“I’ve addressed that issue many times and she continues to make the same mistake. What is the problem?” Sound familiar?

  Establishing accountabilities is often perceived as a simple process that flows seamlessly from communicating expectations, evaluating performance to making improvements and suggestions - done. For business owners that use the above quote frequently, that process apparently does not work. If you find yourself in that category, then this is for you. This blog answers the musical question, “How do I get my employees to follow through and comply with policies, processes and expectations?”

  First, let’s establish the fact that many employees will only execute that which we communicate as important to their own survival. Sad but true.

  While the goal of any employer is to attract and retain the highest caliber employees to meet performance objectives, the reality is that few employees will exhibit exceptional behavior and exceed expectations if we do not clearly articulate the value of exceptional behavior in tangible terms. Simply put, we must clearly articulate expectations and implement a monitoring system that says this is so important to us that we will track your performance and provide ongoing feedback to you on where your performance falls in relationship to our expectations. Finally, we will provide interventions that help you to achieve the level of performance required or assign responsibilities consistent with your ability to contribute wherever available.

  The objective of changing behavior is to align employee behavior with the objectives and behaviors that meet overall strategic goals. When we set company goals, we are saying to the world that we are working together to achieve a level of profitability that satisfies the working capital requirements, generates investment opportunities and puts the company on a path that maximizes shareholder equity. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, often we make sweeping statements that sound good but have no teeth and therefore never materialize into results. So how do we change behavior? It starts with you.

  Business ownership requires leadership. The true measure of a leader is the ability to have a vision, clearly articulate that vision and motivate others to align their behavior and activities with strategies to make the vision a reality.

    Vision

  Let’s break that down even further. Having a vision involves being able to see the business in ways that the average employee does not and knowing its place in the marketplace. It also means being audacious enough to see the growth and success of the business in tangible terms and then planning the steps to take it there. The vision is something most business owners do not have a problem with. After all, that is the reason you went into business to begin with! If you are so deeply mired in the day to day rituals that you do not have time to cultivate the vision, you are doing the business and your employees a disservice.

  Articulating the Vision

  How do you communicate your vision? Is it a list of shoulds and shouldn’ts? Do you give verbal instructions? Do you give a broad overview of your goals periodically? Your ability to clearly illustrate your vision, the role each employee plays in the visioning process and the quantitative and qualitative measurement for attaining goals is critical to change. Do your employees know how well they performed? At the end of the day, how do they know they did a good job? What’s on the scoreboard for them and how do you know? Your job is to define the goals, identify strategies and measurements for success.

  If you don’t do it who will?

  Your employees, that’s who!

  They will decide how much they can accomplish in one hour, week or month. They will decide the quality of goods and services delivered and set the standards for your company. This is your job and you must set the standards and define the tasks and groups of tasks to be executed by each employee. All tasks and groups of tasks must be directly tied to strategies that accomplish your goals and delegated to those employees who have the knowledge and skills to accomplish them. You must decide who decides. Assigning decision rights is important because you define the scope of responsibility for all company goals and accountability for execution.

  The idea of qualitative and quantitative evaluation can be intimidating for some small businesses; particularly when staff members are few and each staff performs several functions. Simply put, qualitative evaluation can be as easy as defining the environment in which business is conducted. It can be a value measurement that defines each business’ position in the geographic market. It can also measure the effectiveness of business leadership. Quantitative evaluation is measurement by the numbers. We can evaluate company performance by measuring gross profits, net operating profit, accounts receivables against sales and overall cash flow. Again, those with decision rights are accountable for attaining target goals and these measurements track progress and identify areas for improvement required to attain company performance goals.

  Motivating Employees: Aligning Behavior

  Finally, articulating your vision requires you to implement a reward system that reinforces your expectations and priorities. This is usually a combination of compensation and benefits that allows for valuation of skill sets and aligns behavior with expected results. All behaviors should tie directly to or support business goals.

   But how do you motivate employees to perform?

