Employees — whether they’re bartenders, masseurs, or rodeo clowns — do the work that keeps you in business, and your job as a manager, supervisor, director, owner, etc., is to make sure everyone’s doing their jobs and doing them well. Your responsibility is to hire, train, and retain the best of the best, filtering out the fast-talking, smart-alecky ne’er-do-wells in the process.
It’s the name of the game, and thousands of companies have spent boatloads of flaming research funds trying to crack the secret to maximizing employee productivity and minimizing turnover. Unfortunately, the businesses that have managed to uncover the secret key to employee whispering seem less-than-willing to give it up, and the rest of us can’t afford to figure it out for ourselves.