Don’t tell, show
Bianconi actually developed his new approach to employee growth by accident.
“There were a couple situations where we weren’t sure that we wanted to put a certain person in a position, but we didn’t have anybody else to put in the position,” Bianconi says. “So we told the person, ‘Hey, until we can fill this position, we’d like you to handle these duties.’ All of a sudden, they did a great job, and we ended up promoting them. It became pretty obvious to me that was the missing link. Having that procedure in place made life much easier for everyone. It’s very easy to promote and announce you’re assigning someone a position and a title. But it’s very difficult to take that away.”
Bianconi began selling his team on this new approach of an interim period before a promotion by laying out the facts.
“I would go in and say, ‘You know what, we’ve just gone through a situation where we’ve promoted several people and we’ve not had good success,” Bianconi says. “These people have failed. They did great in the previous position with the company, but we promoted them and, for whatever reason, they failed in those positions. We need to figure out a way to do this.’”
But what followed was not Bianconi talking about his idea to create a transition period before issuing promotions. Instead, he began to ask questions.
“If you want to communicate an idea that you have, the best way to do it is not to tell people what the idea is,” Bianconi says. “Let them figure it out. The way I do that is by asking questions. You ask the people in the room, ‘What is your opinion?’ That’s a very valid question. People typically have great solutions and great comments. Instead, what happens too many times is leaders get into a room and they think their solution is the only one and the best one and they are not interested in hearing other people’s opinions and comments.
“You have to be open-minded at all levels to understand that your idea may be a good one, but it may not be the best one.”
In this case, Bianconi believed that his idea was the best one. But you can’t go into a meeting with your team with an attitude that it’s your way or the highway.
“I’ve always used the premise that you have to start with the fact that (your people) think logically and they are intelligent,” Bianconi says. “If I can’t convince you it’s a good idea, then maybe it’s not and vice versa. We both have to agree that whatever thing we’re going to move forward on is a good idea.”
Bianconi got the buy-in he needed by making an analogy to airline pilots.
“We started off hiring crop dusters and we elevated to single-engine planes and dual-engine planes and then mini jets and now we’re flying jumbo jets,” Bianconi says. “But along that progression, you need to constantly redefine and hone those skill sets and positions. The person that flies a single-engine plane, they may be able to fly a dual-engine plane. But that’s not what they are really trained for. It’s not where their comfort level is. If you have people up there flying these planes, sooner or later, the likelihood of them crashing is greater.”
Bianconi felt like the company could continue going about the promotions the way it had. If the company was lucky, there wouldn’t be any problems in sales or IT or accounting and it would keep plugging away. But Bianconi had no desire to run his company on a hunch.
“I tell people that our organizational chart is flipped on its end,” Bianconi says. “The people on the top, they are the leaves on the tree that are out there growing the company. I need to be the one offering the support and to make sure I’m providing them with the right tools.”
It was up to the leaders to do better and put a process in place that would better prepare employees for their jobs and the growth opportunities they might provide.
