A year ago, our team read Mastering the Rockefeller Habits by Verne Harnish. The book is about growth and has helped countless firms advance.
There are three basic decisions Harnish says a team must make:
- Do we have the Right People?
- Are we doing the Right Things?
- Are we doing those Things Right?
When I read these questions last year, I answered yes to all of them … and I can still answer yes to all of them, despite the fact that a few things have changed during this year. You see, the answers to these questions change as our company evolves.
Having the right people can be the most challenging of these three questions, and also the most important question. Your people are the face of your company. If they do not interact well with clients, you could be in for some real speed bumps.
Here are a few things we’re doing at Fourlane to ensure we keep the right people in place:
- Make sure our employees know they are important. Through thank you comments from me or their manager, or a shout out at a staff meeting, we want employees to know they are valued.
- Build personal relationships. Because we are a remote team with folks located throughout the country, water cooler chats are impossible. To get to know each employee, we spend time during our staff meetings each week to learn about them – their likes and dislikes, their celebrity look-alike, and even what they had for dinner last night! We try to get to know each person at a different level and have fun at the same time to build camaraderie and loyalty.
- Share our priorities. When the team knows what is important to us as a company, they make better decisions! It’s that simple.
- Provide productivity tools. No job’s a walk in the park; that’s why they call it work. Ensuring our employees have access to the tools and information they need helps.
- Measure and inform. Our operations manager has a way to measure everything – and he regularly shares that information with the team. We’ve found that this keeps staff up-to-date, motivated and improves performance.
Employment requires mutuality. The company has to have a need (and a budget), and the employee has to have the ability and the desire to fulfill that need. Being a good employer is hard. You can’t please everyone, and at the end of the day, there is still work to be done.
