Running a business is difficult.  Even under the best of circumstances, it will occasionally stress and test the best working relationships.  Add to the mix, owners/leaders who don’t like, trust, or communicate with one another and the results can be devastating.

Unfortunately, I see the situation all too often where one or more of these vital ingredients is missing.  It holds back the best companies and threatens the sustainability of the rest.

Like

Let’s start with liking the other owners/partners.  To be honest, you don’t have to like one another to be successful.  It’s great when that’s the case, but being best friends isn’t a prerequisite for being a successful team.  However, you do need to like what one another brings to the table.  

The strongest teams have very complementary skills, talents and ideas.  The skills, talents, ideas and the resulting benefits are what you need to like.  When you happen to like one another, it’s easy to see the positives they bring along.  However, when you don’t like someone, you will likely have to look harder to find what they have to contribute to the cause.  But, do it.  It’s worth the effort.

Communicate

If effective communication is important to any relationship, it is critical amongst the ownership/leadership group.  Nothing can be communicated effectively to the rest of the organization until it has been communicated effectively within the very top level.  Not sharing honest opinions, not being willing to address the “elephant in the room”, not contributing to the discussions that will lead to critical decisions, and not speaking with a unified owner/leader voice are all inexcusable.

Trust

Trust is the most critical of all.  I would argue that lack of trust among owners/leaders is an organizational cancer that if not addressed aggressively, will bring the eventual demise of even the best company.  At best, it will result in every single decision being over analyzed, challenged, and critiqued to the point that its diluted result will have very little remaining contribution.  When the rest of the organization sees the lack of trust at the top level, they will either be forced to pick sides, or even worse, no side at all.  Trust at the top is key to harmony throughout.

Leading through crisis

These are the challenges in ideal situations (and how often are things “ideal”?).  Now think about how it would affect you during times of organizational stress.  What happens when you are threatened by an aggressive competitor, when your clients/employees start to leave, when new clients aren’t materializing, or when the ink is red?  

Experiencing a crisis like one of these will absolutely expose the current situation.  If you are a strong, cohesive team, the crisis will make you even stronger and bring you even closer together.  However, if you are a loosely aligned group of individuals who don’t really like one another, can’t communicate effectively, and mistrust one another’s intentions, you will likely find that you are fighting amongst yourselves more than you are fighting the common enemy.

I don’t know about you, but when (not if) I find myself facing one of these stressful situations, I want to make sure I’m facing the situation with people whom I like, trust, and with whom I know I can communicate effectively.

And remember, none of those happen by chance.  These are team characteristics that have to be built and maintained every day.

Photo by Nils Rinaldi.

@kevintrokey

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Wendy’s previous post about employer entitlement got me thinking about a related issue, employer responsibility.

The behavior and reaction described in her post is all too common and, as bad as it is, the related issue is just as unacceptable (maybe even more so).  What I’m talking about is allowing employees who are allowed to hang around too long when they are clearly no longer fit to work at the company.

I have spent my career in the independent agency industry so perhaps we aren’t as unique as I think.  However, based on my experience, agencies are absolutely horrible at making the tough employment decisions.  We just hold on way too long.

I think it’s largely because, as a small business, we are so personally connected to our employees.  We tolerate poor performance out of a sense of obligation to the employee.  While that is admirable to a point, all too often it is carried to an extreme.

The first obligation (responsibility) has to be to keeping the organization healthy, and healthy requires that everyone on the team contribute at a high level.  If, as an employer, you aren’t taking care of the organization, it is only a matter of time before you won’t be able to take care of the individuals.

Don’t get me wrong, you also have a responsibility to every individual on the team, a responsibility that aligns with keeping the organization healthy.

• You have a responsibility to communicate the direction of the company.
• You have a responsibility to be very clear as to what expectations you have for every individual to contribute.
• You have a responsibility to provide the training, coaching, and resources to allow them to contribute successfully.
• You have a responsibility to provide regular and meaningful feedback to their performance.

• And, when you have an individual who isn’t willing or able to contribute to the highest company standard, you have a final responsibility to the organization (and to the individual) to find that person another position or to terminate his/her employment.

It should always be difficult to fire someone. If it isn’t, you waited too long.

The other employees should always be a little surprised when someone is let go. If they aren’t, you waited too long.

You should never be in position to badmouth an employee who quit as Wendy described in her post. If you are, you waited too long.

