Winning at Work: Focusing on the Things that Matter Most

If you really want to find out how focused your employees are, ask them what it takes to win at your company. Even more important, ask them what it takes to win in their specific job classification.

Some employees may answer that they don’t know what it takes to win. Others may mention that it requires good customer service, quality, or teamwork to be successful. These may be good answers, but can the employees articulate the specific actions or performance behaviors necessary to truly achieve customer loyalty or long-term profitability and growth?

Successful companies, and successful employees, know what it takes to win. They know how to succeed at work.

Recently I facilitated several supervisory training workshops for a large Las Vegas Strip casino. I asked this mix of seasoned and novice supervisors to define the role of a manager. More specifically I told them to pinpoint why a manager “exists.” I wanted them to identify what significant value a manager provides to a company that is so significant it would make the company want to pay the manager for his or her contribution to the enterprise. The answers were wide and varied.

I then asked the managers to explain why an employee exists. Again, I wanted them to tell me what valuable accomplishments an employee provides to a company that makes the employee worth their pay.

Most of the answers I received revolved around the tasks an employee might perform. Depending on the job classification of the workers in the casino, the managers felt an employee existed to “repair slot machines,” “to clean tables,” “to check guests into rooms,” “to provide good customer service,” etc.

If this is the case, then successful managers are those managers who get employees to perform their assigned tasks well. But this is not true.

As a way of helping the managers gain a new perspective as to why employees exist, I asked the managers what it takes to win in football. Some answered “a good team,” “a strong offense,” “good coaching,” or “good plays.” But the more astute managers in the group realized that what it really takes to win in football is points — or more precisely, more points than the opponent.

Good plays and good coaching are what teams use to try to win, but running good plays and competent coaching doesn’t necessarily equate to winning. In fact, some very good teams with excellent coaches have run very well-executed plays, yet they still end up losing. Football teams don’t exist to run plays, they exist to score points and win championships. Football players are “hired” to get results, not just to perform tasks out on the field. Coaches of non-winning football teams may soon find themselves in the middle of a staff shake-up.

Winning at Work

To know what it takes to win in the business world, companies and employees need to look at their organization or job from the customers’ perspective. Customers determine whether or not your company and its employees are winning. Customers know the real score.

Customers consciously or unconsciously know exactly what they want. For example, guests of a hotel want their guestroom to be clean, quiet, comfortable, safe, and everything in the room to function properly. Purchasers of power tools want the products to be safe, durable, reliable, easy to use, and to perform the functions they were designed to perform at the level promised in the advertisements. From a service perspective, most customers hope your staff will be friendly, courteous, professional, knowledgeable, helpful, and responsive to their needs.

To help employees determine why they exist and what it takes to win, I ask them to write a Product Description stating specifically what they are selling.

Every position, whether blue-collar or white-collar, is selling a product. The product may be tangible, like a hotel room or a power tool; or it might be intangible, such as the feeling a customer gets when they interact with you. A product description describes what a customer is really buying, or why a job classification exists from the customer’s perspective. It defines the implied promises the customers expect when they patronize your company.

The product description clearly states why the job classification was created and what outcomes employees are expected to produce for the customer and/or for the company.

For example, contrary to popular belief, a food server or a busperson in a casino buffet doesn’t exist to serve food or clear tables. Those are things they do, but it is not why they exist. Buffet workers exist to get people in and out of the buffet as fast as possible so the patrons can return to more meaningful (and profitable) pursuits.

Food-runners in a buffet who understand that they exist to “get customers in and get them out” automatically recognize that running is a key to their success, not just part of their job title. Food-runners who “get it” don’t wait for a manager to tell them to replenish the food on the buffet line. They know if the food pans are empty, they’re not “getting the customers out.” And if the customers aren’t getting out, then the food-runner is not winning at work.

Workers in a buffet also know that they must be fast and friendly; otherwise they would not be able to “get the customers in.”

Valet attendants are “the official greeters” for the company and the first and last opportunity to make a good impression on the guests”. A casino host exists to “part people from their money and do it in such a way the guest wants to do it again and again.” To win, good showroom managers know they must have the showroom full of “butts in seats at the highest possible ticket price.” Likewise, hotel managers need “heads in beds at the highest possible room rate.”

The best custodians and porters “make the place sparkle,” not just by keeping the property clean, but also by having an outgoing, friendly, and “sparkling” personality.

Focusing Employees

Product descriptions are an effective tool to clearly communicate to employees their roles and responsibilities in a manner that helps them get why their position exists. At the same time, a product description pinpoints and emphasizes the value that an employee or department offers to the company by reminding people why the position is necessary.?It focuses the employees on the things that matter most.

During an economic downturn, the Human Resource Department in many organizations typically is the first area to face cutbacks in its budget. This occurs because upper management often doesn’t recognize the value of what the HR department produces. Unfortunately, even people in the Human Resources department can lose focus as to why they exist and what constitutes “winning” in their position.

Human Resources does not exist to hire staff, provide training, administer the compensation and benefit plans, counsel employees, or similar HR tasks. This is what Human Resources does; it is not why they exist.

A Human Resource department exists “to ensure the right people are in the right jobs at the right staffing levels with the right skills, knowledge, abilities, and attitudes, at the right pay, doing the right things right every time.”

This is what it takes to win for HR employees. The HR staff will prove their value to the company when they focus everything they do on making sure they score in the things that really matter.

If the hiring practices, training programs, compensation and benefit plans, and other HR offerings are not getting the right people in the right jobs doing the right things, then HR is not winning. They may be “on the field,” but they are not “winning championships.”

HR departments who provide managers with the right people in the right jobs at the right staffing levels with the right skills, knowledge, abilities, and attitudes, at the right pay, doing the right things right every time; will find themselves highly regarded and highly valued by their “customers” in the organization. Those who don’t will continue to be discounted and ignored by management.

Finally, a company itself needs to know why it exists. A company exists for two reasons and only two reasons. Companies exist to increase revenue and reduce costs. Or, stated more specifically, companies exist to ensure they are profitable for their owners. There is no other reason to exist.

Customer service, quality, efficiency, reliability, responsiveness, and everything else are what companies do in order to make a profit. Profitability — not customer service, not quality, not teamwork — is the measure of an enterprise’s success. Businesses that are not profitable eventually go out of existence. Usually, there is no confusion on this issue in the executive offices of most businesses. Successful CEOs know why they exist. “EBITDA or die” is the mantra of winning business leaders.

When companies and employees know why they exist, and they stay consciously focused on it, workers automatically know what is important and what is not. They instinctively know how to act and how to channel their performance to achieve the best results. They focus less on tasks or programs, and more on customers and profitability.

This brings us back to the original question: Why do managers exist? Obviously, managers exist to help the company and employees define and achieve their ultimate reason for existing. When the employees meet the exact needs of the customers and the requirements of the business, both the workers and the managers will win in the workplace. §

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Mac McIntire is the president of Innovative Management Group, a Las Vegas-based training and consulting firm specializing in strategic visioning and alignment, organizational effectiveness, management development, quality improvement, customer service, and teamwork. He can be reached at 702-592-6431 or e-mail [email protected]. His website is www.imglv.com