Over-Communicate the Mission

Nearly every Mission: Impossible episode began Phelps briefing them on their mission.  Why was it important to do this?  Jim Phelps cared deeply about his people and knew that the best way to have then be successful in the mission was for them all to know and understand the mission…the whole mission, not just their little sliver of it.  He never knew when he or any one of the other team members might be hurt or arrested during the mission and everyone needed to know and understand the specific missions of everyone else in the team so that they could pick up the slack should one person stumble or fall.

He took the time to go over every detail so that each person was comfortable with what the goal was, how their actions helped ensure victory, what was going on around them and what contingency plans had been made. He answered their questions and stayed with them until everyone was comfortable with their understanding of the larger task at hand.  Hearing this level of planned detail helped assure each Team member that the plan was sound.  It wasn’t enough that Phelps knew the mission… the entire Team needed to see the big picture to ensure success.

At your utility, it’s not enough for you to be the grand puppet master and the only one to know the whole picture.  If you want your entire team to be successful in the long run, they need to understand how their part of the mission supports every other part of the mission.  They must see where they fit into the bigger picture.  How the mission of your utility is NOT to have a maintenance department…or a pump operation.  It’s to serve customers in such a way that they see and deeply appreciate your value over the long haul. 

It is important that your people understand the mechanics of the big picture.  For instance, if they want a pay raise, it is important to know that customers fund this with their bill.  Unhappy customers can raise enough objections to stop a rate increase dead in its tracks and can, therefore, stop the funding mechanism of a pay raise.  This is why remarkable customer service is so important to even the most junior field worker at your utility.  Don’t they deserve to know this important fact?  Have you taken the time to explain this to them or are you just assuming that they know?

If you truly care about your people and truly care about winning, you will take the time to over-communicate the mission in detail with YOUR team.   

ACTION:  Use every opportunity to communicate the big picture to your people.  Ensure that they understand their role in your overall success.

Links to UMC2014 Presentations

I just returned from the Utility Management Conference in Savannah, Georgia where I had a fabulous time presenting to two groups there.  

First was a session on the need for Media Training for utility executives.  The following links will provide you notes on this session:

Media Training Slideshow w/ Notes

https://www.dropbox.com/s/4mvpfhtqd0kspq2/McELROY%20-%20Media%20Training%20-%20Panel%20Discussion%20UMC2014.pdf

Media Training Manuscript

https://www.dropbox.com/s/15a5mdw6oeerwv8/McElroy%20-%20Media%20Training%20-%20UMC2014%20MANUSCRIPT.pdf

The second was a session on performance management entitled "How to Deliver Oscar-Winning Performances at Your Utility".  The following notes will give you an overview of this session:  

Oscar-Winning Performaces Slideshow w/ Notes

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xbnja4u1v2ish35/UMC2014-%20Oscar%20Winning%20Utility%20Performances%20rev%201.pdf

Oscar-Winning Performance Manuscript

https://www.dropbox.com/s/pofrt72g6l1crdu/McElroy%20-How%20to%20Achieve%20Oscar%20Winning%20Performance%20UMC2014%20MANUSCRIPT.pdf

Do you need a dynamic speaker at your next event? I can help!  Here is a link to my Press Kit:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/8ahsce4ympox07c/McElroy%20Press%20Kit%20-%20MAR%202014.pdf

CONTACT INFORMATION

Personal Website – www.robmcelroype.com
Company Website – www.daphneutilities.com
LinkedIn – http://www.linkedin.com/in/robmcelroype
Twitter – http://www.twitter.com/robmcelroype
Blog – www.goodenough-isnt.com
Email –

Company - rob@daphneutilities.com
Personal - rob@robmcelroype.com

Phone -  wk: (251) 626-2628  - or -   cell: (251) 689-5020

Let Them Know That They're Important

If your people are truly valuable and important to you, you should take active steps to let them know that they are so.  One of the ways we do this is by giving them our time and respecting them while we are meeting with them.  There is nothing that communicates disrespect quite like taking a call on your cell phone or checking email in the middle of meeting with your people.  Don’t do it!  (Unless you really are Jim Phelps and people are calling you regularly asking they should cut the red wire or the green wire to diffuse some time bomb, it is likely that you are not nearly as important as you think you are.)

