Sell the plan
O’Hara needed to demonstrate that he believed in Angelica’s commitment to excellence, because employees need to believe that you feel strongly about a change if they are going to commit to it.
“The question of how much watercooler talk goes on is directly a function of the vision and commitment of the organization to what they are trying to achieve,” O’Hara says. “If there is clearly a vision and a commitment to doing that, the watercooler talk is more around the successes and challenges of the business versus individual fears.”
O’Hara incorporated the company’s motto, ‘Delightful service through innovation,’ in every possible way.
“It’s incorporated in all presentations, and it’s plastered around the organization on posters and billboards,” O’Hara says. “Simply communicate the vision, mission, strategies and values constantly. Beyond that, it’s just internal marketing of that through employee communication.”
In order to truly get your employees to buy in, you need to back up your words with action.
“It’s making sure that when we see an issue with quality or delivery or a fill rate or something the customer cares about that we act on it quickly,” O’Hara says. “We act at the value of the customer and not at our own. Even if it costs us some money, we do what’s right for the customer.”
When the zero-defect policy was launched in late 2005, company leaders went out to Angelica locations to enforce the change.
“The easiest way to do it was we went to product about to be shipped and started pulling out product and inspecting it,” O’Hara says. “By the time we got to the sixth or seventh sheet, there was a small stain. … But we asked the head of operations, ‘What’s this?’ He said, ‘It’s a really minor stain.’ And we said, politely but firmly, ‘Is the strategy really small stains or is the strategy zero defects?’ You reinforce the behavior that way.”
The key is to not spring sudden change on your people when you arrive at a new destination but rather tell them where you’re going and let them help you get there.
“You want them to be more evolutionary than revolutionary,” O’Hara says of changes. “In that case, it’s obviously involving a number of the thought leaders in the decision-making process so that they can be your advocates around the field. It’s obviously communication and bringing along people as early in the process as you reasonably can.”
