Netuitive today announced it will close an outstanding year in terms of market traction and industry acclaim for its award winning self-learning performance management software.
This year Netuitive exceeded more than 250 total customers, including two of the largest online retailers in the US, three of the world’s largest banks and one of the biggest energy companies. In the second half of the year, the company tripled the number of new customers over the previous period. And for the third year running, Netuitive achieved a 100 percent customer win record over competitors in head-to-head technical evaluations.
The stock market is in turmoil. Rumors of layoffs may abound. Retirement plans are taking serious hits. Political and economic uncertainty adds to the stress level of our employees.
These are troubling times for companies and for employees. This is the time for leaders to rise to the challenge and ensure their employees that all is well.
Leadership is the special quality which enables people to stand up and pull the rest of us over the horizon. -James L. Fisher
As managers part of our job is to keep our departments running as smoothly as possible. We all know that employees who are under stress are less productive and more prone to make errors. From a business prospective it is sound management to ensure a productive environment continues in the workplace.
This is why during these tough times managers need to be strong leaders. To ensure the stability and productivity of our departments, we must stand up to the challenges we face and lead. These are tough times to lead in, but I feel at this time more than ever that strong leadership will bring us through these tough times.
How to Lead During Tough Times
Everyone experiences tough times, it is a measure of your determination and dedication how you deal with them and how you can come through them.
- Lakshmi Mittal
Now more than ever employees will look to management for leadership. They want to be reassured their job is safe and that their company is safe. While none of us can predict the future, each of us has the responsibility to try and ease those fears.
Many companies have found a direct correlation between customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction. Companies like Disney and FedEx are known for their strong customer service. They understand that to provide outstanding customer service, employees must be empowered.
Empowering employee’s means giving them or someone who manages them the authority to do whatever it takes to satisfy the customer. Often you have to trust your employees to make the right decision without waiting for management to provide approval.
This level of empowerment requires that employees be trained to recognize and act on opportunities to improve customer service. Managers must remove the constraints that keep employees from making decisions on their own. They also must give the employees the confidence that their contributions do make a difference.
It is not just “being nice” to employees that leads them to provide better customer service. The continuous improvement of the organizational processes removes many hassles that produce disgruntled employees, who in turn produce dissatisfied customers.
Empowered Employees
Some of the benefits of employee empowerment for the employee include:
- Workers feel they are given the opportunity to do what they do best every day.
- They believe their opinion counts.
- They sense their fellow workers are committed to quality.
- They’ve made a direct connection between their work and the company’s mission.
In this continuing series of articles on leadership, we are going to look at why leaders need to drive change within their organization.
A leader must be the one to stand up and say this needs to change and this is how we are going to do it. They should lead the strategy, planning, development and implementation of change.
Why Change Is Needed
Change is vital to growth and expansion. It gives your company a competitive edge and gives your departments and reports a spark of energy. Without change it is impossible to grow. To grow one must improve. To improve one must change.
As an example let’s look at Jack Welsh. He took GE and turned it into one of the largest and most admired companies in the world. One of the key elements to his success was to drive change in the organization. He encouraged his colleagues to never stop thinking about the need for change. He advised his managers to make whatever changes were necessary to improve and to constantly re-examine and rewrite their agendas.
As a leader you must understand how important change is and how you can drive change. You must learn how to manage change so it is effective, positive and beneficial to your company, your departments and your people.
Change Is Normal and an Opportunity
Change is a normal part of business and can happen over a period of years or even hours. We must get everyone to understand that change is normal and it must happen. Change is necessary to grow your business. Change will happen with or without you. It is better for you to control the change, rather than have change forced on to you.
Great leaders are usually great communicators. No leadership skill can compensate for poor communications. Great communicators use their skills to persuade others to follow. They are able to present their vision and plan in a clear and concise manner.
In the first article in this series, Leadership Skills - Communications Part 1 we looked at the role of the speaker. Now we will examine the listener and learn how knowing who you are communicating with is almost as important as what you say.
The Listener
Communications Are Heard With the Ears
To communicate effectively the listener must hear what you are saying. Your voice should be loud enough to be heard, but not overbearing. Shouting is not an effective form of communications. It turns on the emotional barriers of the listener and will make effective communications difficult. You should speak using a normal tone of voice, only changing it to make an emphasis to a point.
If you are unsure of how well your speech is being heard you should practice by recording yourself talking. Rehearse a speech and record it. Do this first in private to look for obvious flaws in your speech patterns. Then record yourself as you actually give the speech or communicate with someone. You may be surprised at how you think you are speaking and how you really are.
To be a great leader you must first be a great communicator. With good communications skills you will be able to articulate your vision clearly and repeatedly. Spell out your plan of action, asking for everyone’s support and showing confidence in a positive outcome.
Think of all of the areas where communications skills are used.
- One-on-one with your employees
- Small groups or your team
- Larger groups and meetings
- Interviewing applicants for a position
- One-on-one with your upper-management
All of these are important tasks and how well you do them is dependent on your communications skills. This two part article will look at communications from the heart of the speaker to the heart of the listener with tips on how you can become a great communicator.
The Speaker
Communication Begins In the Heart
The root of what you communicate comes from the core set of values and principles in your heart. If you do not believe what you are saying you will not do a good job of it. The first step in becoming a great communicator is looking at your own heart. Understand who you are and look for things you need to change within yourself to become a great leader. Base yourself in the core values that never change over time: honesty, respect, faith, caring, perseverance, and diligence.
Performance management is the process of assessing progress toward achieving predetermined goals. Performance management is building on that process, adding the relevant communication and action on the progress achieved against these predetermined goals. (Source: Wikipedia)
Performance management strives to optimize results by aligning all of the parts of an organization. With a well designed plan and good training you can build a culture of performance that will improve every part of your organization.
Here are some of the key parts in building a strong culture of performance.
Develop Clear and Measurable Goals and Objectives
The starting point for performance management is to review the goals your organization from the top to the bottom. Every department should have their own goals which align with the overall goals of the company. The goals should be clear and in terms of units of performance that can be measured such as time goals, production goals, spending goals and improvement goals.
A project goes wrong. A flaw was missed. A product was released into production that has caused many problems. Who is to blame?
- “Well it wasn’t me!”
- “We did our part!”
- “I told them this would happen!”
- “Not my problem!”
Too often the blame game is started. People are more concerned about covering their collective rear ends than the mistake. Often extraordinary measures are taken to deflect any blame. Insulating oneself or department is seen as a defensive measure to ensure blame for any failure cannot be reflected back on them. I see this as counterproductive, but that is another article.
Mistakes WILL happen and the blame game has been around a long time. How you choose to handle situations like this will say a lot about you personally and as a manager. Your first reaction should not be to find the person or group that made the mistake and rail them up one wall and down the other.
Your first reaction to should to step up and take control of the situation.
- If upper management is not yet aware of the mistake you should be the one bring it to their attention. It is much better if it comes from you than someone else.
- Take the lead with a proactive approach to reducing any further damage the mistake may cause.
- Find the root cause of the mistake and put into place measures to try and ensure such a mistake cannot happen again.
- If the mistake can be traced back to a particular employee look at what you could have done or can do to help them.
- Examine your Quality Assurance process to see how it slipped through.
See a mistake for what it can be, an opportunity for growth and improvement for you, your group or team and the individual. Don’t look for others to share the blame. Whatever has happened step up and take responsibility for it. If you try to affix blame on others you play yourself as the victim. Rise above such petty thoughts. Even if it is not your fault to play the victim will be seen as a weakness.
