Define your expectations
To give employees a sense of purpose, you must first define
the expectations you have for them.
At CEVA, Bento centers his entire freight management organization on a four-pegged operating process.
“We call it ‘operations excellence,’ and we believe it’s a market differentiator for us,” he says.
The pegs are zero-defect start-ups for new business, 12 communication-based “smart solutions” and lean initiatives.
“You do those three, and then you just measure the hell out
of them,” Bento says. “You put global metrics behind them and
then you have a definition of how you can communicate what
the expectation is.”
The four-pegged operating strategy does two things: One, it
is meant to focus everyone in the company on what CEVA
does best, which is essential for making sure employees can
live up to the expectations you and your managers set.
“When you talk about how to do business around the globe
and define that operationally, you have to be able to say, ‘This
is what we’re good at,’” he says. “This is what the company
should be known for; it helps the operations to know how they
could execute against that. It’s much easier than trying to be a
jack of all trades and trying to do everything for everybody.”
Second, Bento says any operations strategy issued by management is also a means of holding management accountable
to keep opening doors for employees, removing barriers that
might prevent employees from doing their jobs optimally.
He says there is one overarching rule that everyone in a management position should remember: The higher you go in your
company, the more people you are obligated to serve.
“You have to be someone who is willing to step across the
line and eliminate any type of bureaucracy,” he says. “The
ability to lead by example really differentiates good leaders.
Sometimes, you don’t realize that as you take on more
responsibility, you serve more people. You don’t think about
it in terms of that — that, that really has to be on a leader’s
mind, serving the people that work for you.”
