Q. How do you keep everyone moving forward?
That’s one of the biggest problems in management is dwelling on what isn’t done right or what’s done really badly in the company. Not that you don’t have to focus time on that, but there’s usually key issues on those. So fixing those problems quickly is key so you can get back to what you do well.
It’s a case of identifying them early on and then making decisions. Revisiting the same HR problem 12 times in the course of a year because it comes up every single month is not a benefit to you.
That’s not moving you forward as a company. If you have a piece of equipment that has chronic downtime and you’ve brought in outside support and you’ve done your own maintenance and it doesn’t perform the way you want it to be performing, you have to make a decision what to do with that piece of equipment.
Every item has to be analyzed on how it contributes to the company and moves you forward or not.
If you have weak product lines or weak employees, you have to make decisions fairly early on whether you can bring those product lines up to speed or those employees. Make those decisions and then move on.
Q. How do you help your people to get better?
We reward our people appropriately and give them positive feedback, not just negative feedback but a fair amount of positive feedback. If all you’re doing is measuring them and beating them up to a set of numbers or using the numbers as a stick, that’s exactly what people will feel like they are.
Numbers are out there and they are a measurement tool, but they are not designed to be a baseball bat to beat you over the head and shoulders with.
Anybody who comes into an evaluation without a fairly good idea ahead of time of how they have performed or if they go away with a surprise from the meeting, the managers have not done a very good job of communicating to the employees how they were doing all through the year.
It’s more a matter of ongoing communication and dialogue. What are your expectations? How have they changed from quarter to quarter? What are folks doing well? What are they not doing well? It’s an ongoing effort in communications.
How to reach: SCI Engineered Materials Inc., (800) 346-6567 or www.sciengineeredmaterials.com
