The BIGG Successs Show
How to Get Your Employees to Own Their Job, Not Just Do It
The structure you should have in place before you hire your first employee. Find a written summary of today's show along with links to the resources we mention at BIGGSUCCESS.COM.
Welcome to The Big Success Show! Today, we'll talk about how to get your employees to own their job. Not just do it. The Big Success Show with George and Mary Lynn. We recently talked about the Thighstep process to train employees, and what we said was, if we just tell them what they're supposed to do, well, they're not going to remember it, right? If we show them, they may remember, but if we involve them, now they'll understand. That's the ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. That's right, the aha. Yes, but before you start training, it's essential to have some structure in place. Yeah, and the thing is about developing that structure, when we start a business, man, time is just so precious, right? So we're so busy working in our business that it's hard to work on our business, and that creates a real problem. And here's the secret on how to do that. Shh, it's a secret. Very, very quiet. That's right. When you're first starting out, you're small, you don't have any employees, you're Mr. or Ms. Do It All, and you work on your business by working in your business. Now, here are a big success, Marilyn. I think you always want me to work out of the business. George, let me do it. And actually, you're doing pretty good with that. Actually, we work very well together. We do. I have to admit it. Well, and the thing is, you're absolutely right. You got to work on your business by working in your business, and the way you do that is to start documenting your procedures. Here's how I want things done. Here's how we accomplish what we set out to accomplish. This is how we go from point A to point B. When I think about my favorite bosses from the radio days, my favorite general managers, they were the ones who had worked in every department in the station on their way up. So they were disjockeys. They produced commercials. They sold commercials. They were on the sales staff. They knew a little bit of everything because they'd been in there. And that's exactly what you want to do with your business. You want to go through a position by position. Once you've got one position developed, now you're ready to hire somebody. Now, you know, there may be some things that you're just not an expert at. For example, Marilyn, I didn't hear you mention accounting. No. So maybe you're not that great at accounting. That's not your strength. Well, you either find a partner who is good at that and they develop the procedures for that position, or you just outsource those things and get them outside of your firm. So position by position, you work through all the jobs documenting how you do every single task. And coming up, how all of this leads to your employees owning their jobs. Today we're talking about what you have to do before you hire your first employee. The thing is we want to start documenting our procedures. Now, when we have two or more procedures, that leads to a process. A group of processes starts developing our system. And when we have our system in place, we're ready to write an operations manual. And that's really the secret to having a well-run operation. You're able to work on your business by working in your business at first, which allows you to test everything you're doing. So let's look at an example of a procedure. Okay. Let's assume that you own your own retail store. And a customer walks in. What are you going to say to that customer? Can I help you as the natural one, right? Yeah, that's the natural. And the typical response from your customer is going to be, no, I'm just looking. Yeah. And so that's pretty much where the conversation ends, right? It's all over. Well, Michael Gerberin, his great book, The Emith Revisited talks about this exact issue, Marylin. And, you know, it's kind of interesting. He says that they changed the question from, "Can I help you?" to, "Have you ever visited our store before?" And whether the person said yes or no, they had a response. But that simple change in question with a follow-up response for all the clients led to as little as 10 and as much as 16% increase in sales from one question. So let's break this down. Your first procedure is the greeting. And your second procedure is that follow-up question that you can now ask. So maybe it's a special program for first-time customers or a separate program for returning customers. And as we group these procedures together, we have a process. That's exactly right. And as we keep doing this procedure by procedure, process by process, we begin to develop our system. And as we have our system in place, now we have our operations manual. And so now when you start to train an employee, not only can you show them this manual. And involve them? Right, and involve them. But you can tell them why you are doing the things you're doing, and that lets them get it. They understand it, and it helps them buy in. Yeah, because now they feel like you have taken the time to explain to them as a human, not as a robot, why what you're doing is the way that you do it, why it works. And so then you can explain to them that it's not over. I want you to help me look for more ways that we can improve this. Now they come to see a bigger picture. They come to see how they're part of something much bigger than just their job. They own their job. You can find a written summary of today's show on our site at Big Success. That's Big with 2gsuccess.com. You'll also find links to Michael Gerber's book, The Emith, and also a link to our previous show, where we talked about a five-step process to training employees. Next time we'll talk about an inexpensive way for families to connect and compete. Until then, here's to your big success. The Big Success Show at B-I-G-G Success.com [MUSIC PLAYING] [BLANK_AUDIO]