MANAGE & LEAD
Up or Ship Out ." In this case , " shaping up " flexes to the agency ' s changing needs without the employee resistance that causes so many innovations to fail .
If some employees cannot flex with the changing business , live up to your standards and terminate those employees who fail to change with the agency . It is the only way you can strengthen your business for the future .
The hunt for new talent should be a daily part of your job as an agency owner . It never stops , regardless of whether you have open positions . New talent drives in new business , not the reverse . Once talent is identified , your decision is whether you can afford to bring the person on within your current organization or whether this is the opportunity for you to upgrade staff in your organization .
Be direct with your employees about their status and their progress . Evaluations are essential tools to develop employees and advise and document employees whose careers are about to change .
MOTIVATE , DIRECT , AND MONITOR – EXERCISE ZERO MANAGEMENT
3 . MOTIVATE Money is a GOOD motivator . Recognition and Appreciation are GREAT motivators !
Provide motivation tailored to the values and desires of the specific employee . Some employees desire maximum income , and others prefer the security of equity . Still , others like the ego boost of management positions . ALL employees want appreciation and recognition from the boss .
Develop your reward mechanism ( your compensation program ) to pay a specific percentage of your gross income to total employee compensation . Many agencies find the percentage allocated to employee compensation is low and cannot afford more than mediocre salaries . Almost all of these agencies are in that position because owners take too much working capital out of the business in their own compensation and benefits . If these agencies were to get leaner in those ( executive compensation and benefit ) areas and spend more seed money in the hiring and compensation of the most talented people they could find , the very owners who spent less on themselves would soon be earning more than they ever had in the past .
4 . DIRECT Never , Never , Never give direction and leave the employees hanging . Employees will assume they know what you desire and try to satisfy your direction . However , many managers are better entrepreneurs than they are communicators . The employees will try to follow your directives , as they understood them , not necessarily as intended . The solution to this problem is to follow up on all directions to ensure that your employees understand what you meant to communicate . If they did , reinforce and praise them . If not , re-communicate your desires to them to get back on track and follow up again !
5 . MONITOR Many businesses go bad because of micro-managing , as from lack of solid management . The key to success is defining a level of monitoring that satisfies the need to achieve the objectives but permits the employees to decide how the goals are to be met independently .
The soft-touch is best implemented through an MIS ( Management Information System ) that requires the employees to provide you with all of the information you need to gauge your objectives ' success regularly . The creation of the reports themselves keeps the employees focused on the critical roles they have assumed for the agency .
6 . ZERO MANAGEMENT The Zero Management philosophy follows the elimination of non-productive employees and their replacement with innovators . It assumes that you have provided :
• Adequate motivation .
• Communications of your expectations .
• A reporting structure that provides you with the appropriate data regularly .
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