We can create responsible employees through four methods, which include: carefully assigning employees to positions, setting high performance standards, providing information needed for self-control, and offering opportunities for participation to cultivate a managerial vision. All four methods are necessary. Systematically and carefully placing employees in appropriate positions has always been a prerequisite for stimulating employee motivation. Nothing stimulates employees to improve performance and brings them pride and a sense of accomplishment more than assigning them demanding jobs. Merely aiming to get by tends to sap employee motivation; through persistent effort and the use of abilities, focusing on meeting the highest requirements always inspires employees. This does not mean we should not push employees to work; on the contrary, we should let them push themselves. The only way is to elevate their vision and focus on higher goals. The output standards for general employees are usually necessarily the minimum standards, and therefore, inevitably, they mislead employees. Companies should not even publish this minimum standard (and those who exceed it may even receive extra rewards), lest employees think this standard represents the norm. Indeed, doing so may actually have a negative effect on excellent employees who easily "exceed the standard." They will either deliberately lower their output to avoid highlighting the incompetence of their colleagues, or they will lose respect for management because they are so ignorant as to set such absurdly low standards. Whenever management tries to raise the standard, they will be the first to complain. IBM's decision to eliminate the universal standard and let employees decide their own work standards was very correct, and the results confirmed this. IBM's success shows that industry should go further and set real work goals for employees, rather than output standards. We should perhaps start from what contributions employees need to make, rather than from what employees can actually do. For each position, we should have a way to explain what contribution this position should make to achieving the goals of the department, factory, or company. Because new work brought by new technology must replace minimum production standards with goals. But even for the mechanical work in today's assembly plants, if we add some challenges of skill and judgment to the work, we can still set meaningful goals. To motivate employees to achieve the highest performance, it is equally important that managers also set high performance standards for the various management functions that determine employee performance capabilities. To motivate workers to achieve the best performance, another important thing to do is that management must set high standards for its own work performance. Because better management functions are the key to determining whether workers can achieve the best performance. Nothing demoralizes employees more than when managers are busy like headless flies while employees are left idle with nothing to do—no matter how happy employees appear to be to get paid without working, in their eyes, this fully demonstrates the incompetence of management. Properly planning schedules so that employees always have something to do is not a small matter; keeping equipment in first-class condition, diligent maintenance, or being able to repair machines immediately when they break down is also not a small matter. What best motivates employee performance is handling internal management affairs impeccably, showing employees the manager's competence and serious attitude toward work through these activities, and directly reflecting the manager's ability and standards. This principle applies equally to salespeople or machine operators, office staff or engineers. The first test of management ability is whether the manager can enable employees to maximize their work efficiency with minimal interference. The most costly waste is when an office supervisor comes in the morning, makes subordinates wait while he reads all his letters and sorts them, and then pushes subordinates hard in the afternoon to make up for the lost morning time. If a factory foreman is busy looking for replacement parts in the tool room (parts he should have purchased a week earlier) while other workers stand idle, his impact on reducing output will be greater than a union call. And if the chief engineer stores a batch of "spare" personnel and places them in fictitious positions, it will also seriously damage morale. Such poor planning reduces employees' respect for management, makes employees think the company does not really care about their performance, and therefore reduces their willingness to contribute to the company. When someone says it is like "committing murder and then walking away as if nothing happened," that is bad enough, but using the following sentence to describe the company's situation is even more damaging: "It's like in the army: first they rush you to hurry up, hurry up, and then they make you wait half a day." A wise factory supervisor once told me that he only wanted the foreman to do a few things: keep the department and machines spotless, always plan the work three days in advance, ensure the factory has the latest equipment, and replace old tools in a timely manner. Other than that, nothing else needed to be done. His successor introduced a lot of personnel management techniques and tricks, spending a lot of time and money screening foremen, training foremen, and giving them a bunch of interpersonal relations talks. However, he was never able to match the production record set by his predecessor. Keep employees informed To measure performance against goals, sufficient information is needed. The problem is not how much information employees need, but how much information the company must let employees know for its own benefit. How much information must employees obtain to take on the performance the company requires of them? And when should they obtain this information? Employees must be able to control, measure, and guide their own performance, and should know how they are doing without waiting for someone