Have This Value Discussion With Your Employees -- Today

I thought I would try something different in this post. Normally, my message is for managers — to help you develop consistent power performance from your employees. This is key to connecting with customers and growing a successful business.

But today, I thought I would write something that you could print for, or e-mail to, your employees. Perhaps this outline of how they can add more value will clarify what you expect of them and encourage them to be more committed to performance. 

Consider using the "to my employees” note below or customize it more directly for your workers. Whether you use it or not, have a value discussion with your employees and provide the necessary guidance.

To my employees:

To be noticed, appreciated and retained, you must take full personal responsibility for creating significant, unique and results-oriented value for our organization. This means I need you to think through each of your decisions and know its impact on our customers, on your job and on our company. This is very important in our highly competitive and challenging workplace.

To give you a little guidance, here are my ideas on how to increase your impact and add more value:

1. Know our organization. Be familiar with our business purpose, mission and value statements. This shows your effort to understand our business and to use this information to regularly make decisions that positively affect our customers and our business. When you know what we are all about, you can find and invent opportunities that make sense for us — this drives value.
2. Know your strengths. Each of you is good at some things and not at others. To stand out in the workplace, you must be able to know what you are intrinsically good at — what your talents and strengths are — and then let me know the areas in the workplace that allow you to play to your strengths. Sometimes it means minor job modifications or enhancements; sometimes it means more significant changes. But remember your best performance will be in areas in which you feel capable and confident, and interested in what you do — this drives value.
3. Take initiative. Step up and take responsibility to help solve some of our problems and hunt for opportunities for us to be successful. Now is no time to hide, to do as little as possible or to think the next person will do it. You must show up, step up and stand out - this drives value.
4. Focus on the bottom line. Know the impact of your ideas; propose things that make a difference. Think things through and know the numbers. Propose ideas that make sense - this drives value. 

This is how to make a great difference in our business; this is how you add value. It is time to refocus and approach each day with more thinking and more energy. Together, we’ll redefine value so our customers always need what we do. That is good for all of us. Thanks for your great effort. Let’s talk about this.