Six Questions to Know if you Sanction Incompetency

The higher the level of responsibility, the greater the demand on the manager. He must be able to see the whole picture, assess what needs to be done, and help employees to work smart.

 

All this is predicated on your ability to understand and define the demands of the job. What’s more, the following six questions will reveal if you are sanctioning incompetence.

 

1. Have you settled in your thinking and behavior that the demands and criteria you must establish are strictly business?

 

You should possess with some reasonable clarity what will be the successful outcome of an employee’s engagement with your company. It might be easily measured by profit margins. It might be counted by widgets made in a measured amount of time. It might be in the capacity to determine what needs to be done and make sure it is done. A friend once recommended that I hire a friend of his because the man was having a hard time adjusting to adult life and needed a father figure to help him along. My response? My business is not a therapy center and I am not a therapist. Therapy is costly, too costly for me (or you) to absorb just to “help people along.” You are in business; your organization exists to pursue and eventually realize the stated objectives, not provide work therapy for troubled individuals.

 

2. How well do you or your clients solve the problems that customers bring?

 

All businesses are problem-solving entities. We exist to resolve issues. We fix problems brought to us by our clients. This is easy to monitor in repair or service companies. It is less obvious in other industries but true nonetheless. In my millwork business, I educate all my employees on being problem-solving people. When a customer needs something made or installed to satisfy functional or aesthetic problems—usually both—it is up to us to do it. Your employees will encounter numerous issues to resolve (e.g., understanding the concept, engineering a workable design, devising a logical and safe sequence to produce the resolution, finding and sourcing the materials and components necessary to make it happen.) You don’t need and shouldn’t tolerate excuses. You need results. That’s what you’re paying them for.

 

3. Do your employees solve more problems than they create?

 

If an employee or an associate is creating more issues than he solves, the indications that they are in the wrong position grow more pointed.

Tomorrow we look into the other three questions.