Become a motivator
Taylor calls it the “eternal quest” facing
presidents and CEOs everywhere: how to
get the most out of your employees, taking
their talent and brainpower, and putting it
to the most effective use for your business.
It’s a critical element in attracting and
retaining employees who want new challenges.
At the center of the quest is communication. But it has to go in
two directions — speaking and listening. And not always in that
order.
“The first thing you want to do is motivate,” Taylor says. “You
want to find out what makes someone else tick. I learned awhile
ago that the best way to do that is to ask. That’s also part of our
idea of customizing our approach to our employees.
“I think we’ve gone along far too long in assuming that everybody
ticks in the same way. But now we have different people coming
from different backgrounds, more women in the work force, more
people of different generations, whatever it might be. And to find
out what motivates them, you have to ask them.”
At Deloitte, each assignment given to an employee is an
opportunity to teach. Even assignments that an employee
might view as routine or mundane are opportunities to provide
employees with a new challenge and a chance for self-analysis.
Taylor says you must always find ways to go deeper with
your employees.
“After you’ve motivated, listened and asked, you have to help
your people figure out what they can learn from every assignment,” Taylor says. “There are always assignments that seem
mundane or repetitive, and the challenge I have is to ask them
every day to figure out what they’re going to learn from this
assignment.
“Maybe it’s not technical knowledge on this one, maybe it’s
better interpersonal skills. Or maybe you need to learn something about communication skills. But every assignment creates an opportunity to learn. That kind of environment is what
keeps people coming back to the same employer.”
Individual and collective assessment has been a common
theme throughout Deloitte’s Houston operations in the past
months as southeast Texas continues to recover from the
destruction brought on by Hurricane Ike.
The fallout from Ike has put Deloitte into a uniquely innovative position, thinking of ways to help out both clients and each
other.
“I think almost everybody in Houston has thought of one
thing they’d do differently — they’d probably buy more batteries next time,” Taylor says. “But from a Deloitte perspective
and a personal perspective, I’ve unfortunately been involved
with many emergency situations in our firm. Each one is different, but each one is the same. We focus first on our people,
then on our clients.”
Deloitte’s leaders quickly found out that the biggest hurdle
preventing Deloitte employees from returning to work wasn’t
property damage or a lack of electricity. It was a lack of child
care. If an employee ran out of child care options and it was
practical to do so, Taylor and her leadership allowed parents to
temporarily bring their children to work.
Deloitte’s offices maintained power after the storm, allowing
another unique opportunity to serve clients.
“We had clients who were working in our offices since we
were fortunate enough to maintain power,” Taylor says. “We had
people, as many organizations did, who had devastating loss and
people who had minor inconveniences. But our people recognized how they could help each other out. It’s a perfect example
of rethinking and improving for next time.”
Mission statements and strategic plans tend to take a back-seat in the aftermath of a natural disaster, when restoring the
normalcy of everyday life becomes the most important goal.
But even in the wake of Hurricane Ike, Taylor saw a chance to
both educate and motivate her employees to come up with
new ideas.
“It’s exactly the notion that we’re proud but never satisfied,”
she says. “We work very hard to assess ourselves internally,
and we’re pretty much our toughest critic. But we also get with
our clients and ask them to assess our work. How did we do?
Did we get the people we are looking for? If not, why not?”
