Help people find their strengths
Koen says most people show up at work every day with a desire to contribute and make their organization better. Do whatever you can to encourage and strengthen that desire.
“Our obligation to team members is to give them the tools, the capability and direction to be successful,” Koen says.
At SAVVIS, team leaders are encouraged to speak with employees in their group about performance. But they also use the conversations as a means to ensuring the company is using its people to their full capacity. The intent is to prevent usable skills that employees might have from going unnoticed.
Team leaders meet every 90 days and review what they have learned in those dialogues as well as how the company is performing overall in meeting its objectives.
“You have an obligation to figure out how to get the most out of your team,” Koen says. “It’s a very effective way to identify interest and give honest feedback as far as how people are performing.”
Much like the process to gain trust, when employees are asked for their input and feel like it is being listened to, their commitment to the organization should grow stronger and their insights will be that much more useful.
“Commitment comes from having people see that they can be successful,” Koen says. “It’s pretty tough to get committed to goals that are going to fail. … Are you giving them the tools to be successful? Are you giving them an environment where they can be creative? All of those things will simultaneously build to a much stronger level of commitment.”
Start this process of gathering feedback by asking your direct reports for their input and encouraging them to do the same with their people.
“That message gets translated down through the organization,” Koen says. “It’s reinforced through our HR practices. It’s reinforced in the way we promote people, reward people and pay people. You have to have a complete loop here to ensure you are addressing this holistically.”
SAVVIS has seen its revenue grow from $616.8 million in 2004, the year before Koen arrived, to $793.8 million in 2007. The company continues to add new data centers in the United States and expand its working capacity.
“Think of this as a triangle,” Koen says. “At the center of it is this opting-in capability and reinforcing messages that allow you to develop an interdependent and trusting environment, coupled with a sense of, ‘How do I deal with conflicting thoughts in a constructive way?’ Lastly, there is reinforcing it in such a way that people are constantly committing themselves to that cause. You have a powerful formula for leading any organization.”
HOW TO REACH: SAVVIS Inc., (314) 628-7000 or www.savvis.net