else to tell them. The rules about work procedures and information flow apply to both managers and general employees. But the company must also find ways to make employees responsible for the consequences, they should know how their work relates to the whole, and they should know what contribution they make to the company, and through the company, to society. I understand that providing employees with the information they need for their work is not easy and requires new technology. The numbers themselves usually have complete records, but quickly transmitting information to employees requires new tools. Without information, employees do not have sufficient incentives and methods to improve performance. Providing employees with information about the company and their contribution to it is even more difficult. Most traditional data is meaningless to them, especially if the information is presented in traditional forms and with the usual time delays. However, managers should still try to provide information as much as possible—not because employees ask to see the data, but because doing so is in the company's best interest. Even with the greatest effort, it may still be impossible to transmit information to most employees, but when managers strive to communicate information to every employee, they can reach the people in each factory, office, or branch who influence public opinion and attitudes. Having a managerial vision Job assignments, performance standards, and information are conditions for stimulating employee responsibility, but they do not provide the motivation themselves. Only when employees have a managerial vision, that is, if employees can view the company from the manager's perspective and believe that their performance will affect the company's rise or fall, will they take on the responsibility of achieving the highest performance. Today, many people often talk about how to "give" employees pride in their work, a sense of accomplishment, and a feeling of being valued, but others cannot "give" you a sense of honor, accomplishment, and being valued. Employees will not feel more valued because the company president calls them "dear colleagues" in a letter; the president only highlights his own foolishness. Pride and a sense of accomplishment must come from the work itself and cannot be derived from things outside work. Employees may greatly cherish a commemorative medal given by the company for 25 years of loyal service, but only when the medal truly symbolizes their actual achievements at work will employees appreciate the company's gesture; otherwise, it will be seen as insincere and easily breed dissatisfaction. Employees feel proud only when they have actually done something worthy of pride; otherwise, it is dishonest and harmful. Employees have a sense of accomplishment only when they have actually achieved something, and they feel important only when they have undertaken important tasks. True pride, a sense of accomplishment, and a feeling of being valued are based on active, responsible participation in decisions about their own work and the management of the factory community. Recently, employees of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway Company provided an impressive example. The November 14, 1953 issue of American Business Week reported this story: This week, a group of Chesapeake and Ohio Railway employees walked into the board's luxurious offices to show their pride and joy: a model they had conceived for rebuilding the Huntington plant. This model was completed by 60 blacksmiths, electricians, carpenters, engine mechanics, and apprentices out of love for their work, after six weeks of relentless effort (and mostly using their spare time). Chesapeake and Ohio Railway executives estimated that similar planning might take 30 months to 3 years to complete, showing the scale of this collective effort. The idea was initially sparked because Chesapeake and Ohio Railway realized that the Huntington plant had to be rebuilt to maintain diesel locomotive engines. So, employees working in the plant began discussing the rebuilding plan during lunch breaks. According to supervisor Slack, the old plant built in 1928 was poorly designed and had long been unbearable for employees. For example, the wheel factory was located far from the plant site, so wheels had to be transported from a long distance. That noon, the conversation quickly turned into concrete plans, with everyone proposing how to solve the existing design problems in their own workshops. Their supervisor Slack listened carefully to the various suggestions and took detailed notes. He found a draftsman to turn the ideas into blueprints, then invited everyone to participate in the entire planning process. The final product was the model displayed to the board this week. Besides making employees very happy, the entire plan had several compelling advantages: the estimated cost of the entire rebuilding project was about $2.5 million, far lower than the $10 million to $15 million management originally expected, which was very gratifying. Of course, opportunities to rebuild an entire plant are rare, but managers constantly encounter problems that require designing individual jobs or team work. We always try to break work into small units and arrange the workflow in logical order, but there is no reason why engineers must analyze work and arrange processes for employees; this practice is nothing but a superstition that planning and execution should be separated. We have ample evidence that if the people responsible for execution can participate in planning the work in advance, the plan will be better, and this is the essence of "work simplification" techniques. And for 30 years, this practice has been very successful, producing consistent results wherever applied: better work planning, higher performance, and employees no longer resist change. No wonder Chesapeake and Ohio Railway had already started promoting work simplification programs in its factories years before employees voluntarily participated in the plant rebuilding plan. Community activities in the factory But participating in planning one's own work is not the only way to cultivate a