Communicate your expectations
Your task of articulating expectations will continue after the hire. Before you get into job specifics, you need to establish the framework employees will be working within.
Employee orientation should drill into company history and culture. Explain why you do things the way you do to ground your policies deeper than a job description.
“We don’t start saying, ‘OK, here’s a hamburger. We’re going to show you how to cook that,’” he says. “No, we start at the beginning: ‘Johnny Rockets works well because we have the experience; we have the culture. We have the song, the dance, the whole ketchup-with-a-smile.’ You begin to indoctrinate them, then you get into the mechanics.
“You start at the beginning and talk about why your brand has done well. So it’s not a, ‘Here it is; do it.’ We try to tell the story so they’ll understand the background.”
Also, by holding all employees to the same basic cultural guidelines, you’ll ensure a more consistent operation because everyone will be under the same umbrella.
Then with the skeleton of the culture established, you can start fleshing out specific goals to personalize each employee’s role — at least for your direct reports. While fun and freedom may be the means for reaching those goals, you have to be frank about the end destination.
Sanders tells employees, “Look, No. 1 is we’re going to have to make plan. Plan is X dollars. We’d like to do that in an environment that’s fun; we’d like to do it where individuals can have some freedom to do their job the way they see fit as long as they’re productive. But let’s not lose sight of the fact this is a for-profit deal here.”
The next step — trusting employees to follow those guidelines — is a pretty simple one because in Sanders’ mind, it’s already completed.
“You’ve already voted, and you’ve given the person a vote of confidence,” he says. “She doesn’t have to earn it; she earned it when she got the job. So it’s not an audition anymore.”
But you can take empowerment to the next level by literally writing yourself out of the employees’ way when you explain their duties. In other words, they shouldn’t have to rely on you in order to do their job.
For example, the communications director has to get Sanders’ approval on news releases before they go out. But to avoid being a barrier, Sanders put a 48-hour timeline on himself. So if he doesn’t review the material by then, she can bypass him and go on with her job.
If he’s not happy with her work, he can point out what he would change next time. But he refuses to reprimand her if he hasn’t played his part.
“I empower them to do their jobs, and if I’m a barrier, they have all the authority in the world to go around me, within some rules,” Sanders says. “I don’t think the person running the company should be a funnel or a barrier. If everything has to go through you or your CFO, then it’s a company of a couple of geniuses with hundreds of assistants, which is pretty worthless.”
Check employees’ progress
Once your employees understand the goals and how to meet them, let them go. But make sure they stay within those guidelines you gave upfront.
“As the person running the company, you’ve got to be aware of what your senior people are doing or not doing,” Sanders says.
