The American auto industry is unique but in many ways it is no different than every one of our businesses. Leaders of all types must find the right incentives to drive their teams towards success. These incentives must be applicable enough to affect the entire organization but meaningful enough to inspire each individual.
Sadly, the Big Three auto makers are a living example of what happens when leaders fail to find the right incentives for their employees. To put it bluntly, had these top men and women been able to deliver a remarkable employee experience to their people on their own, would there have ever been a need for the rise of the United Auto Workers union? No, there wouldn't have been since the UAW began in 1935 with the mission to fairly negotiate wages and benefits between the leaders and the labor. So regardless of the specific details that mandated a third party to step in and arbitrate, it can be determined that something was clearly missing from the culture, mindset, and workforce processes inside General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler.
That something is what we at entreQuest believe to be the accountability moment. It is how self-governance creates a winning sales culture. The accountability moment technically describes the destination point – where the leaders’ corporate-level goals meet the employees' individual-level goals to create a synergy of success for everyone involved in the business. It takes a few steps to get there however.
First, the leaders must craft their story to succinctly and eloquently articulate the mission, values, behaviors, and vision that define their company. Next, the managers must build their working relationships with their employees so that together they can determine what goals each individual should have and how they will align to company’s story. Whether your employees show up to a corner office in a suit to make sales during elegant lunch meetings or they are wearing much more durable clothing to withstand the mechanical nature of their job, everyone in your organization is a person, not a robot. Therefore they have their own personal drivers and their own unique desires. Good managers will be able to help them realize that their own growth goals and their company’s growth goals can masterfully be accomplished together. Finally, the employee must hold himself or herself accountable to reaching those goals or else the incentives of a monetary bonus or additional vacation time or whatever is being used to reward the employee will not be issued. Obviously the manager is responsible for this piece too and he or she must provide ongoing support, coaching, and a fair aseessment of the employee’s performance.
Of course, there is a limit here. Leaders and managers cannot play the roles of morality magicians. It was Henry Ford who actually already tried to do that with the creation of his “sociological department” for the laborers at Highland Park factory in 1915. Reverend Samuel Marquis, the sociological department’s head, stated its purpose was to be part of “a plan for the education of the working-men in thrift, honesty, sobriety, better housing, and better living generally.” It sounded like a nice idea in theory, especially with an incentive like the earth-shattering announcement of “the five dollar workday” for blue collar workers, but in practice Ford Motor Co. actually hired investigators to go into the workers’ homes and survey their personal lives to identify flaws. It’s no mystery why critics used ideas like “paternalism,” “feudal system,” and “treated like slaves or children” to describe the Ford employee experience back then, right?
We find at entreQuest that employees are generally harder on themselves than leaders might think. Many of them want to perform well past even their boss' highest standards. They also take pride in living up to the values of their organization and contributing towards the team. Leaders and managers who can leverage these fine qualities in their employees know that they will foster growth both for the business and for the employees themselves. It’s a win-win situation.
These days both sides of the automobile industry are working hard to grow back to those glory days of the once flourishing Motor City. Leaders are reassessing their goals, trimming their inefficiencies, and modernizing their offerings. Unions are trying to find the fairest means for workers to earn and enjoy bonus structures, benefits, and profit share. America waits and hopes that together these leaders and unions can create the culture, mindset, and workforce processes to result in a win-win situation.
For those of us running businesses that are not structured like those in the auto industry, we leaders still have a chance to be our own third party negotiators with our team members. Every one of them too because no matter what trade we’re dealing in, our biggest potential salespeople are our indirect salespeople. They might be answering phone calls at a customer service desk or adjusting heavy machinery on a factory floor but they are as much a business builder as your top account manager is. It’s time to give them their accountability moment.
More information on the accountability moment can be found in an article published by entreQuest in SmartCEO magazine at this link: http://www.entrequest.com/wp-content/pdf/0707ownersmanual.pdf?phpMyAdmin=d2c4aa6766ft5760658.
Joe Mechlinski is the President of entreQuest and has partnered with countless leaders to effectively improve their team’s performance, their clients’ experience, and their company’s profits.
(*Information Sources:
“Auto Talks Extended” by Matthew Dolan, Jeff Bennett, and Sharon Terlep. The Wall Street Journal. Wednesday 14 September 2011. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904353504576568643214855166.html?KEYWORDS=auto+talks+extended.
“The People’s Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century” by Steven Watts. New York: Vintage Books, 2005.
The United Auto Workers website. www.uaw.org.)
