. Watch how they do with each of their teams to determine whether one can run the whole outfit.
    • This can ignite other employees – those who will catch on to what the new manager is doing and will now get the message.
  • Another CEO empowered people and explained how it worked.
    • They have had to swallow some poor decisions but have learned that they can’t come down on those who make mistakes – it discourages them from taking the risks needed to make decisions.
    • They’ve organized strategic teams to develop the empowerment program with minimal input from top staff. Teams are required have to report on their results 2x week – no exceptions.
    • The CEO hired two key hires who are hard hitting with deep resumes and experience – individuals who have shaken things up.
    • The new managers started in a sheltered situation where they could learn the organization and the people. This was done before they were put in their eventual positions.
  • What are the potential downsides to making this kind of change?:
    • Some sparks will fly.
    • Some will get upset.
    • Be patient with this process – let it happen.

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How Do You Develop an Employee to the Next Level? Four Points

Situation: A CEO has a key employee who wants a higher level of responsibility. Currently this employee is primarily focused on business development. He’s good at this but wants a higher level of experience. The CEO agrees. How do you develop an employee to the next level?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • If you ask this individual what needs to be done, what happens?
    • Revenue is number one. This is where he is focused, but he wants more than this from his role.
    • If this is also the CEO’s primary objective then the CEO needs to back off and direct him to split his time between closing high level opportunities and training his direct reports to be able to close lower-level opportunities on their own.
  • To the CEO – thinking about your own experience, how did you mature to a higher level when you had primary responsibility for business development?
    • Answer: I built and trained staff to do this and delegated these responsibilities to them.
    • Allow this individual and other key managers within the company to do the same thing, and coach them along the way.
    • Empower this individual to build his staff and enable them to take on more of the functions that he no longer wants to handle himself. Allow him to prioritize his time to focus on: hiring and training of his key staff and coaching and supervision as they grow into their new roles.
  • Consider this solution as a larger project manager role. Take a key product and empower this individual to design, build and manage the organization to deliver this product.
  • To frame this solution short-term, start with a 1-on-1. Ask about his vision – what he wants as his role and how he sees building this.
    • Follow by laying this out in terms of the company’s objectives – be specific as to what this looks like.
    • Look for a win / win reconciliation between the CEO’s and the employee’s visions that meet both of their objectives. Get on the same page with this individual, so that this fulfills both of your needs.

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Do Balanced Scorecards Aid Decision-Making? Three Factors

Situation: A company is investigating Balanced Scorecards as a management tool.  They want to get the perspective of others who have used Balanced Scorecards on how these are used and where they are effective and ineffective. Do Balanced Scorecards aid decision-making?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • To make good decisions in times of uncertainty one needs readily available up-to-date information on the key drivers of the business. Balanced Scorecards answer four important questions:
    • How does the customer view us? (Customer metrics)
    • At what must we excel? (Key Performance Indicators and Internal Business Processes)
    • How do we continue to improve and create value? (Learning/Growth & HR metrics)
    • How do we look to our investors? (Financial metrics)
  • To effectively use Balanced Scorecards employees must be empowered to make necessary changes, and there must be an effective system for prioritizing efforts – so that when a company has multiple opportunities they can decide what to do first, second, and so on.
  • Empowering people to make a necessary change
    • To improve project estimating systems, identify those who are best at estimating project timelines and costs. Have them develop a template of their process, focusing on how they complete projects on schedule. Implement this template across your estimating function.
    • To improve project on-time completion, shift the development focus to calendar and, if necessary, narrow specs to hit the deadlines.
    • To focus scope of work issues, decide test procedures up-front then work on deliverables that will determine whether requirements have been met. From this, develop project assumptions and budgets. Create a template that focuses on internal best practices and clones these for other projects.
  • Queuing Systems & Priorities
    • Define the vision of success. Then drill down to what’s most important. Look at impact of different options on the organization and performance. Finally, force this issue – if we can only do three projects what will they be?

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What Can SMBs Do To Empower Women? Six Options

Interview with Linda Gold, CEO, M3iworks

Situation: While women comprise the majority of US society and business customers, they continue to be underrepresented in business and government. For girls growing up, it’s hard to be what you can’t see, so girls and young women don’t see the opportunities that business offers them. What can SMBs do to empower women?

