Nearly the End of Another year

By Mark Deavall Sept 2017

A few weeks ago, I was having a conversation with a few friends about the problems, economically and politically that we as a country face. Soon of course, the conversation merged those two topics. After a while one of my friends asked the question, “will anything in this country ever be normal again?” I asked him to please define “normal”. His answer was, “where we don’t have to be so pressured!” At that statement, there were nods of agreement.

After some discussion, the group concluded that the economic conditions that we find ourselves in right now, are here to stay. One of the group, the CEO of a large business made the comment that, “a perfectly good playing field has been ploughed up and replanted with thorns and weeds, and now we are expected to still play the game well!”

And this is where we find ourselves today as a country. The playing field has become overgrown with weeds and thorns, and to top it off, it’s also a minefield! And yet every day we trot out onto this field with no new protective clothing, strategies or ideas. All we have is a coach telling us to play harder! This is like telling a drowning man to swim harder. All that you are going to achieve is to let him drown sooner!

And so, the group continued the discussion around the fire and decided that if the playing field has become so difficult to navigate, maybe we need some new strategies. Then there was the question, “but what strategies?” The answer was quick in coming – we need to get our people to work smarter and to be more on top of things!

Now there’s something I’ve heard before. It sounds a bit like a New Year Resolution – easily spoken and easily broken. So I asked the question, “Do they know how to work smarter?” There was a silence around the table. “You see guys, that’s the problem. We expect our staff to do all these things that need new skills and thought patterns, and yet we take no responsibility for teaching them those skills and thought patterns. But we expect them to work smarter and think differently, and then jump on them when they don’t!

The group looked at me. “If you had to tell your managers that they needed to extract better productivity from their staff, what would they do?” After a silence one of the guys said, “they’ll just put more pressure to perform.” “Damn right!” I said. “They’re shouting at a drowning man to swim harder!”

At this there were looks of bewilderment around the group. They now knew what to do to fix the problem, but they didn’t know how. So I started to explain.

I was talking to a debtor’s clerk at one of my clients, who was underperforming somewhat. Her debtors book was supposed to be on 30 days, but hers was 32 days. I asked her what she does and she told me that she collects money from people that owe the company money. I then asked her how she does this and she very proudly showed me her computer screen with many coloured bars on it. I was genuinely impressed.

So I asked her why she collects this money. She told me it was because it’s her job! I asked her if she knew that she was responsible to ensure that the company had enough money in the bank at the end of the month, to meet its cash needs – payroll, water and lights, rent etc? She looked surprised. In fact, she asked me if I was kidding! So I reiterated my point. When I left her, she went to the financial manager (she had been working at this company as a debtor’s clerk for five years and never done this) and asked him how much money the company needed in the bank at the end of the month, to make ends meet. He gave her a number.

She then went back to her desk and divided her client base into low hanging fruit, medium and high. She then set herself a target of 50% collections by the 10th of the month. The result? Her book slid to 34 days, but the company had more cash in the bank than ever before! All I did was to take her focus off the KPI compliance (30 days) and place it on her responsibility (cash in the bank) and her productivity changed.

And there’s the magic word – RESPONSIBILITY. There is a part of the brain that is used very little by people at work. I call it the Responsibility Centre. Everyone uses this part of their brain in their personal lives every day. At night Dad makes sure that the house is securely locked, the dog has water and food and the kids are safe. Yet, nowhere in Dads house or on his phone is there a list of things that he needs to do before he goes to bed. That list does not exist. What does exist is Dad’s responsibility to ensure the safety and security of his family. Mom leaves work and immediately her thoughts turn to feeding her family. Her subconscious mind generates a list of everything that needs to be done to make sure that happens. There is no written list. That list is in her subconscious mind based on her responsibility to feed her family.

When a person is assigned a responsibility, is held accountable for that responsibility and there is a tangible consequence in place for the achievement or non-achievement of that responsibility, the subconscious mind generates a list of everything that needs to be done to achieve the requirements of that responsibility. Not only that, but the brain then interrogates each action to make sure that it was done properly. That is the essence of productivity and we all use it every day in our personal lives, but when we come to work, we switch it off and we work to a to-do list, or KPI’s – minimum standards! Just enough to keep my job! If we want our people to work smarter and to think differently, we need to get away from managing to-do lists, and start managing responsibilities!

“That seems too simple Mark.” “It is simple. But the secret is in how we word the responsibility.”

 “So that’s it?” asked the CEO? “That’s it” I said. “All you have to do is to be clear on each person’s responsibility, hold the person accountable for it and put a consequence in place. Simple as that.”

In preparing your management team for the new year, let’s not complicate matters or create extra stress. Let’s keep management simple yet effective. Let’s show them how to manage differently in a different economic environment. Just applying more pressure is not going to work!

Mark Deavall is the managing director of Merit Business Institute. To contact Mark, please call him on 27 82 465 5481 or 27 11 609-1264