I was at a seminar on Tuesday about Business Administration. At the seminar the speaker discussed how it is that employees that are unwilling to perform a job function will never do it well, or even do it at all. This, of course wreaks havoc in your company.
Why? Because now things that are believed to be getting done are not. Upsets occur between departments, employees and the client who was not serviced correctly, if at all.
The whole organization is thrown out of balance. Employees become uncertain of what is happening, who is not doing their job, “am I going to get blamed” and all manner of anxiety occurs.
What follows is that the one guy (or girl) who is not performing their duties as agreed to, now makes it the problem for the company itself and everyone working at it to solve. So, for some seemingly unlocatable cause, everyone becomes frantic and spends all their time talking about and trying to fix the problem and now does not do their own job duties as they should, or even are able to.
The government is great at this. One guy doesn’t do his job, something simple like deliver the paperwork for his department budget to get approval. The budget doesn’t get approved because he never delivered the paperwork but swears under oath that he did. Let’s not do some quick and easy detective work and call the guy out in the lie, let’s form a 20-member committee to find out why the budget didn’t get approved. A year, and ½ a million taxpayer’s dollars later, the committee determines the budget was never submitted. So now the committee starts to investigate the guy… and the insanity never ends.
In your company you have to be a very skilled observer and keep a good eye on the communication that occurs inside and outside the organization. What I mean by communication is the flow of ANYTHING that can be moved between two points. Be it a memo, email, text, letter, person or object between the company employees themselves AND your clients.
If these are not moving inside the company in a purposeful timely fashion which accomplishes an end goal, then your employees really aren’t working to keep the company going and growing. They just have a job they show up and get paid for, without being willing to perform their duties to enhance the company’s survival, ultimately bettering their life as well.
If there is no communication between your staff and clients or potential customers outside the company there will be no clients or potential customers, hence no income. It’s that simple.
OK, rest assured, I’ll bet most of your employees care what goes on, contribute greatly to keep the company going and growing and have pride in the people and companies they work with.
BUT, there will be those that are unwilling to do the duties assigned and muck up the whole works. As the leader of a section, department, division or the entire company it is up to you to locate such employees and take corrective actions BEFORE they throw your organization into a self-imploding chaos.
Until next time, flourish and prosper in your endeavors.
Know that I am here to assist you should you need it.
Joel