Advice from Linda Gold:

  • Women contribute greatly to the business community, particularly in small and medium-sized businesses which are the principal job creators in the US. For example, in tough times, smart companies and CEOs face outward rather than retreat inward. Women are naturally more collaborative and can be better at networking and building communities of interest that can open up new opportunities. Smart CEOs will leverage this talent.
  • Dr. John Gray (“Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus”) points out that business is like a football game—it’s about getting the ball and running with it. While women know we should be given more credit for our contributions, we need to learn how to take more credit. We need to accept the credit and accolades we receive and deserve. And if a male team member takes “our ball” and runs with it, defense needs to “kick in” and recover the ball. You can only score if the ball is in your possession.
  • Dee Dee Myers, President Clinton’s former Press Secretary gives an example of how to gracefully take credit. When a colleague told her she had done a great job, instead of deflecting the credit, Myers simply and elegantly replied “Thank-you.”
  • Small and medium-sized businesses employ a significant population of women. This gives them the opportunity to raise the profile of their women employees both in the local press, at local social business events, and through social media.
    • The YWCA TWIN Awards – Tribute to Women and Industry – recognize women for excellence in their area of expertise, and for giving back to the community. In Silicon Valley, CEOs nominate their high-achieving executive women for this prestigious TWIN award each year.
  • Girls For A Change (GFC) is a national organization that empowers girls to create social change. GFC encourages young women to design, lead, fund and implement social change projects that tackle issues girls face in their own neighborhoods. The program depends on volunteer coaches – local business, professional and career women – who receive coach training and meet with girls for a 12-week period after school. By publicizing this opportunity within your company or sponsoring a GFC team, SMBs can make a significant contribution.
  • SMBs have a vested interest in encouraging public education to adopt more relevant curriculum and teaching methods. We are in the information age, not the industrial age. We can learn more about opportunities to offer services to and partner with local schools and educational foundations like the Silicon Valley Educational Foundation. We can also lobby for more H-1B visas.

You can contact Linda Gold at [email protected]

Key Words: Empower, Women, Representation, Role Model, Collaboration, Credit, Contribution, NAWBO, YWCA, TWIN, Girls For A Change, Education, Standards, H-1B, Visa

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How Do You Fund Growth? Five Points of Focus

Interview with Hannah Kain, President & CEO, ALOM

Situation: While funding from banks and institutional sources has been challenging in recent years, growing companies need to fund their growth. How have you funded your company’s growth?

Advice from Hannah Kain:

  • We focus on frugality and prevent wWhile funding from banks and institutional sources has been challenging in recent years, growing companies need to fund their growth. How have you funded your company’s growthasteful spending. However we invest in tools that enable staff to purchase wisely and stay ahead of customer demands. We also collaborate with vendors to manage costs.
  • As a result, the last two years have not forced us to change how we fund growth. We are getting large contracts and work globally to solve customers’ logistics challenges. Our challenge has been moving from centralized distribution to strategically placed centers around the globe, increasing inventory costs and cash needs.
  • Where we have changed is in how we negotiate terms and credit with our customers. We manage vendor accounts payable to maximize cash flow while treating them as business partners. This requires close vendor communications to assure that everyone’s needs are met.
  • We have been cautious with our banks and seldom dip into credit lines. Managing vendor payments has been more effective.
  • Essential to vendor communications are open sharing of information and goal setting. We work to create a team atmosphere. This is similar to what we do in our offices. In our experience, instilling the right culture is far more powerful than financial incentives.
    • We share information through all-hands company meetings and regular updates so that everyone gets the full picture.
    • We also share information with our vendors so that each side is aware of the other’s needs.
    • We create an annual one-page business plan for the company, and parallel plans down to the supervisor level. Performance against plans is updated regularly to assure that we remain on top of situations.
  • We focus training on new tools. Our staff gets technology they need to be successful.
    • We generously provide technology to our employees, provided that they give a logical business rationale. This includes home computers, iPhones or Applets to help them do their jobs.
    • Similarly, when a vendor or customer asks for a service improvement or a new service with a good business rationale, we invest to support this.
  • These methods have allowed us to finance most of our growth internally.

You can contact Hannah Kain at [email protected]

Key Words: Funding, Bank, Institutional, Growth, Spending, Tools, Empower, Customer, Demand, Costs, Vendor, Cash, Needs, Terms, Credit, AP, Partner, Payment, Information, Sharing, Goal, Culture, Performance, Technology, Service

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