by The HLH Team
“A goal without a plan is just a wish.”
-Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Of all the 8 Wastes, Talent waste scares me the most. Talent built all our businesses, and only talent can drive them to the next level. If you aren’t nurturing it, then you’re wasting it. Unused talent in a business is like water freezing and thawing across a mountainside: eventually it will bring the whole thing down.
This article isn’t about how to drive people to work harder, put in more hours, or even close more sales. It’s about how to inspire people to want to build your company. Pressuring people may get your more short-term sales, but only coaching them will yield the creativity and innovation you need to stand apart.
Tough Love for the Boss:
The hard thing for those in charge is that when our staff’s talent is wasted, it is usually our fault. We all know a team member who we feel isn’t contributing in growing the company. But before you call them into your office, ask yourself if you’ve been proactive to help them improve.
We all know the baseline of what we need to contribute in our jobs. These are expectations. Whether that’s closing a million in sales in Q2 or making sure your patient’s teeth are clean and healthy, these are the things we must do in our jobs.
Most businesses do a good job at communicating expectations. Whether it’s in a job description or more abstract, expectations are easy. But expectations only maintain your company, they don’t grow it.
Beyond Expectations
You’ve got your goals. You know what you want your revenue to be next quarter. You’ve probably projected your Gross Margin and Net Profit. But do you have a plan for how your team will grow your business?
A Quarterly Rock is a goal that you set with key team members that acts as a roadmap for personal and business growth. It’s a simple concept that is shockingly easy to complicate, so here are the basics:
- A rock cannot be something that would have happened anyway (it shouldn’t be an expectation)
- If you’re just starting, aim for 3 or less per quarter per individual
- The team member chooses the rock and must be personally invested in it. Don’t force something on them they don’t like because you think it will be better for the company.
- The boss works as a coach both during the choosing and meets regularly to see how the goal is progressing and to help it will happen on time.
Turning Goals into Reality:
If you set Rocks with your team and then don’t follow up, they’ll probably fail. Not because they don’t care, but because it will appear like you don’t. If you don’t follow up, expectation-driven tasks will rush in like weeds and choke the Rock out.
Nurturing Rocks for your team is a significant time investment, so choose your key team members wisely. You’ll need to work with them individually and over/above your existing expectations-based meetings.
Whether or not the Rocks are achieved is up to both of you. The team member has to do it, but you need to nurture, prioritize, and provide the resources necessary for it to happen.
The Impact on your Business:
Rocks shouldn’t be a secret. Other team members should know about them and be engaged. Achieving them is both a personal and a business win.
People will be watching how you deal with the Rocks as much as the person doing them. They’ll be watching how much you support and in what ways. They’ll watch your reaction when the Rocks are met as well as your reaction when they aren’t.
If you stand by your team member, help them to see their Rocks through and make that commitment, you will have done more than stem the waste of their talent. You’ll have challenged the others to step up just by showing how invested you are.
Source: This idea of “Rocks” came from the Entrepreneurial Operating System ( https://www.eosworldwide.com/ )
by The HLH Team
“Anticipate the difficult by managing the easy.”
-Lao Tzu
The Bake Sale Debacle:
Imagine with me: you’re taking part in a bake sale for your son’s hockey team. Customers have 2 weeks to fill out an order form for various treats; you’re in charge of baking the Rice Krispie squares.
You make a good guess that each of the team’s 20 players will sell 3 orders of a quarter pan each, so you buy enough materials for 15 pans of squares. You get a great deal at Costco buying that many boxes of cereal and marshmallow bags at once.
Here’s your budget:
Projected Revenue:
15 pans @ $20/pan
Costs:
15 jumbo Rice Krispies @ $5 each = $75
15 jumbo marshmallow bags @ $3 each = $45
Gas to/from Costco = $10
Total Costs:
$135
Projected Profit:
$170.00
The orders trickle in. A square here, a square there. But the big orders never come in for you. Instead, they overwhelm the Nanaimo square mom down the block. She’s swamped, all the while after selling a measly 7 pans your kitchen is still crammed with materials and you’re $25 in the hole for materials.
So what happened?
