When a business is broken the answer lies in one of three places:
- You don’t have the right people;
- You don’t have the right process; or
- People don’t want your product (or service).
Yes, I stole that from Marcus Lemonis, host of the hit TV show “The Profit”. Go follow his podcast “One Hundred Percent” right now, for some excellent business advice.
Let’s assume people want your product here. In our business, our customers definitely want excellent support services, happy patients, and satisfied clinicians. However, without the right people and a good process, we’re not going to get a good product.
Whenever the end product is broken, you MUST look at the first two. If you don’t have the people and the process to get the job done, you’re going to lose. So when faced with an end product that’s not satisfying your customers, start by asking yourself two very important questions:
- Do I have the right people?
- Are they following the right process?
The first question is important because if you don’t find the right people, you can’t perform. More people are usually not the solution, but better people often is. More headcount is not realistic with budgets and market conditions. Nowadays, with wage inflation, you’re often seeing the need for less people, in order to meet financial realities. This makes the executives ability to recruit, train, and retain better people even more important. The right team members can shift a jobsite from poor to great. Always remember that, and be the executive who recruits the top talent.
Executives must be willing to take a hard look at their current roster of team members and give an honest assessment of whether they get results. If not, you must determine if they are capable of the desired results. Your job is to then identify shortcomings and manage to correct those, or (a) move them to another position or (b) part ways.
You must identify, be honest about, and work to correct shortcomings. Don’t resort to firing people immediately, as this causes an unproductive culture of fear. But if your employees can’t or won’t get the job done, after you’ve consulted with them on the issue and gave them an opportunity to correct, you need to find team members who will. Otherwise, you’ll fail.
A good method for evaluating current staff is the Performance-Values Matrix, formulated by GE. In this method, each team member is evaluated on their performance in terms of results and whether they exhibit the values of your company. If they do both, they’re keepers. If they have good values, but are missing the mark, coach them up and correct the issue. If they’re getting results but not exhibiting the values, coach this up as well. Don’t let poor values by top performers cause a cancer in your company. But if they’re lacking in both aspects, move on immediately.
A common challenge in today’s environment is the inability to find workers, especially at the hourly level. You hear about this problem with companies all across the country. Yet I’ve found we often use this as an excuse, without looking at the underlying process we’re using to attract, recruit, and retain hourly workers. If you’re not really looking, you’re not going to find anyone. Also, if you don’t have an attractive work environment with satisfied employees, you’re going to have trouble attracting and retaining talent.
The difficulty of finding quality people, and the excess of lazy workers, is an issue that’s plagued executives since the dawn of time. There’s references to this problem in ancient texts like the Book of Proverbs with King Soloman and Hammurabi’s Code. It’s nothing new, and the executive must not let this external force serve as a justification for poor results.
I encourage you when faced with a staffing problem to first look at what you’re doing to get staffed. A good resource for this process is the book “Recruit Smarter, Not Harder” by Mel Kleiman. If you’re doing the things outlined in that book, you’re going to get staffed, even with lower-than-market wages. No one great is going to walk in off the street, you’ve got to find them out in the community. Recruit, recruit, recruit. It’s the answer to so many of your problems.
The right people are hard to find, but they’re out there. YOU must take accountability for finding the right team members. Statements like “I can’t find anyone good” or “There’s no good workers out there” are counterproductive, and will cause you to lose. Always be on the lookout for the next quality worker who can move your business forward. Make sure you have the right team in place.
That brings us to the Process. The executive should always understand and implement to company’s existing process before trying to reinvent the wheel. All too often, when observing poorly performing jobsites, one finds that the on-site director is not following the company’s process.
At HHS, we have a process for every aspect of our business that’s been developed over nearly 50 years of experience. These processes come from years of trial and error, in collaboration with the best hospital systems and hospital executives in the country. The slow development and use of these best practices that give us the best chance of success. This is true with any company.
Yes, we should always look for new, innovative ways of solving problems. Executives must be problem solvers, and often this involves thinking outside the box and adapting to changing circumstances. But never throw the baby out with the bath water. Use new processes to augment existing ones. Make sure you’re constantly testing and evaluating new methods to ensure they’ll actually work over time. Often times new ideas and techniques show promise initially, but falter over time.
GK Chesterton once said, “Don’t ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up.” The same goes for company processes. Yes, there are always new ways of doing things, and we should always be looking to improve. But time and time again, when examining broken job sites, you’ll find that it’s the process that’s broken, rather than a new idea or process that’s needed.
There’s a saying in songwriting that says “Once you know the rules, you can go ahead and break them.” Similarly, once you know your company’s processes like the back of your hand, along with the reasons for them, you can look to augment them with new processes that help drive even more efficiency. Some will work, and some won’t, but over time you’ll add value by figuring out best practices that move the company forward. This will help you progress in your career as you develop a reputation as a high-value A-player.
Once you have you people and your process in place, you can work on creating the best product (or service) possible. Don’t ever stop working on these two items. The moment you do, it’s only a matter of time before your product deteriorated.