The small trick to better business – your staff’s thumbs up

Wouldn’t it be great if everything you did got a great big thumbs up from your employees? Then of course, we’d have nothing to complain about! The great thing about the real world of business is that your employees do push back against decisions that you make, consciously or not. Some of these aren’t always that helpful (we all have that employee who is convinced you don’t see him slink into the office at 9:07am every day with a Starbucks in hand…). The good news is some of the things that staff push back against are great warning signs.

Many of the businesses we help are in the middle of planning a business strategy, perhaps revising an existing plan, rejigging one, or looking at creating a new plan.
One massive mistake we see is that sometimes these plans are not run through the staff until they have been set in stone, shipped and delivered. There are 2 reasons why this is a bad idea.

The first one is that your staff will definitely have some clear ideas about what will and won’t work. Bearing in mind that process management, planning, KPI reporting and many other business functions are a top down initiative; getting buy in for the process is critical.Here are some oversights we have seen in businesses before:

• Duplication of effort –Multiple spread sheets, online reporting systems, email reports and meetings
• Product failures not identified – poor competitor & customer research
• Technical issues and software failings not being identified early enough

…And we could go on.

The key feature here is that asking the right employees in your business key questions before you get to the stage of signing off your latest business plan / new guidelines.

The second mistake is that staff buy in is so critical.

Even if they were ignored when they were asked about the latest initiative, the right leaders and managers in the business being consulted can produce a culture of trust which in turns leads to the initiatives having a much stronger chance of succeeding if they do need to live and breathe on the sales floor.

So – homework for you – what can you ask from your employees today that will potentially have a real effect on your processes and procedures?

We hope you get some interesting answers!

Speak to us today about changing your strategy for a business that shows real growth and development.

Author derek Findlayson