Establish employee empowerment
by listening to people’s ideas. You
have to be open to their suggestion, and if their suggestion
makes sense, you have got to
be able to do that and not to
stick with your own ideas.
Make it a cooperative project.
You have to have enough
openness to hear what they
want to say, and if that’s the
right thing to do, you go ahead
and do it. Otherwise, you have
to be present to convince
them that what they’re saying
is not the right thing.
You have to give them the
ability to make some innovation in respect to their products or projects so everybody
should be able to be creative.
You have to make sure people
have enough creativity to do
projects that give them an
edge in the industry and they
feel like they’re doing that
every day.
It depends where the opportunity comes from. It might be
a product opportunity, it
might be a sales opportunity,
or it might be a financial
opportunity. But when that
opportunity comes up, you
have to be able to be there to
discuss it with your people,
see if there’s a way to take
advantage of it and listen to
their thoughts on it.
We do town-hall meetings
where I meet with different
organizations in an open setting and discuss issues. We
also do all kinds of e-mails and
webcasts, too, but most of the
time, face-to-face meetings
with customers and people are
much better than the other
ways. You have to do that —
take time to talk to people.
They have to be confident
enough to know they can
come talk to me easily without
having any precautions.
Then, when you can make a
personal appearance, you can
see their body language and
adjust to them and ask the
right questions when you see
their body language change.
Then they feel like they are
needed, their job is important,
and they have a way of communicating their thoughts.
HOW TO REACH: Zhone Technologies Inc., (877) Zhone-20 or www.zhone.com
