Q. How else do you get
your employees to see the big
picture?
If you imagine yourself processing orders, you see the
names of the clients and the
product. It moves through on
the computer, and it’s on your
desk, then you’ve confirmed it
and you do it, then it’s off
your desk. Then your warehouse releases it, and they
pick it up. That’s your world.
That’s your world, except if
you can relate that world to a
tangible perspective, then you
can gain an appreciation for
the fact that your job is really
important.
So you get to go to the
warehouse and watch what
happens when the truck driver shows up without a purchase order number and
doesn’t even know what
they’re supposed to be picking up, to see how frustrating
that is for the warehouse if all
the paperwork involved isn’t
correct.
Q. How does that help your
employees?
You just have a much deeper appreciation for what it is
that you’re doing. Plus, it
stops being hacking something into a computer, and it
starts to become, ‘This is the
stuff that Javier and Marta
and the other families I met
grow. They go through this
whole process of cleaning it
up, then it gets tested at the
microbiology lab, and it’s
finally here, and you can be
proud of it. And I’m the one
who gets it out to the customer and keeps them happy.’
That’s a very different perspective than, ‘I got hired to
do the job — if you took the
emotion out of it — of a
robot.’
HOW TO REACH: Multiple Organics, (415) 482-9800 or www.multipleorganics.com
