April 2016

YOU Are The Reason People Are Quitting Their Jobs #4021 - GROW GREAT

YOU Are The Reason People Are Quitting Their Jobs #4021

It’s not me. It’s YOU.

That’s not what people say when they break up. Or when they quit their job. Well, not often.

Mostly, people aren’t confrontational. They just want to get away with little fuss. So when people quit they’re prone to forego candor. Instead, they may blame quitting on all kinds of things. Some just walk away without warning. Others sneak away quietly due to some family emergency or other contrived excuse. Anything to avoid a show down.

It’s all just as well. Bluntness wouldn’t likely do any good. And it might hamper the future prospects of the quitter. It’s a no win situation – being candid about why you’re really quitting! Besides, the person you’d have to be candid with about it is the culprit himself – the boss. He’s the reason you’re leaving.

Best to leave in the most gracious way possible by saying as little as possible.

YOU Are The Reason People Are Quitting Their Jobs #4021 - GROW GREAT

Almost 8 years ago Jennifer Robison, Senior Editor of The Gallup Business Journal wrote an article entitled, Turning Around Employee Turnover. The article lists the top 5 predictors of employee turnover.

The Top Five Predictors of Turnover

Work units with high potential for turnover send out warning signals, according to Gallup research, but managers and executives must know where to look:

1. The immediate manager. If employees report that their manager’s expectations are unclear; or that their manager provides inadequate equipment, materials, or resources; or that opportunities for progress and development are few and far between, watch out: Trouble is on the way.

2. Poor fit to the job. Another sign of trouble appears when employees perceive that they don’t have opportunities to do what they do best every day.

3. Coworkers not committed to quality. Watch for employees who perceive that their coworkers are not committed to a high standard of work.

4. Pay and benefits. Engaged employees are far more likely to perceive that they are paid appropriately for the work they do (43%), compared to employees who are disengaged (15%) or actively disengaged (13%). And pay and benefits become a big issue if employees feel that their coworkers aren’t committed to quality; they may feel entitled to extra compensation to make up the difference or to make them feel like they are truly valued by their employer.

5. Connection to the organization or to senior management. Another key sign that turnover may be looming appears when employees don’t feel a connection to the organization’s mission or purpose or its leadership.

Source: Gallup research, including meta-analysis, employee opinion polls, and exit interview studies conducted over the past 30 years

Who cares? So what if people come and go in your company?

YOU should care because there’s a big cost to employee turnover. Again, according to the Gallup article…

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has found that the U.S. voluntary turnover rate is 23.4% annually. It’s generally estimated that replacing an employee costs a business one-half to five times that employee’s annual salary. So, if 25% of a business’ workforce leaves and the average pay is $35,000, it could cost a 100-person firm between $438,000 and $4 million a year to replace employees.

Still don’t think it matters if Joe walks out? Too many bosses don’t care. They think people are plug ‘n play interchangeable parts. Joe leaves. Jim enters. Jim leaves. Josh enters. Josh leaves. Jill enters. Of course, it all started with Abe. Over the course of three decades the organization is fast approaching the end of the alphabet. Then it all starts over again. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost dollars and productivity to even a small business. Millions of dollars to a larger enterprise.

If you think VC money often goes down the drain – and it does – then you need to consider the high price of human capital. Millions of people are going down the drain every day in organizations all over the world. It’s not because they’re bad people, or unskilled, or unproductive. It’s because they’re working for a jerk and they just can’t stand it any more.

The High Price Of Employee Turnover

How do you make a boss care? You don’t. Truth is, you can’t make a business owner, a CEO or any other boss care about something. You may be able to persuade them why they should care. You may be able to influence them with compelling data, or an engaging story that just might convince them it’s in their best interest to care. But they have to care about people enough to create a culture that fosters superior human performance. Higher human performance should be the priority of every CEO. Should be, but it’s not.

