“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”
- Henry Ford
I can really relate to this quote from Henry Ford from years ago. So many times when I speak to business owners or executive managers they have put themselves in a box with a ton of limitations. They think in terms of relatively small improvements. I try my best to not see a box and I am looking for dramatic improvements as quickly as possible. Almost always the major improvements come from a completely different way of looking at the problems and the solutions.
What do you REALLY want from your Greatest Asset?
The moment somebody says something like “that is the way we have always done it” or “we have to do it this way”, the hair on the back of my neck stands up. Almost always the premise which this process is based on is incorrect. One company had a rule which effectively gave them 20% turnover the first day of orientation. When we were able to isolate the thought process, we discovered the flawed thinking and we were able to rewrite the process and execute it in such a way as to eliminate the 20% turnover immediately. The cost or recruitment, on boarding and training were eliminated with no expense in making the change.
In another situation, we were having some branch offices which were having a hard time staffing up. A demographic was identified which was obviously being underutilized by these offices. The branch managers were interviewed to determine why this demographic was under represented. The simple answer was they had not had good luck hiring within this group. We discussed the issues which had happened, reviewed the hiring process and made some adjustments. Shortly thereafter, those branch offices hired within this group and were successful in finding the type of employees they wanted. Soon after that, those employees helped the managers find some additional people in this group and outside of this group.
There are ways to clone your best employees
You have to know the tricks and processes; but, I have seen it happen over and over. Back to Henry Ford, this is how you break out of the box. By being able to recognize how you are limiting yourself without even knowing it. It is easier for someone from the outside to come in and question the self-imposed limitations.
Need some help with that?
