Happy employees make for happy customers
- October 11th, 2011
- 5
We all want happy customers. If customers aren’t happy it doesn’t only affect your company’s bank account, but it saps the morale of you and your team. Who wants to come to work to be yelled at by yet another unhappy customer? If a customer is upset or dissatisfied with your product or service are you empowered to help them? Empowerment often leads to work that is interesting, allows us to be creative and can give us a sense that what we do matters.
One of the pieces of advice in the “employees as entrepreneurs” camp is that you should hire people with an “entrepreneurial mindset”. In other words people that aren’t afraid to take the initiative, don’t need lots of direction and can take charge. That’s great for a company in hiring mode. But if your business is anything like ours, you already have a loyal, hardworking team that knows your business and knows your customers. Make sure your team understands your vision for the company. Cultivate them and challenge them to reach new levels. But most importantly enable them to help make some of the critical decisions companies must make day in and day out.
In a book that I am reading about improving software quality, the author often refers to a culture found within only the most productive businesses called the “kaizen culture”. This business culture was made famous by Toyota who adopted it company-wide. Here is an excerpt from the book written by David J. Anderson:
“In kaizen culture the workforce is empowered. Individuals feel free to take action; free to do the right thing. They spontaneously swarm on problems, discuss options, and implement fixes and improvements. In a kaizen culture, the workforce is left without fear. The underlying norm is for management to be tolerant of failure if the experimentation or innovation was in the name of process- or performance improvement. In a kaizen culture, individuals are free (within some limits) to self-organize around the work they do. A kaizen culture focuses on systems-level thinking while making local improvements that enhance overall performance.”
For example, a “system wide” problem could be that an RV dealership, boat dealership or marina has an excessive amount of obsolete parts on-hand. In a traditional management model it would be up to the owner or general manager to find a fix for this problem. The parts manager or one of the service techs may make a suggestion, but typically their input is negated, especially if they aren’t given visibility at a systems (or company) wide level. However in a kaizen culture, the parts manager would be empowered to come up with a way to move obsolete or aging inventory through another means, like selling them online. The parts manager or parts clerk would be given the freedom to run with this effort.
Creating layers of approval that stifle creativity is a sure fire way to sap motivation. There tends to be a bottleneck at many RV dealerships, boat dealerships, boatyards and marinas at the top. Give managers access to key reports in your RV dealer management system or marina management system. Not giving managers the ability to make decisions at a departmental level can hamper productivity.
Great piece on What Employees Want..Little known fact, but you
nailed it…
Interesting Blog that could be interpreted in different ways depending on your title in the company . I am curious what kind of feedback you get from this…if any? Do you send these out on any kind of schedule or strategy behind the releases?
I love the entrepreneurial mindset and wish that more of our society was made up of those types of people. But let’s face it – there are “rice pickers” and there are “samurais”. The world needs both. The life of a samurai can be lonely and is usually always dangerous. But they also get all the praise when they bring the feast back to the village. The rice picker on the other hand makes sure that no one starves. They do amazing things as well. Ever seen a rice paddy? It’s one the most unforgiving places to grow anything. But pragmatically, systematically and meticulously they grow rice and provide a means for subsistence.
We do have a methodology for our posts. Once per week. I take turns by and large with Jessica Seidel. Our focus is two-fold:
a. To discuss a wide array of topics around management systems used in the marine and RV industries. These can include CRM, inventory management, F&I, lead management, time and materials tracking, parts and service, and financial management. Furthermore we include discussions about desktop, web and mobile applications for use in a dealership, service center, boatyard or marina.
b. A more general focus on business philosophy, leadership, time management and both business and personal efficiency.
This post obviously falls into the latter.
First the blog states:
“In kaizen culture the workforce is empowered. Individuals feel free to take action; free to do the right thing…..”
Then later:
Creating layers of approval that stifle creativity is a sure fire way to sap motivation…… Not giving managers the ability to make decisions at a departmental level can hamper productivity.
But this says that managers can still decide if a suggestion by a staff member has merit and stop it before it is ever given thought except by them. Not sure that is going to make the workforce feel empowered. For the workforce to feel like entrepreneurs they need to have a voice in the company – not just in their department. When a manager has an idea he/she takes it to the management meeting. When the non-management people have an idea/suggestion that they want considered they do not have that option.
I understand not all ideas/suggestions can be considered by upper management because of time constraints. Perhaps ideas/suggestions could be shared within the department and a scheduled open discussion could help determine if they have enough merit to proceed up the ladder of managers or better yet brought to discussion in an all-hands type meeting.
I guess I can see how someone may think these are contradictory statements, but in my opinion they are not.
The whole point of my post is to encourage management, whether they are middle managers or in upper management to let people do their jobs, let them be creative and basically stay out of their way. Too often I see managers (including myself) get in the way of people who are trying to do the right thing. Empowered employees need guidance, they need management to be a sounding board, not a roadblock to productivity.
I really like that you’ve provided a suggestion and not just a criticism. The All Hands idea or some other type of open forum is a great place for people to be heard. An internal wiki or intranet may also do the trick.