Lower levels executives – even mid-level bosses – can often behave with greater disdain than the disinterested CEO. Disinterested in making sure people are properly trained, coached, encouraged, rewarded and held accountable. Not caring if people leave and not caring why they leave is the mark of a boss who should not be the boss. They’re destructive to their enterprise. No amount of process management proficiency can outweigh the greater rewards of higher human performance. It’s simple math. One boss can destroy the work of everybody who reports to her. She can’t possibly perform alone at a high enough level to outweigh her damage…even if she’s only got a handful direct reports. The more people she has reporting to her, the greater her damage.

The problem seems complex because of how varied we are as humans. One boss tasked with leading some number of other people is outnumbered. Just like the coach of a professional sports team has one personality, style and philosophy is asked to coach up to dozens of players who are all very different. They’re different from the coach, and from each other. So the challenge is figuring out how to best lead the entire group – the whole team – and to also lead each individual player. Quite frequently professional sports has it more right than business. They fire the coach and keep the talent. We tend to let the talent walk away refusing to consider that the boss is the reason. Pro sports views it from a more economical and practical model. It’s easier to replace the boss than it is to replace major chunks of the team (talent). Businesses don’t tend to see it that way. We often choose to diminish the value of the player because we think that enhances our own worth. We’re wrong. Expensively wrong. Stupidly wrong.

Once upon a time I’d try to evangelize every leader who seemed disinterested in his employees. Over time I made adjustments to that strategy. Mostly because I found it futile. Not always, but mostly.

Emerging leaders – those folks flying at lower altitudes, sometimes early in their management careers – often seemed more open-minded to the logic (and heart) of treating people well. Well doesn’t mean easy. Nor does it mean without confrontation or accountability. It means doing the right thing to help people succeed. It means behaving toward employees so they can become the best versions of themselves. I’d dive into a series of questions aimed at discovering the cost (the overall toll) of employee turnover. Oddly enough, I found lower level leaders could more easily see the business reason to put people first than the chief leader, who most often was steeped in a long-held philosophy of not caring so much. If the person at the top had such a strong personality of not caring, then it was sure to be difficult to convince lower level leaders to hold a contrary philosophy. After all, the chief’s direct reports want to please him. Being like him in philosophy and behavior can be a safe career move.

As much as I believe in a skunkwork (a term made famous by Lockheed Martin), there are severe limitations to grass roots works. Most of us use the term to mean some under the radar, secret endeavor or initiative. Sometimes it may be a bottom up sort of thing. As valuable as those may be, they’re ineffective compared to an initiative fostered by the top dog. When the CEO speaks, everybody listens. Lower level folks can scream and shout and still the boss may not hear it. Or care.

Sadly, nothing trumps voting with your feet. That’s why employees working for a jerk quit. Not all of them, of course. Some are trapped. I’m thinking of all the stories I’ve heard throughout my life of single parents who simply need a job — and lost their self-confidence long ago. They’ve been fooled into thinking they have no other options except to endure the bad boss. They stay. Dwarfing their development with every passing day. De-energized by the environment and their boss. But hey, it’s a paycheck. And that’s what they need most.

When a person quits the bad boss says, “Good riddance!” Without hesitation or concern they quickly move on with the philosophy of Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary – “You’re dead to me.”

That’s exactly why they’re losing people. They just don’t care about others. Self-centeredness prevents them from seeing the value of high human performance. It’s all about them. The quitters have forsaken them, betrayed them and created more work for THEM. They see leadership as a position that deserves to be served – not a position that deserves to serve! A stark difference between being the recipient of service or the purveyor of service. Leadership is a position of service. The higher the position, the more powerful the service rendered.

Today, I focus on working with CEOs and top leaders who understand this – and who see the world as I do. It’s more profitable to pass on the philosophy that organizations are best built by using the highest human performance possible. And by finding ways to continue to elevate it. It’s building an A team, then maintaining a culture committed to superior performance. It’s not easy work, but it’s the most profitable way to go. Nothing will elevate an organization’s performance faster, or more, than leveraging the people who do the work. You don’t have to believe me. In episode 4019 I referenced two leaders who operate multi-BILLION dollar businesses. They see people as their greatest asset. That’s what I’m urging you to do, even if it’s contrary to how you’ve been operating.

