Business - Not Charity

Despite what you might hear from Washington or in the media lately, businesses are NOT charities. They are NOT created to 'transfer wealth' from the owners to the employees without regard to the 'bottomline.' They are not there to generate jobs and wages and benefits without regard to return on their dollar. All that is political propaganda that will work to the detriment of any business if they try to follow it as a business plan.
It’s important – from Day One - for employees to understand that you, as a manager or as a business owner, are in business to make a PROFIT. That profit may be for stockholders, partners or yourself, but the primary function of any business is to make a profit. That means you want to make money. As SHOCKING of a concept as that is in the ‘New America,’ it’s one that NEEDS to be told to your people right from the start.
It's nice that you are able to create compensation for your employees in terms of salaries and benefits, but that product or service you generate to create the money for paying your employees does NOT come from donations or taxes. It comes from honest planning, work, marketing, sales and cash flow from YOUR hard work. That’s how businesses REALLY work, not by confiscating the dollars of your customers and giving it to your employees with no eye on the bottom line.
One of the hardest obsticles I had to overcome when I was starting out in management as a young man was the 'guilt' being directed at me for trying to maintain and increase production levels of union employees. It was my job to insure my people were doing a ‘fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay.’ That is antithesis to what unions stand for today.
That was when we finally brought the union people into a meeting with their stewards and business agents for a little honesty session. The point they needed to understand was I was the one who put on the tie and suit, left the security of the union to work in corporate America where companies expect their managers to show a profit. As hard as it was for them to hear, I was not Santa Claus and the company was NOT a charity. They were not getting paid the same as managers because they chose to be in a union and work for an agreed upon rate. At the same time, they were expected to do their best to keep my company in a competitive position against my competition. As basic of a concept as that SHOULD seem, they failed to see how that was their problem. But it was. If MY boat sank it was taking down all hands. Including the union people.
We are now seeing that very thinking come to fruition in America as unions try to bleed companies – with the added help of Washington – while the companies are going out of business and EVERYONE is out of work – and Washington is seeing less and less in tax revenues.
What is the basic business model that is playing out before our very eyes??? If the bottom line is ignored the company WILL fail. Once the company fails there are NO jobs, wages or benefits to be had. Welcome to ‘Reality 101.’Someone needs to call Washington and explain this basic concept to THEM. They are not getting the point.

Getting It Down On Paper

We hear repeatedly that we have to ‘hold our people accountable.’
Okay, but how do you do that? What’s the key? We can tell our people over and over again to do something, train them how we want it done, demonstrate it, review it and give them written instructions, but what happens if they still don’t get it?
Holding your people accountable is a simple process if you know how to do it. There’s no need to pull your hair out, there’s no need to lose your temper or throw a tantrum. All of those are counter-productive.
The best way to start your people if you have several – or even one – is to have a written job description. You have to be able to explain to a person in the simplest possible terms what their job is and what you expect them to do. If you can hand them a piece of paper with the instructions on it after you’ve given them verbal directions you’ll be WAY ahead of the game. Researchers found that it takes SEVEN passes at a person to get them to remember something. SEVEN. That seems like a lot, but it’s the way the human mind works. After training a new person for an hour I always told them they would go home and dream about what I had just shown them. They all looked at me like I was crazy, but the next day every one of them came back and admitted they had dreamed about the training I had given them. If you make a note – or write-up – after each one of those days of training you will be well on your way to documenting your training and being able to hold your people accountable.
Most business owners and managers are extremely busy people and have too much work to do to be messing with people problems. However, the modern computer has made keeping track of your work easy. You simply need to keep a log of what you do when you’re training your people. It doesn’t have to be an epic novel, it only has to show that you did work with the person on a given date for x amount of time and give a quick one-liner of what you covered. Simple. You now have a write-up for their file (or to keep in your computer file along with the hard copy you print off to review with them and have them sign). Trust me, simple notations will be enough when you need it later.
Every time you talk to a person, work with them, review their standing, or whatever your encounter be sure you put it down on paper (or computer). There was nothing like walking into an arbitration with a union employee and his representatives – and often their lawyers – and plopping down a thick folder of training I had done with that person. Almost every time I won. I was able to show through page after page of documentation that I had worked with that person and I had a right to expect that person to show a reasonable level of improvement. The easiest cases were the ones that showed a decline over time in spite of my training. The arbitrator agreed with me that the person was simply refusing to take the training and held for me. It was all in having the paperwork together and being able to present it to the arbitrator.
No matter how silly it seems you HAVE to write down what you do and say. If I had gone into those same arbitrations with a couple sheets of paper and my statement that I worked with the person I would have been thrown out. That’s not what we want to have happen. What we are doing – in reality – is building a legal case against every employee we have in the hopes that we will never have to use it. Honestly, we all hope our people do what they are supposed to do and we don’t have to put up with the headaches of disciplinary actions. However, should the occasion arise – and it will – you need to have your training and conversations down on paper. With the frequency of lawsuits today, it is equally important for you to document everything that happens in non-union shops and small businesses. You need to protect yourself and be prepared. Again, the hope is that you’ll never have to use your paperwork, but if you have to it is best to have it ready to go.

People 101

The basic building block of any business is your people. Getting to know them is essential.
In these uncertain times you need all the aces up your sleeve you can get. What I want to do is give you some of those aces to make you a success. I have to warn you, KNOWING the aces does not necessarily mean you’ll be a winner. You have to be able to apply what you learn here in your own style and integrate it into your business. Whether you own a small business or are the manager there or run a multinational conglomerate the principles are the same and work.
It was from the people working with me I had some of my greatest success stories. Here I’m going to share with you the basics of ‘people’ that can help your business excel.
The first basic is getting to know your people. I know that sounds easy, but it’s not. When I first started in management at one of those multinational corporations right out of college I was introduced to a program the company had devised to get management to know their people. We had to fill out a report for each person based on an interview we did with all our people. That report was then sent off to Human Resources for filing – which I’m sure meant it was checked off on a list and put in the circular file because we never saw them again. The point of that file was to get me to know my people.
As the years went along I refined that process with my own management people. Writing that report was good for the first time a person came into their area, but thereafter I expected my supervisors to know their people well enough to be able to write that report without having to sit down and conduct a formal talk. Their people still got the time to sit down with their supervisors for a talk, but there was rarely anything coming out of those meetings that were a surprise.
The basic elements we wanted them to know were who their people are, where they came from, who their family is, are there complaints that need to be addressed, how do they feel about their job and the company, where do they see themselves in the company, what are their plans for the future, what will make the job better and always leave them knowing that the person they are talking to always is willing to listen and wants to include them in getting the job done. They were the basics of getting to know the people who worked for us.
By the next year I expected the supervisors to have talked to their people one-on-one on a regular basis to know them well enough that all those elements – and several more – could be put into the report without actually having to conduct the interview. It was important for the people to know that they were thought highly of enough for their supervisors to talk to the on a regular basis and get to know them. To keep the company flowing and being productive – which is the goal of any business – the people had to KNOW they were part of the team.
Let me caution you here. People know when you’re trying to put one over on them. That was the problem with doing the report annually. It was a joke with the people being interviewed. They knew we were filling out a piece of paper that got filed. It was a numbers game; even though that’s not the way it was designed. Supervisors acted concerned when they did the report, but as soon as the report was filed it was over. It was back to work as usual and that was the end of it.
Getting to know your people and letting them know you care about them and their ideas while still remaining in the boss role is difficult. It is all about your leadership skills.