The guy unloading the large delivery to our driveway was clearly skilled with the forklift. I watched him, remembering how when my boys were little they looked upon the guys maneuvering equipment with awe.
Carefully setting down the pallet, he jumped out of the cab and approached me. Now, if you know me you know I ask a lot of questions. "So, are you incentivized for less damage or quicker delivery?" I asked with a smile. "Actually, neither, and it is a PROBLEM," he answered.
Turns out he is also the guy scheduling deliveries and managing truck repairs. And dealing with employee churn for the company. He and his employer have different views about managing people, and this has been more than a bit challenging.
We started chatting. He and his wife recently moved from another state. He was just finalizing the sale of his lube business back home, and now could help his wife with her dream of being a salon owner. Shaking his head, he mentioned his management style is very different than his current boss. I asked him again about incentives. He painted a picture of how he did it:
“My guys knew we were all in it together. I opened my books to them, and when we did better, they took some of it home. I supported four full time employees who felt proud about what they could contribute. When you include employees in the decisions, everyone has the ability to grow together."
I asked if he read Jack Stack's book, "The Great Game of Business", a twenty-year old open-book classic which admittedly reads like “pop business”. He hadn't read it. I was astonished- the guy could have written it. Through truly valuing his people he figured out what worked on his own. He respected his guys enough to open his books and ask them, “How can we do this better?”
Stack sees power transparency in numbers. He has seen how it can change the way a person looks at their job. He writes about showing the parts guy in his warehouse how he was not just a cog in the wheel by educating him in the numbers. When the assembly line went down due to a delay with a part, he could see and understand the impact. “Suddenly what he does has meaning. It’s not work; it’s not just a job; it’s a responsibility. And it’s food on his family’s table,” he writes.
Stack also writes about sharing equity, or giving your employees “skin in the game”. My delivery friend was clearly proud to have shared the good times with his small crew. I got to thinking, what mindset, and what values, lead a business owner to share the wealth?
You inherently believe that your people have something to offer, no matter what their job description
You value honesty and honest work
You care about other people’s well being
You value family
The guy he was now working for, on the other hand, "rules with an iron fist". My new friend painted a picture of pressure, damage to equipment, and high employee churn.
Clearly the owner doesn’t believe his people have something to offer. Sadly, he doesn't realize the tremendous asset he has driving his forklift, the guy I was now looking at like my kids would have, with awe. In this day, when it is easy to make the wrong choice, he did the right things.