Seven Steps to Better Business Results through Improved Employee Performance

The adage says that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. With all due respect to Lao Tzu, I think that any journey begins before that first step. It begins with the decision to take the journey in the first place. Then there is the planning: how will I get to my destination? Will I walk or drive? Drive or fly? Running a business is a matter of taking many journeys at once. Of course there is the main journey, the one of providing goods or services to your customers every day. Then there are all the other, shorter journeys such as hiring a new employee and helping him or her establish a place on your team. One such
journey would be from where you are now to a place where your business runs better and produces more profits. This is a journey along the route of employee performance mprovement. Let's talk about that journey.

The essential steps in planning and carrying out a performance improvement effort are these:

1. List your current and long-term business goals.
2. List any changes to employee performance that might be needed in order to achieve your goals.
3. Assess every aspect of the business that affects employee performance and identify any weak spots.
4. Identify connections between the needs identified in Step 2 and the weak spots identified in Step 3.
5. Prioritize the needed performance changes by how much each one will affect your ability to achieve your business goals.
6. Create a plan that addresses both your specific needs (Step 2) and your general needs (Step 3).
7. Implement your plan, monitoring it against your success measures.

List your current and long-term business goals. This is your destination. If you don't have these clearly fixed in your mind, now is the time to do so. Many times, business owners get it into their heads to "do some training" because they want more sales or better customer service, or fewer employee errors of some sort. But doing training that is not directly aimed at meeting specific goals is usually a waste of time, energy, and money. As Stephen Covey says, "Have the endpoint in mind." Without knowing your endpoint, how will you ever know that you have arrived?

List any changes to employee performance that might be needed in order to achieve your goals. As you review your goals, it's important to be realistic about the ability of your team to meet the goals. Do you need some improvements in selling skills or perhaps customer service? Are you experiencing so many repair comebacks that you aren't meeting profit goals? A little realism in this area will go a long way.

Assess every aspect of the business that affects employee performance and identify any weak spots. While you were looking for specific weaknesses in Step 2, this step is all about general conditions that might be keeping you from meeting your goals. For a list of the areas you should be looking at, review the article "Nine Steps to Transform Your Business and Install a High-Performance People Engine."

Identify connections between the needs identified in Step 2 and the weak spots identified in Step 3. In order to completely solve a problem, it's necessary to get to the root causes and eliminate them. Most performance problems stem from multiple causes, so it's important that you looked at every possible source in Step 3. Once you see the connections between these weak spots in your work environment and the specific changes you need most, you can attack the root causes and know you're doing your best to keep these performance problems from reappearing.

Prioritize the needed performance changes by how much each one will affect your ability to achieve your business goals. Not all of the performance problems you identified are having the same impact on your business. To get the greatest return on your performance improvement effort, fix the most damaging problems first.

Create a plan that addresses both your specific needs (Step 2) and your general needs (Step 3). This plan should include specific action steps, a target date for completion, and a way of measuring the success of the plan.

Implement your plan, monitoring it against your success measures. Besides good planning, what makes the difference between success and failure is often in how well the plan is monitored along the way. It's easy to get off track without knowing it. Monitoring
progress against your success measures keeps you on track and gives your plan the best chance of success.

Taking these steps is easier than you think. It's just a matter of deciding to take the journey, planning it well, and then putting one business foot in front of the other. Enjoy the journey, and celebrate when you reach your destination.

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