Harness employee potential
Focused, motivated employees form the engine that powers
your business. If you’ve done your job in communicating motivating messages to your work force, you then have to be able
to harness their muscle and brainpower to move your company ahead.
At Henry Ford Health System, Schlichting engages and motivates her employees with an eye toward innovation. She wants
to maintain an environment where employees feel free to come
forward with ideas and suggestions about how to make the
health system produce better results for patients.
If your employees are willing to step forward and offer their
ideas, it’s your job to encourage those ideas to keep coming.
Schlichting says the best way to do that is to say one word as
often as realistically possible: yes.
“The best way is to say yes a lot,” she says. “If people come
forward and you constantly tell them why you can’t do things,
it does not encourage innovation. If you try to find a way to
support their ideas, even if they might need to be changed a bit,
but you say, ‘Yes, I like what you’re thinking; I think there is
way we can work with that,’ that’s what encourages people to
come forward with more ideas.”
If you are consistent in encouraging people to come forward
with ideas and careful not to dismiss ideas without careful consideration, it will become part of your reputation as a motivator. Schlichting says that’s a reputation you want to have.
“What happens is that when people are supported, they tell a
lot of people that their ideas are going forward,” she says.
“Probably one of the best examples of that came from one of
our physicians. Our robotic prostate cancer treatment was created and developed here at Henry Ford. Initially, when the idea
surfaced, I think a lot of that physician’s colleagues questioned whether it made any sense. Typically, when most people
come forward with new ideas, people tell them why it should-n’t happen. So when you’re open and you kind of work through
a process, even if it takes awhile, good ideas can get better.
“In our case, the prostate cancer program is now the largest
in the country in terms of providing minimally invasive, robotically assisted prostate cancer surgery. When you’re in an
organization where people rally around good ideas and help
those ideas move forward, they get better. They get sharper
and more focused, and we’re able to make that happen.”
Pay attention to ideas, even if you don’t end up using them.
Simply letting employees’ ideas die on the vine through neglect is another dangerous demotivator. Schlichting says
employees crave feedback; if they don’t get that feedback,
they’ll equate it with rejection, whether you mean it that way
or not.
“If you don’t provide them good feedback and let them know
something is being considered, they basically will quit bringing
those ideas forward,” she says. “If they’re dismissed or just
devalued by a lack of attention, you’re not going to be very successful in bringing new ideas from that individual. And that
word gets out, too. There is an incredible affect on others
when someone feels discounted or that their idea wasn’t really
considered. Then others will feel like, ‘Well, why should I even
think of submitting new ideas to the organization?’”