Power To The People!

“In times of change – learners inherit the earth.” ~ Eric Hoffer ~
The “people factor” peculiar to small businesses. As businesses downsize – less may become more but less certainly becomes critical. In small businesses, flat org-charts are the norm – and both a strength and weakness. It takes a certain type of person to thrive in a small business environment – especially nowadays. Wearing many hats and enduring shifting priorities and tempos can wear on the non-generalist. This goes for both the entrepreneur/owner AND those on his/her staff. The stress is especially acute for those who may have been on the job for some time (having acclimated to the organization during simpler and more relaxed times) or who have formerly luxuriated in a single-discipline focus. CEOs take note: though your staff certainly appreciates their jobs – they have endured downsizings and taken on more responsibilities along the way. This HAS added mental and emotional stress. Be proactive before vital links begin to fracture. Sometimes an outsider’s perspective can detect fractures that you cannot.

Is your front office (you know - your SG&A cost center) disconnected from it’s business enterprise roots? In his book, Shop Class As Soul Craft (©2009 by The Penguin Press), Matthew Crawford looks at the office dynamics of small and large corporations that have lost focus on individual contribution and how new “office centric” and often non-productive and erroneous criteria for performance are diluting SG&A value and derailing companies. You know, like focusing on political correctness versus getting the job done and office cultures that use limp phrases like “I don’t disagree with you” that lead to phony consensus building.

In growing enterprises, valuable and contributing individuals are promoted and given increasing responsibility and authority – sometimes beyond their capability – “The Peter Principal”. These very key players can become roadblocks to further progress when their ambitions digress from those of their leader.

Having ambitions and being ambitious are two very different things. A wise business leader is conscious of this. I cannot count the times I’ve seen key middle managers holding back a company while paying lip service to the ambitions of an earnest CEO. The toughest group are the seasoned veterans who have given their all to ambitious projects and implementations in the past. They may no longer “see the light”, they may be tired or just plain coasting toward retirement. These reluctant participants may often be individuals who are viewed as vital. The questions is this; is your ambitious plan equally as vital as you perceive these individuals to be? If so - a line must be drawn. Who may quit and who may need to move on is a function of the CEO’s commitment to and ambitions for the enterprise – for the good of the enterprise. CEOs should realize that their ambitions may exceed the ambitions of their staff and then have the courage to break through resistance – no matter what the perceived or feared consequences in employee turnover may be. Such fears generally exceed reality. This is why enterprises that embrace a culture of change and continuous improvement have a vitality borne from their culture and not supposed “vital” individuals.

Are your production workers BAD ROBOTS? Matthew Crawford (Shop Class As Soul Craft), makes another good observation about worker mentality in the modern age – “If occasions for the exercise of judgment are diminished, the moral-cognitive virtue of attentiveness will atrophy.”(pg. 101) In other words, too much monotony and systemization in human operations can become counter-productive. All the written procedures and auditing you care to apply will not stem this human result. In certain environments where human involvement in productivity approaches that of machines - you might as well invest in the robots - because your workers will evolve into mindless and, worse, error prone automatons.

Along the same line, organizations that lack ambition will trend toward mediocrity in human capital. Jason Jennings in Hit The Ground Running,©2009 puts it like this, ”Without growth a company will eventually be unable to hire and keep talented people. People work for businesses in the hope of achieving their own full economic potential. When highly talented and ambitious people discover that a brighter tomorrow doesn’t exist, they’ll leave at the first opportunity. Eventually the only people left will be those incapable of finding work elsewhere.”(pg.28)

I help organizations define and achieve their ambitions and I’m available to listen and hear about the problems, issues and opportunities - not acted upon - that dominate your thoughts. That’s where it starts.

All the Best!
Bill