Author: Ethan Theo

Article Contributed by Sara LaForest and Tony Kubica

Could your management team be creating unnecessary employee issues that are leading to:

• Low employee engagement
• Low employee morale
• Poor productivity
• Poor customer service
• The need for voluminous policy and procedure manuals to ensure that the manager follows the rules, and
• High turnover

While not so comfortable to ask, and even more challenging to be accountable for, here are 7 key questions to help you determine if your management is causing the above common concerns:

1.    Does every member of your management team know (internalize) the company’s Mission/Purpose and Vision (ideal future state)?

2.    Can every member of your management team describe the company Values, (that is, the key ways in which you go about your work, such as excellence in customer service, innovation, teamwork, respect…)? And, can every member of the management team give some examples of how the company values are demonstrated on a day-to-day basis?

3.    Do you have a succession plan – that is, an approach for and/or development of high potential/successor candidates?

4.    Do new people promoted to or hired for a management position clearly demonstrate the company values?

5.    Do you have an effective way to transition new managers into their positions (or do you just assume the transition will happen)?

6.    And, do you remove poor and ineffective managers quickly?

If you said “NO” to any of the questions above then you likely have employee issues as a result of your management problems.

When Addressing Employee Issues, Ensure You Have Sound Management First

How can you improve your business when you have employee issues and conflicts getting in your way of running an effective, productive and efficient organization? First, change your approach and take a macro view. That is, understand that often, employee issues are symptoms of inconsistent or failing management.

Your strongest assets and your key resources are your employees. (Yes, even stronger than your brand. Brand creates awareness and a promise. But it’s the employees that deliver on that promise.) And, while painful to acknowledge, it is the most talented employees that leave first.

If you want to improve your business, you must start with your managers. These are the people who are the direct link to your front line employees. These managers include:

• Department managers
• Assistant managers
• Shift supervisors
• Store managers
• Team leaders

Yet unfortunately, the role and impact of the direct supervisors are often overlooked when senior management or business owners contemplate improvement questions such as:

• How can we improve morale?
• What’s a good compensation system?
• How can we recruit and retain better employees?
• How do we improve our customer service?

Simply stated, as long as you do not deal with supervisor/manager competency and impact, you cannot effectively deal with any of the questions raised above. It’s like trying to come up with a model to explain how our solar system works using the earth as the center of the system. It just won’t work, no matter how hard you try. Replace the earth with the sun and it works beautifully. Money spent to improve the effects of management is wasted unless it’s spent to address poor management first.

Five Required Steps to Identifying and Addressing the Issue of Poor Management

1)      First, get senior executives to function as an aligned team and to translate this manager’s to promote (by demonstration not lip service) the stated values of the business. Remember, employees watch their leadership team for cues on how to behave and how to manage. They look to managers to see what’s acceptable and what is not!

2)      Carefully select employees for management positions. This means you need to have a succession plan that incorporates a management development plan for high potential candidates.

3)      Support the transition from employee to manager. Not all newly promoted managers will be ready for their new role. In fact, in many organizations, it’s possible that most aren’t yet ready for prime time but are needed there. (A good coach or mentor can be very valuable in these situations.)

4)      Define the standard of performance required of all your managers. Provide needed support to help your managers understand your standards and meet them. If they don’t (or won’t) after suitable support and development, replace them. Understand that “what you permit you promote”. Tolerating poor managers and poor manager behavior is the same as condoning it. And that is the way employees will perceive it.

5)      Then, insure your managers/supervisors are responsible for performance management and instilling employee accountability using these four fundamentals with their employees:

A.    Clarifying expectations of their role individually and within context to the larger organization

B.     Providing adequate training and development for them to do their job (identify and address skills, knowledge and resource gaps)

C.     Provide consistent feedback on their performance, expressly positive/ recognition based, and of course, addressing concerns or deficiencies (in which case you start over at A, though focusing on the concern/issue and what is needed/expected…)

D.    And, be consistent with upholding consequences. Similar to tolerating poor managers, unwilling or persistent underperforming employees will quickly compromise your overall results.

Service excellence, cost-effective performance and innovation, start with engaged employees. And employees leave their organizations most often because of a bad boss and a poor-working relationship. If you believe that your employees are not engaged to the extent you want them to be, don’t start with employee remediation efforts. Start first, with the leaders and the managers. If employees don’t have a good boss and working experience with them, save your money; as nothing else will work, at least for very long. It may be the most difficult place to start, but it will be the most effective for long-term ROI.

About the Authors:

Sara LaForest and Tony Kubica are management consultants with more than 50+ years of combined experience in helping organizations improve their business performance simply by improving the leadership effectiveness of top management. Now, get their “Self-Sabotage in Business White Paper” at: http://www.kubicalaforestconsulting.com/resources.php and uncover the common, subtle ways your management team is harming your overall business performance.

Article Contributed by Roberta Chinsky Matuson

Business leaders complain all the time that nothing seems to have changed in their organizations, despite their best efforts to make things happen. Yet they continue to do the same things and receive the same results. Well, it’s no wonder why nothing has changed!

Here are five reasons why your progress may have stalled.

1.    You have people on board who aren’t pulling their weight. If you’ve ever ridden on a bicycle built for two with someone who isn’t doing much pedaling, then you know what it’s like to try and move forward with someone who isn’t pulling their weight. It’s exhausting! Take a look around your organization and do an honest assessment. Who is peddling hard and who is coasting? Then make a commitment to remove those people who aren’t doing much of anything. Now try moving forward again and notice the difference.

2.    You’ve failed to invest in your firm or your people. It’s easy to complain how things are falling apart, yet you haven’t made any investments in your company or your people in years. People are not going to become stronger managers and develop better relationships with your customers by osmosis. These are skills that need to be built and continually reinforced. Loosen your belt and start investing in your people. It shouldn’t be too long before you begin seeing changes.

3.    You have a hard time delegating. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to move your business forward when you are still in the middle of daily operations. You hired people to help you, right? Then let them do just that, and notice how much time you now have available to grow your business!

4.    You really have no idea where you are going. I recently experienced this myself when my husband and I were driving through Tuscany. Yes, the scenery was wonderful, but after driving past the same church three times within a two-hour span, it was obvious to me that we needed a destination, even if it was just a gelateria! You will never get to a specific place in your business if you don’t have a destination in mind. It’s a good idea to look at your business every six months or so. This will allow you ample time to make course corrections so you don’t find yourself circling back to the place where you started.

5.    You don’t implement recommendations. You surround yourself with smart people and you ask for their recommendations. Sometimes you even pay for this advice. Yet you never implement any of these recommendations. Is it any wonder that nothing has changed?

I understand that change is hard and that sometimes you’ll experience even more pain before things get better. But in the end, isn’t it better to have tried something than to have done nothing at all?

About the Author:

Roberta Chinsky Matuson is the President of Human Resource Solutions (www.yourhrexperts.com)  and author of the highly acclaimed book, Suddenly in Charge: Managing Up, Managing Down, Succeeding All Around (Nicholas Brealey, January 2011). Her firm helps organizations create exceptional workplaces that deliver extraordinary results. Sign up to receive a complimentary subscription to Roberta’s monthly newsletter, HR Matters.