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Introduction
INTRODUCTION:
Welcome to MASET News. A monthly publication dedicated to the communication between MASET and our many interested friends, customers and potential customers
MASET LLC. I would like to thank one of our readers who sent us the following after reading our Feature Article last month titled - "A story of compassion".
There is nothing new on the web site this month. Tips for New Employee Integration
Do a frustration (barriers to productivity) survey among new hires at the end of the first, third and sixth month. Manage the results. Take a Team Picture on the first day and have it signed by all the members Visit the Products and Services describing the Orientation Passport Tips from Our School for Managers TIME MANAGEMENT -Time is a personal thing. What might seem like a waste of time for you may be highly productive for someone else. Think about day-dreaming, for instance. One person may be doing crucial planning as he stares off into space, while another may have absolutely nothing on his mind. To become more effective and productive, managers must thoroughly examine and consider their lack of time. If training or personal change is based on the results of such examination, productivity within an organization or department will increase significantly, and stress will decrease. Copyright A.E. Schwartz & Associates, all rights reserved ONE LINERS - "To make you think and/or smile"
Minimum Wage does not mean Minimum Effort By Dirk Dusharme - Editor-In-Chief, Quality Digest Good customer service has nothing to do with how much you make. Our publisher, Scott Paton, got plenty of e-mail last week in response to his rant against mega-merchandiser Wal-Mart (see "Last Word" in our April 2004 issue). Most of the e-mail agreed with his view that Wal-Mart has lost sight of customer service (see "Letters" on page 5 and "Last Word" on page 64 of this issue). A few readers disagreed, however. Because we're running our salary survey in this issue, one letter in particular caught my attention: "It's a simple case of getting what you pay for. I could get mad at a person at Burger King for messing up my order, but I realize they're working there for minimum wage. Not exactly a rocket scientist!' There's an underlying sentiment in that statement that says I shouldn't be concerned with the quality of my work if I'm not paid well. Or, even worse, as a consumer, I should expect crappy service from someone getting crappy pay. Well, I don't. I expect good service, all the time. I've had jobs that paid five bucks an hour and jobs that paid 50 bucks an hour (not this one, trust me), and I always strived to do the best job possible. I expect others to do the same. Laurel Thoennes, Quality digest's editorial assistant, often gets e-mails from the readers and advertisers whom she deals with on a daily basis, praising her for going out of her way to locate an old article, help change a buyer's guide listing or about a million other things. Laurel isn't exactly in line to buy a Lexus. She gives excellent customer service because she takes pride in her work. I asked our art director, Caylen Balmain, about his first job flipping burgers. "Did you think about how much you were being paid, and did it affect whether you did a good job or not?" "Funny," he replied, "I never thought about that before. Now that you ask, I don't think it ever crossed my mind what I was paid. It was my first job, and I wanted to make sure I kept it." Minimum wage and 42,000 burgers later, Caylen now runs our art department. I believe that pay has little to do with poor performance. The same people who do poor work at minimum wage are going to do poor work at any wage. It's an attitude. Although the ultimate responsibility for job quality lies with the employee, I think managers also have responsibility to look for ways to motivate employees, to get them excited or at least involved in the workplace. What are your employees' interests? Is there a way to connect their job to those interests through company activities? Is an employee interested in a different type of work at the same company"? If so, why not slowly train them in that function? Maybe the employee has personal problems that are dragging him or her down. Does your company have a policy, formal or informal, to get help for employees who are depressed, drug- or alcohol-dependent or in abusive situation? Do you take a personal interest in your employees' well-being? Do you give credit where credit is due? It's wrong to explain away a grumpy Wal-Mart greeter or messed-up Burger King order on low wages, as if that makes it OK. The way to get better wages is to do a better job than everyone else, to smile at the customer, to so blow the customer away with good service that this person mentions to your manager what great service you gave, instead of writing a put-down that will be seen by a quarter-million magazine and Web readers. Now that, my friend, ain't rocket science. Reprinted with permission of Quality Digest. Originally appeared in Quality Digest, May, 2005 Quality Means No Secrets When United Southern Industries faced increasing foreign competition and a downturn in the U.S. economy, it didn't order cutbacks or layoffs like many of its competitors. Instead, the company chose to invest in its shop floor employees and adopt a stringent quality effort to facilitate a turnaround. The quality and management programs have worked: its innovative Cost of Inferior Quality and Quest for Success management programs saved this North Carolina-based injection molding manufacturer $1.1 million in 2003 and another $327,000 in 2004. The programs keep United Southern industries' employees fully informed about the company's financial status. Factors that negatively affect company performance or profitability are assigned dollar values, clearly illustrating to individual employees what their actions mean for the company as a whole. "United Southern Industries keeps as up-to-date on everything from health care costs to what's driving the business we are getting and losing," says Lisa DosSantos, shop floor machine operator. "Most companies keep this a secret, but not here." The company also invests heavily in education, providing each employee with an average of 100 hours of training per year. This allows employees to become certified in their job skills, and