Why Tell Employees?

Who in the organization needs to know the big picture? Who needs to know all the parts of the business and how they work together?

The traditional view is formal leaders of the organization or team should have the broadest and deepest perspectives. They should be well-informed and familiar with all departments and aspects of the organization so they can make decisions that are in the best interest of everyone.

If leaders are doing that, why would they need to share that knowledge with employees?

Let’s say an important customer usually delivers 50 casings on the 1st of each month to be painted by you during the month. But what he really needs is to drop off 25 casings on the 1st and 15th of each month painted over the next two weeks and picked up at the same time the next batch of casings is dropped off. Unfortunately, that has never been an option and the customer complains about it every month.

Today, the customer announces he needs casings to be painted and it’s the middle of the month. He wants an answer now, not in a day or so. He has spoken to another supplier who can easily paint his casings with much more flexibility. The time it takes your account rep, Joan, to reach you, and for you to move it up the chain, then for you to get an answer and send it back down to Joan may be a couple of days. By then your important customer will be a former customer.

Jim runs a quirky milling machine in the production department. When it acts up, it causes problems for assembly. Policy requires Jim to shut down the machine, report it, and wait to be reassigned even though Jim knows how to fix it. In most cases, the maintenance team member just has to adjust a couple of settings and the machine is back up and running. But the maintenance team is so busy it may take a few days to get to Jim’s machine. And Jim is only responsible for running the machine, not the quality of the parts. Additionally, while the machine is down, work backs up.

What would change if Joan and Jim were as informed as leaders about the overall business? What might happen if Joan understood the value of each customer to the business and how the company is structured to do the work, and had decision authority to address customer needs when they first became known? Maybe she could have been working on a solution for the customer all along and this surprise would never have happened. And what about Jim? If he understood the cost of idling a machine and the impact bad parts had on assembly and the customer experience, Jim might have cared enough to ask for an exception to policy and made the needed adjustments, himself.

To equip your own Joans and Jims with everything they need to produce products, deliver services, and delight customers quickly and efficiently, you will need to rethink the notion that only formal leaders need broad and deep business understanding. You  can make it your responsibility to build up your employees’ understanding of the business—taking them with you to meetings, sharing information you obtain from meetings and other interactions, and teaching them about the larger organization.

You see, front line employees always know things their supervisors don’t by virtue of being the ones doing the work. They are the first point of contact for customers. And, like Joan and Jim, they may be watching customers slipping away or profits evaporating without you even knowing. If your organization can’t afford that, you may  want to begin clueing in your employees to the understanding and insights you provide to formal leaders. You should consider instead of passing problems up the chain how much faster and efficient it would be to educate those closest to the core work and the customer to address needs as they experience them.

After all, it’s not your formal leaders who know the most about your customers and work processes. Isn’t it time you leveraged that expertise?

Kevin Herring is co-author of Practical Guide for Internal Consultants, and President of Ascent Management Consulting. Kevin can be contacted at kevinh@ascentmgt.com.

Ascent Management Consulting is found at www.ascentmgt.com and specializes in performance turnarounds, leadership coaching, and appraisal-less performance management.