QUOTATION 30

JACK WELCH ON THE THREE ESSENTIAL MEASURES OF BUSINESS

WHAT TO DO

• Measuring employee engagement is difficult. Often it is something that is felt or experienced rather than measured. Use management by walking about (MBWA) to take the collective pulse of the organisation or your staff. Start by defining the purpose of your walk, e.g. to determine how staff feel about a recent reorganisation. Identify where best you will get a feel for people’s opinions, say production or despatch. Then off you go, but don’t take a clipboard or pen. This is a listening exercise. So follow the advice given in Quotation 77 and spend at least twice as much time listening as speaking.
• Engage people in conversation. Talk about the weather, sport or what was on TV just to get a conversation going. Then start to ask questions, but keep them general. Use questions like: How have things been going since the reorganisation? Any problems with the new approach? What more do you think we need to do? Done properly, people will open up and tell you stuff that you would never hear if you remained in your office.
• Use the feedback from customers and customer complaints to assess the level of customer satisfaction. Pay particular attention to the responses that customers provide after your staff have resolved the problem. People accept that errors occur. However, if you can quickly resolve the issue, you can actually leave the customer feeling better disposed towards your organisation than they did before the problem arose.
• Make a point of meeting with customers and chatting to them. As with MBWA, avoid formality and try and get them to talk about what they think of your organisation, both the good and the bad. Don’t become defensive if they become critical about the organisation and/or its staff. Take what they say on-board and check it out later.
• Act on the information you collect from staff and customers. Seek to build on the positives and eliminate the negatives.
• Ensure that you receive regular cash flow reports (see Quotation 4) and listen to your accountant. If they say that you are likely to have cash-flow problems in three months’ time, take action immediately. Don’t bury your head in the sand and hope it will go away. Discuss the best ways to increase receipts and reduce payments without harming essential elements of the business (see the Kaizen approach suggested in Quotation 5).

QUESTIONS TO ASK

• Do I receive a monthly one- or two-page report on employee engagement, customer satisfaction and cash flow? If not, why not?
• Which one of the three areas discussed above do I understand least? How can I remedy this?