What Assembling a Christmas Gift Can Teach Us About Helping Workers Succeed

photo by Mannequin

(Note: We’re not launched yet but here’s a post inspired by a little extra work with holiday gifts)

If you’ve ever tried to put together a doll house or other holiday gift that had a pile of small parts along with lengthy and often incomprehensible instructions, you have gained the foundation for understanding how to help workers succeed in their job or any project they undertake.

I’ve done the build out of a couple of gifts in my time and learned that a lot of details and confusing directions can lead to frustration, disillusionment, and failure.

For anyone attempting to assemble a complicated item like a doll house, what is the most important part of all?

The walls? The foundation? Screws, clips, glue?

No.

All are important, no doubt.

The most important item is the picture on the outside of the box.

That picture is the only thing that gives us any hope at all, and keeps us going. Without a picture of what success is, we can easily get off course. Many of us might throw in the towel and quit.

It’s the same with leading a team. We need to provide each member with a crystal clear image of what they’re going after.

Too many managers hire people into jobs or hand out project assignments without giving the worker such clarity. When the results aren’t what the supervisor hoped for, who is most responsible for that?

You may be tempted to think that this refers only to first time managers, and that the more experienced supervisors handle things better. That would be a mistake.

An alarming number of veteran managers hire or assign without going through the details necessary to ensure complete understanding. They shortcut the process, putting people on the payroll or handing out projects based on their “gut feelings.”

I admit to doing this myself at times, and it’s cost me. I may have had a strong feeling about a particular job candidate or just knew that one worker was perfect for a task — only to later be faced with trouble when things didn’t go our way.

Further, in my desire to get things moving in my earlier management days, I didn’t always make sure that a new worker or project leader knew how to measure success. I assumed a lot, and you know how that goes.

In my own defense I can say that my boss never gave me that success picture either, so I was more or less making it up as I went.

To get a view of this topic from the frontline worker’s perspective, please see: Never Accept a Job or Assignment Without Knowing What Success Looks Like

Here are a few tips on how to frame success:

1. Be as specific as possible in the desired outcomes
“Higher revenues” doesn’t leave the same impression that “15% sales increase” or “100 more billable hours in the next quarter” does. Discuss expectations and goals in detail, then have the worker summarize them so you know that they understand.

Context is everything.

Wrong: Do you understand?

Better: What are the keys to hitting our goal with this job?

Wrong: Do you know how you’re going to handle things?

Better: Explain how you plan to proceed.

Almost all managers get distracted at times (or they’re lazy) and let people off the hook with “yes” or “no” questions. This opens the door to problems. Context gets to detail. If the individual doesn’t understand, you’ll know when you ask for specifics.

2. Prioritize multiple goals
Know what you really want and make that clear. George managed both sales and customer service for a family owned company. The CEO gave him a goal to increase overall sales by 10%, but refused to add any service agents to handle the additional calls that a flood of new customers would bring.

George understood that more sales was his primary goal and his sales unit actually achieved an 13% revenue increase, but the company suffered service issues as he had warned, losing several of the new customers in addition to existing clients. When the dust cleared, the company’s growth was virtually nil. The CEO ripped George at a managers’ meeting for not keying on service. George was floored, knowing that sales had been made the lead priority.

3. Link the individual’s success to the organization’s overall plan
People need to know that what they do matters in the bigger picture. When I accepted the job as the morning personality at a radio station years back, the company had been teetering financially and management made it clear to me that the morning show was their priority. It had to succeed. If I did well, the station would do well, and that’s all I needed to know.

It might have been my ego grabbing the reigns, but I interpreted that as a personal call to lift the organization on my shoulders and do everything necessary to win. I put in 12-14 hour days, weekends often included. Listenership increased and the money followed, exceeding our goals.

I loved my job and the radio business, but I have to admit that knowing how critical my performance was to the organization was what drove me. If management hadn’t made that point clear at the very beginning, I probably would have approached the position much differently.

4. Don’t make it only about money — success with the process
When I’ve led selling skills training my focus has been not just on improving closing strategies and counting the money, but on the little things that precede the close. This includes making more contacts and doing a better job of qualifying prospects. Even marginal gains in those areas will result in greater closing opportunities.

Tony Gwynn, the hall of fame hitter for the San Diego Padres, once talked about the intricacies of a batter’s swing and that he’d spend hours working on them. In Gywnn’s mind a lot of things had to go right before the bat met the ball, if he was to be successful. Here was a perennial all-star player, one of the greatest hitters the game had ever known, and he was putting in more time on fundamentals than anyone else.

What is your process and are you encouraging your players to become proficient at the details?

5. Don’t make it only about money — success with people
Very few sports teams have been successful on the field of play without getting along well behind the scenes, and the same is true with our organizations. Winning teams have core values that place equal importance on how we treat our fellow workers, as well as how we conduct business with customers.

Everyone, from the grizzled veteran to the fresh-faced rookie, has to feel they occupy important space and are necessary for the team to achieve its goals. They also must feel that the organization — and their peers — will do right by them.

The workplace is a competitive environment and the drive for profit often overwhelms an organization, with people getting trampled in the name of progress. It may work for a while, but eventually good people leave and take their talents elsewhere.

Showing your team how to win in a way that benefits all resonates with people, and reminds everyone of those core values. This will eventually lead to developing a strong culture of success — one that will get passed to each new worker as they come aboard. Retention will reflect this, as will the quality of job applicants.

When you’re doing special things, the word gets around and a company becomes an employer of choice.

What I’ve written here isn’t the last word on the subject by any means. What can you add to the discussion? Come on, jump in!