When you wait too long, not only do you allow poor performance to slow you down, you damage your own credibility with those whom you are charged to lead.  I promise you, they’re watching and waiting for you to perform your job the way it’s supposed to be performed.

Photo by hobvias sudoneighm.

@kevintrokey

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All businesses experience turnover. How you deal with that turnover says a lot about your attitude, your values, your willingness to learn. And it says a lot about your future potential for attracting new employees.

Got issues?

I see employers who clearly have morale issues and do little to nothing to uncover the source of the problem. Or if they do find the source, they choose to do nothing about it. Then, when employees leave, these employers are shocked.

And then they get mad. They get mad at the employee for “deserting them”, or being “disloyal”, or “using them” and then moving on to a better job (which gives the employer the “right” to feel betrayed).

The final step in this dysfunctional cycle is that they vilify the former employee to anyone who will listen. “He wasn’t very good. Poor performer. Bad for the team. Don’t know why I hired him in the first place.”

Former employers bad-mouthing former employees seems to be pretty common. I personally know a number of such situations myself, and I also have enough information from both sides to know that the problems weren’t just a poor performing employees.

For example, I know a CEO who was a bit of a tyrant. When the CFO left the company (to get away from this new CEO), the CEO, in what I can only imagine was an effort to save face, told the staff that it was good riddance, and it was their opportunity to “upgrade.” Really?? What do you think that did to morale? I can tell you it was already on a downhill slide and simply continued from there.

I think that sometimes employers find a comfort in believing that the employees need them and can, therefore, treat their employees any way they want, regardless of care, fairness, or compassion.

Your future depends on it

What they don’t realize is that they carry out this boorish behavior at the peril of their future success.

Who wants to recruit a friend or recommend a peer to work at a company where she’ll be bad-mouthed and considered incompetent when she chooses to leave? And if the employer is saying those things about former employees, what are they saying about the current employees? Word gets around; reputations are built and talented people know they don't need to work for companies like these.

Employers are not entitled to employees. Any of them. And employees do not “owe” their employers anything beyond exchanging their services for a paycheck.

If an employer really wants to keep their employees on staff, have employees who are genuinely interested in helping the company grow more successful, and become a magnet for talented people, they need to start by realizing they’re not entitled to any of those things. They have to work diligently to create the culture where people are welcomed, appreciated, and respected for their contributions, asked for their opinions and participation in building the business, and acknowledged and rewarded for their efforts.

If you see the negative, bad-mouthing type of behavior at your company or at your client companies, where the employer is always right and all former employees are wrong, I suggest you help dig into the root of the problem. If left unchecked, this will erode any good will currently in place, and it’s really, really hard to build back lost trust and forward momentum.

Photo by Pixel Theif.

@wendykeneipp

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Continuing the planning theme, here is one of our most popular planning articles. Originally published in March 2010.

==========================================

In a previous article about Managing Employee Performance, I talked about helping supervisors proactively manage their employees by engaging with them in a meaningful and productive way. When you help your employees take responsibility for their own success, you will feel the results in their level of return on engagement, as well as the positive impact on your company’s productivity and profitability.

To create this level of active engagement, it is critical to tie the vision of the company to the expectations of the team with specific, measurable goals and objectives.

Cascade the Vision: We all have responsibilities in our organizations to contribute to the overall vision.  Unfortunately, all too often we have no real idea of what that vision is, much less how it connects to our role and subsequent performance.

Start this cascading communication by finding and then communicating the answers to the following questions. As a result, many of your performance management issues will become obsolete or, at least much easier to address.

• Organizational values – What is important in our organization?
• Organizational vision – Where are we heading?
• Organizational goals – What are we going to accomplish?
• Organizational objectives – What results are needed to hit goals?
• Organizational behaviors – What is required to hit objectives?
• Organizational tasks – What job description activities are needed to hit objectives?

After you’ve identified the components of the company vision, the next step is identifying the basic building blocks of performance measurement and how they relate to the vision and goals of the company. 

Goals (of the company): We start by understanding the goals of the company. This is what drives the subsequent objectives and tasks we expect employees to perform. The goals tend to focus on profitability, employee satisfaction, client satisfaction, and/or growth. The example here could be for the company to create a minimum of 20 percent annual, organic growth.