As always I just hope to provoke you to think about what you do. And why. Re-examine things. As the boss, you’re constantly asking people to improve. All I’m asking is that you devote yourself to the same thing – your own improvement. Stop letting talent run out the door. It’s preventable. It’s up to YOU to stop it because too often, YOU are the reason for their leaving.

Randy

P.S. Here are some articles from this week to provoke further thought:

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You Can't Offer A Solution Without Asking Questions #4020 - GROW GREAT

You Can’t Offer A Solution Without Asking Questions #4020

You Can't Offer A Solution Without Asking Questions #4020 - GROW GREAT

Thousands of salespeople have sat across from me throughout my career. Some were very good. Most weren’t. Not because they lacked ability, but most lacked what I valued most while leading a company – somebody who really wanted to help me grow my business.

Self-interest is what drives far too many salespeople – and others, for that matter. What’s in it for me? That’s our collective battle cry. I’m okay with it provided we help the other person get what might best help them first. Mutual benefit should be the objective.

Countless sales executives have entered my office for the first time ever, armed to the teeth with a bag (sometimes literally) of tricks they claimed would solve my problems. It always fascinated me how a complete stranger who had spent no time with me, or my organization could have such a solution. Or how they could even know what my problems might be. Focused entirely on what was in it for them, they began their pitch with all the reasons why this solution was ideal for me. It was left up to me to decipher whether or not they really did have something I could find valuable.

That’s a bad strategy for problem solving – no matter if you’re selling a solution or not. Well, actually, even people on the executive team are selling a solution. They’re trying to persuade the organization to accept their idea. The value of their solution isn’t enhanced with a “let me tell you why this is good for me” tactic.

Never put the burden on the buyer – whether it’s your boss, a client or somebody else – to figure out if you’ve got something valuable or not. Presenting the value as the buyer would see it isn’t the same as deciding if it’s right for them, or robbing them of the opportunity to decide for themselves. But let’s back up before we even get to the part where you present a solution.

First Things First. Ask. Investigate.

As a young salesman I read and heard sales trainers use a term that never felt quite right to me. Probe.

Probing is what we were taught to do to uncover a customer’s needs, possible objections and anything else that might help us figure out an ideal solution. Not that there’s anything wrong with the term, it just wasn’t a favorite word for me. My natural style was always to simply have an engaging conversation where I asked customers questions. It didn’t take me long to learn that if I could ask the right question, I could find out more about the customer’s desire. That elevated my ability to figure out what I might have to help them. Or it helped me learn I may not have anything that would help them.

I would often imagine somebody who requested an appointment just to find out more about our company, or me before knocking my door down with a “here’s exactly what you need” pitch. It never happened. Periodically (not very often), I’d see some sales executive who I thought might be open to hearing such a message, and I’d run the idea past him. Most were just polite, but only a few – very few – appeared genuinely startled at such a novel approach. Startled to the point where I thought they might actually try it.

These were the day of the one-call-close. Nothing has changed. People today are aiming for the one-call-close. We’re all busy. Our prospects are busy. We think, “We’ve only got one shot.” That’s not true though. And if it is true, then I want to challenge you to do something more valuable with that one shot.

Serve.

You can stand out more by not putting your need to make a sale – that includes you executives who are trying to sell your boss on your idea – at the forefront. Instead, try to gain a clearer understanding of the problem. You can substitute pain, desire, want, need or anything else in the place of the word “problem.” Find the word that best fits your situation.

