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Improve Staff Performance
Problem 1. Staff Performance Issues
People often have a lot of discretion in the way they work and the effort they exert. If their role in achieving your strategy isn’t crystal clear, they aren’t adequately motivated (by more than monetary incentives) and they aren’t held accountable, then business performance can suffer.
Solution
Get structuring right with higher employee standards.
Outcome
Improved staff performance due to clear goals, roles and accountabilities.
Read Key Points & Transcript
Staff Performance Issues
video key points
- Staff performance issues often stem from a lack of motivation, misalignment in expectations, or insufficient skills, typically a combination of these factors.
- Clarity on the organisation’s strategy is crucial; each role should be defined in terms of its contribution towards achieving strategic goals.
- Implement organisational design principles that promote quick decision-making, minimise bureaucracy, position top talent close to customers, and clarify individual roles, responsibilities, and authorities.
- Cultivate a culture of high standards, trust, and purpose, recognising that such an environment, while challenging to achieve, is essential for sustained success.
- Recognise the critical role of employee discretionary effort in gaining competitive advantage; invest in enhancing team understanding, capability, and motivation.
- For further insights on leveraging your team’s potential for business success, explore our resources available on the website.
Presented by: Drew Pflaum
video transcript
Why don’t staff “perform”?
It’s not likely because they don’t want to, consciously at least.
It’s more likely because:
- They don’t feel motivated.
- Their understanding of what is expected isn’t aligned with your expectations.
- They don’t have the skills.
It’s probably a combination of these.
So, what are you to do about this?
You need to set out in clear terms how their role contributes to achieving the goals of your strategy.
But, to do this, you need to be crystal clear on what your strategy is.
You should then follow what reputable science shows as two of the key levers for sustained success:
- Have an organisation design, which supports:
- Fast decisions;
- Reduced bureaucracy;
- Keeps the best people closest to the action (the customer); and
- Is very clear on what each person’s role is: their functions, responsibilities and authorities.
- Build a high standards, high trust and high purpose culture.
Achieving this will be difficult. By that we mean it’ll require conscious effort and continuous implementation. But the actual building blocks don’t need to get too complicated.
We say keep things as simple as possible, to enable everyone to remain focused and working together to resolve issues for the long-term.
As we’ve mentioned in various places of our website, your people are the source of your competitive advantage. Don’t under-appreciate how influential their discretionary efforts play within the overall success of your business. Rather, commit as all great leaders do, to uplifting your teams understanding, capability and motivation.
Get in touch with us if you want to explore how we can help you, or join the free tier of the Munro’s Business Academy to assist your learning of what can be done.
In that video you just watched, we mentioned some research.
If you’d like the references, simply head on in to the Munro’s Business Academy and you can find them on the Reference page.
Problem 2. Staff Turnover
Turnover is a particularly expensive problem as many jobs require organisation-specific skills that can take years to cultivate. Scientific evidence shows that both high trust and high purpose increase productivity, reduce job turnover, improve job satisfaction, and make people happier and healthier.
Solution
Develop a high trust, high purpose culture.
Outcome
Reduced recruitment hassles and costs (average total recruitment costs for professional positions can be nearly one year annual salary).
Read Key Points & Transcript
Staff Turnover
video key points
- Staff turnover represents significant costs, encompassing recruitment, training, and lost productivity, highlighting the importance of retaining employees.
- Success in extending staff tenure lies not in unproven frameworks but in embracing scientifically-backed strategies focusing on building high trust and high purpose cultures.
- High trust cultures foster teamwork and safe conflict, enabling better decisions and a more cohesive work environment.
- High purpose cultures motivate employees towards a common goal, enhancing dedication to solving customer problems.
- Leadership is pivotal, requiring clear, motivating strategies, adherence to core values, and consistent communication that balances high standards with employee wellbeing.
- Acknowledge areas for improvement in your business culture and take proactive steps to enhance trust and purpose for better productivity and employee satisfaction.
Presented by: Drew Pflaum
video transcript
Losing staff has to be one of the biggest costs to many businesses.
We’ve seen reports estimating the average total recruitment costs for professional positions at nearly one year’s annual salary.
The costs of staff turnover aren’t just the advertising, recruiter fee and interview costs. There’s the waste from lost output, both directly from reduced employee counts (at least temporarily) and indirectly due to the hours leaders and managers have to commit to recruitment. Plus there is the additional training costs for the new recruit.
It’s inevitable staff will leave, but how do you extend the productive tenure of staff?
You don’t follow some unsubstantiated “high-performance” framework. Rather, you take advantage of what science has investigated and found to work.
