I’m a big fan of what’s called SCRUM. This is one of the many process improvement methodologies and strategies that we can use to create a business with an unfair advantage.
If you haven’t heard about SCRUM, that’s OK. There are almost no blue collar business owners who have. The funny thing is those who have heard about it and have implemented the strategies outperform their peers by a factor of two or three times. That alone is a good reason to learn about it.
One of the main tenants of SCRUM is measure how happy your people are. They maintain and I agree, the happier your people, the better the performance in your company.
And, that’s what today’s video is all about.
Transcript
I’m a big fan of what’s called scrum. This is one of the many process improvement, methodology strategies that we can use to create a business with an unfair advantage.
Now if you haven’t heard about scrum, that’s okay. There are almost no blue collar business owners who have. The funny thing is those who have heard about it and have implemented the strategies, outperform their peers by a factor of two or three times. That’s a reason alone just to learn a little bit more about it.
So one of the main tenants of scrum is to measure how happy your people are. They maintain, and I agree the happier people, the better the performance in your company.
And that’s what today’s video is all about. So let’s jump right in.
- So why do you want to have happy people? That might be your first question.
- Well, having happy people means that they’re going to treat your customers really, really well, ’cause the truth is your people are going to only treat your customers as well as you treat them.
- You want to look at companies where people, employees are really valued, for Zappos, for example, I don’t know if you’ve ever done business with Zappos or not. They’re an online shoe company. They’ve expanded to all sorts of other things now. And they happened to be owned by Amazon, which I find really interesting in lots of levels. But the truth is when you do business with Zappos, you know you’re dealing with happy people, because they are so happy to serve you, and they’re so helpful in the way they go about doing it. Whether it’s just your online stuff or you actually call the company up, you’re going to find that the people at Zappos treat you like an incredibly valued customer.
- Now let’s look at the other side of the coin where companies are not very happy. Now, if I go back two, three, four, five, six years ago with United airlines, I’m gonna tell you that almost all my experiences with a United employee were relatively unhappy. The reason was really pretty simple. United management was not valuing their employees. And they were really, really, really clear about that. Now in the last couple of years, I’ve seen United not make a dramatic change, but start making a change. And the reason is really simple. They changed presidents, and the presidents went from being antagonistic towards all their employees, to actually acting like he cared about them. And that started to have some big effects for how United has treated me as a customer, and I’m going to bet you also, if you fly with them.
- Number two, happy employees make friends at work. Now you’re saying, okay, I don’t really care if my people make friends at work, but you should care.
- And the reason is research shows that when people have friends at work, they don’t leave. And I had this in my company for years. We’ve had people who became good friends together, and our turnover is almost nonexistent. The reason is, is I encourage people to be friends. I want people to be friends. We set an environment for people to be friends. So are you doing that in your company?
- The number one reason people leave the company they’re with is because they have no friends. So those are a couple of really good reasons why you want your people to have friends at work.
- Number three, and this is a biggie, happy people don’t spend their time complaining.
- When people complain, they aren’t doing the work. They’re complaining, and they’re bothering people around them. If you have one happy person or three happy people and one unhappy person, that one unhappy person is gonna really poison the well of your company. So you really want to make sure that your people are happy and you want to set up ways for them to become happy.
- Now, this sounds kind of ridiculous, but it really isn’t. Happy people are more inclined to be foolish,
- and foolish people are okay with making mistakes, ’cause they kind of laugh it off and they say, oh gee, I guess I shouldn’t have done that. Now, what do I need to do differently next time, so I don’t have a problem?
- Mistakes are part of learning, and if you’re foolish, it’s okay for you to make a mistake. If you’re so serious, and you’re not happy, and you’re not having fun, making a mistake becomes a mortal error on your part. We don’t want that.
- We want people to focus on learning from mistakes, and it’s much easier for that to happen when your employees are happy.
- Number five, and this is a biggie one for me, happy people are fun to be around. Work should not be drudgery, and in too many places it is. You want to have fun at work and so do your employees. So my question to you is what are you doing to make sure that your employees are having fun at work?
So what’s your feeling about having happy people around you at work? Why don’t you leave a comment below and let me know?
And while you’re down at it, DOWNLOAD our Free eBook on Hiring For Unique Abilities. This will help you learn about how you can hire effectively and raise your success rate from 25 or 30% up to about 85%.
I can tell you one thing, part of having a sale ready company is having happier people. You’ll have more value and fun while you own the business, and happy employees will make your company attractive for others. Either way you and your employees win.
Hey, this is Josh Patrick, you’re at the Sustainable Business. Thanks a lot for stopping by. I hope to see you back here really soon.
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