Every single day I’m talking with CEOs. From very small companies to enormous companies. And I always discover the same thing with any of them willing to talk to me – and most of them are willing. Here’s the simple, but service oriented strategy (which isn’t so much a strategy as it’s simply how I naturally operate):

  1. I spend a few minutes (1-2) telling them why I’m reaching out to them. Don’t play some bait and switch game with your prospects (especially your boss). Be candid. Tell people why you’re wanting to hear their story – why you’d like to ask them questions. It’s not an interrogation. It’s a conversation. Don’t make it a grill session.
  2. I then simply ask them to tell me their story. And I shut up. Most open up quickly – evidence they’re not asked this question nearly often enough. We all care about our story. Most of us wish somebody cared enough to ask us about ours. I do care enough. I’m fascinated by the stories I hear. Most days I hear more than one really compelling story. Amazing what you learn simply by asking.
  3. Then I briefly tell them the truth. Sometimes what I do – or anything I might offer – isn’t a good fit for me. That means it won’t be a good fit for them. Other times, I’m not sure. But it’s not up to me to make the call when I don’t know on my end. If I’m thinking, “This may be something valuable for him, but I’m not sure” — then I’ll tell them that. I don’t try to make the decision for them. They need to make the call.
  4. It leads to more conversation or it doesn’t. Either way, I’m good with that and I’m convinced so are they. We both win regardless of the outcome.

I don’t want to sell. And I don’t think selling or sales is a dirty work. I just don’t want to do what most people think of when they think of selling. They think of talking people into things. Manipulation. That’s not what sales is. It is persuasion and influence – which we all want to incorporate into our communication when we know we’ve got something of value…something that can help others. Mostly, it’s giving people an opportunity to solve their problem (remedy the pain, gain some pleasure, get a solution, etc.).

No Agenda Except To Give Others An Opportunity. And Give Yourself An Opportunity To Serve.

Put first things first. Put your prospect (yes, that means your boss, or perhaps a co-worker, or anybody else you’re trying to serve) first. Listen to them. Better yet, express interest in learning as much as you can about what they think, how they feel and what they want or need. Ask. Listen. Pay attention.

People are searching for solutions. Many are staring into space right this minute, wishing somebody would arrive into their life to help them. What if you could be that person? Why can’t you be that person?

My headline isn’t completely true. You can offer a solution without asking a question. You can offer a solution without even listening to the other person. It will be a terrible experience for you – and the person you’re hoping to sell. But you can keep doing it. And keep enjoying a life of disinterested people. They’re disinterested in your solution because you’re disinterested in them.

You reap what you sow.

Randy.Black

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Lip Service, Customer Service & Employee Happiness (People Determine Your Profits) #4019 - GROW GREAT

Lip Service, Customer Service & Employee Happiness (People Determine Your Profits) #4019

Lip Service, Customer Service & Employee Happiness (People Determine Your Profits) #4019 - GROW GREAT

In the summer of 1998 one of my all-time favorite sales gurus, Jeffrey Gitomer, published a book that would become my chief “most gifted” book – Customer Satisfaction Is Worthless, Customer Loyalty Is Priceless: How to Make Customers Love You, Keep Them Coming Back and Tell Everyone They Know. I’ve given that book to employees, friends, business owners, CEOs and even people with no real business element in their life. It’s a book about and for fanatics – or those who need to become fanatical about service. I had encountered Gitomer sometime earlier – I don’t remember where – and I was already a fan by the time the Business Journals around the country picked up his column on selling.

Gitomer-SatisfactionHard to believe a southern boy fell for a guy from Philly, but I did. Gitomer was blunt, candid and delivered his message with a passion I felt was long-overdue. From my earliest days I saw the benefit and long-term value of not being transactional. Customer happiness was always my focus, even as a teenager selling stereo gear. Why would any sales guy or business owner be okay with customers who just felt “okay” about their purchase or their service? Made no sense to me.

What did make sense was Gitomer evangelical passion and candor. Twenty years ago – as now – businesses continued to market how much they cared about their customers. Few walked the walk. That’s still true. It’s common to see salespeople and business people grab the money. And run.

Earlier in the 90’s – years before Gitomer’s book – a couple of authors wrote another book I had fallen in love with – The Customer Comes Second: Put Your People First and Watch ’em Kick Butt by Hal Rosenbluth and Diane McFerrin Peters. At the time it was quite a remarkable message. Love your employees before you love your customers because the employees are the ones serving the customer. Again, I had intuitively believed that and been mostly attracted to companies who behaved that way. It helped that Mr. Rosenbluth ran a high growth company that wound up topping revenues of $6B (that’s BILLION) before selling to American Express. How could a guy like that get it wrong? Well, he didn’t get it wrong. Others do.