  Employees show up every day not for the love of the job because clearly there are some days where there may be no love for the job! No matter how much they may proclaim their love for their work (and it may very well be true!), they expect to be paid. If we want employees to give their best consistently, we must recruit employees that give their best consistently and pay them accordingly. Either that or recruit employees at low pay rates, monitor them carefully (I mean like Big Brother!) or hire desperate employees and intimidate them into performing at the level we expect. I do not recommend either of the last two options, nor do I believe that we must overpay our employees in advance of their performance in order to motivate them to excellence.

   The answer lies in your leadership capability. Do you lead by example? Is your work ethic one that is exemplary?  How do you non-verbally communicate the vision and expectations of your company? Are you available to provide information, encouragement and support? Are you a consummate professional? What is the standard that you set? Are you the person for whom employees go that extra mile?

  These are tough questions that you must ask yourself because if you are not among that small percentage of businesses that employ staff who are self motivated towards excellence, then you probably suffer from performance issues. You are now responsible for changing the culture of your business to one that delivers exceptional products and services to customers, rewards excellence and whose profitability contributes to the economic strength of the local and global market.

  In short, you must be willing to change if you envision change for your business.  To plagiarize fortune cookie wisdom, “Your business does not get better by chance. Your business gets better by change.”

How  can we navigate this minefield of cultural relationships? Through open communication.  First, we must establish that all of these cultural and geographic distances also create challenges to communication as well. As we learn about communication, we learn that there is a traditional sender, message, receiver, feedback process in play. That seems to work reasonably well in American business interactions because there is a common understanding of that process. 

Realistically, because of some of the nuances that we previously addressed, communication may be distorted based on perceptions, experience, understanding imagery, sensitivity to proprietary information etc.  Dealing with emerging markets communication contains emotional content, ideas about expectations, issues of trust as well as other elements that may arise. Because of these implications, we need a new model for communication that takes into consideration a deeper level of understanding in order to overcome some of the distortions that arise based on perceptions.

In the adapted model we posit that the traditional communication components exist; however, we acknowledge a third layer of information that is affective in nature. We describe the receiver as one who receives communication in a multidimensional format. The following diagram illustrates this multidimensional communication model.

Each message is sent with a host of other subliminal messages attached.  For example:

“I like the product, but I’m not happy with the packaging. Let’s change the packaging to make it more marketable.”

The message sent but not received is that the product can sell but the packaging is not appropriate for the new market. 

The message received but not sent is that this person considers our products to be inferior. They will probably want to change the packaging and make it their own and we will lose all rights to the branding of this product. There is no way we will allow that to happen.

So, despite the message being sent, the message received has been distorted by a series of factors that have some historical and cultural significance even though they may appear irrelevant to the current transaction. The receiver feels distrust based on an emotional memory of past exploitation. Hence, the affective component to the communication process. Instead of a linear sender receiver message being sent the message may be distorted by a host of factors.

There may be a clear sender, however there is duality in the reception.  A more realistic depiction of communication includes a cognitive receiver as well as an affective receiver. The message my be filtered by; gender, age, interpretation, asymmetrical information, jargon, lifestyles, economy, education, fear….                                                                                           

The cognitive reception processes the information through the pre-frontal cortex, the seat of our reasoning. The affective reception is processed by the limbic system which processes emotional information and assesses threats. When limbic engagement takes place it often supersedes the pre-frontal cortex processing and the receiver may perceive the new or “foreign” concept or communication as a threat until further cognitive processing can occur.[1]

Beneath the communication system are a variety of affective elements that may influence the quality of the communication and affect the ultimate outcome.  The dilemma is that we are often unaware of these affective elements and may be blindsided by subrogated issues. To further complicate matters, we are unable to know what these may or may not be unless we have invested time and committed to an understanding of the people and culture first hand through immersion. Most of us do not have nor take this opportunity. We want to build trust but why should we be trusted if we cannot or will not invest time in understanding the people, the cultures and practices that drive these markets?

We must build alliances. Not the traditional exploitive alliances that have been our past methods of doing business but the type of interpersonal alliances that are genuine and that allow us to have a greater understanding and appreciation for the world economy we seek to develop. Social networking has aided this and we are in a unique position historically. We can now develop relationships abroad through use of technology that allows us each a glimpse into each other’s worlds. 