Your people deserve to meet with you undistracted.  Turn your monitor off on your PC so that you won’t be tempted to glance over at those pesky email pop-up notifications.  If your phone rings, don’t even check it to see if its “important”.  Just reach into your pocket and turn it off.  If your people ask you if you need to take that call, just say, “No, I’m helping you right now…when we are done, I can call them back and help them later.”

If this just seems impossible, then try this cutting edge smartphone app that almost no one seems to know about.  It’s called “voice mail”.  Apparently, if you don’t answer your phone, your phone will answer itself, take a message for you and will play it back to you anytime you want it to!  AMAZING! (You really should try this!) 

ACTION:  Show your people that they are important to you by honoring the time you spend with them.  

Listen to the Team's Feedback

LISTEN TO THE TEAM’S FEEDBACK-

The one thing Jim Phelps did during his mission briefings was to listen a lot and let others answer the big questions.  “How will we get out of the prison once we have the General?”  “Well, Cinnamon, that’s where’s Barney comes in…why don’t you brief us on that Barney.” 

Even more than that, the IMF team often asked pointed questions like, “Do you really think you can convince him that you are his father, Jim?” 

They sometimes had to point out facts like, “That’s a time delay door.  It will take three minutes to open once we have input the code.  Your timeline won’t work as is.”  Phelps never got angry with the feedback he received.  He used it to refine the plan and allow others to feel more of a part of the overall success.  In addition to this, the act of listening to his people's concerns helped build faith in the plan as a whole.  This was vitally important in completing the mission because people who feel they are sent out to fail, usually do.  Likewise, people who have confidence in the plan and confidence in the person who scripted the plan, often succeed.

If your staff meetings and company meetings consist mostly with you talking about what you want to talk about, something is wrong.  Are you listening?  Are you sharing the stage?  Are you letting other people own their parts of the mission?

If you get angry when people question your plan, you are stifling valuable input that can make or break your mission.  Is it more important that you never be questioned?  Or is it more important that your mission be a success?

ACTION:  Listen as much as you talk and always be receptive to the feedback you receive.

Pew! It's Time To Change The Baby!

I recently took my family out to eat following my son’s high school graduation. It would have been a perfect day…except for the screaming baby in the booth right behind us. The parents hardly seemed to notice their baby, however. They ate and talked while their baby screamed and threw food all around him. (From the smell, I am fairly certain it needed to be changed, too!) How could these people not notice how smelly and disturbing their baby was being to everyone in that restaurant?

The truth is that they cannot see, hear or smell the baby because it is THEIR baby. They see it every day. They smell it every day. They have seen it throw much worse tantrums in the past. They are so close to the baby that what it is doing right now doesn’t even seem that bad to them. The baby has become “invisible”.

The same thing can happen in our businesses. We work in the same building every day so we do not see the carpet getting dirtier over time. We eat lunch in the same break room every day and so we don’t even notice that the counters are getting stained and stickier each day. We ride in the same trucks every day and so we do not see the drink cans and candy wrappers that accumulate in them. In the course of our jobs, we have all experienced a major crisis or two in the past and worked in some pretty horrible conditions to fix a problem. As a public utility, we’ve seen things that were vile and smelled things that would make you gag…so a small sewer spill in someone’s yard doesn’t seem to be anything important. We are so close to what we do every day that much of it, like that baby in the restaurant, has become invisible to us.