This clearly was a time of enlightenment for me as a business guy because somewhere during this time I became aware of a man who appeared to be the epitome of a nice guy, Jim Goodnight. He ran a little enterprise in North Carolina called SAS. Talk about fanaticism. Goodnight was fanatical about making SAS the best place on the planet for employees. The Internet had yet to be born. Silicon Valley startups wouldn’t happen for many years. Goodnight put employees on a pedestal and provided services for them that made other business owners cringe. Even then employers were searching diligently for ways to reduce overhead in the way of employee benefits. Instead, Goodnight was searching for ways to provide more benefits that would enhance the lives of his employees. He fascinated me. And made me want to be more like him albeit on a much smaller scale. Goodnight’s SAS blew past the $3B (that’s BILLION) mark last year.

Why do business owners and CEOs still not get it? 

I’ve only reached one conclusion. It’s because most are too short-sighted. Yes, some just don’t see people as valuable as they should. They figured humans are like generic parts, interchangeable. One is as good as another. If you lose one, no big deal. Let’s just plug another in place. But even those who believe people are valuable has set limits on that value. I mean, after all, the benefits packages have to be reduced by 25% this year no matter what. It’s easy to say people matter, but it’s very different to make the investment to prove it.

Even privately held companies are under constant pressure to exceed last month’s numbers. Group think kicks in because we’re all reading Fortune, Forbes, Fast Company and Inc. Innovation. Creativity. Blah, blah, blah. We read about it, give it a few seconds of thought then we go back to the reality that it has little to do with our life and our business. We’ve got to get sales up. And costs down. It’s the ying and yang of business building that mostly lures all of us. Along the way, we can easily forget the impact on our people — and our customers. We grab today’s dollars because we’re unable to see the five dollar bills we might be able to garner next month. A bird in the hand and all that.

It’s understandable. Well, sorta.

I’ve sat with too many CEOs who lamented about an employee’s performance – a key employee – who performed well until a bit more pressure was applied (intentional or not), proving they couldn’t quite hold up. We’re no different. Apply enough pressure on us to grow that top line, or the bottom line…and we’ll be likely to grab the dollar in front of us. I don’t make harsh judgments about leaders who grow short-sighted, even if I don’t always agree with that strategy.

It was in the early 80’s when I first wrote down and began preaching what I called “non-negotiable standards.” I was involved in turning around a company that was just a few years old, but quickly the inventory had grown obsolete, the people disenchanted and the systems non-existent. Two things ruled all my early actions: cleaning up the company (physically) and establishing non-negotiable standards. I wasted no time telling people what that meant – “non-negotiable standards.” It means things you must do or refrain from doing else you’ll put your job at risk. Now before you think, “Man, how heavy handed” — tap the brakes.

It was fair. Candid, but fair. I wanted employees to own their behavior and performance. That hadn’t been happening. People were lackluster, lethargic and apathetic. Many of them didn’t last. I don’t doubt their goodness as people, but the culture had betrayed them. They had grown accustomed to the pathetic environment. Good performance happens at the hands of good performers. Good performers need fostering, training, encouragement and rewards. In short, they need standards to meet.

Quickly I learned that the good performers who survived had long been frustrated by the unfairness of busting their humps while the slackards sat around without accountability. They embraced the changes and soared. I’ve since seen it happened many times.

Talk is cheap. 

I’ve not yet met the CEO or business owner who openly admits, “I don’t much care about my people. They’re all replaceable.” Instead, most of us – okay, all of us – give it lip service. Yes, some of us back up that talk, but many of us don’t. Some of us wish we could or would back it up. Others of us don’t much care, we just want to be polite and politically correct. A few of us are bullies who honestly don’t care about people. They’re a necessary evil and they vex our existence as leaders. Those are the folks I call “managers.” They’re not leaders. Honestly, they may not be very good managers (that is, people who oversee systems, processes and operations).

