You are currently browsing the Business Bulldog weblog archives for December, 2009.
28. December 2009 by Susan Kempton-Smith.
How do you know for sure that you’ve made the right hiring decision? You don’t, or at least you can’t be absolutely sure until the new hire has passed the test of time. What you can do is take some practical steps to reduce your risk of hiring the wrong person.
Step 1 - Without a road map you’ll be flying blind, so make sure that before you begin your search for the perfect employee, you develop a job description that truly encompasses necessary hard and soft skills.
Step 2 - Eliminate the candidates whose resumes suggest a less than perfect fit.
Step 3 - Screen the candidates for hard skills. You can determine the qualification potential of applicants by devising questions that can be administered over the phone, saving both of you time and money. For example, if a job requires specific computer skills, you can ask software-specific questions to help determine their skill level.
Step 4 – Have the applicant fill out an application and have them email or fax it to you prior to the face-to-face interview. This process helps to answer several questions. When driving is a job requirement, then a space for driving history should be included on the application. This can reveal DUIs or excessive speeding tickets, which would be probable reasons for elimination.
Step 5 – The face-to-face interview. This is the time to get to know the applicant.
Step 6 – Picture them in your environment.
Finally, remember that skills can be taught. Personalities can’t. You can only expand what’s already there. It’s impossible to build on something that doesn’t exist.
Posted in Hiring Process | Print | 72 Comments »
27. December 2009 by Bob Griffin.
The article I wrote on compliments has been downloaded and printed a few thousand times I want to add to it to ensure you have the tools to help this value-adding idea to your own business philosophy. There is more than just being polite to getting compliments, although that is a good place to start. There is an ideology that many small business owners and managers fail to notice and so fail to foster in their employees. Business Bulldog, Inc. was started to help get businesses back to the basics and grow with time-tried, recognizable ways of growing. It is what helped start the best businesses around. It is also the path that businesses that do not worry about what people have to say about them use.
To just read the above paragraph and think you understand how to get compliments would be a mistake. There is a school of thought that guides the best in business that must not only be understood, but lived. It is something that all good people know in their heart and live by. It can be broken down to one simple, yet profound word. It usually makes owners cringe and fail to see it’s worth and for employees to throw out of their vocabulary after the first hour on the job.
Trust
Compliments are broken down into three parts: the actions that bring about a compliment, the action of giving a compliment, and the context in which it is received.
Very often we hire “warm bodies”. I mean - the people needed just to keep things going. They fill a spot on the schedule, but do not really make things better. Kind of a “space filler” on the payroll. I call them a waste of space since I would not hire someone I did not see helping the culture of my organization. All employees are a representation of the brand. If you do not think so, you are in for a rude awakening when things go bad and you need everyone to step up and help with jobs they do not normally do or were hired to do. Want to see just how cranky the person who normally unloads trucks can get when asked to answer a phone? A quick check - - would you be comfortable letting anyone in your organization tell a news reporter about your business? If that answer is no, you have “warm bodies”.
“Warm bodies” are the reason most places do not get compliments. They drag down the rest of the employees who want to be proud of the company and the job they do. I have seen far too many organizations that think that is the only way to keep the business going. The reason I have heard is, “Employees do not want to do any more than they have to. You have to push them to get anything done around here.” That is the business with the going out of business sign on the front door and the merchandise being stolen by employees when the boss turns his back. The culture there is “I don’t trust you”.
So, how do you start trusting people when your organization is geared to pushing and dragging crew to do their job? The first step is to change the way you look at your business. Why did you get into business? Was it for a short term gain or for the long haul? Businesses built for the long haul are the only ones we work with. Why start with you? Because you are the driving force in your organization. If you make it important, the employees will see it as important. Make your actions compliment worthy. The rest of your team should see this as a clear path for them to follow. It is also easy to see where your weak link is when you are acting professionally and expect others in your organization to act similarly.
We have mentioned a few times that getting compliments should be an easy task for your customers. How many businesses do you visit each week that do not have a way (an easy way) for you to give feedback? That is where you need to spend a few budgeted dollars (or for our international friends euros, dinars, etc.). Find ways to get customers to give you their honest opinion. Walk around your store and ask, place a phone call to a recent customer, give surveys, or have a third party ask. I do not recommend using it as part of a promotion - you give us a score and we will give you a chance to win a prize. There are too many ways for that to muddy the message.
