If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more,
YOU ARE A LEADER
-John Quincy Adams
Everyone I work with is surprised how little they have to do and how quickly they start seeing positive changes. They over estimate how much they will have to do in the process. In most cases, the Business Owner/CEO has little involvement other than a review and approval of plans. They then receive status reports which include areas of improvement and hard dollar savings.
In one case the first positive movement was the filling of open positions. A strategy was built to take advantage of communicating the strengths of the company. Another was to identify all of the sources of people which were not being touched when I arrived. At the same time, we were implementing another strategy of cross training employees in multiple service lines. This took more time given we had to set up the training; however, once the training was completed the benefits were immediate and staggering.
Success is driven by management leadership not direct involvement
The cross training nearly doubled the employee utilization thereby increasing revenues and profits. The employees were also happier as they were making more money. They were making more money because they were bringing in more revenue and profits. Over a period of time we were able to determine the maximum amount of cross training which maximized revenues and employee satisfaction. We continued to fine tune the cross training to determine the best mix of service lines for the employees. Our goal was to maximize the leverage between revenues and compensation while driving up employee satisfaction.
The company skills gap was also being eliminated by the cross training. We had numerous positions which were eliminated due to the skills being added through cross training. As we continued to have success with those strategies we implemented other processes as approved by management.
All of this was executed with management oversight; but with little direct involvement. Management focused on resources, goals and eliminating obstacles. The affected departments and I focused on making it happen. I have been told many times by management how painless and fruitful it all was.
