What happens when process works? Right data, right stakeholder plan, fidelity of execution, etc. Yet people are surprised that it all worked – especially the ones that put all the processes and data in place and are pros at execution.

Why?  Two parts to my answer:

Champions At Wrong

Spend enough time working in virtually any industry and you’ll find yourself getting pretty good at defending.  You may have to defend your budget, your boss, your team, a pet project, a star employee who doesn’t conform to every rule, a department that is stellar in execution and possibly a bit gruff in customer-facing service skills.  Is that wrong?  Allow people to get too good at working on explaining why things cannot be done and they’ll have little time to change things for the better.

What Gets Rewarded Gets Done

Do you reward teams that keep every account profitable?  Do you reward people that let operational errors push a client to within a phone call of leaving your company and then work their butts off leading a company-wide team to ‘save’ the account?  What about that star sales rep that pulls in ten times the revenue of the nearest colleague but isn’t following every expense account rule…reward or not?

The culture that perpetuates, grows and sustains in the one that is rewarded.

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What are you doing in your organization to not be so surprised when everything actually works according to plan?

Joe Raasch :: Sep.19.2009 :: Employee Engagement, Organizational Development, Performance Management :: No Comments »