Are You Leading The Corporate Pack?
How Tuned Up Is Your Corporate Leadership?
An organization, large or small, can be thought of like a sportscar! In order to improve performance, you have to get under the hood and examine the engine. It is time-consuming. You’re going to get greasy. Some of the parts are going to need to be retooled to maximize performance. But in the end, it’s all going to be worth it because the car is going to be faster, more agile, and its performance more sustainable. If you are looking for a faster, more agile, and improved performance from your organization, it may be helpful to think of your organization like a sports car, except that the engine is your team and the parts are your people. If you are not getting the performance out of your organization that you expect then you need to look under the hood.Corporate Leadership Begins With A Skilled Leader
As the leader, you are the top mechanic. You must know the parts of the engine. You have to know their form and their function.
In that same way, you must know the members of your team. Individually. And not just their work life. You need to know a little about their personal life too. What makes them tick? Money? (probably not). Recognition? Family? Growth opportunity? Corporate Culture? (Ahhh… now you may be on to something) If you don’t know these things about your people, you will have no clue how to retool them to get the performance that you need out of them as a member of the team.
Parts Are Replaceable, People Are Not
Oh sure, you can go to the parts store and try to get another part, but there is no guarantee that the new part will be able to provide the performance that you were specifically looking to improve. Sometimes that “new” part was found in someone else’s automotive boneyard. Again, there is no guarantee.
Because people are very complex beings, there is no guarantee that plugging in this part solves the one performance problem but, instead, leads to three other problems. Bad attitude. Doesn’t work well with others. Absenteeism. Essentially, you traded 1 performance problem for three others. Not to mention the time and money it takes to go to the parts store! (Recent studies suggest that it costs the employer ½-2X the salary, to find another part… ummm I mean employee) Yikes!What is a leader to do?
In a Tight Labor Market, Good Leaders Are Critical
When you consider the tight labor market, and the demands of the labor force like employee engagement, professional growth, employee retention, and even M&A Integration, employee replacement may not be the best solution. You may find that it is more effective to retool the employee for maximum speed, agility, and team performance than to release the employee and find yourself wandering around the automotive boneyard.