Operate in the open
Price’s plan to remake The Linc Group hinged on creating total
employee accountability. The technology to create the type of system he needed was already available, but first he needed to bolster
a technological infrastructure that was bordering on obsolete.
Price spent $6 million to install a wireless system that would facilitate real-time accountability all the way down to the point of service.
“It was all about becoming a technology-enabled labor business
— a business that was going to operate under these sets of values
in real time,” he says. “You have the check and balance with the
value systems and the ability to see the values were being lived in
real time. That was the uniqueness of what we were trying to do.”
The system is able to give a constantly updated tally of each
employee’s progress toward his or her individual performance
benchmarks. However, instead of keeping that information
restricted to members of the management team, Price drew back
the curtains and let everyone see how well The Linc Group was
doing.
For each project, each employee has a set of key performance
indicators to work toward. Price’s team works with the customer
to create goals and benchmarks that align with that particular
project. By listening to their input, you create a stronger relationship with the customer and increase their overall satisfaction
with the project.
“We tell them, ‘Here are the things that are important to us in
order to redeem our contract value to you. Tell us the things that
are important to you,’” Price says. “Then we marry those up and
create these performance indicators that we benchmark monthly.
So then our customers know — on a monthly basis, not quarterly
or once a year — they know if we are hitting our marks, if we are
closing out our job tickets, if we are doing the things we told them
we were going to do.”
As the project progresses, the performance indicators are posted
in real time on the wireless system. That helps customers see the
project’s progress as it happens, and the transparency shows
Price’s confidence in his team.
“It’s open kimono with your customers, so you’d better be confident that what you’re sharing is something you’re willing to aspire
to,” he says.
Usually Price’s management team explains how each performance
indicator creates value in the mind of the customer. The benchmarks for a field service technician will be different than the
benchmarks for a dispatcher, but the key is showing them why
each metric is important and how they will be evaluated.
“When you facilitate that with the performance indicators that say,
‘Here’s how you’re going to be evaluated,’ people are going to aspire
to hit those marks,” Price says.
He rewards employees who consistently achieve the goals set for
them with bonuses and promotion. He says by shining a light on
his employees’ performance, he lit a competitive fire in his team.
“When you have that visibility and transparency in real time, you
create an environment where people will naturally compete to try
to do better than the other guy,” Price says. “That’s just basic human
nature. If you create transparency down to the level of the point of
service, then the guy who’s out there doing the work knows he’s
getting the proper support, the proper training and the proper tools
at the point of service, but he also knows he’s being watched.”
The extra scrutiny raises employee awareness of how they are
performing in relation to their peers. Making employee performance indicators public can create tension in the workplace, so you
must share the reasoning behind your metrics with your employees or else risk complaints of a skewed playing field.
If your business doesn’t actually manufacture anything, creating measurable goals isn’t always easy. To create easily defined metrics, Price says you
have to eliminate vague, nebulous goals.
During each planning session for a project,
Price rejects any potential performance
indicators that can’t be tied to a value and
shown in real time.
“If we want to be X, Y or Z, that’s great,”
he says. “Now, how do we measure X, Y
[and] Z? If it wasn’t measurable, it didn’t
have much value.”
As might be expected, some people didn’t
agree with Price’s new direction for The
Linc Group. During the two years of what
Price calls “The Enron Wars,” the switch to
a completely transparent work environment forced some employees to leave.
Price didn’t mind though, because the
employees who couldn’t adapt to the
changes weren’t the employees he wanted
to stay anyway.
“It’s visibility that creates the angst,” he
says. “People either enjoy that because they
like being rewarded for good behavior or
people are hugely uncomfortable with that
and they take themselves out of the mix. So
if you’re the kind of person who runs under
the refrigerator when the light comes on,
we’re not a good place for you to be.”
Some employees may appear to be doing
a good job, but appearances can be deceiving. For example, Price fired one very talented and bright employee who was running a division with modest success.
“When I had the final discussion with
him, his comment was, ‘I’m not going to
fault myself because I think what we’ve
done has been pretty good,’” Price says.
“And I said, ‘Yeah, well imagine where we’d
be if you did the hard things, too.’”
Although he gives his managers the freedom to do their jobs the way they see fit,
Price enjoys the added security of the constantly updated system that tells him
exactly what they’re doing.
“You can’t blindly advocate responsibility
to people,” he says. “As they say, hope is
not a plan. You can hire the best people in
the world, and if you don’t measure or
monitor them, you’re still going to get an
outcome that’s sporadic and haphazard.”