Expect the Unexpected:
You made an educated projection of how much you’d sell, and you bought your products at a reduced rate based on that projection. You even saved fuel and time by making fewer trips. You should have come out ahead.
But the unexpected happened: the nanaimo bar competition. As you munch on Rice Krispies for the next year, you tell yourself, “I couldn’t have known.” But, there is always the unknown. Therefore we need to plan for the unknown.
Just-in-Time:
You actually had another option. You could have bought enough ingredients to get started, then waited for more orders to buy more.
Just-in-Time Inventory Management was developed in Japan in the 60s and 70s and perfected by Toyota. The philosophy is simple: only have enough raw materials to fulfill the orders you’ve taken.
The secret is in developing a reliable supply line to bring in just enough materials on fairly short notice. Just-in-time for your bake sale would have looked like this:
- You buy enough raw materials to get started with a couple pans.
- You make more frequent trips to the store. You buy smaller boxes of Rice Krispies. Thus, you pay slightly more in transportation and materials.
- You save by staying close to the rocks, and not carrying any more inventory than you need.
Here’s what a Just-in-Time process for your bake sale would have looked like:
Confirmed Revenue:
8 pans @ $20/pan = $160
Costs:
12 midsize Rice Krispies @ $3.75 each = $45
12 midsize Marshmallow Bags @ $2.25 each = $27
Gas to/from Costco = $30
Total Costs:
$102
Actual Profit:
$58
Your costs were higher. But you turned a $25 loss into a $58 profit. You expected the unexpected and built flexibility into your model instead of optimism.
Advantages:
The deadly waste of Over-Inventory is dangerous because it’s so often overlooked. When we bring in more inventory than we need, it doesn’t just sit in the corner.
It wastes money every day it sits there:
- Every dollar we tie up in inventory is a dollar less in cash flow; a dollar less we can use to run our business.
- As inventory sits, it ages. It gets old, goes bad, becomes obsolete. We often eventually need to discount, throw away, or write it off
- Every time you have to move it, money is wasted.
All in, the cost of carrying inventory for a long period is 25-30% of its value. For most businesses, that eats your profit margin even if you can sell it at full price.
Potential Hazards:
Toyota is the king of Just-In-Time Inventory Control, waiting until it receives orders before ordering parts. But when you’re close to the rocks, there’s no room for error: in 1997 a fire at a Toyota parts manufacturer shut Toyota assembly lines down for weeks because they ran out of the part after just one day.
Examples like that are illustrative of risk, but incredibly rare. For lean businesses adept at Just-in-Time, the waste saved is well worth the odd hiccup.
Whether you’re a large manufacturer or a tiny kitchen cook, the first step is making your supply chain as reliable as possible. Step 2 is Just-in-Time.
by The HLH Team
“Start with good rules, lay out the rules, communicate with your employees, motivate them and reward them. If you do all these things effectively, you can’t miss.”
-Lee Iacocca
As we learn to be brutal with wastes like over-inventory and sending half empty trucks on deliveries, we need to remember that some of the worst kinds of waste happen right in front of us, day after day. Unhealthy and stress filled workplaces inevitably waste countless hours in lost productivity, sick days, and low morale.
Here are a few ways that you can both reduce waste and make happier employees at the same time:
Encourage Exercise:
The modern world seems built to condone sedentary lifestyles. Diabetes, obesity, smoking, and stress cost governments and businesses billions of dollars a year and cost the people afflicted with them much more.
The best solutions are also the simplest, and even a minimum of effort can help combat these patterns. You don’t need to be punitive; the best results come from positive encouragement and gentle nudging. As a good leader, you can help your team break out of unhealthy lifestyles for everyone’s benefit.
It’s as simple as encouraging everyone on your team to exercise 30 minutes a day. Whether that’s allowing a walk at lunch or recognizing people who choose the stairs over the elevator, it can go a long way in decreasing stress and increasing overall focus and productivity.
Work/Life Balance:
In the frenzied pace of the past 30 years, employees have often left their home life behind as they struggled to climb the ladder. Now, the results of that relentless unbalance are becoming clear. Stress reigns as a key detriment to health and wellness.
Younger employees are increasingly wanting to keep a balance. People are searching for a way to balance goals and priorities in and out of the workplace, and parents are wanting to spend more time with their growing kids.
