Develop trust
Everybody would like to work at a company where nothing bad ever happens. Unfortunately, that’s just not realistic. Bad things do happen every day and problems arise and people have disagreements about how to deal with them.
As you work to bring everyone on track with your goals for the organization, you need to be sure you are creating an environment where employees can raise concerns and questions without fear of punishment.
“Let’s say I walk up to a guy in the warehouse and say, ‘How is this going,’” Perlman says. “‘Are we having any problems with a particular brand of big screens?’ He may look immediately toward his boss who is the warehouse supervisor, who may look to the guy who runs the warehouse who may look over to the store manager to see if he is getting anybody in trouble. But you still want that guy’s response.
“He’s scared of saying something that could get somebody else in trouble and, in turn, get himself in trouble. The reality is, you’re looking to put somebody at ease.”
The key is to not penalize people for raising concerns.
“The famous comment on that is the old production line that allowed anybody to stop it if they saw a problem,” Perlman says. “But if the guy did stop it, he got in trouble because it slowed down production. Here they go and they develop this great system that any one person can stop a line if there is a problem. On the other hand, the guy has to be absolutely positive he is right. Otherwise it could really affect the company’s productivity.”
You have to make it clear that someone who is raising a concern is not a bad guy and should not be viewed that way.
“Whenever I speak to people as a group, one of the things I’ll always say is, ‘Within the company, we may disagree with one another every once in awhile, but there are no bad guys in the company. The only bad guys I know are the competitors,’” Perlman says. “ Get everybody focused on the bad guys, which are the competitors. If you can get everybody thinking that we’re the good guys and they are the bad guys, that goes a long way toward getting that concept across.”
