Our Most Valuable Asset: Part I

Is what we see what there is? Our daily activities make it difficult for us to see reality. We limit ourselves to observing what is apparent, and as a consequence we don’t act on the root cause of problems. Technology today is relatively easy to acquire. But where do you find a motivated team? What is more, once you find one, how do you maintain and develop it? Why isn’t our team in tune with our strategy and why does it seem to be demotivated? How can we act on this asset? Our Most Valuable Asset. Do our employees know what we expect of them? It’s difficult to do what is expected of us if we haven’t clearly been told what to do beforehand. The managers to whom employees report should take the necessary time to think out certain things before interviewing them and assessing their performance. A number of points regarding different quantitative, qualitative and relationship aspects should be very clear:

1.- What their employees do well;
2.- What their employees do badly;
3.- What they want their employees to do in the future;
4.- How their progress will be measured;
5.- Possibilities for improvement and the tools for this.

We tend to focus on what our employees do badly and only address them on occasion, and often not in the most appropriate manner. We miss many opportunities to congratulate our employees when they do excellent work or make extra efforts. What does the interview bring to performance? In order to achieve maximum performance from employees, we have to work on a number of factors. Goals (what to do), Competence (how to do it) and Motivation (wanting to do it). So it’s clear that we should know what those people are expected to do by setting out clear goals and indicators with which to monitor their progress. In addition to knowing what we have to do, we should know how to do it, and if this is not the case, the necessary measures should be taken for this to happen. Finally, and possibly the most important thing, we should want to do it. All of this should be dealt with in a completely free and natural way in the interview. This will mean that we are acting on the three factors that directly influence our employees’ performance. In other words, if we do our part well (the most important as managers), we are enhancing as much as possible the factors that will make it possible to increase the performance of the company and create a climate of trust and cooperation.