Passing on the Knowledge
As we looked at the cost of a poor promotion, I shared stories about a few different rockstar employees I had worked with over the years. One of them had been an assembly line lead for nearly four decades but refused even to consider taking the next step into a supervisory or management role. Another was as knowledgeable as anyone I ever knew about every piece of equipment in the department he worked in but struggled mightily when he moved into a team lead role for that same department. I realize both examples were from a manufacturing environment, but I'm willing to bet you can picture similar examples in any industry you're currently in!
At some point in our leadership journey, we'll all face the reality that not every outstanding performer on our teams will be interested in climbing the company ladder. And as hard as accepting that will sometimes be, our challenge then becomes helping them be the best they can be right where they are AND providing them with the tools they'll need to pass their expertise on to the team members coming behind them. While some folks may not be interested in chasing or accepting promotions, that doesn't mean they're not a critical part of our succession planning process!
While I still fancy myself as a decent carpenter, and I could probably teach you how to operate a 250-ton stamping press to make the blanks that get rolled into tubes for inside a muffler, Cindy and I have been very intentional about not giving the perception that we're the people to teach the technical skills necessary in any industry. In most cases, you'll have experts in-house who can do that. And even if that's not the case, I'm doubtful I have the time at this point in my life to be the technical expert you need. But we have helped the experts in the organizations we're working with become incredibly effective at passing on what they've worked so long to learn. There have been a few cases where those folks have been supervisors or managers who had already completed our Emerging Leader Development course. Still, the most significant need for this has been with those without interest in those positions.
Either way, our approach to Developing Effective Trainers combines much of what we provide to help leaders communicate more effectively with the concepts I detailed before for having tough conversations. We add a healthy dose of the necessary steps for earning influence and buy-in, so anyone receiving the training is actually willing to listen without having their lives threatened!
One thing we stress when we tailor this specific course for any company is that it is not the stereotypical approach to training trainers. We're not telling anyone how many times to show, do, or watch. We're providing them with the tools they'll need to pass the expertise they already have onto their peers in a way that increases their influence and captures the profitability that would otherwise be lost if they left the organization and took all their knowledge with them. And when we've needed to, we've added one more step to that process to ensure they can apply what they've learned.
Driving Long-Term Results
Whether it's been through the customized approach to Developing Effective Trainers that I just explained or any of the other resources Cindy and I have developed to help leaders address the things that are killing profitability in their businesses or teams, we've always worked to help each participant identify the specific action steps they can apply to achieve results that move their respective teams forward. Since the very first lesson we wrote on our own, we've always wrapped up with a list of questions for them to answer on their own AND provide to whomever they report to with hopes of driving the kind of collaboration within their organization that produces increased performance for years to come.
Quite honestly, I had seen so many charlatans calling themselves coaches, trainers, or consultants who worked harder at embedding themselves as a permanent line item on their clients' budget that my goal had been to provide the best tools possible and get out of the way. In a perfect world, that would have been all it took to help the teams we serve realize an ongoing return on investment-but I've learned that this most certainly is not a perfect world!
When we tailored the very first Developing Effective Trainers session for a large organization, the plant manager specifically requested that we provide several of his key team members with some ongoing support to be sure they actually implemented the tools we provided and had everything they would need to sustain their changed behaviors even when they encounter bumps along the way. He said that not only did he not have the time to do it himself, but he felt like they may be more open about their concerns and issues with us since they didn't have a reporting relationship with us. He was just as concerned about their immediate supervisors not having the time to help these trainers through the process and expressed some concern that their lack of time may result in them choosing the current state over the desired change. We had launched our Strategic Leadership Coaching model with a few other leaders in very specific situations, but this was the first time we applied for a group of folks within the same company, acting as a designated extension of the local leadership team.
Since seeing what that group of trainers achieved, we've realized just how important it can be for any organization to have an additional set of hands to support achieving a change that produces long-term results. This Strategic Leadership Coaching approach has become an integral part of how we help anyone participating in our Executive Leadership Elite Think Tank or IMPACT Leadership Academy fight through all their schedule demands to implement action steps that build stronger leadership cultures throughout their teams. We've also helped numerous students in our Emerging Leader Development and Recruitment, Retention, & Culture courses ensure that the action steps they identify after each lesson become part of their daily routine and capture measurable profit for their organization!
Let's be honest, though; we can't truly consider an issue resolved unless we can track the results. The numbers won't lie, but not nearly enough organizations track the impact of these soft skills on addressing the things killing their profitability-and that's how we'll close the loop on it all!
Measuring Your Results
I'll share this thought with you one last time:
Organizations of all sizes invest significant amounts of time, money, and energy in improving their processes with hopes of becoming more profitable. Sometimes this is based on the goal of becoming best-in-class, but sometimes it is just to stay competitive with customers or to attract talent. All too often, though, the things that can have the most immediate impact on profitability (as well as the lives of everyone involved) are overlooked or entirely written off because those things are considered to be intangible. What are those things? Those are the skills needed to build an organizational culture that produces world-class results and makes the best people in your respective industry beg to be part of your team! Those skills tie back to a word that's frequently misused: leadership...
Unfortunately, a large majority of the organizations in the world today will never capture all of the profitability they're truly capable of generating for one painful reason: they won't take the necessary steps to track what they're losing-or even the profit their best leaders capture when they do apply any of the steps we've covered here.
In my nearly twenty years with a large corporation, I was involved in countless continuous improvement events that started with the goal of achieving better results within a work cell or through an existing process. While we always began one of those events with a stated goal, the actual return on investment didn't always match. And even when real improvements were made that increased productivity or lowered costs, old habits die hard-meaning that some of the most tenured team members didn't always jump on board and follow the new approach. Complicating that even more was what seemed like a constant push to chase a new rabbit nearly every time we turned a page on the calendar, confirming our ongoing reference about it being the most important quarter in the history of the world...
For years, I've heard the saying that if you chase too many rabbits, you probably won't catch any. That was far too often the case, as more of our time was sucked up in recording data or filling out reports than we had left over for doing the actual work. And that resulted in even more profitability being unnecessarily killed!
In addressing each of the things I've seen kill profitability in so many organizations, my goal hasn't been for you to feel like you need to do everything at once. You and I both know that's never feasible! That said, every single thing we've covered in this process can have an immediate impact on its own, AND I believe all of these things can have a compounding impact when we tie them together. I'm not about to pretend it will be easy, but I know firsthand that it's not hard! The most challenging part will possibly be changing the metrics you're tracking.
I'm confident you're already tracking a bunch of measurables, most of which are likely critical to your business. I'll close this look at What's Killing Your Profitability by challenging you to at least consider making a few tweaks to what you're tracking-or in many cases, just how you're tracking it-so you can realize a long-term return on the investments you make into providing these skills for your team members. I'm convinced that improving your profitability all boils down to leadership!
