No one hires an employee to have that employee merely take up space. At least not any more. Personnel costs have accelerated in the last decade with salary, benefits, and taxes, all increasing at a rapid rate. As a result, consistent execution by every employee has become critical for companies to receive any kind of return on their investment in personnel, not to mention moving the business forward in the marketplace. Here are five essentials to accomplish that:
1. Define Roles
As simple as it sounds, role definition is often ignored in organizations. Sure, you may give people a job title that’s placed on their desk and printed on their business card, but that’s not enough. Your people need to know how their role relates to the other roles within the organization and what lines, direct and dotted, impact communication. And, most importantly, these roles need to be reinforced in the actual day-to-day interactions in the company.
2. Outline Responsibilities
Again, we think we’ve done this when we write a job description for the people we hire. But most job descriptions after being written don’t ever see the light of day. I prefer a different approach, a simple one sentence summary of each of the 4-6 core responsibilities for any job. This simplicity results in crystal clear clarity about what’s being asked of each person in your company, and can actually be remembered (gasp!) by the people who need to do them.
3. Measure Results
With roles and responsibilities in place, the next execution essential is simply this: results. Every person in your company must know exactly what they are accountable for producing. Simply stated, what gets measured gets done. So measure outcomes, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly. Create a scorecard for each job, keep track of progress, and celebrate success.
4. Document Routines
For every job role there are certain tasks that are done over an over again. And that’s a problem, because the details of routine tasks can easily be overlooked. For example, there’s a step by step process I need to go through in writing and posting this blog so that it goes up on my web site and is distributed by email at exactly the day and time I want it to. It’s not a complex task, but it has specific things that must bet done in a precise order. I don’t try to keep all this stuff in my head, because if I forget one thing, it messes up my blog. So I have a list with about a dozen items on it, and I check off each item on that list as I post a blog article. You must do the same for the routine tasks in your organization so the details get done without fail.
5. Review Regularly
Finally, nothing in business is static. What works today may not work tomorrow. In fact, it probably won’t. The marketplace is a dynamic, constantly changing entity, which is why all the previous four items must be reviewed regularly and constantly updated and improved. No less than once a year, comb through the roles, responsibilities, results, and routines in your company. The pay off will be consistent execution and robust revenue growth.
