So you have a great idea or
product you think you can start a business with. You’ve worked out the details
and how much profit you should make every year and how much your business
should grow annually. However, how much attention have you really paid to the
actual engine that will produce this profitability and growth?
Business researchers have found
out that out of every twenty businesses that get started in a particular year,
only ten survive to do business in the second year. By
the tenth year, only one of those original businesses still remains viable –if
the others have not folded up, they have been merged with stronger businesses.
Most of the time the reasons for
this failure reported seen are the lack of a unique product without a strong
competitive advantage in the presence of countless competitors, inadequate
access to finance, and wrong choices that led to lowered productivity. However,
given last place as a reason for failure is usually the engine, the staffing you
employed to translate a business starter’s ideas into profitable reality.While
the product and business environment reasons are valid and important, the
staffing employed also has a big role to play in the success of the business
you create.
Lists by Jules brings you 10
things about staffing you need to understand before you start your business.
13
HIRE QUALITY STAFF
Except you are a mind-reader, you
cannot possibly know the best people to hire out of your possibly numerous
choices. However, never hesitate to fire staff who show themselves to be undisciplined
and unruly, no matter what you think their abilities are. At this sensitive
stage, it is difficult to get things done if your staff do not respect and obey
you.
The extent of authority you
possess is really defined for you by the extent to which your subordinates are
willing to accept this authority. Don’t be a harsh person, as this will only
reveal insecurity, but do not accept continued incompetence from any staff
member.
The quality of staff you hire is
really the foundation of your success, the more specialty qualitative, and
temperamentally compatible people you have working with you, the more your
chances of surviving beyond that first year.
12
KNOW YOUR STAFF
Now, you’ve hired the most
qualitative people for your business. These are people who recognize your
authority and do not despise your instructions though the business is still in
its infancy stages. These are people with the mindset to work. These are people
who know that this is a business despite what it looks like at the moment.
However, to build upon this
strength, you need to do something more: you need to “know” your staff
Now, you’re probably thinking:
“But I know them; I hired them didn’t i?”, but there is a big difference
between being acquainted with your staff and knowing your staff. How do you get
to know your staff? It is the little touches that make all the difference. If
you know that Mr. Desmond who you hired has a sick daughter, make it a point to
enquire after that child: for an awareness of such personal information is very
necessary. Don’t miss that golden opportunity. Especially as your business
begins to grow and more staff are being hired, it is important to have frequent
face-to-face contact with your staff; there is no real substitute for this.
You will do well, but for your
business and in maintaining your compassion for humanity, to realize that your
staff are real flesh and blood people
like you who have personal lives of their own – with worries, anxieties, joys,
and sorrows, and not merely as part of a working machine to make you rich or
grow your business. If you receive a leave application (no matter how small
your business is, make it as professional as possible) from a woman whose
husband is ill, you must realize how much this leave application means to the
woman who is making it. Or if one of your men is ill in hospital, a visit will
make all the difference.
You must not seek out these types
of scenarios, but wait for them to come to you. That way you do not seem
insincere.
Think about the army for a
moment. Why do soldiers follow their commanders and NCO’s to death if
necessary? The main reason why discipline is so good in the army is that an NCO
or officer makes it his job to know his men. He sees that they write letters to
their homes, he sees that their trousers fit, he ensures that their boots don’t
pinch: and the result of all this is very good discipline. An officer will
never eat until he ensures that his men are properly fed. You can get the same
high standard of discipline in civilian life as well, if you try to adhere to
these principles.
11
TREAT GRIEVANCES PROPERLY AND INSTANTLY
I am assuming that by now you
have at least ten staff members.
The next important thing to
remember is to treat grievances properly. You will probably find out that you
are so busy with your day-to-day work, that you will tend to treat grievance
petitions (professionalism, remember?) from your staff with a certain amount of
irritation; you may tend to brush them aside. But this is one of the worst
possible things to do. You must remember that a grievance is the most important
thing in the world as far as the person making it is concerned. For that reason
alone you should treat grievances as being important, no matter how trifling
they may appear to you. Reply to letters properly. If it is verbal, make sure
you give a patient hearing to the man making it. It is easier said than done,
but if you follow this you will get good results from your staff.
10
ORGANIZE INFORMAL GET-TOGETHERS
Another thing which could be very
useful is an occasional get-together outside the office or workshop. A picnic
with your staff is an excellent idea. The extraordinary thing about office or
workshop picnics is that when you go to them you do so with the idea of doing
your duty, but you usually find that you end up having a good time yourself!
You will be surprised at how enjoyable such a picnic can be. And these events
build morale. I recommend them thoroughly; such things, you will find, have
excellent results.
9
UNDERSTAND THAT YOU ARE PART OF A TEAM
As a boss, you must remember that
you are just one person. The men under you may be anywhere from ten to fifty,
but no matter how hard you work you cannot do much more than one man’s work. So
your primary function is to ensure that the work of all the personnel is
properly organized. When you arrive at your office or workshop in the morning,
you must not think so much of what you yourself are going to do for that day;
its far more important for you to think of what the various people under you
are going to do. You will find out that this is not at all easy, because there
is always the temptation for you to try to do everything yourself so that your
staff do not see you as a passive commander. But this is wrong. You must learn
to delegate your work. The more you delegate the better you will be able to
lead your staff. Delegation overtime also ensures that in the event that you
are absent from the office owing to an illness for example, the work still goes
on.