Developing relationships with stakeholders is critical to working within emerging markets because the trust issue will constantly rear its ugly head. If you don’t believe this, look within the US cultural demography. The United States, with its advanced technological developments, capital markets and broad cultural and demographic scope still has much to learn about building bridges between cultural and ethnic groups based on mutual trust.  A reliance on “political correctness” has replaced a genuine investment in understanding and has, in many cases, short circuited our efforts to build authentic relationships across cultures.

Forging Stronger Cross Cultural Business Relationships

Acknowledge differences and become curious about how and why groups approach business the way they do. Have and show a genuine curiosity about how work gets done. Listen long enough to ask more questions and engage the speaker and understand the benefits and challenges they face while engaging in their business practices.

Do your homework. What was the past historical and economic relationship like? Are there lingering effects that may influence your business relationship today? Are you bringing any preconceived notions to the business relationship? Be clear about the benefits afforded each party in the business engagement from your perspective and make sure you understand what their objectives are.  Be authentic. If the business relationship is not right, respectfully move on.

There will always be asymmetrical information, but intentional transparency is vital to building trust.

Be aware of language and avoid language that may be emotionally charged. I do not advocate walking on eggshells; however, I do believe in using language that is neutral when understanding is the goal.  Seek clarification wherever possible when misunderstanding takes place.

Finally, remember that doing business across cultures can be exciting, challenging and rewarding. Mutual learning and appreciation for the value each entity brings to the relationship should be the bonus for cross cultural enterprise. Ultimately, business engagements should be a win – win proposition and overcoming cultural challenges is a significant component of business success in a global economy.

Listen to the lion’s tale.

[1] Carlos Diz, Instituto de Lideranca Executiva, Brazil

As the story closed, one of the participants stood and asked the speaker why every story about a man and a lion ended with the man overcoming the lion. The facilitator responded, “Man will always win until the lion can write his own story.”

As much research as has been done on capturing business opportunities in emerging markets, surprisingly little has been written about the cultural nuances one encounters , how they may challenge the best business relationships and how  businesses may overcome them. Let’s get this straight. I’m not talking about cultural etiquette and your ability to conform to cultural norms. Anyone can learn to go through the motions and display the appropriate behaviors. We’re talking about the real challenges. The unspoken ones.  I’ve found that these challenges fall into a few categories that are consistent across many cultures.

Relational History – Impact on Indigenous Attitudes and Perceptions of Western Presence

When we study the history of other cultures, we must be aware that our perception of history may be biased by our perspectives. Facts don’t change; however, depending on historical outcomes, reactions and attitudes about those outcomes influence our ability to foster sound business relationships.

Media – Imagery and the Effect on Indigenous Public Perception

The perception of wealth and poverty on a spectrum of conditions in the west is controlled by the media which in turn controls disbursement of imagery about these conditions to the rest of the world.  These images often do little to build trust in our economic platform for those emerging countries exploring options to do business in this country.

Experience – Anecdotal References and Relationships with Cultures

Experiencing emerging markets as a tourist can give a distorted view of the true nature of the political, environmental, economic and cultural dynamics that influence global business relationships.

Cross - Cultural Communication Models

Investment in communication models that foster trust are often limited and misunderstandings may reinforce preconceived attitudes and stereotypes.

Building stronger relationships requires multi-dimensional communication models.  We explore one such model in Part 2 of this article. 

At each networking event (I lost count of how many I attended); I walked up to these incredibly large human beings. “Hi, I’m Kate and forgive my ignorance but I’m not a sports fan so please tell me your name.” After the incredulous unspoken “Huh?” that momentarily crossed their faces, the athletes usually laughed and seemed actually relieved that their notoriety was lost on me because we could then have an intelligent conversation without the “What’s in it for me” cloud hanging over our heads. One athlete said, “First, let me just say, you are ignorant!” We both had a good laugh over it and had a conversation about health care and the medical profession and I discovered that he had never intended to pursue a career in sports and planned on becoming a doctor prior to being drafted for the NFL.

