Share your vision
You can’t fear sounding like a broken record. The only way to get your vision across to employees is through repeated communication and defining their roles in accomplishing what you’ve set out to achieve.
Carnahan doesn’t stop at just talk or even e-mail. All of the work that went into setting initiatives and benchmarks for the vision is u
sed to communicate the vision precisely and to get employee buy-in.
“The most important way is just communication,” Carnahan says. “It’s communicating the vision over and over again and measuring our results against the vision, key benchmarks, financials as well as qualitative benchmarks on how we’re progressing that vision.”
The first step in communicating the vision is making sure everyone at all levels understands what the specific goals are both in the long term and in the short term. Carnahan relies on her general managers to set the tone of the vision at the local level. Since Cintas has stringent measurements for performance, general managers are able to specifically outline the vision’s initiatives and give constant feedback to employees on how they are making strides toward the vision.
The process goes back to Carnahan’s philosophy that you have to inspire employees to achieve the vision and employees need to see the vision and believe it’s accomplishable. That only happens when people understand what the goal is and how close they are to achievement.
“People buy in to a vision by winning,” Carnahan says. “It’s just like coaching a football team. The players have to see the vision to score touchdowns in order to win the game. They need to visualize what must be done.”
The same goes for those managers. Monthly goals are set, and if they’re not met, then Carnahan and her staff revisit the goals to determine what fine-tuning needs to be done to get everyone back on track.
And fine-tuning will need to happen, especially when you’re trying to grow or venture into new markets.
“Sometimes you have to make changes because you may find what you expected would happen in a certain market, when you go into a new market, it’s not according to the timeline that you originally expected, so you’ll fine-tune,” Carnahan says. “You won’t fine-tune the vision; your vision will stay the same. Your timeline might change though. Again, it’s constant communication.”
Employees won’t connect with the vision by measuring results alone. While the general managers are charged with establishing the vision at the bottom level, Carnahan makes sure all upper management is seen and heard to ensure the message she sets from the top is being communicated.
“I’m out in the field a lot with people because the answers aren’t really in my office, the answers are out in the field,” she says. “I make sure that I’m out talking to my partners constantly.
“They need to see our leaders, not just myself but the other leaders in my division, all the time to make sure they’re getting the message.”
At the beginning of each year, Carnahan, along with her general managers and regional business directors, set a detailed calendar to ensure she is reaching every region and a good representation of her employee-partners throughout the year.
Sometimes that means meeting service representatives in the field before they start their daily duties at 6 a.m. The keys to making those conversations successful are talking to employees about what they’re seeing on the job, asking them about their lives and updating them on what’s going on in the rest of the company. In Cintas case, the Document Management Division’s 1,800 employees is a small number compared to the overall company’s more than 30,000 employees.
“We’ll have communication and interactive communication back and forth, and talk about what their challenges are, what they’re seeing in the marketplace, how we can help them be better at their jobs,” Carnahan says. “It’s really very just open communication. You talk about safety. You talk about security. You talk about, again, things that are on their minds.”
Being with your employees in the field, not only allows you to check on progress toward your vision, but it gives employees a sense that you care about them as an individual and you care about their work.
“The key for any executive to inspiring employees to buy in to the vision is engaging your employees — from the front-line employee-partners to your direct reports — and making every employee realize they each have a valuable role in the overall success of the company.”
How to reach: Cintas Corp., Document Management Division, (800) 246-8271 or www.cintas.com
