Guidelines vs. Rules – Creating Wildly Successful Employees
Employees have changed. Rules don’t cut it anymore. The newer generation isn’t sure it even wants to go to work and has in some ways decided to retire BEFORE working. They’re out there “gigging” instead of working. How do you as a Business Owner respond to this new world?
How is the new world different than the old industrial age employee world? The old world had rules the employee needed to live by. The new world has guidelines that create ownership, freedom, teamwork, and creative involvement for the employe:
Employee Guidelines (principles) → → Employee Rules (laws)
- Provide Framework → → → → → → → → → Box to live in.
- Gives you a “floor”-minimum → → → → → Gives you a ceiling – “maximum”
- Encourages innovation → → → → → → → →Encourages conformity/sameness
- Frees up employees to win → → → → → → →Creates fear of losing
- Emphasis on effective result → → → → → →Emphasis on process/procedure
- Emphasis on employee ownership → → → Emphasis on we/they blame games
- Encourages participation/innovation → → Encourages hiding/work-arounds.
Examples of each:
Apple Computers → → → → → → → → → → U.S. Government
A Key Objective in creating happy employees: Create “ownership” of their job, and help them see how it fits into the bigger picture (process mapping is a great way to do this.)
How do you lead in the new world? By becoming a Servant Leader. The best leaders have always led this way, but if you don’t lead this way in the new employer world, you won’t keep your employees.
Leaders do not exist to be served by those “under” them. They do not have the right to have others make them look good. Having a title on a door does not make you a leader. Leaders are focused on how they can make everyone else around them more successful (the servant leader). Employees are very clear that the leader’s job is to champion them and give them the vision, environment, resources, training, and connections to be wildly successful. The smart leader knows that if everyone around them is successful, they won’t have to worry about their own visibility or success.
Be a servant leader – create ownership among your employees for their positions, and focus your energies on making them wildly successful. You’ll have a great business and make more money in less time as a result.