We lead people. We manage the work.

That’s my view. You may not share it. It’s okay. You can be wrong. 😉

I could write volumes of books on the horror stories I’ve heard about bosses who behave badly and who treat people even worse. You could likely be a contributing author. We’ve all got tons of these stories. But the behavior still persists.

I cringe every week because every week I hear multiple stories of bad boss behavior. Yelling, screaming, threatening – they’re just too commonplace in some workplaces. Grown people treated like pre-school children. Workers being humiliated. Supervisors and bosses feeling good about themselves by making sure the staff knows who is in charge. Like medieval fire breathing dragons, they roam the office just waiting for a white knight armed to the teeth to cut their head off. Unfortunately for many employees, no such knight ever arrives. Eventually, human indignities realize their limits, and people quit.

No big loss. Hire somebody else.

How much does it cost to hire or replace an employee in your company?

Most don’t know. They’ve never taken the time to compute the lost time, lost productivity, lost revenue or any other losses associated with a good employee walking (or sprinting) away. Sometimes it’s because the profits and revenues are high enough, it doesn’t much matter. That’s really shallow thinking. A business earning strong double digit net profits doesn’t seem bothered because they’re fat and happy. Unproductive perhaps, but fat and happy none the less. If an owner is banking $1M…it can be a daunting task to show him how a shift in his culture might result in a $1.25M income.

I live in the Land Of What’s Possible. What if?

What if we really embraced finding, training and retaining top talent? What if we pushed our chips into the middle of the table to build in some consistency and longevity among our employees? What if we actually put our employees first – above our customers? How would all that impact the customer experience?

Unfortunately many businesses will never find out. They’ll churn through people never figuring it out. They won’t calculate the cost – human cost or business cost.

Some will go out of business. The odds of failure in business are still staggering.

Others will survive in spite of themselves. They’ll never realize their full potential, but they don’t care. Enough. If they did, they’d find another way.

Books and articles about leadership may help shift a collective culture, but then again there’s Steve Jobs. Tyrants get worshipped. Some buy into the notion that you must be an insufferable maniac to succeed. Rather than try to persuade people otherwise, long ago I just decided to urge people working for such people – or people working in dysfunctional organizations – to find new opportunities. Get gone. Sooner than later. Protect yourself. Guard your heart and your own passion for doing good work. Life is way too short to work for a tyrant.

I wish I could impact the bigger picture, but I’m not naive about my own reach. Instead, I think it best to soar with my strengths as Donald O. Clifton wrote (the father of StrengthsFinder). I’m committed to serving leaders who already know the truth of profit generation and business building. People make THE difference. It’s not lip service. It’s not some better-felt-than-told philosophy. It’s a working culture that daily is willing to be tested to prove itself. Owners and CEOs who refuse to give an inch to behave otherwise. They remain committed to doing the right thing all the time, no matter what.

That kind of leadership resolve is rare, but it exists. Just today I had a nice conversation with a CEO who shared his story with me proving that his talk was anything but cheap. Big customer, little customer. They’re all the same to him – deserving of a great experience. He’s in the real estate game. He’s got a good sized team. Back last summer he recounted how he had to part company with an employee who simply didn’t understand that the CEOs “non-negotiable standards” are indeed NON-NEGOTIABLE. Grabbing the money – even for the firm – violated the principles and culture established by this high integrity CEO. He put his money where his mouth was. He acted, not based on financial gain, but on doing what was right. Why? Because he understands how big he’s going to win over the longer haul.

If business guys who achieved $3B and $6B respectively don’t convince you to value people, then I’m certainly not successful enough (financially) to persuade you.

Randy

Subscribe to the podcast

bula network podcast on itunesTo subscribe, please use the links below:

If you have a chance, please leave me an honest rating and review on iTunes by clicking Review on iTunes. It’ll help the show rank better in iTunes.

Thank you!

Lip Service, Customer Service & Employee Happiness (People Determine Your Profits) #4019 Read More »

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