Savvy employers are actively on-board. A healthy work-life balance makes us more creative, productive, and keeps us physically healthier. The broad array of benefits stem from the right mindset in the workplace.
Here are a few easy ways to encourage this:
- Stop emailing them at night, and ask all employees to do the same. Leave that time for them, and encourage them to put their smart phone away during those hours
- Be flexible with work hours. Be the boss who makes exceptions for piano recitals and birthday parties.
- If someone isn’t taking their holiday time, encourage them to. They may not think they need to, but they need to rest. Workaholism doesn’t help anyone in the long run.
Smoking as Waste:
It’s a personal decision to smoke, but a 2013 Ohio State Study quantified its real cost to private US businesses. The 2013 study concluded that, on average, smokers cost employers $5,816 a year. Based on business and industry, it ranges dramatically from $2,800 to over $10,000 a year.
Time is the biggest, and most obvious, waste directly from smoking. While other employees take scheduled 15 or 30 minute breaks, smokers will often either “tack on” an additional 10 minutes to existing breaks or take extra breaks just to go outside.
While this isn’t all smokers, it’s a strong enough majority to be quantified in the study. The average was just over $3,000 of cost annually per smoker just in wasted time, with an average of 4 extra 10 minute breaks per day.
Talk to your smokers honestly, and encourage them to quit. Don’t threaten them, work with them. If you crunch some numbers and determine that a monetary reward is worth it, then do that. But often just knowing you’re on their side will give them the will to quit on their own.
Studies Cited:
http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/23/5/428
by The HLH Team
Talent is the most mysterious of the wastes of business. It’s impossible to measure because unlike the others, it’s not about having too much of something. It’s about not having enough ideas and enthusiasm because the wrong person was hired or the right person wasn’t listened to.
The root of talent waste happens during the hiring process. Hiring the right person opens up new ideas and opportunities, while the wrong hire can waste time and effort while squandering much needed potential.
At hiring time, you get a stack of resumes and they all blur together. Some stick out, for better or worse. But how to tell the others apart? And how to find what you actually need? Some interview questions reveal more than others. The right questions can cut down on wasted talent by finding the right person to hire in the first place:
“You work for this company. I’m a big Lead, and I give you 20 seconds to pitch me. Go.”
This not only puts the pressure on, but shows how much homework they’ve done. How keen are they? How well can they improvise? Pay attention to the details of their response; do they recite your slogans back to you or have they shown the initiative to learn the nuances of your brand?
“Tell me about the best relationship you’ve had with a co-worker. What about the worst?”
Team dynamics are as important as employee skill sets. You’re looking for people who will forge productive and meaningful professional relationships. A synergistic team builds each other up and brings out the best in each other, while talent waste can stem from feeling unsupported or unvalued at work, halting ideas in their tracks.
It’s also illuminating to hear about their worst. Almost everyone has had a negative experience at one point, but the illuminating part is hearing how honest they are about it and how they speak of the other party.
“Let’s find something complex which you’re passionate about but I don’t know at all. In 2 minutes or less I need you to explain it to me so I understand.”
The topic is immaterial: the key here is that they can break it down quickly so that you understand it, and in an engaging way that draws you in. This is critical for evaluating communication and people skills. We all have passions, but those of us who can communicate and connect spread them to others.
If they’re working for you on complex problems you want them to be able to break it down quickly, but also communicate the value of it in a way that gets other people excited.
“I give you $50,000 to make your own business from scratch. What do you do with it?”
This question gives you the best insight if you give them some time. Let them think on it, perhaps even jot some notes. The best answers here are specific, so try not to cut them off.
You’re testing their creativity, their interests, and their entrepreneurial spirit. You’ll also get a taste of their business IQ by thinking about how successful their venture could be.
“I hire you, and a year from now you’re thinking that taking this job was the best thing you ever did. What happened in that year to make you think that?”
Ideally, you’re looking for someone who has already thought through what they want to contribute for the company. The more specific their answer is, the more ambitions they probably have.
This question will also inform you about their values and goals. A year from now, do they want to be focused on closing big commissions, or are they excited about developing an exciting new product? Consider if their answer team oriented or personal, and how it fits with your existing dynamic.
