Q. How do you communicate to employees that
you understand mistakes happen?
The first thing we do is
tell them, ‘Don’t be
afraid; we’re not going
to fire you at the first
mistake that occurs. But
use your intelligence
and try not to get there.’
If you get to the point
where that does happen, then we tell them,
first of all, they aren’t
going to get fired over
it. Then, the best way
to establish it is to
show it.
Once you’ve done it
once or twice, if there
is a problem that occurs by
one individual, usually everybody knows it. It’s very hard
to keep that a secret. Then, if
you show that the ramifications are not being fired,
that’s about as good of a
technique that you can use
to make everybody understand that that’s what you
are doing.
Q. How do you handle bad
decisions?
What I instituted here, and
it’s only about a year old, I’ve
been searching for ways to
transfer the positive out of
the problems to other people. In other words, learning
from our mistakes.
Generally, the individual
who is involved or individuals
who are involved will learn
from their mistakes, obviously. But the challenge is, how
do you get that to other people in the company?
You don’t want one team to
go through a problem and then have the next team do
exactly the same on the next
project.
We have these sessions of
‘lessons learned.’ So, if an
issue crops up, we’ll call the
meeting and have everybody
in there. Then, what I try to
do is have the individuals
involved make a presentation. It’s not even a presentation, it’s a talk-through —
‘This is what happens; these
are the parameters.’
The other key I tried to do
is have it immediately.
Sometimes, we have them
before the issue is even
resolved, while we’re in the
midst of it.
When the problem is
resolved and everybody is
calm, there is no passion
left. You tend to just talk
about it as a, ‘This is what
happened and blah, blah,
blah; it’s over.’ While you’re
in the middle of it, you tend
to show the nervousness
that goes with it and the
frustration and the need to
come up with unique ways
to solve whatever that problem may be.
Then, the benefit that came
out of it, that I really wasn’t
looking for but was pleasantly surprised, is that by the
fact that you’re getting people together, you end up with
a lot of brains in one room.
So, other people put in their
opinion, and some of them
are very good.
Instead of being a one-person or three-person problem,
it becomes a 50-person problem, and everybody benefits
from it and everybody sees
the pain the people involved
are going through.
HOW TO REACH: O’Donnell & Naccarato Inc., (215) 925-3788 or www.o-n.com
