Putting Your People First ...

A number of years ago a colleague mentioned to me that business leaders should pay more attention to ‘the 3P’s’.

I was intrigued, was this just another management acronym or was there some substance behind what my colleague was saying?

The three P’s I was told stand for:
PEOPLE before
PRODUCT (or service) before
PROFIT (or performance).

The sequence and the word before each P are extremely significant. In other words, if you ensure your that your people are capable, creative and engaged, they will in turn produce great products (or services), which will lead to a successful, high performing and ultimately profitable business.

But how many businesses and organisations think in this way?

I have seen and worked for many who engaged in too much ‘top down’ thinking. They strive for profit and performance without thinking about whether they have the right people engaged in doing the right things.

We have all seen businesses pay huge salaries and big bonuses to focus staff on what needs to be achieved (e.g. sales and profit), and while bonuses can act as an ‘extrinsic motivator’, in reality they only provide a short term ‘Hawthorn’ effect, they do not truly engage staff and are soon forgotten.

So what does putting your People before Product and Profit mean?

I believe that if a business is going to truly put their people first they have to do a number of things. For example, they need to:

* Understand the innate skills and capabilities of the people they have.
* Be clear about what is expected from their managers and staff.
* Support their managers and staff to develop skills that will make them more effective in their jobs.
* Trust their people to do their job and give them the freedom to make their own decisions (within guidelines).
* Involve their staff in decisions that affect them more.
* Listen and pay attention to what their staff say, their concerns, and ideas for improvement, and ACT on them.
* Respond flexibly to the needs of their staff.

In addition, they need to recognise and understand that the culture of the business is dictated by the behaviour of its leaders and managers. The business must therefore work hard to support their leaders and managers to develop the necessary behaviours to enable them to act as excellent role models, and demonstrate on a day to day basis that they put their people first.

If a business truly desires to improve its performance, it must start with its people, their skills, capabilities, motivation and level of engagement. After all, Spain didn’t win the World Cup last year with a bunch of players who had the skills of a Sunday league side!