How to Help your Staff Overcome Complacency
About the Authors:
NEIL FLANAGAN and JARVIS FINGER
World-renowned business strategists and authors of several international best-selling books on management. Neil is a sought-after keynote, conference and motivational speaker and Jarvis is the award-winning founder and editor of Australia's best known magazine for school administrators.
Most people prefer for things to continue in their same old predictable way. If change is to take place, such people will probably argue that it should happen at some point down the track—when their routines will not be affected. Such complacency needs to be transformed into a sense of urgency—or your organisation will stagnate and you won’t get the staff support you need to make change happen.
You can overcome staff complacency if you…
1. Set performance standards that demand effort.
Never accept low performance standards. Set productivity, revenue, sales, and other performance targets so high that staff cannot afford to rest on their laurels. Goal-setting literature often places too much attention on words like 'achievable' and 'realistic'—words that have been interpreted by some employees as a ‘softer’ approach to performance standards. Your organisation's standards must encourage employees to extend themselves.
2. Insist on S-T-R-E-T-C-H(*) goals.
It’s not hard for employees to accomplish goals when they state them in easily 'achievable' terms—such as 'contact five new customers each day'. Steer clear of statements of minimum acceptable competence, because these soon become accepted as target standards. Make sure that you have a say in what are acceptable goals. You will find that employees will appreciate your involvement.
* S-T-R-E-T-C-H goals - The term was coined by Jack Welch during General Electric’s golden years. It describes the process of asking for the almost impossible as a method to get workers to reach beyond what they had previously thought to get amazing results year after year. Steve Jobs at Apple applied the same philosophy. Both companies achieved world largest organisation status under these leaders.
3. Make employees accountable.
The success of the entire organisation should be the aim of all employees. Even if your staff have become used to focusing on their own individual divisions or departments—almost as if their area is all that matters—they must be encouraged to think in terms of being accountable to the wider organisation. If the organisation prospers, they too will share in the recognition.
4. Share external feedback.
Employees need to hear feedback of all kinds, not only from satisfied customers but also from dissatisfied clients, angry stockholders, and frustrated suppliers. If the only feedback employees receive is 'good news', then they may consider complacency acceptable behaviour.
5. Encourage honest discussion.
Employees sometimes fear that honest disclosure of information will not be well-received if the news is ‘bad’. You can’t afford not to encourage open and honest discussion of problems. You should come down decisively on those attempting to conceal information.
6. Adopt a ‘What’s next?’ attitude.
Your staff should be encouraged to be constantly on the lookout for opportunities. And if every opportunity is not grasped, or if things don’t fall into place as one would hope, don’t linger, lament, and engage in unproductive analysis. It is far better to ask, ‘What’s next?’ and move on to the next opportunity.
7. Remove unhealthy messages.
If your organisation has all of the outward signals of success—lavish parties, boardroom bashes, and other events that convey the wrong messages—employees can’t be expected to be overly concerned about the organisation’s future. Get rid of these obvious examples of excess. Communicate to employees instead the messages that will encourage them to lift their game.
8. Find or invent a crisis.
If the organisation isn’t losing money, or no lay-offs are on the horizon, employees don’t see any visible threats—and thus don’t feel any sense of urgency. If there isn’t a crisis—create one, even a minor one. You’ll find that crises help people to regain focus.
9. Look to the future.
Focusing on past successes may serve some purpose, for example, when you’re coping with a one-off rejection. However, you should not dwell on past glories for too long. What you focus on grows, so concentrate on working towards the future and not on something that's history.
Management Memo
People rest on their laurels and never notice that they're losing ground. I don't know how many times I've seen very talented people get short-changed on a promotion or new job because they rested on their laurels. They think that because they're doing a great job, it should be obvious to the people who control their future that they deserve success. This is a most dangerous type of complacency… Paul Austin, the late chairman of Coca-Cola, once told me. 'The worst thing that can happen to a CEO is to enjoy his company's position in the marketplace—especially if it's the dominant position. Anytime you become content with where you are, then that's like issuing a corporate decree to stand still.'
Mark McCormack, Success Secrets
Just about Everything a Manager Needs to Know
By Neil Flanagan and Jarvis Finger
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