Empower employees to change
By including employees from all departments on each team, you already have eyes looking at each issue from all sides. But you need to equip them to ask the right questions to identify breakdowns and improve efficiency.
“Every decision we make is about providing more value to our customers,” Horne says. “If we
01
9;re not producing products that are cheaper, better and faster than anyone else, we will not remain relevant. Our associates have to ask themselves one simple question in everything they do: Is it growing audience or revenue? And if not, it’s time to stop doing it. It’s that simple.”
If employees uncover a process that meets those criteria, Horne trains them to ask whether it can be done cheaper, better or faster by partnering or outsourcing.
Give the teams additional frameworks for each issue you charge them to examine. Put their task in context of what you expect the outcome to look like and what types of solutions are acceptable.
“I tell them what I want from an outcome, either from audience or revenue or expense, and then I tell them what they can and can’t do,” Horne says. “For example, if I’m telling a revenue group to grow revenue any way you can, [I’d say], ‘Come up with $1 million a month in new revenue next year.’ I might say, ‘But you can’t open a Starbucks drive-through. You can’t go out and do something that’s totally outside of our core competencies. But you can invest money in a product that serves our customer base better.’”
Then step back and let the teams do what you trained them to do.
When teams present their proposed solutions to Horne, they have to verify that it meets each facet of the framework he gave them — for example, the team would include research that shows how its plan would bring $1 million in revenue every month. The team should also figure the cost of implementation.
There may be some back and forth as you ask for additional details or rethinking. But once you give approval, send the plan back to the team for implementation.
“That’s why I don’t allow them to be called committees — committees talk about it and recommend, and somebody else implements,” Horne says. “These are teams that solve the issue and implement the issue.”