Business Resources
The Soft Stuff is the Hard Stuff
By Pamela D. A. Reeve, Chair, The Commonwealth Institute
When I was in graduate school, “hard” subjects, such as capital markets, cost accounting, and managerial economics were revered; “soft” subjects like organizational behavior were regarded with something just short of disdain. The soft stuff was too easy and the hard stuff was, well, hard. Turns out, like a lot of things, we had it backwards.
You have done the “hard” stuff in order to survive the economic challenges of the past year. You have done everything you can imagine (and some you couldn’t) to cut costs. You have eliminated projects and product lines. You have closed facilities. You have deferred (for who knows how long?) major investments and purchases. You have laid people off, reorganized and restructured. You have redesigned and re-planned. It has not always been a lot of fun, but it has kept your business going, perhaps even improved it in some ways. Turns out, all hard stuff may have been the easy stuff.
As leaders we want the people who work with and for us to be energized and creative; we need that in order for our organizations to growth and thrive. We can’t succeed with folk just happy to be employed. And we can’t accomplish our goals if our offices are filled with the walking wounded, demoralized, passive, worried, angry, unfocussed. So after more than a year of cut-cut-cut, disappointment and job loss that has affected nearly everyone on some way, how do you retain (or regain) what you need from your people?
Turns out it’s the “soft” stuff, and it’s hard. Here are a few thoughts:
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Open up. Tell your employees how things stand, show them the numbers, share what you see as the opportunities and challenges ahead. (Extra points if you never stopped doing this.)
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Listen up. Solicit their ideas in a variety of ways—town meetings, one-on-one conversations, anonymous methods. Do it often, make it a conversation.
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Saddle up. Name a person or team to develop and execute on good ideas.
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Talk it up. Make sure the company hears from you—and sees you—often. Let people know that an idea has taken hold and that Sally is heading up the effort to make it happen. Recognize the progress, and declare victory when the time comes.
All that hard work of cost reduction has typically been a centrally controlled and top-down operation (and often for good reasons). This soft work of re-engaging, re-energizing, and innovating is more dispersed, less systematic, more individual. As the leader, you rightfully lay out the goal; but ask your people how to get there. They need the sense of urgency, the excitement about success, the satisfaction that comes with being part of your team. And it is not easy; this soft stuff is really hard.
Konosuke Matsushita, who as an uneducated 24 year-old, created a company that would survive the Great Depression and Japan’s loss in World War II, to become one of the most successful firms in the world (Matsushita Electric Industrial, now Panasonic Corporation), put it quite well:
“…the essence of leadership is getting the ideas out of the heads of the bosses and into the hands of the labor…the survival of firms, so hazardous in an environment increasingly unpredictable, competitive and fraught with danger, that their continued existence depends on the day-to-day mobilization of every ounce of intelligence….Only by drawing on the combined brainpower of all its employees can we succeed.”
Sounds easy, doesn’t it?