To be great at what we do, we cannot allow our “baby” to become invisible. We must force ourselves to open our eyes fresh and new every day. We must look at our facilities, trucks, uniforms and worksites the same way a customer does when they see them for the first time. To run the kind of business we must be, we need to remember that the “baby” is ours. It smells worse than we think it does. It’s louder and more obnoxious than we think it is. If we try to ignore it, it’s only going to get worse. Our “baby”…our company… needs to be changed… for the better. It’s OUR job to change OUR baby.

When was the last time you checked on your “baby”?

Another Great Conference in Indiana!

Things have been very busy and I am sorry for the lag in my postings!  Last week, I traveled to Bloomington, Indiana to speak at the Alliance Indiana Rural Water Conference.  While I was there, I provided three different addresses:

-          The keynote address at the opening ceremony:  This was a short talk I love giving about the things my father passed on to me over the years and how they have helped me build a steady and prosperous career over time.  My dad was hilarious in the stories he would tell me and in the things he would say.  Some day, I am going to write a book just about that.  He always knew exactly what to say to me to get my attention so that I would actually hear his point rather than blowing him off as not nearly as smart an me in my youth.  I am reminded of the Mark Twain quote about his father.  “When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”  Priceless!

-          An hour-long presentation on my "Good Enough Isn't" Method:  Again, great participation and a lot of follow-up requests for additional information.  That is always great feedback to a speaker!

-          The Guest Speaker at the Operator’s Awards Luncheon:  I spoke about the powerful return on investment from having a great customer service program and again used my father’s words as illustration of the points.  Special thanks to “Duke” who helped me through one of my illustrations.  I had no idea that this person was quiet and shy when I picked him from the crowd.  It turns out that he was the perfect volunteer!  Thanks again!

Thank you to AIRW Executive Director Connie Stevens and her entire staff for putting on such a great conference.  It was truly a first class event from start to finish!

Lesson #9: Feedback is the Key to Developing All-Stars

Imagine if your pay raise each year depended on you improving your bowling score.  Do you think it would be possible to improve your score over time if you had to roll the ball under a curtain that hid the pins from view?  Would it really help if someone met once a year with you to update you on how many times you rolled a gutter ball?  Wouldn’t you feel powerless and frustrated in this situation?

In business, we cannot continue to expect our employees to improve their performance by meeting with them once a year, reminding them of everything we can think of that they did wrong the previous twelve months and telling them that they need to “do better next year”.  Faced with this, your employees are going to be as frustrated as if they were bowling under a curtain.  It’s not fair to them and, frankly, it’s not fair to your company either. 

Supervisors must be in constant communication with their employees on what they are doing right (so that these actions can be repeated) AND what they are not doing right (so that the employee can stop doing a task wrong as soon as possible).  To achieve measureable improvement all year long requires constant feedback, both positive and corrective.

Done well, the annual review process should really be a “no stress” composed of simply documenting at year end a conversation that has been occurring all year long. There should never be a surprise in someone’s annual evaluation.  If there is, the supervisor has not been properly doing their job.

Remove the curtain your employees face every day.  Let them see and understand the results of their actions.  Their performance will improve and your team will performance will also.  They deserve it.  You deserve it.  You company deserves it. 

Lesson #8: Welcome to the TEAM!

Smart coaches never hire great players and just hope that they figure out on their own how to best become part of the team.  This is far too important to leave to chance or luck.  They carefully manage the transition of a new player into a productive team member.  That often means a well-planned and detailed orientation to the team where they learn the history of the team they have joined, what the strengths of the team are and what goals have been set for both the near and long term.   This helps the new player get into the right mindset of the team. 

To help the new player become a productive part of the team in the shortest time possible, they assign the new player a roommate who can help incorporate him into the team and what is expected of him as a part of that team.  This gives the new player a person to learn from and ask questions of.  As part of this process, the roommate often takes the new player to make introductions to the key staffers he will need to know…coaches, trainers, therapist medical staff, payroll staff, etc.  This is never left to chance because there is far too much money on the line to risk having the new player become isolated, a loner or jaded on whether he should have joined this team in the first place.  The team needs him to start “earning his keep” as soon as possible, and this detailed orientations process is the best way to accomplish this. 

