Doing More with Less: The New Mantra in Business

Doing more with less: The new mantra in business

We all know that with the increase in gas prices, the budget cuts everywhere and a still weak economy, companies must find a way to do more with less resources.

Every manager now must get the best of his or her employees and to do this, he will need to understand the barriers to employee productivity and find ways to motivate and train those that work for him.

What makes an employee successful? What separates people who feel realized from those that suffer from anguish, dissatisfaction or bitterness?

Well, research says that it isn’t money in the bank, fame, awards or the rank in an organization, as much as those may matter. Many people don’t win the race but even so achieve abundance and they will always be remembered, while many who do finish first will never be associated with greatness and will soon descend into the dark territory of indifference.

It really doesn’t matter much what strengths you have. Being talented is certainly over rated, being street smart is a plus but also not the key, going to Harvard or Yale, being good looking, not having an accent when you speak etc. all this is overrated.

What really matters is what you do with what you have.

When Welby Van Horn, who was the tennis pro at the Caribe Hilton in the 1950’s, was asked who is the professional tennis player he admired the most, he answered Michael Chang. Michael Chang’s claim to fame was winning the French Open at 17, I believe still a record, but the highest he ever got was number 2 in the world and he never ever again won a grand slam title.

Why would Welby mention Michael as the player he admired the most when he got to meet Arthur Ashe, Agassi, Courier, Federer, Sampras, Nadal and others?

He said that he admired Chang, because he did the most with what he had. In other words, Michael Chang used everything he had to get as far as he possibly could.

If you hold nothing back, if you take calculated not reckless chances, you give it all you have got, try to serve your clients well, then you will always stand tall in the eyes of the world, in the eyes of the people that matter to you, mainly your customers and in your own eyes as well.

This is very important: The more a manager can help the people who work for him or her to do the best they can, to use every resource they have, the greater the manager will be and the best results he or she will obtain for the organization.

Put in very simple words, the best managers have the ability to bring out the BEST from their people.

This is true of basketball coaches, CEO’s of large companies, government agency heads and entrepreneurs.

They look for and find the unpolished or polished diamond that resides within every human being.

When people join a company usually they are very motivated and they really look forward to doing a great job. The exception here are employees who need a job and they start working anywhere just to make some money to be able to pay for their living expenses.

Most people find the job they want and are motivated and a few months later, the motivation disappears. Why?

In some cases it is the employee, but in most cases it is the environment, the supervisor, some factor inside the company that sucked that motivation out of them and then they turned into automatons doing a mechanical job, trying to do the less they can and go home as early as possible.

What are some of the barriers to employee productivity?

1. Lack of resources to do a good job. Equipment is broken, software out of date, ancient computers, bad on the job support etc. Your employees can’t be productive if they don’t have the tools to get the job done right. Think about this. If you need to tighten a screw and you don’t have a screwdriver, you will use whatever you can find to do so. You might have to go and look for a dime or a knife or whatever you can find, but that wasted time and effectiveness and probably made the employee upset at the company for not having the right tools available.

2. Decision making only takes place at the top. Personal accountability is not emphasized. The work environment is autocratic and bureaucratic. This is seen very often in government agencies but also, more than it should, in private companies. If employees are discouraged from thinking for themselves, they will never take ownership for their jobs and their effectiveness will diminish considerable.

3. One department against another. We must accept the fact that office politics will never go away; it is the nature of the beast. However, when politics become destructive, people become demoralized, productivity will diminish and there will be more turnover. Gossip, lies, antagonism, jealousy and power plays are lots of fun to see in the movies or in television but they certainly represent potential disasters in a company.

4. Incentives are insufficient and often reward both poor and good performance. Pay attention to this: Believe me because I see it all the time in my client companies. Nothing can be more frustrating and discouraging than seeing someone who barely contributes get the same incentive bonus as all of those who give everything they can to the job and to the company. Reward or incentive plans that do not take into account the exact, measurable contributions of each individual are not only highly ineffective, they are definitely counterproductive.

5. Employees are risk averse and they don’t do the things they must do in order to keep your company competitive and innovative. I am certain that many employees remember very well attending a meeting where the top executives praised and maybe even gave a plaque to the month’s top performer. Very few if any can recall attending a meeting where the top executives praised a daring effort that failed. In a recent survey of 690 employed American workers, Blessing Inc, a US based consulting company, asked employees whether they are often encouraged to take risks. Only 26 percent of employees said they are often encouraged to do so. A surprising 41 percent said they are never asked to do so. Never.

My question to all of you is: How can organizations adapt to constantly changing conditions or to be forward thinkers trying to innovate, if their employees never try anything new?

The mantra is: Do more with less but allow the people in the trenches to do it and do not block their efforts.