The critical scientific research we’ve read tells us it comes down to building a thriving high trust, high purpose culture.
High trust cultures are motivated to get to the best decisions and have thriving, safe conflicts (or in other words, debates). Furthermore, they have team members who truly work as a team and trust one another to get the requisite work done.
High purpose cultures have team members positively motivated to achieve the big audacious mission – the “purpose” of your business. To help whoever it is your customers are, with whatever painful problem it is your business is driven to resolve for them.
Building a high trust, high purpose culture demands leadership who have set out a clear, motivating strategy. Who live by winning values. Who continuously communicate consistent messaging and overcome the false dichotomy of high standards and being good to people.
So, what is your gut telling you right now? Do you have a thriving high trust, high purpose culture or do these insights perhaps make you feel a bit guilty for falling short?
Don’t feel shame about this. A great many of us have been there. That’s just the journey of business. To learn what is best and continue to get better.
If you want to increase productivity, reduce staff turnover and generally have a happier workforce, don’t feel shame for not being your best now, actually do something about it.
We have ways to help you and can begin the process Risk-Fee with our 90-day guarantee. Head on over to the How We Get Started page to learn more.
In that video you just watched, we mentioned some research.
If you’d like the references, simply head on in to the Munro’s Business Academy and you can find them on the Reference page.
Problem 3. Ineffective Business Improvement Training
From time to time employees attend training workshops and seminars to improve business performance. However, besides a training booklet and some scribbled notes, nothing much ever changes – wasting a lot of time and energy.
Solution
Design training to succeed.
Outcome
Training with a positive return on investment and over time a positive force driving your sustainable competitive advantage.
Read Key Points & Transcript
Blended Learning for Leaders
video key points
- Effective learning programmes are essential for transforming knowledge into capabilities that significantly improve business results, avoiding the common pitfall of forgettable training sessions.
- The success of “Winner” businesses showcases the profound impact of nurturing talent from within, with evidence pointing to returns such as 14 times more profit over a decade, underscoring the value of strategic, in-house capability development.
- A strategic approach to learning involves aligning organisational structure and goals with employee development, ensuring learning directly contributes to the execution of strategic actions and enhances motivation.
- Implementing learning programmes that challenge employees and employ interventions to prevent forgetfulness can lead to the development of strong in-house capabilities, supporting just-in-time learning for immediate application.
- Reflection on the effectiveness of current learning initiatives and their alignment with strategic goals can reveal insights into the ROI of training investments, highlighting the importance of selecting training that drives sustainable competitive advantage.
- Explore further by visiting Munro’s Business Academy for research references and consider a Get To Know Each Other meeting to design a training programme tailored to your success.
Presented by: Drew Pflaum
video transcript
Your learning programmes must lead to success. They must actually give your people the capabilities to produce more and better results.
The trouble is, that often employees are, with good intentions, sent off on training workshops or seminars to improve business skills but don’t come back with much improved capabilities.
They might digest the knowledge during the workshop or seminar, but soon after forget it.
Even when they do retain the knowledge, are they supported to convert it into a capability they can use and improve?
Wasteful learning is a massive opportunity cost for business. “Winner” businesses, those we mention on the Experience Success page, work incredibly hard to avoid it. The science shows that by building and enhancing talent from within, this has contributed to “Winners” achieving such returns as 14x more profit over ten years.
Designing and implementing an effective business improvement system begins where so much does in business:
with your strategy.
What are your goals?
Specifically, how are you helping staff learn skills that help them complete strategic actions they are tasked with this quarter?
Your organisational structure, hopefully shaped by your strategy, prioritises who needs to learn what. It must also support each employee’s motivation to learn.
The learning programme itself then must be designed to pass on the requisite knowledge, and again most importantly, convert this into capabilities. Some of the science suggests a somewhat counter intuitive approach of making the knowledge acquisition difficult. Supported by a series of interventions to combat forgetfulness, this style of just-in-time learning should help your business develop stronger and stronger in-house capabilities.
Take a moment to think about your business:
- What learning and capabilities from it are presently happening?
- Are you seeing a return on investment?
- Of the strategic actions you’ve been working on the last 90 days, or year, exactly how much learning can you say has supported and made it a success?
There’s a fantastic saying you may have heard of:
- The CFO says to his CEO, “What happens if we train them, and they leave?”
- The CEO replies, “What if we don’t train them, and they stay?”
What the CFO and CEO should really be focused on is:
What training will provide a positive return on investment and over time be a positive force driving our sustainable competitive advance?
We’re only a Get To Know Each Other meeting away from taking the first steps to help you design a training programme tailored to your success.
