So ask yourself as an organization, are you focused on getting things done or are you caught up in busy work? Ask yourself, do we reward people for staying busy, for activity, or do we reward people for getting things done, results, accomplishment? We have a tendency in all areas of business to reward activity rather than accomplishment. The next area, we tolerate poor performance. Yeah, we do.
Don’t kid yourself. We tolerate poor performance primarily because this just takes too much time. I mean, I don’t want to mess with that.
So they came in five minutes late. Who cares? They let it slide. You know, the problem is we’ve let it slide for way too long.
I’m a company guy, folks. I’ve been in business, lots of different businesses, a number of times over a lot of years. I’ve run a number of businesses that turned them into multi-million dollar successes, and I’ve run a business into the ground and went bankrupt.
Pretty much, I learned a lot of lessons by going bankrupt in my business, and it was primarily because I let little things slide. You can’t let little things slide. You can’t do it.
You see, so Jim over there, he comes in five minutes late. Is that really a big deal? Well, maybe not today for Jim to come in five minutes late, but you see, the problem is over here, Susie saw Jim do it, and she also saw that you didn’t do anything about it, and because you didn’t do anything about it, because it was just too much trouble to go over and mention it, she said, well, he got by with it. I bet I could get by with it.
So three days from now, she comes in five minutes late, and now a trend has developed. You have people who start to come in late. Is that really a big deal? Yeah, it becomes really a big deal because, number one, they’re stealing from you, and we’re going to talk more about that in just a minute.
You paid for that time. They’re supposed to be there. No excuse in the world is good enough, in my opinion, for anybody to be late.
When they said they were going to be there, they ought to be there. That’s what it comes down to. They gave their word.
It’s a lack of integrity if they don’t show up on time, but that kind of performance just gets overlooked. That’s wrong. You can’t overlook anything.
The little things do matter in business because the little things lead to bigger things because if they’re willing to be five minutes late, they might be willing to give a little less than their best when they’re dealing with a customer, when they’re dealing with a co-worker, when they’re working on a project or something. We accept poor performance because it’s just too much trouble to take the time to correct it, and when you don’t correct poor performance, it spreads like a cancer throughout your business. People say, well, Larry, cut him some slack.
I don’t believe in cutting anybody any slack. I think you earn slack. You know, if you’re a salesperson and you’re 300% of quota, you can go when you want to.
I don’t really care because you’re 300% of quota. If you’re 85% of quota and you come in five minutes late, I’m all over you because you’re not producing results, and that kind of performance cannot be tolerated. So we tolerate poor performance.
You are. You’re tolerating poor performance in yourself. I know you are.
We all do. We let ourselves get by with stuff, and because we know we’re getting by with it, we don’t really feel good about correcting them when they’ve provided us with poor performance. We don’t feel like taking the time to correct.
Next idea is this. We don’t even bother to teach folks how to be good at what they do. Not a lot of time is spent on education.
Most companies say, okay, you’re hired. There’s your computer over there. Here’s basically what you do, and we leave them alone, or we put them through training programs that, one, we don’t communicate what the overall part of their job is and how it plays into profitability and customer service and sales, all those things I just talked about.
We haven’t told them what their role is in the big picture, but we also haven’t trained them how to really do what they do. Education is way off. We haven’t taught people how to be good workers.
We haven’t taught them that we expect certain things from them and we’re going to manage according to those expectations. We haven’t taught them how to be good people, and being good people is a big deal. You see, I really do believe that business gets better when the people in the business get better.
Sales get better when salespeople get better. Customer service improves when the people who deliver the customer service improve. Employees get better when managers get better.
In fact, everything in your business only gets better once the people in the business get better. I get hired all the time. They say, come in, Larry, and help us make our business better.
I can’t make your business better. I mean, I said this was about how to have a better business, but everything I’m talking about is about making people in the business better because if they get better, if you get better, then your business will improve. So the principles I’m talking about here, these are principles for you as individuals, people within your company, so they can be better at what they do.
