You’ve seen them. The business goals at almost every corporation usually read like this:
- Create synergies with our business partners.
- Increase market share by 6% in targeted markets.
- Enable innovation by implementing new research and development team.
- Drive revenue to 1.2 billion internationally.
- Improve relationships with distributors and vendors.
- Ensure that employees are satisfied and developing.
There! Did you catch it? Aside from the terrible overuse of corporatese, did you notice that employees were last on the list?
Though this company had told its employees over and over again how important they were to the success of the business, each time a list like this came out, the employees were last. As if they were an afterthought, if they were even thought of at all.
How do you think employees feel when they read this list. Important? Think again. They likely think, “Gosh, those first five things must be the really important ones because they came FIRST. And, I’m guessing that the last bullet about employees was added on by one of our senior managers who, as everyone was walking out of the boardroom and congratulating themselves on a job well done, stopped them and said, ‘Hey, we forgot to put anything about the employees in here. We’d better fix that cause they might get mad and think we forgot about them.’”
What those leaders obviously forgot is that it’s a leader’s job to understand that the people who follow them are human beings with human feelings and human hearts and human fears and human hopes and human wants to do better and be recognized and respected and cared for and understood and appreciated and needed.
Don’t tell your people they’re your greatest asset, then treat them like they’re your last consideration. It hurts.
So, instead, let’s imagine what the list would like with one small, but very significant, change:
- Ensure that employees are satisfied and developing.
- Create synergies with our business partners.
- Increase market share by 6% in targeted markets.
- Enable innovation by implementing new research and development team.
- Drive revenue to 1.2 billion internationally.
- Improve relationships with distributors and vendors.
Now, imagine how your employees would feel reading this list. Pretty good, right? And guess what, if your employees feel good about themselves, and about you, and about the company they work for, you’ll reach those other goals on the list.
In fact, you’ll probably exceed them.
All from putting employees first.
Jim Warda