“Would you have asked any different questions, or done anything differently, in this interview?”
This may be uncomfortable, so be gentle. You’re trying to get at a number of things here. How assertive are they in speaking their mind to authority? Action-focused people with strong voices push achievement to the next level better than “yes men.”
You’re also giving them the chance to tell you the thing about themselves that they wished you asked about. It’s a bit like asking a cook his favourite recipe; you’re opening the conversation to a lot of things, but expect it to be a little rehearsed.
An anecdote as the last word. I interviewed someone years ago, and it was a good interview but she was up against very stiff competition. As we concluded I asked her if she had any questions for me, and she did: “Could you please tell me what I could have done better, so that if I don’t get it I can learn for next time?” I hired her on the spot.
by The HLH Team
“A meeting consists of a group of people who have very little to say – until after the meeting.”
– P.K. Shaw
Whether you’re the boss or the attendee, you don’t want to spend an hour in a meeting thinking about how you’re not getting any other work done. Meetings have extraordinary potential for bringing out our best, but they usually just make us sleepy.
Choose Attendees Carefully:
You can’t control attendees at every meeting. Staff meetings, like your morning fire-up, are for everyone. Keep those short and bold. For more collaborative meetings, choose your attendees wisely. Are you inviting them for the insight and/or experience they bring to the table, or because their feelings would be hurt if you don’t?
7 people has been shown to be the perfect balance of diversity and sanity for a good meeting. There is some room for movement around this sweet spot, with a couple people more or less than the magic 7. Less than 5 attendees, and you may struggle to achieve the critical mass of energy needed for innovative ideas to emerge. More than 9 people in a room and people will have trouble being heard, to the point that some will fade into the background potentially pulling their ideas off the table with their voices.
Implement Standing Meetings:
Standing meetings let the participants know the meeting will be short and concise. It allows everyone to make decisions and move on allowing the meetings to be shorter and everyone to be more productive.
At our office we have a standing meeting every morning. It is always 15 minutes max and happens every single day. This allows us to start the day off right and we wouldn’t go without it now.
Distribute a Written Agenda Beforehand:
Agendas are your secret weapon for controlling the meeting’s trajectory. They communicate the meeting’s purpose and show the roadmap for how to get there.
Whether you have a set agenda (although it should never be truly static), or a one-off, distribute it beforehand with the explicit expectation that attendees review it.
If you want to involve everyone on a deeper level, ask for their feedback in crafting it. This sets a more collaborative tone which you may or may not want.
Be Brutal with Tangents:
If a one staff member rambles on to another staff member about his weekend, headache, or cat’s eating habits, it wastes the time of 2 people. If this happens in a meeting, the waste is exponential. Let people know beforehand that you will shut that down, and then don’t be shy about doing so.
It gets complicated when the tangents stop being about cats, and start being about another aspect of the business that needs to be talked about, even though it has nothing to do with the meeting’s agenda-driven purpose. Keep the meeting on track, and either ask them to carry it on later or give them a few minutes to sidebar and return while you carry on with the main group. Otherwise you’ll sacrifice the intact goal of one meeting for the partially formed goals of 2 meetings.
Listen:
Seems obvious, right? The reality is that if a person doesn’t feel heard in a meeting, they will feel deflated and contribute less the next time.
It’s the organizers job to create and keep an open, respectful space where everyone feels heard. If there’s disrespect, shut it down decisively. If a few people are monopolizing, reach out to the quiet ones, who sometimes have the best ideas go unnoticed.
Take Notes & Hold Accountable:
If a meeting happens and nobody remembers it, was it useful? Of course not. So always take notes, even if it seems trivial.
Make sure the notes names, so that you can hold them accountable at the next meeting. But, beware of the “Hank thought of it so Hank has to do it,” trap. If Hank thinks that every idea he has will end up in the record with his name and as yet another task stacked on him, he’ll just stay quiet. Find the balance between holding people accountable and being punitive.
Cited:http://projectmanagementhacks.com/meeting-tips/
https://www.inc.com/jim-schleckser/7-plus-or-minus-2-for-meetings.html