managerial vision. Employees must also have the opportunity to take leadership roles in the factory community; this is the best way to gain practical management experience. The traits that enable a person to take on leadership in the factory community and win respect are often not the same as those needed for management positions. However, the only way companies typically recognize and reward employees is through promotion. No matter how abundant promotion opportunities are and how fair the promotion system is, there will always be some widely respected leaders among employees who do not advance further, and they become disappointed and start opposing the company to continue exercising their leadership abilities. No wonder so many union leaders choose the union as the stage for their career development, because companies cannot recognize their leadership through the promotion system. The famous union leader Walter Reuther is an outstanding example. Undoubtedly, Reuther believed that the free enterprise system was not ideal, and his ideas were mainly based on the premise that a good system should have discovered and utilized leadership talents like his long ago. I also know many union cadres who are extremely conservative in temperament or appearance; their interest in union activities mainly arises because they have never been appreciated by their superiors and have always failed to become supervisors in the company. In every enterprise, employees have the opportunity to gain a managerial vision while managing employees. In every enterprise, there are also many activities that do not belong to the scope of business operations but are factory community activities. These activities must be managed by someone, but they usually have no direct relationship with business operations and have minimal impact on the company's success or failure, so they do not need to be led by management. For example, these activities may include Red Cross blood donation drives, Christmas parties, shift scheduling, or safety measures, employee cafeterias, or the design and planning of employee publications. Each activity may not seem important by itself, but together they are extensive. For employees, these activities are very important because they directly affect their social lives. The information service field is also an area where employees can plan and promote on their own. For example, publishing an employee annual report, writing an employee handbook for new hires, planning training courses on new technologies, new skills, customer service, or how to answer customer calls. If management handles these plans instead of forcing employees to take responsibility themselves, the company loses a great opportunity to cultivate employees' ability to view problems like managers, and it does not benefit business operations. Managers already have enough to be busy with; they do not need to plan non-operational activities in addition to their operational responsibilities. Moreover, running community activities well requires a lot of time and manpower, and if all are controlled by management rather than letting employees fully use their enthusiasm and talents, it will be particularly prone to criticism and dissatisfaction. For example, aren't company restaurants run by executives always full of employee complaints? I want to state one point: I believe that in the field of business operations, employees cannot enjoy the same level of participation. Since employees do not bear "responsibility," they naturally have no "authority." Nor do I want to see more community activities in general enterprises—in fact, I think in many enterprises, such activities should be reduced. I am not advocating for more staff, more frequent meetings, or other symptoms of organizational bloat. I am just advocating that whatever needs to be done should be done in a reasonable way, but with fewer people, and managed by the community within the factory. The quality of these activities should be held to high standards; indeed, these activities provide excellent opportunities to demonstrate the true meaning of performance standards, but the factory community should take actual responsibility, and employees can thereby cultivate a managerial vision and be deeply motivated to strive for the highest performance. It is not easy to develop work motivations that can replace fear, but it must be done. Today, we have sufficient engineering knowledge to effectively design individual and team jobs to achieve the highest performance. We also have social knowledge to organize manpower to achieve work efficiency. Under new technology, we also have a production and sales system that can provide space for employees to use their talents and satisfy their achievement motivation. If employees themselves do not have the desire to perform, then even with these opportunities, they will ultimately not bear fruit. Eliminating fear in the office is a good thing, but eliminating fear alone is not enough; we need more positive incentives—including careful job assignments, high performance standards, sufficient information for employee self-control, and employees participating in factory community affairs like responsible citizens. -END- The best FMCG distributor learning platform in China Focusing on providing professional, practical, and useful tutorials for companies and distributors Committed to helping Chinese FMCG distributors grow rapidly The most professional and practical knowledge base in the FMCG industry Reply with the red number below to get the corresponding content Reply with number 1 to view the complete knowledge base | 001 Excellent article selection | 002 Distributor market operations | 003 Terminal visit management | 004 Sales supervisor skills complete | 005 Sales improvement techniques | 006 Channel expansion | 007 Managing distributors | 008 Distributor development | 009 Distributor internal operations management | 010 Team management | 011 Efficient distribution techniques | 012 Sales manager's eighteen skills | 013 KA operation methods and strategies complete | 014 First lesson for new salespeople | 015 Internet, brands | 016 Distributor B2B transformation | [Long press QR code to follow]