Focus on the Ones Who Can Change
Copyright Jack Mixner. 714 449 1040. www.mixnerstrategy.com
Jack Welch certainly said it with vigor. Replace ten per cent of your staff - the under-performing ones - each year. State the company values and vision and expect people to buy-in - or leave. Stay in businesses ranking number one or two in their industry or sell the company.
Maybe there is another point of view. Training a new team takes time and money. Selling a company may be a waste of time.
Sometimes it makes more sense to change yourself. OK, there's always going to be turnover in a company, sometimes instigated by you. Many times, however, just changing yourself is quicker. When a consultant works with a company, she or he wants results quickly. If you fire people, things don't necessarily speed up, do they? So a consultant looks for places where change will get results. And the place to look isn't with the team. It's with the CEO (Farson, page 88). The CEO sees the problem. She knows what she wants to fix. She can't fire everyone, every day. No. She can change what she expects from people. Re-shuffle them. Assign them to new tasks that they're better suited to. And, this is the subtle part, make changes in yourself. Don't make big demands about the little things. Make big demands about big things. Big things are things like Vision and Values. But you don't necessarily have to make big changes to get big results.
I worked with one CEO and his team who managed a wonderful company. The only problem was that profits were becoming harder and harder to come by. Everybody thought they needed to sell more. To whom, they were not sure. Just sell more. We decided to sell less. Instead of selling all over the country, they focused on two regions where profits were higher. They needed fewer sales calls as a result. Productivity and net profits increased. They made significant changes, yes. The changes allowed the company to sell more with less effort. In the middle of a large planning effort focusing on nationwide distribution, the CEO made a change by allowing the company to take on a more regional focus. No one really noticed at the time. They had the same amount of work, but it was more focused. And profitable.
Reference
Farson, Richard. Management of the Absurd. Paradoxes in Leadership. Simon & Schuster. 1996.