Make Your Business Their Business
Fouroboros has an entry that relates to yesterday's Fire Them Up posting.
(I've modified some of his phrasing)
90% of successful business depends on connecting meaningfully with what you do. Nobody does anything well unless it supports the innate ambition and idealized personal future people cart around in their heads. That's powerful stuff.
Getting your route salespeople to gently nudge aside the the Frito-Lay stuff to better display your Utz Potato chips depends on that guy or girl personally identifying with the product or company character. Call it ownership-by-proxy.
This is not rocket-science. If you discover your employees' latent ambition and graft it on to your objectives, you get real loyalty. And you get patience. Because "owners" forgive a multitude of sins and imperfections in their own business.
Get the insights into what they want and do the necessary communicating and they'll understand why outsourcing may have to happen, as long as you offer a credible answer to their follow up question: "What's next, for me?" And believe me, bonuses or raises or new Aeron chairs aren't what they're looking to hear.
Jon Katzenbach has an interesting book out, "Why pride matters more than money". That's a title business leaders should like because Pride is cheaper than money. It has a better batting average too.
Pie in the sky? I'd like to see practical examples. Perhaps on another blog.
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