the company boasts a large percentage of Society of the Plastics Industry certified operators and several American Society of Quality-certified workers. The company is registered to ISO 9001 and QS-9000 and has implemented Six Sigma and lean manufacturing practices. In 2003, United Southern Industries implemented an innovative workplace game called Power Dots. He game is posted on a large board in each facility and keeps "score" of each shift's efficiency, scrap, yield, sales, labor use and return material authorizations. Each shift works together to advance its game pieces, creating friendly competition among the workforce. "Employees absolutely love the programs," says Todd Bennett, United Southern Industries president. "There's a sense of trust built up now that all employees have access to the financials, understand what the company is doing with the money, as well as how their position affects the bottom line. Our profitability is up, our labor costs are down and job errors are dramatically lower." The programs have had the following effects on United Southern Industries:
For more information, visit www.unitedsouthern.us Reprinted with permission of Quality Digest. Originally appeared in Quality Digest, April 2005 RxSales: An Expert Performance SystemTM Unique Strain of ADD Strikes Seasoned Sales Professionals
Today Jim Kinney is the president and managing broker of Chicago's preeminent real estate brokerage, Rubloff Inc., with seven offices and 225 agents who average $7.1 million each in sales. But Jim remembers the day he knew it was time to hang up his agent gear and accept the call of sales leadership. "I was sitting with a prospective buyer, nodding my head as he talked, smiling at all the right moments," he told me. "But I was actually thinking about my upcoming vacation. Suddenly I was capitulated back into the present, and I realized that I had not heard what my prospective buyer had said for - how long? I had no idea." Jim Kinney explains a classic symptom of salespeople who suffer from Attention Deficiency. It is the bane of seasoned professionals. They have a command of their subject and extensive experience with similar conversations. It is easy to perform several tasks at once - plan ahead, think about other things, and listen (well, sort of). A more commonly known condition, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), makes it difficult for children and adults to focus, organize, and finish tasks. Treatment includes medication, counseling, and, in some cases, behavioral therapy. While the exact cause is not clear, researchers have found that ADD tends to run in families, so a genetic factor is likely. In the RxSales Expert Performance System, we examine sales professionals for signs of a disorder that is specific to their profession. Instead of a genetic cause, research shows that Attention Deficiency in sales is often linked to length of time in the business. It is people, not tasks that do not receive the attention they deserve. And the results can be devastating. Sales professionals pay a high price to engage in a behavior that the rest of our society condones: multi-tasking. They often miss the most important thing that the potential client says - the buying signal. While Jim was mentally landing in Jamaica, did his prospective buyer say The One Thing that would cinch the sale? Lack of attention is one symptom. Another is impulsivity, defined as "acting before thinking." This happens when the sales professional is taken off guard and loses control temporarily. A potential client says something or does something that has the effect of a curve ball in baseball or a tough shot in tennis. Every sales professional has a different list of tough shots. One says, "Oh, I hate it when prospects say 'All right, show me what you've got,' and I feel like I must perform on cue, like a wind up toy." Another says, "I get annoyed when people take phone calls or other interruptions when I have an appointment with them." Despite the nature of the tough shot, a salesperson's response is often impulsive and ineffective. Sudden moves are common for sales professionals whose style is alert, fast-paced, eager, and change oriented. However, in sales as in sports, sudden moves can lose the game. For attention deficiency in sales, treatment involves behavioral conditioning. Part of the prescription lies in learning time-honored ways to achieve the state of concentration - or "one pointed-ness," as the definition suggests. Many top producers' results improve dramatically when they perfect the art of staying in the moment. Some realize that both their personal and professional lives have been running on automatic pilot. They get serious - Yoga classes, books and tapes help them regain focus and control. The second part of the prescription involves developing a response sequence that allows sales professionals to move through their tough shots and regain control of the process once it enters more comfortable territory. Since Attention Deficiency often plagues the seasoned professionals in a sales organization, Jim Kinney was wise to authorize a Group Diagnosis of his agents. In the first group, we discovered that Attention Deficiency was a major problem. Fifty-percent of the agents showed some evidence of the condition and, for thirty-six percent of the group, Attention Deficiency had become a critical problem. Their leader, Jim Kinney, could have basked in the glow of a record year in 2004. He could have, but he did not. With an eye to the future and a track record of investing in advanced learning, Jim convened a group of agents for lunch one day and recommended elective "surgery" (The Clinic for Sales ProfessionalsTM) for this and several other early warning signs. With proper treatment, sales professionals enjoy Attention Proficiency. They successfully perform their essential role - expert facilitator of decision-making. Anything that takes professionals or their prospects and clients off the natural path of decision-making is an obstacle. That is why Attention Deficiency takes a place, along with Decision Making Dysfunction and Enlarged Approval Gland, as a Killer Condition. To learn more about RxSales: An Expert Performance System™, visit the Guest section at www.rxsales.com or contact Charles Loew at Charles.Loew@masetllc.com COMING IN THE NEXT FEW ISSUES:
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