Workin' for the man

You run your own business: you sweep the floors, dust the countertops, organize the merchandise, greet customers, up-sell features, design new services, market your wares, and so much more to basically do what ever you have to do to make your company successful.

What tasks go away if you say, simply work for a business?

I dare propose this: “none”

In every business, every employee is a salesman.

In every business, every employee coddles its customers. Selling and coddling are supported by the tasks (assigned to you defined by your given role), supporting your colleagues to do the same, and yes, even housekeeping.

We’re all in business to stay in business.

What motivates you to do the extra steps and to step outside of your role to ensure an amazing customer experience?

Empowerment

Trust

Responsibility

Kudos

Incentives

Mutual support

Leadership by example

Gratitude

I imagine your employees are motivated similarly.

Minus One

I threw a big party recently and had a sizable committee to help me execute the event as well as a few new and good friends to help me during the night of. I am very grateful for all their support as without each of them, the event would have been different.

Different bad? Different good?

Each friend brought their own unique ideas, bubbling personalities, and quirky humor. I tentatively assigned tasks to each based on their requests or for what I thought they might enjoy and be good at.

Of course like anything, things change, and new challenges arise requiring fast flexibility and initiation by each of us.

One of the women approached me after the party and started to almost apologize as she thought her presence wasn’t really needed that night. “I feel like I didn’t do very much, you really didn’t need me,” she said.

Au contraire!

Without her, I would have been nervous that I was one person short. Without her, I wouldn’t have had anyone to help the others when it became obvious that more hands were needed for the auction support.

While a party is a very different animal than a production line, producing a product and executing a seamless evening is quite similar mechanically.

PRODUCTION

Work flow and balance are equally important in both circumstances. Persons should be assigned tasks that keep each similarly and equally busy but along with flexibility to increase output –or temporarily lend a hand to someone else, without the process being interrupted.

In this design, there are many positive outcomes:

• 1) each person is not working at their maximum, thus energy is conserved,
  

• 2) should a customer request extra pieces, a slight speeding of the line is possible, and
  

• 3) should someone be absent, each person can absorb a little bit extra work to maintain balance and output.

PERSONALLY

My humble friend from the party forgot one thing about the importance of her presence.

By ‘showing up’, she was demonstrating her support to me that couldn’t be illustrated in any other way.

At work, we also demonstrate our commitment to the company and our colleagues by ‘showing up’. Sure, they could sustain themselves here and there without us, but by consistently showing up and doing what we commit to do; we honor our fellow workers and bring about better morale.