Q. How do you get
employee buy-in?
It does need to start
internally, rather than
externally. We have something we call ‘20-minute
sessions.’ We call them
20-minute sessions
because we thought that’s all it
would be, and they’ve become
hour to hour-and-a-half sessions.
Those 20-minute sessions are
either myself or myself and our
senior vice president doing a
one-on-one or two-on-one with
every employee to talk about
the vision, the values, their
role, how they fit into that
whole vision. We end up getting great feedback, and it ends
up being a great dialogue.
The benefit for the employee
is an opportunity to have reinforcement for what contribution they’re making toward the
vision. Day to day, we get
siloed and lose focus on how
important the role we’re playing is toward the goal.
So it’s a great opportunity to
reinforce, ‘Here’s where we’re
trying to go, and here’s your
role in that.’ Also, we get some
feedback from them on things
that we could do differently to
make their role either more
rewarding or more effective.
So, they get clarity, and we
get great ideas.
Q. How do you find time to
meet with everyone?
There’s not a timeline on it,
so I’m not trying to knock
every meeting out in one
month. It’s just a rolling
process, so I may meet with two or three people this
month and six people next
month and one person the
month after that.
I know who we’ve met with
and who we haven’t, so we
have this rolling rhythm, and
we schedule them out over
time. It’s a good discipline, but
we don’t tie ourselves down in
terms of a timeline.
I don’t want them to feel
forced, either. Sometimes, they
can be impromptu.
Sometimes, that feels better
than something structured
where you send a meeting
invitation — ‘Come sit in my
office.’
We’ve had feedback that has
led to us implementing
changes in processes and
investments in things that
were good ideas. So the
actions coming out of it reinforce that it’s time well spent.
Q. How do you sort through
all of that feedback?
If something shared in that
meeting looks like a potential
concept for improvement, I’ll
take that concept to our management team and share it
with them. We’ll kick it around
and talk about some of the
pros and cons and make a
determination together if it’s
something we’d like to explore
further and implement.
If so, we usually involve the
person who came up with the
idea. If not, we go back to the
person and talk to them about
the discussion we had and
why we chose not to move
forward with it at the time.
Usually, that gives it some closure. You see some action, or
rather than perceived inaction,
they get some feedback.
HOW TO REACH: Marketing Direct Inc., (314) 590-8301 or www.marketingdirect.com