By Mike Cieri, Vice President, Mardac Consultants
“The best way to predict the future is to create it” — Peter Drucker
When we have committed employees, customers, suppliers and/or distributors, we create synergies that enable us to focus our efforts on efficiencies and exceeding customer service expectations, while having flexibility in problem resolution.
There are three categories to focus on that have a direct correlation to developing commitment, thus increasing profits:
1. Mission – The company’s purpose
2. Hiring – Employees & Customers
3. On-boarding – Employees & Customers
The Mission:
Many companies have formalized mission statements. Even if yours is not written down, you have one. How else would you know how to react in difficult situations?
I challenge you to identify what is inspiring about your mission. How does your mission statement encourage people to be creative, take risks, work extra hours, resolve that nagging problem, create commitment with the customer, etc?
Also answer the following questions; what are the values of the organization, what’s important? What’s the ideal relationship with customers, employees and suppliers?
Hiring:
What are the traits and values you need from your employees, customers and suppliers that will support your company’s mission? Hire for these traits and values; you can teach the rest.
On-boarding:
Now that you’ve hired the individual or landed the new account, what is the process for assimilation? Social psychologists show that in the first 10 seconds people are capable of making as many as 10 judgments that will form their initial impressions. That formation will continue and they will decide about how they feel in about 30 seconds and your level of credibility is established by the end of the first two minutes. On top of this, they have shown that most people decide about the quality of the relationship within eight hours. Thus the first eight hours are critical for laying the foundation of commitment.
Perform an integrity audit of your company’s on-boarding process. Those processes, policies, and information that are not congruent with the mission should be eliminated.
Conclusion
Peter Drucker said, “The best way to predict the future is to create it” And you can begin building commitment to your organization by examining your Mission. Is your hiring and on-boarding process congruent with the mission? By looking at these processes you are on your way to increasing commitment which will increase your profits.
Mike Cieri, MSIR, is Vice President of Mardac Consultants and been in the Human Resource Management field for over 20 years. During this time he has held a variety of management positions, including several years on the executive management team of a large corporation as Vice President of Human Resources and Safety, as well as Vice President of Operations. His areas of expertise include legal compliance, workers’ compensation, leadership development, performance management, coaching, training and development, compensation analysis, strategic planning, and developing best practices.
Mike has a Masters degree in Industrial Relations & Human Resources from the University of Oregon, is a Certified Safety Director, and a national speaker. He has a coaching certificate from The Coaches Training Institute, San Rafael, California and a Practioner’s Certificate in Neuro-Linguistic Programming from the NLP Institute of Oregon, as well as a certified MBTI trainer through CAPT. Mike also is an adjunct professor at Oregon State University in the college of business.
