Chris' Rules of Business

From a communications perspective, the past half-decade has been quite the whirlwind. Employee engagement, an area in which I specialize, sometimes took a backseat to dealing with the economic fallout.

In the past year, employee engagement has become more important (a recent poll estimated that roughly 85 percent of all workers are disengaged to some level – that should be *extremely* troubling for businesses).

Through my experiences, I came up with a number of “Rules of Business” – tips I consider to be business truisms. Six of them are listed here. They’re not all entirely mine; but I’ve made them mine, as much as possible.

The first is an individual rule (one I try to follow, myself). In your communications – with employees, co-workers, supervisors and even externally with customers – you will often have to make a decision.

1. Is it better to be “right” or to be “productive”?

We’ve all been there. We’ve listened as someone speaks and we’ve heard them say something we *knew* was incorrect. At that moment, we’ve had to decide – is it important to be “right” (showcasing ourselves as the more knowledgeable party) or is the better option to be “productive” and keep our mouth shut?

That sort of decision-making can be vital in terms of personal growth. It’s a variant on the old “Pick your battles” mantra; but there is a difference. It’s important to consider the way you are perceived by your audience. A client could easily be turned off by someone who continually corrects information in a meeting. Sometimes, the more productive approach in many situations is to not say anything (as much as it pains us) until we have a less-public forum.

Heck, even if your CEO says something wrong in a meeting, he (or she) will probably be far more grateful if you point it out in private after the fact, and then he can address it more gracefully. Plus, it’s rare that anything said *immediately* becomes unchangeable. There’s always a better way to handle something than to correct or point something out in public (especially when an outcome is to diminish someone else).

2. There is no such thing as a “One Size Fits All” policy.

The Cincinnati Reds of the mid-1970s were a dominant team, with four perennial All-Stars (Pete Rose, Tony Perez, Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan). The manager, Sparky Anderson, realized his best players deserved to be treated differently. Each year, in Spring Training, he delivered a speech, where he let *everyone* know he had different rules for his star players.

I’m not endorsing that sort of thinking – where companies line up everyone who works for them and state, explicitly, some workers are going to be treated differently than others. However, the inverse is also true. Too often, I’ve seen companies writing employee handbooks that create a zero-tolerance policy with no exceptions. In its zeal for creating an airtight, legally binding document, that spells out every nuance of expected employee behavior, the company paints itself into a corner and – worse– begins to chip away at employee morale.

At one company, employees were forbidden from having any food at their desks. Why? Because, in the past, some employees hadn’t been the most meticulous in cleaning things up; and there had been issues. So, yes, that’s a great reason; but it’s insulting to those who already have that level of conscientiousness. And, moreover, it breaks Rule #3.

3. Treat people like adults; hold them accountable as adults.

Talented employees – who have graduated college and are looking to make a difference – really enjoy being treated as adults.

At one job, I was making a case for communicating the company’s sales numbers in the internal publication. I heard the expected objections – “What if someone inadvertently shares the information?” “Aren’t we giving them too much information?” I answered each objection successfully. Then, someone asked, “What if someone shares the information intentionally?” I immediately asked, “Why would you have someone working at this company that you feared would do that?”

Is it a risk? Sure – but anecdotal evidence greatly supports the concept that treating your workforce like mature adults pays off far more than spoon-feeding them. A bigger risk is seeing your best workers walk out the door.

4. Life is a bell curve (the 10-80-10 rule)

When you look at most data (or human behavior), clusters begin to emerge. The vast majority tends to bunch up in the  middle.

When I moved into the world of communications, I had the pleasure of attending a conference with Steve Crescenzo as a presenter, and he outlined his version of the 10-80-10 rule, where (as he says), 10 percent of the people in your organization *love* you – you can do no wrong in their eyes; they bleed the company colors. 10 percent hate you, and they hate everything about you. They’re psychopaths, and they hate their lives, their wives and their dogs. Nothing you can do will be good enough for them. And, effectively, both camps are influencing that middle 80 percent (and, this is where a good communications director is vital!)

At my last company, I created an employee engagement survey – the first of its kind for the company. When you first administer a survey, unless something dramatic appears, those results serve as benchmarks. As I analyzed the results, I noticed “employee trust in senior leadership” qualified as dramatic.

I tell people to initially expect 10 percent negative feedback, since this fits into the 10-80-10/bell curve theory. When “trust in senior leadership” exceeds 40 percent negative, there’s a definite problem. Thankfully, we do surveys to learn about these problems, and – one year later, when we redid the survey, we reduced that number by more than two-thirds.

5. Good managers tell the “what” and “why” and listen for their workers to tell them the “how”

No one likes to be micromanaged. The younger generation of workers is even less inclined to be interested in that (remember, these newer GenY and Millennials – in many cases – grew up with both parents working. They didn’t necessarily work harder than their previous generations; but they certainly worked with less guidance.

You may be noticing a trend in these “rules” – treat people like adults. Moreover, there’s a definite need for managers to take a step back from looking to control everything. Hire good, quality workers and reap the benefits.

At my last company, the CEO had moved up to the role from an earlier position as director of sales. One day, we were walking by the Sales “inbox” and he took out a few orders and started looking them over. Wistfully, he said to me, “I used to do this every day. I used to look at every order that came in. I don’t get to do that anymore.” I replied, “Good! It’s not your job anymore! You’ve hired a great director of sales; let her do her job, and you do the CEO’s job!”

6. Just because someone is good at their job, doesn’t make them a manager

And, this certainly ties in to the previous  point. This is a pretty common occurrence in America. You’ll have a front-line worker who is absolutely phenomenal at their job (maybe something like data entry or order processing ... even a sales rep), and – eventually – they’ll want more – more pay, more responsibility, some combination of both.

Now, they’re *great* at their job – the tactical part of it – and the company doesn’t want to lose them; but, unfortunately, they’ve already moved up the ladder as high as possible in terms of salary bands. They’ve reached the top salary for whatever position they’re in.

And, rather than raising the salary band, most companies will do the worst possible thing: promote the worker to a manager level.

Now – I’m breaking my own rule. There *is* no one size fits all; and I don’t mean to generalize. On occasion, some workers get promoted to a manager level and they thrive. But, most of the time, the company hasn’t properly developed them to take on a managerial role; and it’s even less likely the company has even evaluated the colleague to determine if he or she is even suitable for a managerial role.

So, in the cases where it’s not a success, what happens It’s a failure. The colleagues resent the new manager, who loses their support. They are unable to strategize or lead or motivate, and now the company has a choice – do they demote the worker back to his earlier role (which is awful, obviously); or do they let the worker go – and, in doing so, they’ve lost that phenomenal tactician they were so happy with, earlier.

I’m certainly not saying no workers should ever be promoted – far from it. But, companies will do far better by investing in their colleagues and developing their colleagues; setting up personal development plans that start to get both the colleague *and* the company, thinking about a career path; and *then* considering whether to promote the colleague to a leadership level.

That is true engagement.

Obviously, none of these tips can stave off the catastrophic impact of an economic recession, which is what led to the universal abandonment of employee engagement in the mid-2000s. But, as we continue to recover, a greater risk may be emerging – the exodus of workers due to a lack of engagement.

True employee engagement is far more strategic (and complex) than what I’ve outlined here; but these first steps are a necessary foundation of beginning to create a more engaging workplace.