 There’s a quote from Richard Branson that’s been doing the rounds on Social Media for the last few months, it says:
"Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.” I’ve even seen it printed out and stuck above an employee’s desk at one of my new client’s. It’s really struck a chord, mostly I imagine, in businesses where it’s clearly not the case. So, how do you prove, to your own people at least, that they really do come first in your business? Here’s my top 10 1. Involve people in your vision and planning 2. Keep them up to date with how the business is doing 3. Let them know what you expect of them 4. Give them feedback to let them know how they’re doing - appreciative or constructive 5. Give them simple, logical and repeatable systems to follow 6. Develop them as an individual and not just as an employee 7. Give them the opportunity to develop their abilities and knowledge 8. Give them interesting work and tell them what impact it has on ’the big picture’ 9. Make sure that there are consequences for both good and poor performance 10. Reward your High Performing Team, and have fun with them! Do these things, and you’ll have a working environment where people start to thrive and grow and the business will thrive and grow with them. The more you convey your high expectations of your people the higher their own self-expectation becomes. Build this people-first culture in your business, be true and consistent to this culture in everything you say and do, and you’ll create a team that take full ownership for their role, and great care of your customers. Do one thing: Rate your own business against my top 10, and let me know how you did. And if you want help in putting these foundations in place, consider joining us for our next McFreedom Secrets workshop. Click here to learn more. For more information on how MPL can help you visit www.mariannepage.co.uk or contact me on hello@mariannepage.co.uk
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 “When people are financially invested, they want a return. When people are emotionally invested, they want to contribute.”
Round here, we talk a lot about the 4 Foundations that will give a business owner McFreedom, that is, freedom to choose whether to scale, grow, or sell your business…or run it from a beach somewhere. The 4 Foundations - Planning, Process, People and Performance - are all inter-dependent and inter-related, all essential for making a small successful business even more successful, without any one of the four, the business can't fulfil its potential. The fact is though, that the 4th foundation, performance management, which is the real cornerstone of the whole McFreedom System™ is often the one that is either forgotten or set up badly. For your Performance Management system to add value, you need three things:
We’ve talked about the first two in recent blogs, so let’s take a look at number 3, and the common mistakes business owners make. Or rather the biggest mistake that business owners make - making rewards all about money, or more specifically, the bonus. So what’s the problem with bonuses? They’re giving your team members what they want aren’t they? Well here's just a few of the potential pitfalls:
To be really effective, a bonus, or better still a pay review, must be based around very clear measures of business performance first and foremost, and then, if the business has done well, very clear measures of the individual's performance to determine the size of the bonus they will receive. But money really isn't everything, there are other much more simple ways to engage your team.
In the words of Simon Sinek, author of 'Start with Why': “When people are financially invested, they want a return. When people are emotionally invested, they want to contribute.” Do one thing: Consider how you are engaging your team emotionally on a daily basis [To learn more about the 4 Foundations of The McFreedom System™ join us at our next McFreedom Secrets Workshop. Click HERE to learn more] For more information on how MPL can help you visit www.mariannepage.co.uk or contact me on hello@mariannepage.co.uk  Development can help great people be even better - but if you have a pound to spend, spend 70p getting the right person in the door.
Last week we were looking at having great performance reviews as part of an evolving process of continuous feedback and development. I was saying that there may be times when you need to part company with someone who despite your best efforts, isn’t improving, and that the sooner you realise they’re not the right fit and have an honest conversation with them, the better for both of you. I’m sure we all know people who’ve had a career change who said; ‘Blimey, wish I’d done this years ago’. The truth is though, that while effective performance management is easier if you’re giving informal feedback throughout the year, it’s much, much easier if you’ve recruited the right person for you and your business in the first place. So what do I mean by the right person for you? I mean the person whose values match your own; who has all of the personal attributes that will see them easily fit into the way you and your team work; their work ethic, their energy, their positive view of life - that sort of thing. Their CV will only tell you what they have experience of, not how they did it, or whether they were any good at it. Of course, if you’re going to hire to your values, then you have to be really clear about what they are, and that brings me back to two of the most important questions for any business owner to be able to answer: 1. Where are you going? and 2. What do you stand for? If you picked up a pen and paper now to jot down your values, what would you write? Integrity? A passion for Customer service? Continuous learning? Consistency? Having fun…? And how do those values show up in your business? How do you demonstrate through your every day actions that these are your values? How obvious are they to your team… and what about to your customers? Once you’re really clear about what you stand for…your values, then you can use them to recruit the right people - the people who stand for the same things. So, if your core value is integrity and passion for Customers, you won’t want to hire a salesperson who focuses on getting a sale at all costs. If you’re all about making business fun, then you’re not going to take on someone who struggles to find their personality every morning. You get my drift. A great way to get the right people to interview is to put together a job description that shares the following three pieces of information:
I don’t know much about Paul Russell, but he was right on the mark when he said, "Development can help great people be even better - but if I had a dollar to spend, I'd spend 70 cents getting the right person in the door." Do one thing: Review your hiring system, and make sure that your job descriptions are set up to hire the ‘right’ people for you and your business, first time Want to learn more about hiring and developing a High Performing Team? Join us at the next McFreedom Secrets Workshop. Click HERE for info. For more information on how MPL can help you visit www.mariannepage.co.uk or contact me on hello@mariannepage.co.uk  [Includes FREE download from our series of Simple Systems ‘How to deliver an inspiring performance review.’]
Performance management is one of the four foundations of the McFreedom System™. Performance reviews are all about improving the performance of the team, by improving the performance of each individual in it. No one should ever feel anxious going into a performance review, because nothing should ever be a surprise. If a manager is managing effectively, ongoing, day to day appreciative and constructive feedback, will have made it clear to the individual exactly where they stand. So a review will be a formal summary of this ongoing informal feedback, either recognising excellence or identifying areas for improvement and agreeing the way forward. Performance reviews are all about enabling progress - inspiring and motivating your team to strive for continuous improvement. So where does the fear come from? Maybe it’s from seeing performance reviews as confrontational - I’m going to tell the individual everything they’ve done wrong, and they are going to be defensive and argue back. Or maybe it’s because we’ve avoided giving ongoing feedback; we haven’t corrected a behaviour that’s now going to come across as a much bigger deal than it needed to be, because our feedback will be a surprise to them. Maybe it’s because we haven’t actually been monitoring or measuring the individual’s performance, and our feedback will be very flaky and subjective, as a result. Or maybe it’s because we’ve had no training in performance management, and know that we’ll be ‘winging’ it. Want to remove the fear? Here’s our top 5 tips for stress-free reviews:
If you’re an ‘accidental manager’, have had bad experiences, or just want to improve then Do one thing: Grab your FREE download ‘How to deliver an inspiring performance review’. For more information on how MPL can help you visit www.mariannepage.co.uk or contact me on hello@mariannepage.co.uk |
AuthorMarianne is the author of three books, and is currently working on her fourth, whilst regularly writing her blog, we hope you enjoy it :-) Archives
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