So if that’s what you’re interested in and you understand that concept, you have to focus on what you can do to make your workers better people, people who are reliable, people who have integrity, who are honest, who show up on time. And you’re going, well, now, Larry, come on, that’s pretty basic. Duh, yeah, it’s pretty basic.
But those are the things that get overlooked. People who manage their time better. Let me ask you, people who manage their time better, if you taught them how to manage their time, would they be better on their job? Stupid question.
Of course they would. People who know how to set and achieve goals. And I’m going to do a session on how to set and achieve goals in this series.
But if you know how to set and achieve goals, are you going to be better at sales, better customer service? If you are, are you going to be a better janitor? Are you going to be better in the warehouse? Will you be a better receptionist? Will you be a better leader, better CEO? If you knew how to set and achieve goals, well, of course. Are you teaching your people that? You see, we’re not teaching people how to be better at who they are so they can be better at what they do. Next is this.
We don’t even create an environment that is conducive to work or that is conducive to profitability. One of the dumbest things we’ve done in the past several years is create something called casual day. Usually it’s casual Friday.
I’ll guarantee you that productivity goes down on Fridays when people dress casually. Because if you don’t feel like you’ve dressed for work, you don’t work. Sorry, that’s how it is.
And some of you may be sitting right here on a casual Friday watching this going, oh, I don’t like what you just said. I don’t care whether you like it or not. It’s still the truth.
Productivity goes down when you didn’t dress up for the job. Why do you think cops wear uniforms? Did they get a casual Friday? No, because the uniform, number one, makes them know that they’ve dressed for work. Plus, it lets everybody else know that that’s a cop.
That cop is dressed for work. The uniform provides respect. You have a uniform.
It’s what you wear to put forth your best effort. Sorry, folks, this is my uniform. This is who I am.
This is how I dress when I want to do my very best. I got to dress like Larry Wingate so I can act like Larry Wingate, so I talk like Larry Wingate, so I think like Larry Wingate. I guarantee you right now if I’ve shown up in t-shirt shorts and flip-flops, I wouldn’t be able to do this.
Why? Because it wouldn’t feel like Larry Wingate. It wouldn’t feel like sitting here talking to you. So dress for work.
Don’t let that slide. Make sure that the environment is an environment where people dress for work. Next is this.
I go in businesses sometimes, but I wouldn’t sit down in that place that’s so filthy dirty. You know, we’ve let our lunch rooms become places where food turns green and where it looks like people have had a party. People’s desks, they’re cluttered, they’re covered with stuff, people are eating at their desks.
By the way, a little aside there, don’t eat at your desk. Your desk is the place you work. And if you get to the place where it’s become a habit for you to eat there and do all that stuff, then you don’t think that your desk is a place where you sit down to work.
When you go in in the morning and you sit down in your chair, you need to know that chair, that chair is where I get work done. This desk, this is the place where I sit down and I go to work. And if you clutter it up with other things in your mind that aren’t conducive to work, don’t allow you to be the most productive, then you’ve detracted from your workspace.
Don’t do that. You see, these are simple ideas, but we just let them slide. Too much trouble to correct.
Besides that, we think the person who’s eating at their desk, well, they must be busy. They have to eat at their desk. No, probably the reality is they’re lazy and they have to eat at their desk because they weren’t working for the last three hours between the time they got there and time for lunch.
Tough? Yeah, that’s how it is. You know, we’re talking about making your company profitable, so I don’t care what it takes for you to do that. I don’t care how tough it is for you to start to make changes.
You’re here for one reason, to make your organization, to make your business, to make your company more profitable. Because the more profitable it is, the more money you make and you guarantee you’re going to stay in business, the more profitable it is, the more people you can employ. That’s a good thing.
So never apologize for being profitable and don’t apologize along the way for making sure that you’ve created an environment conducive to being profitable, an environment conducive to running your business better. Don’t apologize for that. Instead, figure out that you run a business.
It needs to look like a business. It needs to dress up like a business. It needs to act like a business.
Your front door should not be a smoke hole for employees, so customers have to walk through all your employees who are on their break out there smoking. Stop that immediately. Make sure that the entrance to your company looks like you want it to look.