We live in a world where two things are certain…“You won’t get out alive” and “Change” is the realistic constant. Consider how in the 1980’s we used to write on paper and send it as mail or memo. This was succeeded by the fax machine and then by email. Today we phone and video chat or Twitter or WhatsApp each other. The same applies to business and sports. The tactics we previously used have been studied and copied by other teams and new ways of working have been established to better the existing ways of doing things. Globalization and technology are the drivers of business change today. The problem with change is that everybody wants change, but nobody wants TO change. We often come across companies where CEOs and Executive boards want significant change, but don’t want to change in the way they work. They don’t believe that they also need to change and set an example for the rest of the organisation to follow.

As an SME and Entrepreneur, you have an expectation and the motivation to drive your company in a way that means you are evolving to deliver greater profits. But what about your employees – What are their motivations and what are their levels of engagement? We often hear Organizational Learning and Development professionals say, “We want to engage and motivate our people, but we are too busy” or “We don’t have the budget!” Did you ever hear of a football team saying they don’t have the budget to train their players? Many people do willingly change – look at the adoption of SMART phones over the past five years. There are now over 8.98 billion mobile connections worldwide, which surpasses the current world population of 7.69 billion implied by UN digital analyst estimates. And smart phones have only been around for 25 years! But employees spend lots of working time on their phones doing non-work-related activities. Facebook is not work related. Doing personal banking or calling the spouse to remind them

 

Jean Nicolai of SteppingStone Global gives insights on how to discipline employees without traditional methods of punishment—a concept that is slowly gaining traction in today’s economy.

 

 

 

to get something out of the freezer is not work-related. Worse still, how much of this non-productive time is represented in the balance sheets? We have a column for CAPEX assets, and we have a column for depreciation and for overtime, but nonproductive working hours? No, I don’t recall having seen that on a balance sheet.

What’s the solution?

To solve this, it is necessary to instigate a professional culture which focuses on:

• Taking ownership, accountability & responsibility by people of any level – starting at the top
• More delegation and empowerment
• Executing strategic change initiatives with a sense of urgency – Time is money
• Replacing Fear Management style with discipline without punishment I am reminded of something Steve Jobs often quoted, “We shouldn’t employ expensive smart people and then tell them what to do, we should employ expensive smart people so they can tell us what to do.”

As an entrepreneur you are in charge of choosing the route and you either buy or build the vehicle that will travel to your dream place. But along the way, you must let somebody else help you with the driving, and you need trusted people to look after your vehicle and the engine and keep your windows clean. If it rains, the windscreen wipers need to work! You can’t do it all yourself. Eventually you will have to let somebody else take the wheel and you need to be able to trust that they will do the job as well as you do. To do this, they need to know the vision and they need to understand your reinterpretation of the mission. What does success look like? Once they know that, they can help you move towards it.

If something goes wrong, don’t blame others, take a look at yourself first and ask if you did everything to make it a success. If not, then some of the blame lies with you too! Here’s to a magnificent journey – just remember you must tell people where it is that you are heading towards.

Good luck.

About SteppingStone

For over ten years SteppingStone has been helping SMEs and larger organizations to successfully change and adapt for higher performance and profitability. If you want a trusted partner to advise you based upon many years of business experience, on industry best practices and practical knowledge, then get in touch – we would be happy to talk to you about how we can help you engage with change.