STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY

What happens in your company from the time you know what product or service you’re going to sell requires structural integrity just the same as the building you’re sitting in. The sooner you have the solid structure, the sooner you ensure greater profitability, greater customer satisfaction, and greater success. You decide when you want that solid structure in place but the "rule" is - the sooner the better.

• Pre-Sales: Don’t be caught like a deer in the headlights when success is headed in your direction. Know in advance what actions it will take to deliver what you have promised your customer.
• Production: Don’t let your procedures develop without controls. Know and formally define in advance exactly how your operation is going to work.
• Delivery: You want to deliver the right product to the right location at the right price and at the right time. Your customer wants the same thing. Spell out how that is going to happen ahead of time.
• Customer Support: Eliminate suffering! Be sure you understand what expectations are and understand how you are going to meet them.
• Continuous Improvement: Once the specifications exist for your solid structure, improvements are just a matter of tweaking your well-defined processes.

Seven Critical Signs Your Process Needs to Be Improved

1.      Teamwork: The blame game - When something does go wrong, does it result in finger-pointing? If you have warring departments, you will never have a productive team. In one case, bickering between engineering and marketing departments brought about the closing of what had been a profitable division. Spell out expectations clearly, concisely, and completely and reap the rewards.

2.      Customer Satisfaction: Tech Support and Customer Service are drowning in calls - If your customers are complaining, they are NOT recommending you to their contacts! Shipments that don’t match the order, products that don’t perform as expected, and instructions that can’t be followed won‘t build your business. Spell out expectations clearly, concisely, and completely and reap the rewards.

3.      Loss: Things “falling through the cracks” – Have you had this happen? At a mortgage company, the mail clerk emptied the inter-office envelopes and tossed them up on the shelf. Months after the six-figure cashier’s check to pay off a mortgage went missing, another employee who needed interoffice envelopes picked up a stack, tapped it down to “neaten it up” and could see that one of the envelopes had something in it. Spell out expectations clearly, concisely, and completely and reap the rewards.

4.      Training: Training for new employees is too long – Weeks or even months after the initial training, the not-so-new employee is still asking others how to do something. A new division of a large company used temporary employees as receptionist/file clerks. Most of the time, they lasted a few days. As time went on, the file drawers got so messy that they could not be closed. Important papers were torn apart trying to retrieve them from the files and one of the 4-drawer files fell forward, injuring an employee. Seem impossible? Spell out expectations clearly, concisely, and completely and reap the rewards.

5.      Costs: Costs are too high - Does it seem as if you can’t compete? Are you thinking about offshoring your operation? Will you find new employees who can immediately understand your mission, your objectives, and perform as you want? Labor is rarely the reason a company cannot be competitive. Waste is the issue – wasted time; wasted motion. In one company, a committed effort to reduce waste reduced the time to build their product from six weeks to eighteen hours. Spell out expectations clearly, concisely, and completely and reap the rewards.

6.      High Turnover: Losing Employees? Issues between Managers and Employees? It’s unlikely that anyone who works for you wakes up in the morning and says to themself, “I think I will perform poorly today.” The issue is more likely that they don’t really know what is expected of them. Many years ago, I received a poor evaluation for appearance from a manager who was very stylish. Her comment in the meeting was that I didn’t wear enough makeup. Most often expectations are not that trivial but they might not be known. Spell out expectations clearly, concisely, and completely and reap the rewards.

7.      Inventory: Is it a nightmare for you to account for your inventory? Do you spend an unreasonable amount of time trying to reconcile records? In one small manufacturer’s operation, there was a single Shipping/Receiving Clerk. When a shipment came in, he had to go to the front office to get the paperwork. Because the trucker was on the clock and he knew the paperwork could take a long time, he would sign and let the trucker go. As soon as he left the area, the teams with work waiting for parts would “loot” the incoming shipment for their parts. Much of their inventory never made it into the records. Spell out expectations clearly, concisely, and completely and reap the rewards.

Time to Market vs. Creeping Elegance

Help or HELP!? - How Do I Know What Kind of Help to Look For?

Help or HELP!? - What Do You Do with All Those Resumes?

You were overloaded and knew you needed to hire some help. You posted the position online or advertised it in the paper. Maybe you called an agency to help you with the search. However you decided to do this, you will have decisions to make. If you started with the clear idea of what kind of help you need, it will be easier. If you decided to do it on your own and wound up with hundreds of resumes, here is a simple process (I call it brutal but it's the best use of your time and will get the kind of results you want):

1.      Open them all and put them in a pile (staple any that have multiple pages).

2.      Go through the pile the first time, looking for nothing but appearance and put any bad looking resumes either in a separate stack if you can afford the time and money to respond politely or in the wastebasket if you are strapped. Do you want someone who doesn't take pride in their work to work for you?

3.      Go through the remaining resumes and look at the objective. Is it your objective or is it a vague announcement of the applicant's wishes? If it's not your objective, into the reject receptacle with it! Do you want someone who can't focus on the task at hand to work for you? The pile is getting smaller, isn't it? Feel better about the brutal process?

4.      Look at the remaining resumes for the skills you clearly stated were important to you. Don't see them? Into the reject receptacle with it! Can you afford to hire someone who can't get to the point clearly and concisely? It's really shrinking now, isn't it?

5.      Look at the experience. Is there anything that tells you that the applicant can apply the skills you need in a way that will contribute to your success? Can't tell? Into the reject receptacle with it!  Will someone who just goes through the motions help you succeed or would you like someone who does the best job they can wherever they are. You should be left with a very small stack of resumes - your "short list."

6.      Prepare a short list of questions or "talking points" that you want to start with. Got clerical help? Have an administrative assistant make the first call, a screening interview and make sure they know what their task is (If you're doing it yourself, this should be easy). Whoever makes that screening call needs to take notes about the responses and about the attitude. Some people will actually be less than polite to someone they think is "only a clerk."

7.      Now, you should have just a few "survivors." Call them in for interviews. An excellent manager and exceptional team builder told me, years ago, "There are only two things you need to find out in an interview. Can they do the job and can you stand 'em while they do it?"

8.      Welcome the new member of your team and plan on a successful relationship with a valuable asset to your company.

Help or HELP!? - Where Are the Well Qualified People (The Mythical Skills Gap)?

There are a lot of articles that have been written about the "skills gap." Many of them point to this phenomenon as a major reason for offshoring jobs. In my opinion, there is no skills gap. There may be a gap between what employers are willing to offer for skills and what constitutes a living wage in the United States. Two groups of people have all the skills you need and they are readily available:

1.      Experienced people in your industry and in related industries who are older than your HR people and don't get past the first interview. Think you might be able to use breadth of knowledge? Look at a wider range of ages when you're hiring and don't allow age discrimination to slip in to your company. Sometimes, even the people who do the initial interviews don't realize that they are eliminating well qualified people for reasons related to their level of comfort with the applicant. I was once rejected for a staff job that I was extremely well qualified for because the interviewer told the recruiter I was "too comfortable." You may not know why you're having a hard time finding the great people you need.

2.      Uncle Sam has spent a fortune teaching people leadership skills, stress management, how to work under pressure and how to exhibit their best qualities under the worst conditions. Veterans are coming back and not getting the kinds of jobs they are extremely well qualified for. Can you be sure that your HR people are not just reacting to their discomfort with people who have been in combat? Veterans from World War II, Korea, and Viet Nam returned and kept this country going strong. If you want employees with a commitment to the goal and a commitment to their team, hire a Veteran!

The people you need are here. Get them started working on your success!