The Salesby5 Blog

Today, stocks are on sale and your competitors are scared.  The three things that make up great companies that are able to hit their BHAG, or Big Hairy Audacious Goal, are:

Passion: Do what you love and love what you do!  What can you be the best in the world at: Where are your true strengths that make you better, or dramatically different?  Profit per X: This allows you to think about what is waste, what do people not care about, instead, where is the true area you can make the most profit and out-deliver a competitor?

Source: Jim Collins, Good to Great

Learn more about the three circles (Hedgehog Concept) at Jim’s site.

photo by Riude

Do you have a red flag mechanism in your company?  A way for people to pick up the red phone for an important call or press the red button to shut off the pumps?  A red flag/phone/button or anything else is an interesting idea in that it signifies that an important idea, problem or issue needs to be brought to light - NOW.  Having such a mechanism with the right team will help ensure that you and your team are seeing pressing problems right now versus at the end of the year during a review.  Take a look at how Jim Collins, of Good to Great fame, describes his red flag mechanism from his classroom and how Graniterock taught him about shortpay; a way for the customer to deduct a line item of a bill without prior consent from them.

photo by acaben

Today we had an interesting discussion about our culture and how it has dramatically changed. We used to allow the unacceptable and in my previous business it got to the point of ridiculousness. So if you want to change it so that your people are not de-motivating (un-selling) each other, you, your customers, what do you do? Remember the flywheel Jim Collins referenced in Good to Great. Imagine a giant, heavy wheel that moves an inch after much pushing.  With continuously dedicated pushing in a consistent direction you start seeing it speed up. Finally it is spinning.

Once you have your purpose, core values, brand promise and goals and BHAG in place and the leaders are living them, the flywheel starts to move! It is not over a week, but the movement in one month can inspire.  The movement in six months will make you shudder at where you were six months ago and in a year, it is all clarity so you can focus on the vision (BHAG). It can be fun if you have a great coach or a great team pulling, pushing and providing the inspiration. Once you get to this stage, you do not get to rest or relax, you then get to make sure that everyone is realizing how each person is living that brand promise and living the company’s purpose. How cool would it be if everyone is moving in the same direction with enthusiasm?  This is similar to a rowing team. What if one person did not row in the same direction once? What if they did not row the same direction two of five days? The rowing team would not allow it, why should you?

Summary: Selling starts with an attitude and reaches success with momentum. Selling on the inside gets sales on the outside and keeps the flywheel moving.  When were things the best?  Who is rowing against the team now and how fast can you fix it?

…show up every day.  The key is knowing when to say yes, but more importantly, when to say no.  Try running the opportunity through Jim Collins’ Hedgehog Concept:

1.  What can you be the best at?
2.  Does it make a profit?
3.  What are you really passionate about?

If the opportunity makes sense after considering those three questions, then it might make sense to pursue it.

When Jim Collins wrote Good to Great, a surprise find was that companies who have gone from good to great hire motivated people and teach management and each other how not to de-motivate one another. They do not spend time and effort motivating as it annoys the highly motivated and only has temporary effects on the un-motivated.

“Psychologist John Gottman created a landmark study on successful relationships both in marriage and in business. He found the ratio of positive to negative interactions to be best at 3 to 1 for business and 5 to 1 in a marriage. This simply means that in your work place having 1 negative interaction or de-motivating interaction to 3 motivating or positive interactions is the lowest you should be. At home, it needs to be 5 positive for every 1 negative.”

In creating an exercise for my clients to initiate the change, we started with these facts and then asked the participants to openly tell us what de-motivates them. My suggestion is that you take management as a group and you take their employees as a group, keeping them both separate. We would whiteboard these de-motivators and then we printed the compilation of all items on the whiteboard. This became an 8.5”x11” card laminated with the title: “What To Stop Doing” and in bold type De-Motivators. These went to each person in the room. The list was also assigned to one person who owned the task of keeping it alive in the organization.

We also initiated and highly encouraged the use of telling each other when someone de-motivates them. It always was a small joke at first, but quickly became part of the company’s language. Simple statements like “Hey man, you are de-motivating me!” became common during and after the exercise. Like anything, good use of internal branding to keep it alive was crucial.  Leadership keeping it in daily, weekly and monthly focus is a key to getting employees to live it and use the language.

I refer back to this often due to my own incredible ability to inspire others and accidentally de-motivate them.  It can “accidentally” happen when you talk to your children, spouse, and what I have found to easily be your employees. Below is a short list of potential de-motivators that seem to be common in groups I have worked with.  It will be easy for you to add to this list.  Do not discount the idea that this 30 minute exercise has amazing potential to increase employee productivity, happiness and inspire others.

Typical De-Motivators

• Closed door meetings
• Not saying good morning
• Not returning e-mail or calls
• Not listening
• Making assumptions
• Checking e-mail during a meeting
• Not using eye contact
• Negative talk of others
• Rolling of eyes when things are mentioned

Ingredients Needed for a Happier Workplace:

• 30 minutes
• Separate the group into two rooms, one with employees, the other with leadership/management
• Ready the half page segment of Good to Great regarding the surprise facts on de-motivation
• Whiteboard the de-motivators
• Combine all de-motivators on one page, print and laminate
• Cross share the information with the all groups
• Assign an owner to help keep this language alive in the organization
• Market it or brand it internally

Copyright 2008 by Sales by 5