Small Business: Make It Easy to Measure and Reward

It’s not that hard. Was talking with a client about yesterday’s rebooted resolutions. The very first one is:

I will ask every employee for one suggestion on how we can make it easier for our customers and prospects to do business with us. I will reward those employees whose suggestions we use.

You want to really accelerate your internal and external growth this year?

Constantly encourage your employees to go through their days thinking of ways for you to make it easier for customers to give you money.

Easier – that word’s important for the purposes of this discussion. Maybe it involves the use of new media. Maybe it involves some capital investment.

Heck, maybe you can’t implement every suggestion this year.

Measure and reward all serious suggestions – no matter how crazy. Make it your company’s internal mission to come up with as many suggestions as possible. Evaluate them. Measure their impact on the company.

Then (and why is it so many companies – including one I used to work for – want to avoid this last part) offer crazy rewards for their success. Offer crazy rewards for efforting to increase the numbers of ideas. Make the ideas available for everyone to see. Crazy ideas often lead to other crazy ideas. Keep reinforcing this throughout the year.

Roy Williams taught me long ago: “You cannot increase what you do not measure and reward.”

Encourage. Measure. Reward. Reinforce. Increase.

There – I just made it easy for you.