TRUTH 4 If they aren’t buying it, they aren’t doing it
Over recent years, the wise thing has been to help employees see the connection between their work inside the company and their external customers’ experience with their product. Southwest Airlines, of course, has been famously trotted out as an example of this internal branding. It gives its customers the “freedom” to fly affordably and enjoy life through travel. Therefore, the employees should feel the same kind of freedom to do their jobs well—and enjoy life on the job. With internal branding, all the whys of how they’re expected to do their job are imbedded in the cultural conversations employees have with the company overall. Make the experience of doing the job consistent with the experience of using the resulting product, the reasoning goes, and you’ve got a better product (not to mention a stronger customer relationship and larger market share).
On an organizational, macro level, these kinds of conversations are driven via big campaigns coming out of corporate communications, marketing, and HR. But, as a people manager, you have the micro-level responsibility of making the same kinds of emotional links to the employees’ daily deliverables. Marketing managers understand that customers are volunteers—they can always go somewhere else for what they need. Your employees are also volunteers—they can always go somewhere else for a paycheck.
You’re the ultimate brand manager—helping your employees connect the value of what they do in their jobs to the value of the jobs themselves. This isn’t about engaging what you might have once considered to be their discretionary effort. This is about engaging the basic fundamentals of their job responsibilities. If your employees aren’t fully engaged in the spirit behind the tasks of their days, they will do just the bare minimum and then sit around waiting for you to tell them what’s next. In addition to telling them the what, you have to inspire them with the why. Do that well, and you’ve got employees who are sold on the mission of the day.
Your clout as the boss won’t cut it anymore. Because I said so may have worked with a five-year-old (once), but not with people who probably know their job better than you do. And, of course, you better forget about my way or the highway. Just as you can’t force a customer to buy, you can’t compel a valued employee to perform. My way or the highway will result in just one response: “Yeah, okay.” And it won’t be the “okay” of compliance.
In today’s daily workplace, your job as manager is to sell the value of the mundane as much as the marvelous. Your challenge is only as difficult as your customer (your employee) is resistant, or as easy as your employee is emotionally bought-in to the powerful value proposition behind the task.
Sell your employees on the mission of the job they do. Speak about their roles and responsibilities in terms of customer service. Help your employees see how their duties and tasks serve customers down the line—even if that customer is in accounting down the hall. An understanding of the entire value proposition of your department and how its function serves your business unit and the entire corporation will help your employees see how their daily efforts have meaning beyond the immediate sense of hassle and deadline.
And don’t make the mistake of interpreting resistance as a demonstration of “no.” Salespeople don’t take “no” for an answer; neither should you. Find out what the resistance is based on and address that issue specifically. Lack of time? No money? Lack of other essential resources? Maybe your employees need to be convinced that their effort is essential? And do what successful salespeople do. They take that resistance as hints from the customer on how they can successfully seal the deal.
When you get resistance from your employees, don’t punish them. Convince them to buy.