I've Been Thinking...

About why I hate to shop nowadays... and it all comes down to one word, "management." As I move through life everyday, I can't help but see the effect of poor management... it is everywhere. What does it look like? It looks like the completely disengaged employee checking your bags at the airlines, who doesn't verify that the tag on the bag is correct. Or it is the waitress who can't remember that you ordered the pasta with sauce on the side. Or the customers service employee who puts you on hold and never checks back on you. Lousy performance? Yes. Why?

We are all affected by service events... because service is the biggest thing we do in this country. But in most cases, service is terrible. And if we dig to find out why, we end up with the answer: we have the wrong employees doing the wrong jobs; they hate it, they do as little as possible and it shows in their performance. You and I feel it every time we are part of a service event. I'm pretty tired of it... particularly because it doesn't need to be this way.

The problem is actually not the employee - it is more likely the manager. Today's managers must understand that the industrial (we made things) age is over - we are now in the intellectual (we make ideas) age. The way to drive performance in one age is very different from the other yet most managers continue to use the industrial age autocratic management on today's workers. How do I know? I see it in the service I receive... and it is everywhere.

The solution?
Management must understand what moves employees to perform and own the process of learning to manage in the right way. Today, employees contribute great thinking to the workplace... that is what they are paid for. They are paid to solve issues, invent opportunities and respond to customers in the appropriate and most dynamic way possible. They must be constantly thinking, watching and inventing. The will to perform at this level comes from the employee. There is no way to mandate this kind of performance (industrial age approach); instead, it must be encouraged since the employee himself controls how hard he works, how creatively he thinks and how long he stays. Engaged, content and excited employees perform; bored, disengaged and unhappy employees do not.

The solution is in a new way of managing employees. Millennial management is the process of managing the Human EDGE - the "humans" that work in the workplace. Successful millennial managers do four things:

They hire employees based on talents (their natural thinking) and properly align them to jobs that match their thinking.
They create performance expectations that define "what" is to be done but leave the "how" up to the employee. This creates greater participation and sense of employee ownership.
They provide consistent performance feedback in the way coaching, education and mentoring to guide employees into greater skills and therefore greater performance.
They provide a recurring career conversation (development) to insure employees always see the opportunities for the future and have a voice in which road they take.

Success in this millennial age is in understanding how to get the best from each employee by using the four principles of millennial management and building strong personal relationships with each employee. These relationships start a dialog so that the manager always has the best information on the employee to help direct where he belongs, how to increase his skills, advance his performance and see long term opportunities. Employees who are managed in this way consistently perform. Employees who are managed in this way are more likely to remain. So you see, lousy performance is about outdated management. It is time to get with the times and learn how to get the best from your people.

Humanetrics offers education, programs, keynotes and consulting in the area of the Human EDGE. The programs are highly interactive, practical and direct showing the way to shift from industrial age to intellectual age management.

Take Action

This month we focus on Millennial Management - the process of managing our people in a new way that encourages their thinking, inventing and performing. Consider the following to start your process of millennial management by getting to know your people:

Get caught up on what millennial management is and why it is so important by review the resources posted on this site. Great sources are Marcus Buckingham's "First Break All The Rules" or any of the articles posted on the Articles link.
Talk to the HR department employees and see their perspective on maximizing employee performance.
Start asking employees what they think more than you have done before. Consider requiring one idea (per day, week or month) from each employee to addresses customer service, profitability, innovation or efficiency.
Spend 10 minutes with each employee over the next month and ask the same couple of questions:
- What is your favorite part of this job?
- What is your least favorite part of this job?
- What do you like to do in your spare time?
- What other areas of the company would you like to be involved in?
Share a comic or quote each morning -consider assigning the responsibility to others on a rotating basis. Use it as an opportunity to get to know each other and get each other talking.

Invent other ideas. Start your own Idea Center and share it with others. Click on our Idea Center to see some of our management ideas.

Your Tools

Humanetrics wants you to think your way to success. To help you with this we introduce BLOGucation (Daily Power Learning), our Success Formula process and worksheet, our programs and our keynotes. Remember that you can also find great resources, articles and links to some of today's best thinking and sites. Use the sources, review the articles... get smart. And when you need some help to raise your performance to a power, contact us and let's get started together. Until then, use what you find on the site to be your best; your employees and your customers need you to be great.