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.
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.
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