In that video you just watched, we mentioned some research.
If you’d like the references, simply head on in to the Munro’s Business Academy and you can find them on the Reference page.
Problem 4. Managers Who Don’t Know How to Lead Effectively
It’s not uncommon for people to be promoted into management positions without any management training. Some cope, but many take a while to learn things the hard way, whilst some others who were once star performers may never be their best again. Even when there is some management training, it may be sporadic and ineffective.
Solution
Coaching and just-in-time learning.
Outcome
Better leaders.
Read Key Points & Transcript
Business Ownership Education
video key points
- Managers, while experts in their domains, often lack crucial leadership skills for sustained business success, underscoring the need for focused training and coaching in business leadership capabilities.
- The wisdom of Ayman Al-Abdullah, echoing JFK, suggests that leadership and learning are intrinsically connected, highlighting the misconception among some leaders that reaching a leadership position negates the need for further learning.
- Incremental improvements in knowledge and skills by leaders can have significant, positive impacts across their organisations, leveraging leadership as a tool for widespread improvement.
- Addressing the challenges of leadership capability development involves determining the timing and extent of learning, identifying essential skills aligned with business strategy, and choosing effective learning modalities to combat the forgetting curve.
- Emphasising the importance of learning for results rather than mere knowledge accumulation, Munro’s offers tailored learning programmes and leadership improvement initiatives through Munro’s Business Academy as practical steps towards enhancing team performance.
Presented By: Drew Pflaum
With Thanks To: Ayman Al-Abdullah
video transcript
Managers are often domain experts in what the business makes; but they often lack the skills to lead the business to sustained success.
This is partly because little time is devoted to training and coaching leaders in the necessary business skills. Here’s why this should not be the case.
If you watch enough of our videos you’ll notice on several occasions us quoting Ayman Al-Abdullah, now business coach and former CEO of App Sumo – a business Ayman grew from $3million to $80million in revenue. This is because he is incredibly good at distilling down important business leadership insights. So, here’s a social media post by Ayman:
He begins with quoting JFK: “Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other”.
Ayman follows up with:
“Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.” -JFK
Too many leaders think that achieving a leadership position means they have all the answers and don’t need to learn anymore
But in reality, it’s the exact opposite
— Ayman Al-Abdullah 🧱 (@aymanalabdul) July 6, 2023
Whether or not too many leaders think they have all the answers and don’t need to learn anymore is debatable. But, we certainly agree with the sentiment that learning commonly becomes a lower priority.
So, Ayman continues and this is where he starts to make a very powerful point:
As leaders, we should seek to learn more
We don’t have all the answers
And improving our knowledge just slightly could lead to huge changes across the organizations we lead
— Ayman Al-Abdullah 🧱 (@aymanalabdul) July 6, 2023
That’s a very powerful thought. The fact that even incremental learning by leaders can influence profoundly upside improvement for a business because of leveraging that acquired knowledge and skills.
If you’re in agreement that business owners, leaders and managers should be continuously improving their capabilities, then the key consideration is how.
Three key challenges for building and honing capabilities are generally:
- When and how much time to dedicate to it.
- What should one learn.
- How should that learning and capability building take place.
We’re an evidence-led firm and prefer to follow the rigorous science on this. However, for the moment at least, we’re not aware of definitive evidence heavily directing us to a certain approach. Given this, we let science direct us as best it can and we continue to evolve learning best practices over time – just the same as with how we should learn all our business skills.
So, with regards to when and how much time to dedicate, it depends on what is being taught, what are the current capabilities, what is the urgency to acquire the capabilities, what is the capacity to learn, especially given other time demands, and how to mitigate the forgetting curve. The more new and novel the learning, the more likely it is that learners need to regularly commit time to learn.
What should one learn, should be directed by your strategy, current capabilities and critical business areas that science has shown to have the greatest influence on business success.
How should the learning and capability building take place, is similarly influenced by the afore-mentioned factors. There are a mixture of learning options available, such as impactful sprints involving face-to-face and online material, online courses, group meetings for rising stars and personalised coaching for business owners and CEOs.
If you take only two things away from this video, then make them these:
- Improving leaders’ capabilities can have a profoundly positive multiplier effect due to leadership leverage; and
- Learning is about building and improving capabilities. It has to produce results, not knowledge that’ll soon be forgotten.
We offer impactful learning programmes tailored specifically for our business clients, and also host leadership improvement programmes through Munro’s Business Academy. So please do take advantage of this if enhancing your team’s performance is of interest to you.
Can every one of your employees succinctly define their role in achieving your strategy and do they execute that with outstanding precision?
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