There are four points in mastery of a business, the foundation of a company. Money Mastery; knowing your numbers inside and out. Time Mastery; being very effective and efficient on your time. Destination Mastery; knowing exactly where you’re going in a perfect world with your business. And Delivery Mastery; delivering your goods and services with excellence to your customers.
However, when it comes to money mastery, there are some other numbers we need to know in our business, these are the little hidden percentages that we’re either not familiar with or are measuring that could make a big difference. I’ll explain. Once you get clear on the culture of your organization, the vision of what you want to create, the mission of how to get there, that in itself creates more clarity for your organization.
I’m going to share a couple of examples. Zappos used to be a shoe company that just sells shoes; however, they don’t make shoes. They have a tremendous culture. I had the fortunate experience 12 years ago to tour their facility. They most definitely have an out of the box type thinking mentality in that organization. However, one statistic I found very interesting that they administer. When they hire somebody, onboard them and go through the entire training process. When that process is complete, they offer those individuals $2,000 on the spot to quit. That’s it. “Now you’ve done all the work. Here’s $2,000. If you want to quit, quit.” The statistic is that 10% take the money and quit. Those are the people that would’ve been unproductive and would have somewhere down the road quit anyway, so get rid of them now.
Many years ago, Bank of America had a challenge with its call centers. Heavy turnover, burnout, and results were down. They brought somebody in to move things around to shift things up. What did they do? First of all, they created scheduled 15-minute breaks that everyone met at the same time. All these callers would meet in the coffee room at the same time for 15 minutes. They bought and invested in upgraded coffee machines and coffee, and they did something else that was interesting. They changed the tables from able to seat four to tables able to seat ten. Where before you had these callers burning out by hitting the phones all day long. Now there were designed 15-minute breaks with 10 people getting together at a table, they’re drinking nicer coffee. They felt more important because the company invested in nice coffee machines and coffee, something simple, so they could enjoy a nice cup of jo chilling out while conversing and collaborating with others. And the result? Turnover went from 40% down to 12%, and productivity increased by 20%.
Those are the numbers in the little things we don’t see. Sometimes it’s the little things we do that make the big difference. So, I encourage you to look at your organizations in the little things you can do to get your team to chill out a little bit now and then, and collaborate so they can go back and be more productive.
A happy team is a team that stays. And when you have a happy team with very little turnover, that’s a company that’s going to be successful for a long time. So, investigate your numbers, make the shifts, and it’ll make a big difference in your business.
COACH MICHAEL DILL is an Award-Winning Certified Business Coach, global speaker, and published author. He is a proud Action Coach Franchise partner as well as the President of Power & Ice Wealth Creation a strategic leadership company that works with business owners, leaders, teams, and entrepreneurs to both develop a systematized and structured organization while accelerating their mindset, efficiencies, and effectiveness to grow both personally and professionally to achieve extraordinary results. He brings more than 40 years of business and entrepreneurial experience in his leadership, team training, and mentoring practice. Businesscoachmichaeldill.com