Objectives: Objectives are the results you want your employees to strive to achieve and they are based on the goals of the company. For a producer, this may be to work on high-probability prospects, resulting from formal introductions. Objectives should be SMART:

• Specific – Who? (producer), What? (write $100K), When? (2010)
• Measurable – Numbers, frequencies, timelines
• Attainable – Reasonable, yet challenging
• Relevant – Has to be a difference-maker
• Trackable – Must be monitored and reportable

Tasks: These are the daily activities for which an employee is responsible, and they’re usually included in the job description. An example for a producer may be to build a network of individuals whom she can count on for those introductions.

As you can see, performance objectives are the critical link in connecting the individual to the organization. As with any tool, it is important to recognize what objectives are and what they are not.

Performance objectives:

• Help a company meet goals
• Help employees be more productive
• Assist in giving one-on-one communication
• Help employees be successful
• Give direction to management on financial increases

Performance objectives are not:

• A tool used just for compensation
• A system to find where employees are not doing their job
• A system to grade people

In order for objectives to be properly measured, there has to be a well-defined measurement scale, which takes the uncertainty of performance out of the equation. When establishing your measurement scale, it is important that "expected" isn’t at the top, it lies in the middle. There needs to be a mutual understanding of what outcomes are reflected at each level.

Measurement scale
5  -  Far exceeds expectations
4  -  Exceeds expectations
3  -  Meets expectations
2  -  Falls short of expectations
1  -  Falls critically short of expectations

Now that you’ve written the objectives, it’s time for everyone to get to work. And for the supervisor, it means having a monthly one-on-one with each employee. If everything has been set up properly, these check-ins should last no more than 10 or 15 minutes. The purpose isn’t for a full-out review, but just to review the feedback that the employee has tracked for the last month. As the supervisor, it is your responsibility to provide guidance on what they can be doing next and to give recognition for what they have already accomplished.

The monthly one-on-one sessions are imperative to connecting and engaging with your employees. This time investment is what creates the payback at year-end because you’ve been monitoring and reviewing performance throughout the year. Now, the year-end review is simply another review session, and there should be no surprises for either you, as the supervisor, or the employee.

As with so many challenges, the answers can be relatively simple, it just takes a commitment, a little discipline and a fair amount of effective communication. The return on this investment will be significant. Just ask yourself, “How badly do I want it?”

Originally published on agencyfuel.zywave.com © Copyright 2010 Zywave, Inc.

Photo by Jeremy Vandel.

@kevintrokey

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I live in St. Louis.   Which, by unwritten law, makes me a huge Cardinals fan.  Since there is no minimum age for said unwritten law, my 11 year-old son is also a huge Cardinals fan.  And, of course, by some unwritten subsection of this unwritten law, our favorite player is Albert Pujols.

Now, you may or may not know, that at the end of this season, Albert will be a free agent.  This brings up the possibility that he could (god forbid) play for another team next year.  As you might expect, this has caused no small amount of anxiety for my son who has never known Cardinals baseball without Albert Pujols.

We have had countless conversations about what might happen at the end of the season.  At this point, I think he truly understands the basics of how it all works.   Our most recent discussion went something like this:

Zach – “Dad, if someone else offers Albert a contract, does he have to take it?

Me – “No, he will get to choose where he plays.”

Zach – “Well, I think he really likes being a Cardinal, and I think he will stay.  But, I bet the Yankees offer him crazy money.  They try to buy all of the best players.”

Me – “That’s certainly possible, but I agree that Albert will take less money to stay here.”

Zach – “You know dad, if the Cardinals give him too much money they wouldn’t have enough left for other players.”

Me – “That’s right buddy.  As good as Albert is, they have to think about the rest of the team as well.”

Zach – “Well, if he has to go somewhere else, I hope he gets to go to a team that isn’t very good.  That way, he can help make them into a good team.”

I thought that was pretty insightful for an 11 year-old considering the prospect of his favorite player no longer playing for his favorite team.  I also thought that it’s too bad that we don’t always have that same level of insight with our employees and clients.  Think about the comparison:

Your employees and clients always have a choice as to where they work and with whom they work.

Your employees can always leave for more money, and your clients can always leave for a lower price.  You have competitors who will offer both.

Your employees and clients have to consider the employment/client experience you provide as part of their decision to stay with you.

There is a point where paying an employee to stay or discounting your compensation for clients just doesn’t make sense. Sometimes it’s in everyone’s best interest for employees and clients to move on to another team.  As good as the run may have been, it almost always has to come to an end. 

Albert, if you happen to be reading this, it’s definitely NOT time for you to move on.

