How do you show up for work? No this is not about your fashion or dress sense, but more about the emotional engagement you have when you walk in the door at work.

 

Workplace

The Gallup surveys tell us that the majority of the work force in USA is not engaged in their day to day activities at work. More to this is that a vast amount of available time and energy goes towards covering their backs and hiding their mistakes from colleagues and superiors. All this reduces the input and impact on the businesses output. How sad it must be to not want to go to your place of work where you spend up to 40% of your time.

Running a small business requires the same if not more energy to keep afloat. There is a constant battle to keep the ship upright and headed in the right direction. There is no time to be disengaged of distracted from the task at hand. A business owner and their staff need to be focused on the vision, lead by the mission and guided by the values and keep the eyes on the prize at all times.

But this is not always possible; things do go wrong. People have off days, get sick and have personal issues with each other. During these times the balls get dropped and issues fall through the cracks. It is a business that has well defined business procedures and processes that will thrive even in bad times. Simple well rehearsed drills, similar to a good sports team, will keep the ship on course.

As a manager, take time to flow chart the processes within your department and reduce, where required to paper using lists, flow charts and forms. Introduce these to the staff through training sessions and then encourage and enforce their use until they become automatic and part of the everyday life in the office.

Then sit back and manage by exception rather than fighting fires. This just makes your life a little easier and allows your staff to be more engaged with the purpose of the business not their personal agendas.