Running on "E" : The Leadership Vehicle
A few weeks ago, I went to pick up my PMO Consultant, Kim, from the airport. As usual I got caught up in a meeting and found myself hurrying out the door because I knew I should have been on the road 20 minutes earlier to pick her up. I jumped in my vehicle and being the Jersey driver that I am I was on the highway in no time. After greeting one another and loading her bags into the vehicle, we hopped into my car. I had forgotten she hadn’t seen my car. I had purchased a compact vehicle very well known for its reliability, and being economically and environmentally sound. As I drove down the highway I told her although it was great on gas, I was a bit disappointed by its lack of get up and go. Sometimes it seems like it had the power I needed on the highway and other times it seems to struggle. She looked at me perplexed as if I had three heads. In my high pitch and confused voice I responded, What?!! Why are you looking at me like that?!!!
She laughed and said Krishna I’m sorry, you know my dad is an engineer and mechanic at heart and that he taught me everything I know about cars. Yeah, I said slowly. She said well one of the things he taught me about cars is you shouldn’t expect your car to perform at its maximum when it has a minimum amount of gas. Krishna you are almost on E! I said, yeah, I know but I have enough gas to make it to the gas station near the office. She said, yes maybe you do but you don’t have enough gas to be driving 65 mph on the highway and expecting this car to maintain it’s highest level of performance.
You are expecting your car to perform at its best with very little gas and to make matters worse you are running the air conditioner. Of course, your car is struggling with meeting your demand to go 65+ mph. She said Krishna you should never let your car get below a ½ tank of gas. She then patiently explained to me the long term damage I was doing to my car. Kim shared how allowing my car to get below a ¼ tank of gas allows sediments to filter into the engine and causes future problems such as wearing the fuel pump out prematurely, or dirt to get into my tank and block the fuel filter. Both of which results in hundreds of dollars in damage.
Like me, many leaders want speed (quantity) and performance (quality) out of the departments they manage but leaders aren’t putting the necessary amount of gas into their employees to perform at this high level. These are the leaders running their employees on E. They are expecting employees to do tomorrow’s work with last year’s skills and training. In an organization, the big red E shows up as low employee engagement, poor productivity, sub par performance and worst yet workplace conflict, high employee turnover, lawsuits or discrimination claims, low customer satisfaction ratings or plummeting profits. It’s time we stop running on fumes .
Like your car, in your business you need to periodically pull over and fill up your employees with the gas and maintenance they need. The gas is providing your employees with professional and leadership development training linked directly to the mission and vision of the business and the maintenance comes in the form of engaging subject matter experts to share best practices, build upon your staff’s existing skill set and discuss current innovations and trends taking place in the industry. Studies have shown, organizations who train and develop their employees outperform those who do not receive training by as much as 200% If you don’t want your competition to drive by you and pick up your customers or high performing employees, my advice is don’t be too busy to get gas. Keep your employees gas tanks full.
