As I began researching my topic for this month’s blog, I looked to the past for inspiration. The day I started my research happened to be May 29th, the same day that Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Tenzing Norgay of Nepal became the first explorers to reach the summit of Mount Everest, the highest point on Earth. This is significant for several reasons. Not only does Everest sit at around the same altitude as most jet airliners (27,900 feet), but due to low oxygen levels, freezing temperatures and unpredictable weather changes, climbing this mountain is considered more than just dangerous – it’s insane.
Risks are inherent in reaching the top of any mountain, but like climbing Everest, a new business startup can be an original idea that others deem to be insane. To be a small business owner you have to be a little “crazy,” as some might say. But I call it something else: Passionate. Without passion, there is no innovation. Without innovation, there is no glory. Granted, glory isn’t why a passionate person opens their business, but personal achievement and self-belief are.
No matter the position you find yourself in, whether it be new installer, solo retailer, industry veteran, or Mobile Electronics Retailer of the Year, the lesson of staying passionate should hit home regardless.
Gallup conducted a poll for the years 2010-2012 to capture how engaged the U.S. workforce is in their jobs. The workers polled fell into three categories: Engaged, Not Engaged, and Actively Disengaged. Engaged employees, as you might guess, are the stars of the company, actively working to drive innovation and are the most connected to the other staff. Not Engaged employees are working but have no vested interest and are essentially “checked out,” sleepwalking through their day without energy or passion. Actively Disengaged workers are more than unhappy with their job, they are actively trying to destroy it by undermining what their Engaged coworkers achieve.
Considering how difficult it is to find good help in the industry these days, it’s important to identify which of your employees is Actively Disengaged, which can be done by following the path of destruction they cause. If your goal is to convert Not Engaged employees back to being Engaged, the poll found that companies that engage their employees could minimize the chances that they will leave. So how do you engage someone who’s barely interested in his or her job to begin with? The poll found three methods.
The first method is selecting the right people. Since people engage people, finding a manager who can spark excitement within an organization is critical. Instead of using management jobs as promotional prizes for all career paths, companies should treat them as “unique roles with distinct functional demands that require a specific talent set,” the poll report said.
“We recently had a staff member lose his mojo, and his work was suffering. We moved him from installation to sales to freshen things up,” said Ryan Pepsin, owner of SRQ Customs in Sarasota, Fla. “It was a downward spiral and he is leaving us at the end of this week anyway, but on good terms. As we have grown and I had need to hire a manager, I brought in an outsider with experience instead of promoting, and that hurt him.”
The second method is developing employee strengths. Everyone has a different way of doing this, but the obvious way is to let them follow their passion and work with them to build their strengths, rather than try to improve their weaknesses, the poll said. This also helps to build a strong relationship between management and employee. If an employee comes to you with a request to try something, let them try it, so long as it doesn’t hurt the business in any way or go against company policy. Teams that focus on strengths every day have 12.5% greater productivity, according to the poll. Pepsin’s approach to helping staff to grow is to listen to their ideas on how to improve the business and providing staff with the tools they need to grow. “When someone says, ‘We could do a better job if we had…’ then I get them what they need.”
The third method is enhancing the employees’ wellbeing. Considering the rising costs of healthcare, investing in engaging workers improves their wellbeing, and ends up lowering medical costs and improving performance. A thriving worker is less likely to get sick than a suffering worker. Part of thriving is knowing the type of business that your workers want to do versus what they have to do.
“The real key to keeping these guys motivated is encouraging that we only do good work,” Pepsin said. “And it’s not just that we do every job well, we only do jobs that we know will end well. When kids come in and want horn tweeters mounted in their grille, or something else stupid, we say no. It’s not always easy to turn away money, but the damage it does to our reputation and the morale of the staff is way more than the money we could make off of it.”
No matter the challenge, staying hungry for your passion, regardless of the amount of time invested, is the biggest reason to put in those long hours developing the perfect shop and crew. The first expedition to attempt the climb to Mount Everest trekked 400 miles across the Tibetan plateau and reached the base of the mountain, only to be stopped by a raging storm that forced them to abandon their attempt. When George Herbert Leigh Mallory, one of those mountaineers, was asked by a journalist why he wanted to climb the great mountain, he said, “Because it’s there.”
