Any dummy can make things complicated – and most dummies do exacty that !!
It takes intelligence, organization and effort to keep things simple.
Keeping things simple doesn’t just happen on its own. Things getting complicated—THAT happens on its own – unless good people pitch in to help.
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The world of business is not neat. It is not clean. It is messy, disorganized, chaotic.
The world of business is full of competing interests and sometimes even deliberate misinformation from clients and suppliers.
Successful factories learn to be constantly changing plans to suit their customers,
And accept this as a way of life.
Don’t be frustrated by frequent changes driven by customers.
That is the nature of the game !
The same all over the world !
So, if we are going to play this game -- let’s play the game well !
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Similar to the above thought:
Yes we should STRIVE for perfection. That is the GOAL.
But, we will all be stressed out (and maybe even heading to an early grave !) if we EXPECT perfection.
Expect your people to be focused yes, and to be committed yes, and to do their very best., yes.
But don’t be shocked or angry when mistakes happen. Getting overly angry at mistakes is a sign of an immature leader.
Calmly determining how to prevent the mistake from happening again – that is what a leader does.
I hope I can try hard to meet this high standard, and I also hope you can treat your own staff in this way.
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FLOWCHART FOR EMPLOYEE CORRECTIVE ACTION OF AN EMPLOYEE’S BEHAVIORS:
Do you have a trouble employee you need to improve that is affecting your department ? This type of thinking has served me well over the years. You probably have used similar ideas. Here’s what I do:
1. Define clearly the behavior that you want the person to change. Write it down, just by yourself, in clear words. Be sure you are talking about ACTIONS and RESULTS not personality traits. Can’t say, “I want you to not have such a bad attitude.” It has to be much more specific than that. Much more “actionable” than that. Likely the person cannot change his personality ! But he can change his performance as defined by actions and results.
2. Before meeting with the person, give some thought to what the person might say to defend themselves. This will prepare you for the discussion. Still, they WILL bring up SOMETHING you didn’t think of, probably !!
3. Now ask yourself: Can this person make this required change on his own, right now ? You have to really think about this one. One way to say it is, If his life depended on it, could he make this change tomorrow ? Not be mean about it, it’s just a way to think about it….
a. IF NO, then this person does not have the training, or the skills, to make the required behavior change. In this case, we need to give the person re-training. But do make sure he understand that after his training you expect better results. Only if the re-training does not work, move to step 4.
b. IF YES, this means the person has the training, has the skills needed to make the change, move to step 4.
4. Now you are ready to have a serious, private, one-on-one discussion with the employee. This is not the time for a lighthearted tone of voice. Your goal is to make it clear that you have expectations that their performance on __________ (aspect of his work) must change.
a. Don’t embarrass them by dragging them into your office from the production floor or the office area. Their peers will see this. Instead, get them aside in a quiet place away from others… or tell them to meet you later in your office at, say, 2 PM.
b. Do not mix “good and bad”, i.e., focus solely on the bad behaviors you want to change. Do not throw in a couple of their good behaviors to “soften the blow.” It may ease the tension at the moment, but it does not help send the message. Trust me on this one ! Talk about their positives in a discussion on an ENTIRELY SEPARATE WEEK sometime later, if you want to…
c. If you approach the topic with a serious but gentle tone, most employees will respond. Even if the employee raises their voice at you, DO NOT raise your voice, keep your tone civil, no matter what they say, no matter how much they may test you by bringing up irrelevant information or distractions or anger.
d. A good formula I like: EMPATHY – FACT – ACTION. You don’t have to say it in this way ! Or this formally ! But, it can be effective to work in these THREE elements in the conversation – in your own words…
i. “I empathize with your troubles of ….. (whatever they brought up to defend themselves)
ii. … the fact is, our operation requires that ……… (the behavior you want from them) be followed or else ……. (consequence that ensues to the organization). This way you don’t make it PERSONAL you show the effect on the BUSINESS. Be sure that this FACT is clearly a FACT, it is unarguable.
iii. … therefore, the action I expect, is that you will ……. (restate the behavior change in a different way so that they remember it clearly.)
iv. At the end of your talk, it can sometimes be helpful to ask the employee to repeat back to you what you are asking, to be sure they understand.
5. Depending on the nature of the issue, you might decide to set a formal follow-up meeting at an appropriate interval (maybe a month or so). If it is the 2nd time you reached step 4 with this employee, then DEFINITELY you will need to set a follow up date to re-discuss in the future.