Photo by William Holtkamp.

@kevintrokey

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As you read this article, look at it from two perspectives. First, reflect on how your own agency may be impacted by employee engagement. Second, think of your clients and the impact they are experiencing, as well as how valuable a partner you would become if you could help them improve their current level of employee engagement.

See if this sounds familiar:

AnyCo is a mid-sized business. Things were humming along pretty well; the firm's future seemed bright. Then, almost overnight, the economy seemed to implode around it. Revenues were on a steady decline. Margins were evaporating even faster than revenue. The confidence employees once had in their future started to wane. Further investments to grow the business had to wait. They lost complete sight of the vision that once drove their efforts. In fact, all that mattered was the bottom line—keeping the doors open. Survival became their new definition of success.

To ensure that survival, AnyCo had to lay off all but the most critically needed employees. The budget dollars for training and development were quickly eliminated. Salaries were initially frozen and eventually had to be cut. Employee benefits suffered the same fate. Increases in premiums had to be passed on to the employees, but soon even core benefits had to be eliminated.

These weren't decisions AnyCo management normally would have made, but they had become necessary just to survive. However, as necessary as these actions were, they weren't without consequences. The result was that the remaining employees became frustrated, angry, and more and more disconnected from the business until their level of employee disengagement was at an all-time high.

So, what is employee engagement anyway?

Our working definition is: "The positive connection an employee has to the organization and to the organization's vision. The higher the level of employee engagement, the more positive the employees' behaviors, and the more successful the organization becomes."

More important, why should an employer care about the level of employee engagement?

Recent studies conducted by Towers Watson, and Gallup, have identified that an organization that has an average level of employee engagement has a payroll efficiency of 63%. To translate that to dollars, for every $100,000 being spent on payroll, that employer whose employees are engaged at an average level is receiving only $63,000 worth of work in return. I don't know about you, but after I read that statistic, I had an entirely new appreciation for employee engagement.

Of course, payroll efficiencies will never hit 100%, but think of the bottom-line impact on the organization that can move these points even a littler higher!

So where does the remaining 37% of potential employee efficiency go?

When a company suffers from poor levels of engagement, there are a lot of associated costs, but many are liable to be overlooked:

• Turnover is higher;
• There is a greater demand on HR and its associated resources;
• Communication becomes more difficult and less effective;
• Attracting high levels of talent becomes more difficult;
• Management spends unproductive time with disengaged employees
• Workplace accidents increase;
• Employees are less productive, spending time complaining, looking for another job, not working to potential, etc.

As bad as all of this is, it gets even worse. Lack of employee engagement likely means lack of client engagement.

Dr. Gary Rhoads of Allegiance, a consulting firm specializing in employee loyalty and engagement, recently wrote a paper titled "The Spillover Effect," in which he identifies the correlation between employee and customer engagement as one of the most significant drivers to profitability. The more engaged a company's employees, the higher the likelihood of having engaged, rather than just satisfied, customers. Engagement is contagious. Not only does it spread from employee to employee, it spreads from employee to customer.

Research shows that when customers are engaged, they spend higher percentages of their discretionary dollars with the company with which they feel engaged and prove to be more profitable on each of those dollars spent than are the company's merely satisfied customers. Additionally, a synergy is created when a company has both engaged employees and engaged customers. In fact, they can expect to drive twice the financial results compared with organizations that are able to achieve active engagement from only one key group.

Signs that your employees are engaged

If an organization displays the following characteristics, they are in a good position to have high levels of employee engagement

Employer engagement—The company actively seeks to understand its employees and acts with the expectations and preferences of the employees in mind.

Perception of job importance—Employees have a clear understanding of the importance of their job and how it contributes to the organization's goals and objectives.

Clarity of job expectations—Success in each position is clearly defined, and the resources needed to meet that success are provided. As a result, the employee can focus on organizational success rather than being preoccupied with personal survival.

Career advancement—Each employee has a clear plan of personal development and a realistic path of advancement.

Opportunity to contribute—Employees have clear opportunities to contribute ideas and initiatives that will improve the organization.

Feedback—Employees always know precisely how well they are performing; they receive formal updates on a regular basis. A bonus check is nice, but it will be quickly forgotten (that's not to say it isn't important, but it isn't the complete answer). However, sincere and specific comments on what an employee did well may last forever.

How to improve employee engagement

Based on the list above, you probably have a good idea of how to improve employee engagement when it is poor. However, here are a few specific ideas.

