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A few weeks ago I had a discussion with a young “up
and coming” business owner. He was frustrated that his employees
were not logical. For example, many of them did not want to contribute
to the 401k when the match was 50 cents for every dollar. They would get
a 50% return immediately on the money that they put in. They really preferred
to keep their money and spend it.
In another situation that same week, a manager for one of our clients
was frustrated by a decision regarding their computers. He was able to
justify spending money to upgrade the computer system, but the “feeling”
of the ownership team was that they should not upgrade the system. They
had too many bad experiences with changeovers where the changes took too
long and created too many problems.
As I thought about these situations, I was reminded that my grandfather
would periodically have to patiently explain to me that people are basically
emotional creatures. While we use logical thoughts to rationalize what
we did, what we are doing or what we are going to do, the facts are that
we are typically trying to “prove” that what we feel is “logical”.
The reality is that we “felt” like doing it. This seems to
be true both personally and professionally.
Logic is important in business, but is not the driver of a great business.
While understanding personality styles can help communication, teamwork
and making better decisions, it is not a driver of great results. The
best product in the world does not mean that it will become the best selling
product in the world (i.e. Beta vs. VHS).
A great business is ultimately a result of having regular employees that
all do 1,000 little tasks a little bit better than the competitors. This
comes from motivating people to “feel” like they want to do
a great job.
While I do not necessarily agree with all of Wal-Mart’s business
policies, they have been able to take a set of beliefs from the corporate
offices and share them with employees locally where the employees “feel”
like they want to do the best they can to take care of their customers.
Another way to say the same thing is in a book by Joseph Pine and James
Gilmore, called The Experience Economy. They talk about providing an experience
to your customer in such a way that you are not a commodity based on price,
not a service based on price and quality, but an experience. In other
words, people do not buy us for our intelligence, but for the experience
we create for them. The ultimate experience is transformation or changing
someone. In the same way we want to do that with customers, why don’t
we take the same approach with employees?
When I was at a training class at Farr Associates in Greensboro, North
Carolina, they taught us that to transform someone, you can take one of
three routes:
- Be more emotional.
- Give them a new context for their beliefs.
- Spend time with them.
It is the same way in working with your team of people,
with your employees:
- What is it that gives your employees a special experience
with you and causes them to want to feel like supporting you and your
business 130% (i.e. they are not just there for the paycheck, the commodity)?
In other words, how can you transform them into true believers?
- What are you doing to motivate your people to “feel” like
part of the team and to feel that they want to support your team’s
vision?
- What are you doing to motivate your people to “feel” like
they want to achieve great results?
- What actions can you take in the next 30 days to motivate your team
to feel like doing what needs to be done to get great results?
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FFG Companies, Inc.
4009 Village Park Drive
Knightdale, NC 27545
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