Springfield Business Journal_2019-10-14

SPRINGFIELD BUSINESS JOURNAL · 27 OCT 14-20, 2019 NEWS A critical facet of leadership today is one’s ability to prevent bad mistakes from happening on their team. What’s surprising, though, is that many leaders have unjustified attitudes toward employee mistakes. The constant pressure for organizations to adapt or make changes like- ly contributes to questionable views regarding em- ployee risk-taking and autonomy.  Some leaders, for instance, believe there’s no such thing as a mistake, only a good learning expe- rience. That’s naive. There are mistakes – and really bad ones. Numerous companies have experienced fallout from bad mistakes with negative impact on finances, strategy and decision-making or custom- er relationships.  Another example is the overly simplistic view that making any mistake once is fine; as long as the employee is doing what they feel is the right thing. That’s not very practical. There should be reason- able controls on making potentially costly mis- takes. No doubt, large and small companies alike have been harmed by serious mistakes. Take Nokia, for instance, it was once the world’s largest mobile-phone manufacturer. But when smartphones entered the competitive landscape, the company made a series of bad mistakes in adapting and eventually lost its competitive advan- tage. Recently, I queried participants in a client’s workshop and found that 90% had once owned a Nokia phone. But no one in the audience owned one now.  Bad mistakes pose threats to otherwise healthy organizations. Here are six ways smart managers can equip employees to make good mistakes while avoiding bad ones. 1. Know which mistake you won’t allow.  Iden- tify allowable versus disallowed mistakes. In col- lege, I had a boss who handed me a binder with several earmarked pages and informed me that making a mistake in those critical areas would be grounds for termination. This might be considered unfair for today’s work culture, but I got the point. It motivated me to be cautious with those critical tasks.  2. Coach your employee through a mistake. As a first-time manager in my 20s, I was not good at handling employee mistakes. Once, after dron- ing on and on to an employee about his slip-up, he snapped back and said, “I got it; I made a mistake. Let’s move on.” Avoid burdening people with too much harsh criticism, make your point but then coach the individual on how to prevent the mis- take’s recurrence.  3. Communicate common-sense parameters. One client of mine permits employees to give free- bies, discounts or special deals to customers. An- other client does not allow employees to make those decisions without management approval first. Obviously, there are consequences for management to think through with either approach. The key is to communicate and reinforce your parameters for employee autonomy, documentation, decision-mak- ing and risk. Clarity naturally reduces bad mistakes. 4. Make enough good mistakes. Unless your people are making a sufficient number of mis- takes, they will become stagnant, and stop creating and advancing new opportunities. Create an envi- ronment that preserves operational effectiveness, while stimulating entrepreneurial thinking and new ideas. 5. Don’t learn from mistakes; change from mistakes. Some managers allow their people to go from one mistake to the next without making the necessary changes to produce better outcomes. En- courage people to recognize the lessons learned, but also emphasize that it is changed behavior you desire. 6. Don’t turn a good mistake into a bad one. One of the clients I coach only praised her cre- ative team when their ideas aligned with what she knew the firm’s client would approve. Unfortu- nately, her constant rejection of leading-edge ideas discouraged her team from putting out top-notch concepts and forced them instead to sustain the sta- tus quo. Her failure to encourage good mistakes and produce the very best ideas resulted in the decline of employee morale and potentially harmed client satisfaction.  Smart managers lead employees in making good mistakes in order to produce the best outcomes, and they work to prevent costly mistakes from happening. Consultant, professional speaker and author Mark Holmes is president of Consultant Board Inc. and MarkHolmesGroup.com. He can be reached at mark@ markholmesgroup.com. OPINION Domestic violence is a workplace issue Managers can help employees make good mistakes I have an exercise for you. The next time you’re in an all-staff meeting, look around at your colleagues and consider these shocking facts: Roughly half of them have or will be victims of psychological aggression from an intimate partner and roughly a third of women and a fourth of men have or will experience physical violence by their partner. Before you write this off saying it doesn’t affect you or your employees, think again. Additional statistics from the U.S. Department of Justice find domestic vi- olence is not isolated to any particular income bracket or industry. It’s most prevalent in households earning $15,000-$25,000 a year, followed by households earn- ing $50,000-$75,000 and then over $75,000. Domestic violence knows no stranger, and no one is immune. It’s pervasive and crippling to families and communities, and we can’t afford to look away. That’s why I’m proud Springfield Business Journal Publisher Jennifer Jackson is actively involved with Harmony House’s iCare campaign. Throughout October, Domestic Violence Aware- ness Month, the nonprofit is asking businesses to do something to help end this epidemic. That ranges from raising funds to shelter women, men and chil- dren fleeing domestic violence to using their platform to bring awareness of the issue. This is the third year for Harmony House’s cam- paign, which culminates this time around on Oct. 25. If you’re not familiar with the iCare campaign by name, you might recognize it by its symbol: a black eye patch. Perhaps you’ve noticed the photos of busi- ness leaders donning the patches in the pages of SBJ, on the sides of buses, on billboards and business mar- quees, and online. As of press time, 335 local business- es and organizations had signed up to support the campaign. But you might be wondering: Why is this issue a workplace matter? First, let’s not be confused by the “domestic” part of domestic violence. The violence may happen at home and within families, but its effects are not isolat- ed there. In Greene County last year, there were 2,468 incidents of domestic violence aggravated assault, or nearly seven a day on average. And that’s just what was reported. Putting Greene County Sheriff’s Office crime sta- tistics aside, domestic violence is damaging our econ- omy and our most valuable workplace commodity: people. The Society for Human Resource Management and the Workplaces Respond organization report that do- mestic violence costs the U.S. economy $8.3 billion a year. That factors in health care costs, missed days of work, lack of productivity and even the deaths of em- ployees. For survivors of domestic violence, these organiza- tions found 60% report losing their jobs and 96% say their work performance suffered as a consequence of the abuse. What’s a workplace to do? Putting on eye patches, taking photos to post to social media and creating space for conversation is a start. But if that’s where this conversation ends, we grossly misused this op- portunity. Here are some tips from Harmony House on how employers can help their employees facing domestic violence: 1. Don’t ignore the evidence. Signs of domestic abuse include an employee having difficulty focusing at work, repeated absences and frequent physical in- juries. 2. Allow for flexible scheduling. Support an em- ployee if they need to go to the police station, attend court proceedings, see a doctor, find emergency shel- ter or set up a new bank account. 3. Put emergency protocols in place. Be prepared if an abuser shows up at your workplace. Establish visitor sign-in policies and implement crisis planning. 4. Examine health care coverage. Do you offer good mental health benefits and an employee assis- tance program that provides counseling services? 5. Show compassion. Abuse happens to anyone. 6. Change the culture. Based on the statistics, if you have women and men working at your company who are survivors of abuse, you likely also have wom- en and men who have perpetrated abuse. Create a zero tolerance policy within your company for bully- ing and harassment. Let’s all use this month as a jumping off point to start addressing domestic violence. I’m incredibly proud to be in a community that is talking about the hard issues and working together to do something about it. Springfield Business Journal Features Editor Christine Temple can be reached at ctemple@sbj.net. Send letters and comments to sbj@sbj.net BUSINESS SHIFTS Mark Holmes TRUTH BE TOLD Christine Temple