1. Get input from your people. They know why employee engagement isn't as high as it could be and quite likely have ideas of how to make improvements. However, they need to feel comfortable regarding the confidentiality of their responses. Bringing in an outside consultant skilled at drilling down to the core issues will provide the right environment.
2. As you hear negative comments, fight the temptation to become angry with any individual identified as a source of the negativity. Instead, focus on how the negative behaviors can be eliminated and address them directly.
3. Be honest with the organization about what the survey indicated. It's okay to be disappointed with the results and to honestly communicate that disappointment. Fight the urge to sugarcoat the results and to downplay the impact. The employees know what they said, and they talk to one another. They will lose confidence if they believe that their input is being downplayed in any way.
4. Start fixing it! It's too late to turn back now; you have to start implementing change. If you don't follow through, you will make existing problems worse, create new problems, and ensure that any future efforts won't be taken seriously. Publicly state your commitment to implementation.
5. Prepare leadership to implement effectively. Engagement is largely about the culture within an organization, and cultural changes have to start at the top. Spend time with leadership focusing on specific behaviors that they need to demonstrate to make the implementation successful.

Final step

Repeat, but not right away. After you have given yourself sufficient time (a year at a minimum) to implement your initiatives, ask the employees how they are making a difference. Fight the urge to start asking too soon. Cultural changes, including improving employee engagement, take time to take root. Asking for feedback too soon will result in inaccurate feedback.

Employee engagement isn't a project; it's part of the culture. It may take specific projects to improve it from time to time, but we have to work everyday to make sure it is maintained. As levels of engagement improve, you will find that the rewards most coveted by engaged employees tend to change. Make sure your reward system is in alignment with what employees value.

Salary isn't the only motivator. The higher the level of employee engagement, the lower down the list of desired rewards financial compensation moves. Engaged employees tend to value non-compensation types of rewards. They value personal development, a rewarding job environment, and an ability to make a difference, to name a few. Think about it—the things that engaged employees value are the very things that will result in even greater returns for the company.

While employee engagement may seem to be elusive and intangible at times, the impact it has on virtually every aspect of your organization (including customers and bottom-line profitability) makes it something that can't be ignored.

Perhaps the greatest thing about an engaged organization is the exponentially higher return you will receive for continued efforts. You can create an environment that will drive a greater return you receive on investments made through your employees (training, benefit programs, team building, etc.), or you can reinforce a culture that emphasizes wages as the primary reward and continue to just plug the meter with disengaged employees hoping that more money will result in more productivity. Of course, the former takes more of a planned strategy, but the results are well worth the effort.

So, who is AnyCo? Well, perhaps it should have been named EveryCo. There isn't a company out there, whether it's your agency or any of your agency's clients, that can't benefit from very consciously focusing on employee engagement.

As a broker, you're in a unique position; the strategies and experience you gain from working on your own internal employee engagement can easily become a service you take to your clients.

Originally published in Rough Notes magazine March 2011.

Photo by Yasser Alghofily.

@kevintrokey

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"Your customers are only satisfied because their expectations are so low and because no one else is doing better. Just having satisfied customers isn't good enough anymore. If you really want a booming business, you have to create Raving Fans." This is the advice given to a new Area Manager in Ken Blanchard’s book, “Raving Fans”.

It’s sad, but true. Our expectations of most business/customer service interactions have been set at a ridiculously low level. In fact, most of the time we have come to consider such interactions good if they just manage to avoid being bad. Unfortunately, too many businesses have taken comfort in the fact that mediocrity is the new good.  

However, I hope good isn’t good enough for you and your business. If that’s true, then you have a huge opportunity to create your own raving fans.

I recently went on a spring break trip to DC with my 13-year-old son and had the opportunity to experience exceptional service and become a raving fan.

Before I left, I went to Mapquest for directions to the hotel. While I knew the hotel, Residence Inn Arlington Capital View, had opened the week before, it never crossed my mind that the new hotel may not have been in the Mapquest database. After entering the address, I received very detailed directions - unfortunately, when I made the final turn onto a residential street, it was obvious that they were very detailed directions to the wrong location. Mapquest had picked a street by a similar name, but one that was nowhere near my hotel.

Being a guy, my first instinct was to just drive around a bit assuming I would find the correct street, but I soon gave into the heavy sighs of my son and stopped and asked for directions. I knew I was in trouble when they guy at the service station had no idea of where I was trying to go, much less how I could actually get there.  

