Many times, I generate the material for my blogs from the Business Acumen, Business Leadership, or 
Strategic Business Selling programs I conduct for Advantexe. However, this morning over breakfast at a hotel in Hong Kong, I overheard an American business leadership team at the table next to me talking about their business and the issues they were facing opening up a new manufacturing facility in Shenzhen, China just up the road from here.
After a few introductions over another cup of coffee, we started talking about business issues and some of the challenges of developing human capital in 2017 and beyond. The team, a group of leaders from a hardware manufacturing company, was lamenting about some of the preparation work that was done by a manufacturing engineer that was supposed to detail the requirements of a build out to increase the shipping capacity at their new plant. The Manufacturing leader said that he double checked with the Engineer to make sure everything was in order before the meeting. The Engineer said he took care of everything and sent a PDF document. Unfortunately, the Engineer didn’t check his work and the PDF document only copied every other page of a 42 page document.
“Oh, what do you expect from a $65,000 a year entry level employee?” It was fascinating to see and listen to the rest of the team take that statement as a matter of fact and move on the how they were going to fix the problem. The problem of getting a new document when the USA day starts, not the problem of the employee who couldn’t follow through on a simple task of copying and sending an important document.
As a seasoned human capital management professional, I take exception to the passive acceptance of mediocrity and a culture of fixing the immediate problem and not the root cause problem.
In this volatile business environment I suggest that leaders can address the root problems of performance by focusing on the right training and leadership best practices. Here are three suggestions:
Develop Business Acumen skills
Business people need to act and think like business people. However, too many organizations don’t invest in basic business acumen skills for their people and as a result, don’t understand their own company’s business strategy or the goals and objectives they are trying to achieve. Without that foundational skill set, they can’t make the best decisions and they don’t understand the repercussions of their mistakes.
Create a Culture of Attention to Detail
No matter what your business strategy, the skill of attention to detail is critical in order to achieve success. It is a skill set sorely missing in too much of today’s workforce. There is no magic formula for creating this culture other than providing the skills and tools needed as well as the leadership processes to hold people accountable to the details. Simply saying “What do you expect from that level of employee” is not acceptable and only serves to enable the problem further. Quick fix training programs can be executed in the areas of project management, time management, and business acumen as a positive start.
Give Hard Feedback Often
Today’s coddled employees behave like they can’t handle hard feedback. If they don’t like being held accountable, they can easily leave for another job at higher wages, and if they don’t like that job, they can jump to another one as soon as they want. By avoiding providing well-designed feedback and coaching leaders are reinforcing a vicious cycle which will only get worse. A quick fix training program can include eLearning and other programs that teach skills of providing feedback and coaching in hard conversations.
In summary, leaders have a responsibility to their customers, shareholders, and other leaders to achieve their goals and objectives. In our world, we teach that leadership is equal to the execution of business strategy. Addressing critical HR issues through training and performance improvement is critical to success.
