Eliminate snipers
For a culture of communication and consensus to work, everyone has to be willing
to support the final decision. Marhofer’s system is a different way of doing business, and
some people have trouble adapting to it.
“In the initial stages, obviously everybody
was very skeptical,” he says. “Things have
changed in the last 15 years.
“When I first started, it was more of a
dog-eat-dog, ‘my way or the highway’ type
of thing,” he says. “Other people had those
experiences, and I’m coming in and saying,
‘I want you to make some decisions; I want
you to participate in running the company.
So if there is something that affects you in
your job, I want you to be involved in
deciding how that happens.’ Of course,
when you say that, their eyeballs are looking at you like you’re from another planet.”
Occasionally, Marhofer has had to deal
with “snipers” — people who may have put
up a green flag during the decision-making
process, but then complain privately about
it later. That type of negativity can undercut
the entire initiative, he says, but the solution
is simple: Call them on it. Make sure the person understands the benefits of the consensus system, and let them know that if they
don’t start working with the team, they
won’t be on the team much longer.
“That’s not saying you’re wrong; it’s just
saying that’s not in alignment with where
we want to go,” Marhofer says. “I understand that you’re challenged about letting
go, that you’ve got fears that people are
going to walk all over you. Let’s talk about
that. But at the end of the day, if you’ve got
your arms folded and you say, ‘I’m not
changing,’ you can’t be here.”
If someone is sniping, you may not
always know about it. But chances are
someone on your team does. About once a
week, Marhofer has “whiteboard meetings,” in which employees can write whatever they want on a whiteboard, and that
becomes the meeting’s agenda. These
meetings are not driven by management —
they are entirely driven by the team.
In the days before Marhofer’s system had
become fully entrenched, he met with considerably more resistance. Several times, it
got to the point where people wrote their
teammate’s names on the whiteboard. As
you might expect, the ensuing confrontation wasn’t pretty. It seems harsh, but
Marhofer remained steadfast.
“You have to tell people that confrontation is good,” he says. “We’re all trying to be
politically correct — we can’t attack the
person, but we can attack the behavior.”
If a person feels uncomfortable with his
or her actions being a topic of discussion
on the agenda, he or she is free to leave the
room. However, the person receives a copy
of the minutes from that meeting. Every
comment is written down in the meeting’s
notes, along with the action the team
wants you to take to correct your behavior.
“You have a choice,” he says. “If somebody
makes you aware of your behavior, you can
choose to stay the same or you can choose to
take it to heart and make a change.”
HOW TO REACH: Ron Marhofer Auto Family, (800) 731-6704
or www.marhofer.com
