Empower employees
Once you’ve hired the people
y
ou want and have a plan in place, you need to empower those employees.
One way to do that is by talking with them and listening to what they have to say.
Olsen has breakfast with six to eight employees, which his assistant chooses randomly from across the organization, about once every six weeks.
If you want to meet employees in a more casual setting, make sure you aren’t doing it with someone you interact with on a regular basis.
“Think of it as, it’s not a skip level,” he says. “It’s skip two or three or four levels.”
The company reserves a private room where the employees can take their time, eat and talk, and not feel rushed. Employees don’t know what to expect before they arrive, but when they do, Olsen tells them to order whatever they like and the group engages in some small talk.
“Then, all of a sudden, the dynamics turn around always to something around work, something around business,” he says. “Then, someone says, ‘Well, do you know I can help you with that?’
“Then, all of a sudden, that level of the organization that has their hands on the steering wheel are now engaged in cross-functional communication. We expect them to do that on a regular basis. That then bubbles up into the process work that we have the process teams looking at. Then, you can now build a playbook around the improved process. You don’t try to build the playbook and then jam that down people’s throats. That doesn’t work because there is usually breakage between what I could potentially see … versus the folks that are building the tasks.”
That communication is not only needed from side to side in the organization but also up and down. While it’s beneficial to have the macro view of the organization, you need to hear from the employees on the lower levels, which holding get-togethers like a breakfast helps accomplish.
“It’s sort of like watching a football game, and I get to see where the open receiver is because I have 20 TV cameras showing me,” he says. “I don’t have the defensive lineman about to crush me. But the person that is down on the field has the ability to understand the speed of the game that I have no appreciation for from where I am sitting. Therefore, those two views end up providing a much better type of equation to solve versus either one of them on their own.”
Another way to empower employees is to show them that they may know, in some cases, more than you do about the company.
“Then it builds also an interesting human dynamic issue,” he says. “They actually see that I don’t know a lot and I have to depend on them. They also get to see that I am thinking about things two or three years out.”
During the breakfasts, as well as town-hall meetings, employees sometimes ask Olsen questions he doesn’t have an answer to, or they ask him questions he hasn’t really thought about.
If you find yourself in that position, remember to just be honest.
“I find that if you are just direct, frank and truthful, you don’t have to be that smart,” he says. “I don’t have to remember a lot of things if I’m direct and truthful. I just have to remember that it’s the truth. That doesn’t mean you have to tell the truth harshly. You can tell the truth as attractively as possible, as long as it’s the truth.”
It’s also OK to say you don’t know the answer, instead of trying to give a half-informed response. If you don’t know the answer, admit you don’t, but make sure you let that person know you will find the answer and get back to them.
Overall, having breakfasts and skip-level meetings helps empower employees, which leads to a more productive company.
“People come up with creative ideas,” he says. “They now don’t think that they shouldn’t raise their hand and come up with ideas to improve the cycle times and the operations,” he says. “Then they see us implement some of these decisions and spend money on these decisions, and we talk about the pride of ownership of it.
“Now, there are many more ideas than what you do. As long as you have the process and they understand that it’s going to take a serious look, but the minimum ante is that you have to build a case. It’s not just a whim and an e-mail saying ‘Hey, did we ever think about standing on our nose?’”
How to reach: Switch & Data Facilities Co. Inc., (813) 207-7700 or www.switchanddata.com