In business, it is equally critical to transition from “finding” to “keeping” your great employees. The orientation process helps to introduce your new hire to the company and the company family. Matching new hires to a partner who can look out after them during these first few critical days, weeks and months really helps them start earning their keep much sooner than just handing them a shovel and saying, “Get to work.”  Even little things like “Here’s how to use the time clock,” can help to ease the transition of a new hire from “outsider” to “key team member”.  This is vital to the success of your company and should never be left to chance.   

At my company, we introduce every new hire to everyone in their chain of command in the first day of their employment.  This goes from the supervisor, to the department manager, the operations manager and the general manager.  They also meet critical personnel such as the customer service representatives in the front office as well as the HR and finance managers.  Each person they meet welcomes them and reiterates that they have joined a great, winning team!

Help protect your investment!  Orient your new hires in a carefully planned way.  Marry them up with a steady, reliable worker on your staff so they will very quickly have someone to teach them the ropes.  Introduce them to all your key staff in the first day so that they can feel that everyone in the organization really wants them there.  The money you save will be yours and the team you run will be all the better for the efforts! 

Lesson #5: Three Magic Words: “I Want You”

When a team is trying to get a great player to sign with them, the coach always makes the offer in person, face to face.  The coach looks the player in the eye and says three magic words: “I want you.”  

They don’t send the human resource manager or the university’s athletic director or anyone else to do it.  It is never as effective that way.  They don’t do it by phone or letter or email.  They make the offer themselves because it’s a deeply personal thing that has a powerful and compelling message behind it. 

Think about it.  “I want you to join my team. Come play for me.  Let’s win together.”  

Is there any doubt in your mind that employment of a new worker would start in a much more powerful way if the supervisor the person was going to actually work for made each offer face-to-face?

“I interviewed a lot of people looking for just the right person to fill this slot.  I think you are the person who can do it.  I want you to join my team and help us win.  Its hard work but you will be part of a great team that has accomplished some incredible things.  I think you will fit in perfectly with us and help us win.  I want you to take this job.”  

What you say can be long or short…flowery or straight to the point…but it needs to contain the magic words, “I want you.” 

Of course you will have HR in the room to go over benefits and cover the paperwork that must be completed, but don’t leave it to your HR representative make the offer and miss this opportunity to start the working relationship off in a powerful direction. 

“I want you.”  Simply magical. 

Over-Communicate…Even When It’s Obvious

Once you have had your “zen moment” and formed in your head the vision of what you want your company (…or division…or department…or team) to become, it’s time to share this with others.  Practically speaking, it’s impossible to get anything done alone in an organization, regardless of what your title may be.  You need help to get you there.

Share your ideas, your vision, your dreams of what your organization could become with others around you.  Paint a picture for them.  Make it vivid and tangible.  (“Better” is not tangible.)   In salesman’s terms, you want to sell the sizzle. 

For instance, if you were trying to rally a team to win their championship, you don’t talk about “winning” in the abstract.  You describe for them how they will feel when the crowd is cheering and they are standing at centerfield holding the trophy high in the air.  How proud their spouse will be of them for this hard fought achievement.  How good it will feel when reporters are asking you how you did it.  How good it will feel to have other teams courting you to come to their organizations.  Paint a picture that they can see, touch and feel…both of you will benefit!

Don’t keep the Vision you have for your Company a secret. Your employees deserve to know where they’re going and what part they will play in it.  Tell them again and again to insure they hear you and don’t forget the goal ahead.  Repeat it at every meeting in the simplest terms you can find.  Over-communicate this basic building block and you will have taken a key step forward…but never put it down either.  Your team deserves to be reminded constantly what the goal of their hard work is all about… and only you can provide that to them.