I got back in the car and used the only other option I had; I called the hotel hoping that they would tell me, “Oh, you’re just around the corner, go 3 blocks, turn right and you’ll be right here.”  

No such luck.

I told them my location, the roads I took to get there, and David (the desk clerk at the hotel) had no real idea of where I was.  He suggested that I drive and tell him cross streets, landmarks, etc. After a few blocks, he started to get an idea of where I was, but it was 5 zip codes away from the hotel.  

He easily could have given me a few “next steps” and told me to call him back when I reached a certain point.  Honestly, I would have considered that to be “good” service.  Instead, he insisted on staying on the phone with me, even through the heavy DC traffic and the long waits at stoplights.  For half an hour, he gave me turn-by-turn directions all the way up to the front door of the hotel.

What could have been a terrible start to a trip, turned out to be a great experience.  When we walked into the lobby and David greeted us at the door, I felt as though I was meeting an old friend.  Every time I saw David during our stay, I was struck by a connection that I felt to him and his hotel.

Because expectations have come to be so low, I would have been satisfied with much less of an effort from David.  However, what he delivered was exceptional and I can tell you, he created a raving fan.  

When he answered the phone that afternoon, he had no idea who was on the other end of the line or what they needed.  I’m sure he had no idea that the call would occupy the next half hour of his day.  However, he was prepared to deliver exceptional service and make me feel that he was actually honored to be able to help me in a time of need.

What about you and your employees - are you prepared to deliver exceptional service at any moment?  Are you creating raving fans or are you only creating customers who are merely satisfied?

To borrow from another author, Jim Collins, don’t let good be the enemy of your great.

Communicating effectively within our companies is arguably one of the most important strategies to organizational success.  Unfortunately, it also proves to be one of the most challenging.  Here are a few reasons why.

1.  Diversity of the Workforce – Think about the various groups that make up today’s workforce: we have 25 year olds coming in and 65 year olds on their way out, we have pre-retirees, baby boomers, young families, and young singles.  Of course, those groups have always existed in the workforce, but it’s the rapid pace of change and the technologies that make it different today from what it’s ever been before.  The life experiences of today’s 25 year old compared to today’s 65 year old are more dissimilar than at any previous time.  Diversity within the audience requires diversity of message.

2.  Learning Style – We all learn differently which means we need to be communicated to/with in different ways.  Some of us are visual learners, some are auditory, while others are tactile and need to interact with the message.  The reality is that we are all varying combinations of all the styles.  Varying learning styles means that no one way of communicating is sufficient to reach everyone in your group.

3.  Competition for Attention – From the time we get up to the time we go to bed, we are bombarded with messages.  The radio, Internet, texts, instant messaging, television, billboards, e-mails, the list goes on and on.  Making sure your message gets through the clutter is tough.  You have to find ways to make your message stand out and be directly relevant to your audience.

4.  Lack of Time – Businesses are leaner now than ever before; we are all trying to do more with less.  The reality is that we rarely are able to slow down to communicate, at least effectively.  To really get your desired message to the right people, you have to make it a priority and take the time to do it effectively.

The point is, communication in the best of circumstances is difficult and right now it’s more difficult than ever.  However, that doesn’t excuse us from slowing down, recognizing the challenges, and making sure that our communication is very purposeful, strategic, and well designed. It will take an investment of time, but your organization is dependent on the return it will provide.

Do you wish you had an accountability culture in your company?

If you’ve said “Yes” to this question, then you should definitely keep reading.  We’ve got some free tools to get you started.

Companies that create an obvious vision and a clear path with accountability to achieve the vision, see greater results from their teams. 

We’d like to see that happen for you.  And we’ve created a guide to get you started on your path to developing that culture.

1. It starts with a strong company vision and values that you communicate regularly to your staff.  You want them to know as well as you do, why you’re all working so hard at this every day.
2. After that, it’s creating a winning system to manage the accountability to the vision & values that you’ve established.

Your team will not only produce better results that are in alignment with the company goals, but they’ll be happier as a result, which means they’ll be more engaged and work harder, plus they'll stay with the company longer.

Sounds like a win, win, doesn’t it?  It is!  So get started today and download the free BGN Accountability Culture Kit.

Track your progress, and let us know how it’s working. We’d love to hear about it, and might even write up an article documenting your progress!

Download FREE BGN Accountability Culture Kit.