Employee Development
First of all understand that you CANNOT motivate your jewelers. No one can motivate anyone but themselves. You have all heard the statement "You can lead a horse to water, but you can not make it drink. Well, I've coined a new phrase; "You Can Lead a Jeweler to a Bench, But You Can Not Make Them Work." The desire to work is just like the desire to drink. It must come from within the individual. You can not force anyone to work any more than you can force them to drink a glass of water.
Now, a long time ago, farmers learned that they can get their livestock to drink adequate water, if they feed them enough salt. By adding salt to their diet the livestock becomes thirsty and will want to drink.
n business it is no different. We need to find something to "feed" our employees to get them to want to work. Dwight Eisenhower said, "The key to leadership is to get people to do what WE want done, because THEY want to do it."
The Primary Job of Management
Is to Bring Out the Best in the People Who Work for Them.
What Gets Rewarded Gets Repeated
A story is told about Don Drysdale the famous pitcher for the Los Angles Dodgers. One year the Dodgers offered Mr. Drysdale a bonus if he kept the amount of walks under a certain number for the year. Management desired to keep the number of opponent base runners to a minimum. It seemed like a good idea to offer a bonus on limiting the number of free passes to first base.
As the story goes, on occasion when he had a three ball no strike count, facing the fact that one more ball and the batter would walk hurting his chances of receiving the bonus, he would throw AT the batter. If he hit the batter, they would reach first base on a hit batter charge, not a walk. A hit batsman did not count in his contract, only walks.
Don Drysdale received his bonus that year, and the Dodgers learned to be more careful in establishing what they want to accomplish in setting their bonuses.
Many retail jewelers have felt the same disappointment as the Dodger management. Wanting to generate more work out of their shop, they put their jewelers on commission or other incentive program. However, what they found is the quality of work dropped as the jeweler hurried to finish more work. In addition, large time-consuming jobs lay around the shop unfinished as quicker jobs are finished earning the jeweler more money.
A problem arises when management says one thing but rewards something else. For example: you can preach till you are blue in the face about quality but if you reward only quantity then speed is what you are going to get. For example: A jeweler may hurry through 10 jobs performing mediocre work and receive only one or two back because of not reaching standards. He can re-do those two jobs in less time than it would take to slow down and do all ten jobs correctly.
Or a jeweler sizes a ring, checks all the stones, and tightens the loose ones, as you would expect him to do. However, if you only reward speed (by paying commissions) then it would be faster for him (and more profitable) to size the ring and turn it in. When you check it and find loose stones and return it to him he tightens them. He spends no more time sizing the ring or tightening the stones. However, he saves a lot of time by not checking the stones on all the rings he sized.
Employee Development continued