The Root Causes of Employee Problems

Sometimes the best idea does not come from the consensus of the large group, but rather from the dissenting vote of the lone ranger. And for all the complaining managers do about their direct reports, the truth is that all problems with employees can be reduced to three root causes. These are the two primary items that this issue focuses on.

Corporate Acceleration

Aside from a variety of religious books (no need to stir up that hornet's nest here), the finest document ever written in my opinion is the Constitution of the United States of America. It provided a framework for effective democracies world-wide. At the heart of this approach to societies is the idea that the majority rules. The majority of voters select the president and the lawmakers. The majority of elected officials make a host of important decisions. In other words, the "majority" in any group makes the most critical decisions for the good of the overall organization.

Unfortunately, sometimes the majority is wrong. Sometimes the very best idea comes from one individual within the group whom every one else thinks is crazy. Actually, that's how history is usually created. One person sticks to his or her guns long enough until their idea is finally given a chance. Then slowly the idea catches momentum until suddenly the "majority" of people see the new perspective as the right way to do things. Many of the icons of business got their start this way:

Walt Disney was called a fool for creating a full-length animated film. People thought Ray Kroc was nuts for starting a nation-wide chain of hamburger joints called McDonald's. Michael Dell was completely left alone when he started selling computers directly to end buyers. Today he has overwhelmed Hewlett-Packard and is moving into other electronic products.

As you sit through meeting after meeting, be sure to listen to the lone voice that says the majority is wrong. Listen to their rationale. Dig into their thought process. See if there is any possibility that their idea could save your organization a ton of money. Think about it. Most people are too busy to examine every issue. Consequently, if a few key people support an idea, then a lot of other people will automatically jump on board. Pretty soon the idea attracts a critical mass of people and before you know it the "majority" thinks it's a pretty darn good idea. However, what if the first person was wrong and simply convinced a few others to jump on board and those few people each attracted a few more. Before you know it, a bad idea has suddenly become a good idea in the eyes of the majority. I think that's probably how slavery became acceptable several hundred years ago. It's also how the earth was considered flat. Before you go down the path of a very bad idea that could create enormous negative long-term effects, please consider the perspective of the minority. Even if the minority consists of one person!

Career Acceleration

In my experience, the most frequent complaint of all managers is they say that they simply have weak performers reporting directly to them. These managers invest an enormous amount of time and energy complaining about how their employees screwed up, lost key accounts, arrived late for meetings, have no vision and, in general, are not the same person they thought they hired.

If you happen to be one of these people, here are a couple of tips: stop complaining, stop being frustrated and stop playing the role of the victim.

All employee problems can be traced to three root causes:

1. The wrong person was hired.
2. The person was not trained properly.
3. The person was not held accountable with both positive and negative consequences.

Notice: by putting the onus of responsibility squarely back on your shoulders, you can now do something about it.

If you think that this problem is beyond your control, then you can legitimately waste time getting frustrated. However, once you realize that you (or someone else) have hired the wrong person, not clearly explained their role and/or developed them to be successful in that role, or have failed to hold the individual accountable for their behavior and results, then you can take the appropriate actions: fire the person or move them into a role they can be successful in, provide more effective coaching for the individual, and/or reinforce effective behavior and results with positive consequences and ineffective behavior and results with negative consequences.

Stop complaining about your people, identify the root cause or causes of the poor performance and take action immediately.

New White Paper – Accelerate Your Strengths

On June 16th I gave a half-day seminar on “Accelerate Your Strengths: practical ideas to boost business momentum” for GE Capital. It was such an interesting project that I wrote a white paper for the group after the seminar based on what we talked about. In turn, that white paper was forwarded on to 7,000 GE employees. Consequently, I thought you might like to read the paper, except this version has all the references to GE taken out. Here is the link for the

Accelerate Your Strengths white paper: http://thecoughlincompany.com/accellerate_your_strengths.html

New Book, Find a Way to Win: Management Insights from Terry Michler, America's All-Time Winningest Soccer Coach

This book focuses on business lessons that can be learned from soccer. The foundation of the book is how Terry Michler used the powerful simplicity of Dutch soccer to win more games than any other U.S. coach in history.

On July 11th, the finals of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa between Holland and Spain was watched by more than 700 million people. While I was cheering for Holland at the beginning of the game, a major decision by their coach led me to learning a valuable lesson all over again.

Dutch soccer, which is highlighted in my book, is all based on extraordinary technical skill, efficiency, and precise attacking soccer. This is how a country with only 16 million people competes so extraordinarily well with the world's super powers in soccer including number-one ranked Brazil, whom they beat in the quarterfinals. However, in the World Cup finals Holland abandoned what made them great and instead focused on playing brutal, violent soccer. They wanted to intimidate Spain, and in the end they lost the game and the respect of so many people who love Dutch soccer. What happened and why did they do it?

They felt they couldn't compete with Spain if they allowed them to get into their normal passing game. So they consciously decided to physically attack the Spanish players with violent tackles all over the field. One Dutch player even shoved his metal cleats into the chest of a Spanish player. They received numerous yellow cards, a red card, and ridicule from the world-wide soccer press after the game.

What's the lesson to learn here for every business? Stay true to who you are. When the prize is close don't abandon what got you to be one of the best organizations in your industry. Too many companies in the past ten years have decided that what made them very, very good wasn't going to be enough to make them number one in their industry, and so they got away from their strengths. Big mistake.

I believe Holland will return to their traditional style of play, focus on precise, skillful, attacking soccer, and get away from their violent style of play. I think they learned a huge lesson. And hopefully every business that got away from its core strength in the pursuit of being bigger and more successful financially than anyone else in the industry will also return to its core and get back to winning again.

You can learn more about Find a Way to Win at http://thecoughlincompany.com/book_store.html

Republishing Articles

Each month my e-newsletter gets republished in approximately 20 blogs, on-line publications, and internal publications for businesses, universities, and not-for-profit organizations. If you would like to republish all or part of my monthly articles, please send me an e-mail at dan@thecoughlincompany.com with "Republishing Article" in the subject heading. I will send you the article in a word document. All I ask is that you include my name as the author of the article and a short paragraph at the end of the article about me with a link to my website.

Take care and have a great month!

Dan Coughlin

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