Inclusive Management: Part 2

There is indeed a secret sauce for achieving inclusive management and as usual some folks naturally have the ability to make it happen. That doesn’t mean that they can’t get better, it just means they have a jump on the rest of us. Some people have better instincts than others, like in Baseball, some base-runners just “know” when to take the extra base and others should rely on the base coaches to get them where they need to go. A guy can have blazing speed, but not be a very good base-runner because his instincts are not very good, and there is more to it than that. At the end of the day the great ones are also the ones that studied the most. That guy with the great instincts is usually the one who is also learning the most about which outfielders have the best throwing arms and which ones don’t. Because they have a passion for the game they don’t consider it to be work. They Love it.

We all have experienced the difference it makes when we “Love” something and become fully engaged in the activity that drives the result. Time fly’s when we are in love and engaged. And that is no accident either. Love is God Stuff and time is man-made. That’s right, we made up the whole time thing. There is no time on the “other side” – the non-physical side. It is that from which we came and to where our consciousness shall go. (I’ll say more about this in another article). So where am I going with all this time and Love stuff. I’ll tell you where I am going – I am going directly to your wallet Mr. and Ms. Business person! And I am not going there to take anything out.

The idea of inclusive management is obviously to get your people involved. But it’s not to simply get them involved in their job, it’s to get them involved in “the running of the Business”. That is the secret sauce. Now for the ingredients of the sauce – the how do you do that? You do that by creating a system of management that gives responsibility to the employees. For example: A warehouse manager would actually take a group of his people aside for a meeting and ask them what is on their minds. Because he has implemented other communication strategies to make it safe for them to communicate what they think might be wrong with the operation, they speak up. “The lighting in the warehouse is horrible,” one guy says. The manager later polls everyone and finds that 87% of all the warehouse employees believe their job is negatively affected by the poor lighting. This is where the rubber meets the road my friends. Now it is time to get a small committee together of warehouse employees that will be responsible for researching the lighting situation, getting prices to change it and to make recommendations to management. If the manager sits in, he/she only facilitates the meeting. Naturally, there are budgets to be considered and there is transparent upper management that is required to properly communicate their decision to implement or not to implement the recommendations. And how does this affect your wallet? Because the workers now have a say in what is going on around them and they are happier and happier translates into more productivity. There are methodologies that can also be used to get their input on other areas of the business that they are not directly involved in, but as with everything else, what affects A will eventually affect Z.

This is not pie in the sky stuff or theoretical management. I can attest to this myself having implemented these practices in more than one business. This is tried and true management practices. And if you don’t believe me check out the teachings of W. Edwards Deming (he was the brains behind Japan’s industrial and quality revolution).

If you want help with your business or a difficult situation in your life that seems unsolvable contact me at allen@allenhatton.com.