I’ve noticed a growing trend in many businesses lately that’s rapidly becoming a “secret leech” when it comes to the bottom line profit. Shiny new people join the team with great experience, great enthusiasm and energy, and great ideas of how to bring growth. But then after a while they seem to lose their energy, and the shine rapidly wears off, and you wonder what happened to your talented new recruit…
So here’s something we seem to be missing. It’s dull, perhaps worse than dull to many of us, but it’s about having solid processes. I often compare this to the walls of a house. You could live in a straw house for a while if the sun was shining, the ground was dry, and there was never more than a gentle breeze. But bring on a little rain, some wind, and a bit of soggy ground (which is most days where I live in Cumbria!), and you start to have problems. Yes you can repair the straw house, but it would need constant repair, which would steal your valuable time, and money for some replacement straw.
Now compare that to a nice sold brick house, which would need a bit of upkeep now and again, but not the constant replacement of the fundamental structure. Let’s face it, you may have to replace a roof every 10 years, but I can’t imagine anyone having to constantly replace bricks all the time!!
So what does this have to do with our shiny new recruits losing their gloss? Well if you don’t have your solid processes in place, and you don’t give them the right induction that says “THIS is HOW we DO IT” (queue Montell Jordan singing in the background) the first thing they will probably do is try to install the same process of how they “did it” before. This may have been a great process in their old business but they don’t know yet what works well here, so they will spend time setting something new up that may or may not work, and because they are new they don’t necessarily know who needs to be consulted, so the shiny new process may not be accepted, or may fall over at the first hurdle.
Let’s imagine a new sales manager has arrived into a sales team. If this happens to him a few times in the course of his first few months it can not only be stealing precious time, it’s very demotivating, and his manager could be looking on thinking “why isn’t my great new sales manager bringing in more sales, perhaps he’s not that great at selling”, when in fact the poor guy has had to spend time trying to ensure the orders he has from existing customers are being processed correctly instead of meeting with new customers!
So back to the straw house analogy, our sales guy is supposed to be sitting on the front lawn of the brick house, delivering his sales pitch to all the neighbors, but instead he’s busy picking up bits of straw and sticking them back on the house!! So it’s a double whammy in terms of profit, not only is he not doing what he’s supposed to do and isn’t bringing in new sales, when he finally gets fed up with the whole thing he will leave and you will have to replace him, then the cycle starts again!
The good news is you can easily stop the cycle, but you HAVE to take a little bit of time out to get those processes in place, and ensure that you have a robust induction that explains “How you do it”. I believe that many business need to put this to the top of the agenda when it comes to strategy, otherwise their house will always be made of straw…
If you’re feeling a little like you’re in that straw house, get in touch…
Lorna Stellakis - A woman on a mission to help as many people as possible to look up from their shiny screens and really connect with their co-workers (or whoever is around them that day) so that they can collaborate, learn from each other, become more productive, more efficient, and figure out what will make their day really great!! If you really look, the world is a lot shinier than those little screens… Look me up on LinkedIn or drop me a tweet @LJS_LORNA
Consultant, Facilitator, Mentor and Thinking Partner
What to expect if you work with me…