It was my metaphorical Super bowl. All who make it to the Super bowl have reached a level of success that allows them to compete at the highest and most challenging strata of their professions. I would equate it to the old “How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice…” While the lights, camera, action, feeding frenzy was in full force, I thought of the relative obscurity in which each of these professionals labored before the lights were shining on them. The short shelf life their careers often have illuminate the need to capitalize on opportunities when presented and to prepare for unforeseen hardships while aggressively pursuing the goal. I thought of the many variables that influence personal and professional lives and how they must risk it all to pursue their goals.  

As entrepreneurs, those who commit to the sacrifices required to become successful will eventually have the opportunity to play their best game. We all have the opportunity to become champions on our own playing fields. The year 2010 can be a year of level playing fields and as long as we prepare we can win.  Just as the Saints came marching in from the underdog position to win, entrepreneurs can serve it up in the business world.

Who dat? A champion – game on!

I mean the act of not showing up as your authentic self.  The consequences of faking may seem harmless at first blush.  After all, faking it is common, particularly early in one’s career.  “Fake it ‘til you make it “has been the mantra of many a young professional trying to break into their first career opportunity and if you choose that route, It should represent a short term solution to the lack of experience catch -22.  We also use our ability to fake it to gain confidence in new or intimidating situations.  The practice of “feeling the fear and doing it anyway” is helpful in overcoming challenges.

If, however, you find yourself perpetrating a fraud after an extended period of time, you may want to examine the reasons you do not bring the best representation of your thinking, actions and skills to the table. Women (and men) fake it for many reasons – ironically, they fake it for some of the same reasons they fake it in - ahem – other arenas.

1. They fake it to please employers or co-workers and hold on to their jobs. In the current economic climate, they feel compelled to “perform” under less than ideal circumstances and they often suppress true thoughts and feelings to preserve their working relationships and status in the workplace.
2. Faking it as a means of not exposing oneself to employers is also common. In many corporate environments much lip service is given to thinking outside of  that proverbial box; however, in practice many businesses are wed to an almost “groupthink” culture.  Employees in these settings must tread lightly and learn to interpret the subtexts of all communication and interactions.
3. Some fake it because they do not know how to complete the job. They have not been able to explore the resources available to them or tell colleagues or managers what they need to be successful.
4. Fear of rejection is often the core reason for people faking it. Rejecting one’s authentic needs, ideas, contributions is essentially a form of self deprivation.

One of the problems with faking it is that your colleagues, employer and other stakeholders think that the person you present to them is really you! The repressed frustration, anxieties and resentments that are seething below the surface become their impression of who you are. They never really get the benefit of the person who is a valued contributor.

Faking it almost guarantees that eventually you will be so frustrated and well – unsatisfied that you will not enjoy your work but lose confidence in your ability to deliver on your value proposition.  There are steps you can take if you’ve been faking it.

1. Start today to bring your true self to work. Express your thoughts, concerns and ideas with diplomacy.
2. Give instructions to co-workers and managers about what they can do to help you contribute successfully.
3. Be informed and do your homework to develop resources for your own success.
4. Share what you know and what you learn in a way that others value your contributions.

The sooner you bring your authentic self to your work, the better your working relationships will be.

Stop faking it.

ROCHESTER, New York (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Reserve must be prepared to raise interest rates if needed before the jobless rate has fallen to an “acceptable level”, or risk losing its inflation-fighting credibility, a senior Fed official said on Tuesday.

“People who are mesmerized by the past will be missing opportunities for the future.”  James E. Glassman, Managing Director and Senior Economist, JP Morgan Chase & Co. 

1. What is the biggest lesson for you over the last year?

2. What is my “divine assignment” at this stage of business?

3. This time next year, what would I like to see different in my business? In other words, what’s my vision?

 4. What have I been procrastinating about?  

 At this time of year, these are questions any business owner should have been asking. If you have not done so already, now is your chance. As the leader of your business (even if you are the sole person) you drive the vision of your business to manifestation. Spend some time over the next couple of weeks and redefine your vision.

Be preemptive. Opportunities await. 

Make Profit Not Excuses.    

–Kate Washington (President & CEO of Enterprise Solutions International, LLC)