Empowering People

One massive challenge I witness is the ability of organisations and leaders to empower their staff. Make it safe for people to make decisions. When they don't it creates bottlenecks and business can not move forward as much. Here are the only 5 questions you staff need to answer to make a decision without you.

1. Is it right for the customer?
2. Is it right for the company?
3. Is it ethical?
4. Is it something you would be willing to be held accountable for?
5. Is it consistent with the Company's values?

If the answer to all 5 is yes then - DON'T ASK - JUST DO IT

Understanding the "Core Values" of Honesty and Integrity

Often I hear that Honesty and Integrity are core values - as they should be. Would you ever Hire someone who wasn't honest or exhibited Integrity? How often though have you employed someone to be disappointed on these values.

The challenge is that you need to go to a deeper level so your people can understand what it really means in your organisation. The words are like the outer layer of an onion and you need to peel back the layers until you get to the real "core" of the definition for your company.

In our company "Live what we teach" defines Integrity for me. We have a client who is a painting contractor that has "3 coats means 3 coats". Isn't this a lot easier for his staff to understand than Integrity.

The difinitions are different for every company. What does the inside of your onion look like for Honesty and Integrity in your company.

Making it Safe For Staff to Discuss Things

I have always believed that the test of a healthy work place is whether or not your staff can talk freely about decisions, offer ideas or improvements etc without fear of retribution. Don't get me wrong here because decisions ave to be made by the leaders and once it has been made the team should adopt it as their own.

I'm talking about robust discussion, input to the big decisions and feeling like they are part of the team to the extent that they can offer ideas or improve current systems in place. After all those actually doing the hands on graft know what works and what doesn't.......this builds on the adage that people are not a business's biggest asset, their skills are!

Here at Results.Com the team are free to challenge me or anyone else and speak freely. This does not come without a need to swallow some pride or eat a bit of humble pie, but it certainly makes for a great culture and adds to the decision making and accountability of the overall team.

Karl