Finally, how are you going to receive the message. By that I mean, what are you going to do with the information? If you are going to just look at it and thunder orders to your front line crew, forget it. You don’t make changes that matter by pushing your team. Either they are part of the answer or you are fooling yourself into thinking you are a leader. If you want to use the information to make changes that will change your business, post the best examples of compliments that show the path you want your team to follow. The feedback that is not a compliment is valuable too. Use it to make changes, but do it as a team. If you have field people, get them in the office for a meeting and have them brainstorm was to make the customer’s experience better.
Trust is an amazing thing when you have it in your business. Trust your employees to do the right thing. Trust your customers to give you meaningful feedback. Finally, trust your team to help you build a stronger business. Compliments can be an amazing part of your brand image. It is tough to tear down a brand that has dedicated followers. Just remember to start the path to compliments inside your business.
Posted in Customer Service, Creating the Culture | Print | 48 Comments »
16. December 2009 by Noel Guilford.
It is obviously difficult to live in a society that is permeated with the idea that only total and absolute disaster can be the catalyst of necessary and long over due change. That may be the case for most of us, but we have the choice to be a fish that slips through the net or canned tuna. Many, many businesses and organizations find themselves too far along to take any type of corrective action that will make a difference. They flop around on the deck in vain protesting to be thrown back into the sea. The sad part is, that as the net of this recent economical environment sweeps up more and more businesses…I mean fish, how many will really be missed in the commotion?
So a show of hands for everyone that would prefer to sabotage their own business by being reactive rather than proactive…anyone? Great!
Now, lets not make this complicated shall we? It takes more courage than anything to put ourselves underneath the microscope. I’ll give you 7 easy steps to giving your business a self diagnostic and we know that checkups should be done regularly so your first time should not be your last.
Never stop asking this question as the answer can change over time. The current answer will be the direction that you drive your business in and the ultimate goal of all your work. If you don’t clearly know, you will be like a ship lost at sea with no bearings. Totally subject to the forces around you and utterly powerless to determine your own destiny.
There are no right or wrong answers here just honest realizations. Are your a front-line type of leader or more of a hands-off delegate type? Perhaps you don’t need to lead your business at all and it would be best lead by another person accountable to you. It could simply be that you best serve the business by managing the financial aspects rather than the day to day. Decide and stick with that decision.
On a scale from one to five, rate exactly how you believe your business performs in four separate areas. Five being excellent, three being fair, and one being poor. Not sure what a five looks like, that’s where step four comes in. This step is to make sure you calibrate what you believe to be good performance.
If the President needs an adviser then so do you. Some solicit the counsel of other business owners that they may know or have met through an organization of business owners. Others opt to enlist that aid of a consultant, personally this is an instance where the more really is the merrier. Let your adviser or advisers rate your business on the same scale and see what they have to say. At the end of the day the decisions are still yours to make. If others can help you see your situation from every angle would you not be able to make a better informed decision?
Take everything you know and everything that has been said by your adviser or advisers and lay it all out together. Give it all equal amounts of consideration, if it doesn’t work (even if its your idea) then it hits the cutting room floor? It helps at this point to remember step one. Keep what works and what has never been used. From these things create your business plan. This can be an overall business plan or one to tackle an area of your business that needs improvement.
Before you start leading employees out to the gallows lets give this a second look. Everyone has their strengths and their weaknesses, and in order to use an employee to their fullest you must know what those are. As loyalty is hard to come by, before you replace someone determine if there is another position on the team that makes good use of their talents. If not then the decision is clear. Always use a diagram on this step. It helps to make sure that you pair who you have and what they can do, with what you need done.
Alright coach, now you should know your role, know where you are, have a goal, have what your need done, and who you need to do it. Great! Now it’s time to get everyone on board. This may require one large meeting or several small ones. Lead as many as dictated by the role you play in your business. Just remember that most of all they need to know why they are there (why they work for you ), where they stand in performance (just the facts), what function they have, and what needs to be done next. Lastly give them your reasonable expectations to be accomplished in a reasonable time frame and who will be holding them accountable to these expectations and why.
Wondering who is going to hold you accountable? Each time you perform this seven step check up have your previous one handy. Commitment and accountability should begin and end with you regardless of your role. Even though no business fails in a day, and no business corrects itself in a day, there is only one time to begin change and that time for you can be today.
Posted in Creating the Culture, Being the Boss, Training | Print | 64 Comments »