Momentum can be your best friend or your worst enemy. The sooner you come to the realization that momentum plays a huge part in the success of your business, the closer you’ll be to achieving that success.
Every week I have one-on-one meetings with all of my direct reports. In those meetings, two of the most important questions I ask are, “How are your employees’ attitudes” and “Where is your momentum trending?” We make it a priority to know the pulse of our employees’ individual attitudes as a whole because we have come to understand the direct effect it has on our success — or lack thereof. If we have momentum on our side, we try to do everything we can to keep that momentum headed in the right direction. At the same time, if we see our numbers are dipping (or we have grumblings within our ranks), we want to step in and quickly change the direction so we can get some positive momentum back.
The following four tips can help you manage momentum.
Tip No. 1: Confront challenges.
I like to call it inviting the 500-pound gorilla into the room. The important part to confronting challenges or conflicts is to get in front of them before they explode into something that’s not easily managed. We do this for the most part by having one-on-one meetings. Like I said earlier, I have one-on-ones with all of my direct reports every week, and they have one-on-ones with all their direct reports weekly as well.
I know this seems like an awful a lot of time and a whole lot of meetings. I agree. I honestly hate meeting just for the sake of meeting. I wouldn’t waste my time or my employee’s time if I didn’t believe wholeheartedly that these one-on-ones were the absolute best use of our time. We have seen amazing results since we implemented these meetings.
For example, not long ago, we had a technician on the verge of turning in his two-week notice. Worse than that, he also started complaining and acting very disgruntled to his coworkers. This technician was usually a very positive guy, but he had hit a bit of a slump at work and, like most of us, he was putting the blame elsewhere rather than where it belonged — on himself. He had been stewing on this for nearly a week and finally decided to schedule a one-on-one with his operations manager that day. Although it was uncomfortable for him, the manager did the right thing and invited the 500-pound gorilla into the room. After that meeting, the technician had a change of heart and attitude. The result: He had a record month.
These meetings are about communication, and the better the communication in your business, the smoother things will run.
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Tip No. 2: Motivate your people.
I believe the biggest part of motivating your people is putting goals in front of them. But for goals to be effective, you first have to know where you’re currently at. This is where tracking your technicians’ daily key performance indicators (KPIs) becomes crucial. If you are not doing this right now as a manager or owner, start making it your No. 1 priority. It will pay off. I promise!
Another tool we use to motivate our people is healthy competition among team members. I love to compete, and we have built a culture of friendly competition in our business. I believe competition is not only fun, but also an amazing opportunity to achieve some positive momentum. If you email me, I’ll be glad to send you a couple of the competitions that we run throughout different parts of the year.
Tip No. 3 Believe in bonuses.
A little over four years ago, we rolled out a bonus program along with our technician daily report (TDR). The TDR is our mechanism to track our technicians’ daily KPIs. The TDR gives our technicians a daily snapshot of where they are and how close they are to getting a bonus based on certain benchmarks we have set. This has been a huge success for our business and for our technicians. It’s not uncommon for our technicians to have earned tens of thousands of dollars individually in bonuses by the end of the year. Now that’s motivation!
Tip No. 4: Recognize success.
We currently have three locations, and each of our training rooms all have similar layouts. One wall in each of our training rooms is dedicated to 13 banners. Each banner represents a record-breaking number. Written on each of these banners is the name of the person that holds that record and the date it was broken. Each year, we have a banner ceremony where we replace the banners of the records that were broken that year. In the three years since we’ve implemented these banners, only one record has stood for more than a year. There’s not a month that goes by that I don’t hear one or more of our technicians talking about “taking a banner down” (i.e., breaking a record).
You have to manage momentum just like any other part of your business. Implement these four tips and ride the wave of success that will follow.
Hagan is a second-generation electrician. He owns and operates the Mister Sparky locations serving Northwest Arkansas, Oklahoma City, and Tulsa, Okla. He oversees a staff of 30, which includes electricians and technicians. He can be reached at [email protected].