If you try to do everything
yourself, you will eventually lose sight of the things that really matter:
which is to think critically about the future courses the business should take.
Also, you will probably start to subconsciously despise your staff for not
showing as much zeal as you, forgetting that you denied them the opportunity by
spoon-feeding them. Thinking, really, is what you receive a salary for, not
putting out day-to-day fires.
The task of leadership is to
combine decisive leadership with an insistence that subordinates show
creativity, initiative, and individuality. This can be done and is being done,
but it takes a fair amount of hard work and hard thinking.
The management of people is your
most important task, because your main job is to get tasks done through other
people. But ‘people experience’ is one of the few important things that one
cannot get in a campus or under laboratory conditions. In most cases people experience
can only come with the actual hustle and bustle of everyday work, with
face-to-face experience of people themselves in their own setting.
8
MAKE WORK INTERESTING
A boring job is one of the
biggest drains on creativity. Keep your staff informed about the company and
about the jobs they are doing. This will not only give them a pride in the
organization in which they are working but will also give them an interest in
their jobs. And if they are interested in their job, they will do it much
better. Even if the particular staff is working on a machine tool, let him have
an idea on the job he is doing and what it’s all about. You may find that if a
workman is told what he is doing and what part his job plays in the success of
the whole organization, he will do his job far better because he will become
interested in his job. Make every worker feel that the job they are doing - no matter what it is, being a lowly
secretary, cleaning lavatories, machining a bolt, or sweeping the floor – is
important and that without this job the factory or business just could not
carry on. Oftenstaff, especially those on the lowest rung in the organization’s
ladder, responds wonderfully if you take an interest in them and make them
interested in their jobs. Often in the rush of daily work, you may tend to
forget this and focus on the more ‘important’ things. It is usually not very
conscious, but brushing aside anyone has a terrible effect on a worker’s
self-esteem and should never be done.
7
GIVE A PAT ON THE BACK
You may forget to give
appreciation when a job is well done. More often than not, one is inclined to
criticize and find fault. This again is something you must watch.
Psychologically it is far easier to criticize and find fault than it is to give
a pat on the back. Many bosses have the idea that if they appreciate people and
give a word of encouragement every now and then, they will take advantage of it
and tend to become very lazy and idle, but if you have done your work well in
picking the right quality of staff, this attitude among staff should be in
non-existent or negligible proportions. Besides, you should never shirk
discipline for improper or ineffective behavior even if you praised the person
for work well done a day ago.
You will find that a pat on the
back acts as a spur and an inspiration and makes everything better all-round:
this is a point well remembering.
6
KNOW WHEN NOT TO SCOLD
It is difficult to avoid the
tendency to dress down a staff member in the presence of other staff member, or
worse his subordinates. But this is a thing which should never be done. Call
them to the quietness of your office, and there scold them if necessary.
5
ALWAYS ASK FOR SUGGESTIONS
Try to get suggestions from your
most dutiful staff members. This has a double effect. In the first place, you
may get first-class ideas which you could put to real use. Secondly, the mere
fact that you asked for suggestions tends to heighten your staff’s self-respect
and feeling of importance. And this in itself is an excellent thing. You cannot
always see or know everything.
4
BE COST CONSCIOUS
If a task can reasonably be done
by one person, don’t hire two. Don’t waste money just to give yourself the
feeling that your business is indeed growing. All these costs will impact the
pricing of your product or service, and may therefore eliminate potential
customers. Use your men, materials and machines effectively and without waste.
Be cost conscious.
3
LEARN FROM YOUR MISTAKES
No matter how perfectly you
adhere to the principles listed in this article, you will inevitably make some
mistakes. Learn from them. Every new boss makes mistakes but the important
thing is that once a mistake has been made, every effort should be made to
study the mistake, analyse it, run over it again and again, and try to discover
why you have made the mistake. Try as hard as you can to learn from your
mistake.
I recommend keeping a little
diary and note down the various mistakes you make. And then run over these
mistakes from time to time. You will find that as the years go on, that by
analyzing the mistakes you have made, you make fewer and fewer of them.
2
KNOW WHEN AND HOW TO APPLY PRESSURE ON YOUR STAFF
One of the problems you will face
is knowing the degree of pressure to apply: to what extent should you
repeatedly control and check your staff? Pressure is not necessarily bad, but
excessive pressure certainly is
1
NEVER REPRIMAND IN GENERAL TERMS
Finally, an important point in
leadership is to be able to know that when something wrong has been done, the
person concerned must not be made to feel that they are being reprimanded or
rejected as a person. Reprimand that person for their specific behavior or for
their fault at that particular moment: that is all. Generalities about the
person’s character and the person’s attitude must be avoided at all costs,
because this does tremendous harm and only makes matters worse.
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