Right Person, Wrong Seat

Lily was managing one of our call center teams but she struggled with the personnel issues that kept arising. So, did Lily quit? Was she fired?

No, we just found Lily a different job within Dasher that fit her strengths.

Today, she is having significant success as a marketing assistant.

In the personnel chess game, Job One is slotting everyone in the right spot.

Many people can get overwhelmed by the demands of the job. Thus, it’s essential to take time out to do the GWC exercise – as in “Who Gets it, Wants it, Can Do It?”

It is a valuable exercise that we do at least twice a year, or as much as four times a year.

Some people “get it” but lack ambition. They don’t honestly want it. Some people have the desire but cannot meet expectations — at least, at this point.

Our goal is to train and retain our employees, to evaluate their capabilities and outline what they must do to stay and excel.

The bottom line is: Are the right people in the right seats?

Get it, Want it, Can do it

Some may half “get it,” really want it, but can’t do it. If they are in the wrong seat, we can move them to a new seat. It is not “demoting” someone, as another company may act.

At Dasher, we find that a team member’s goals – or “rocks,’’ as the Entrepreneurial Operating System, or EOS® (www.eosworldwide.com) we use calls it — help the course correction process. If we do it right, everybody believes they have a noble goal and contributes to the company’s success.

The struggle of day-to-day work can sometimes obscure the goal. A team member may ask, “How does making 40 calls an hour get us to where we need to be?”

We share that the CEO’s  goal may be 10,000 constructive interactions a day, so their 40 calls an hour are a giant step forward in contributing to that over-arching goal.

Our meeting structure has the same agenda for every meeting, so we do not have to prepare a new one each time, and people know what to expect. We go through our metrics, headlines, and the IDS — “Identify, Discuss and Solve.”

Everyone can add to the agenda. We share good news, our scorecard, our metrics, and then address issues. Everybody provides input, which is why we embrace EOS® so heartily.

The pre-created process adapts itself well for a small company. We help team members find their cadence. Everyone owns a piece, and everybody’s voice matters. It keeps us on track and moving forward and makes us look at how to help people succeed.

An exercise we have found helpful is to draw the organization. Don’t think of people, just draw the seats, and the organizational flow-chart you need. Then we can fill the seats. We envision the job accountabilities and the reporting structure we need to grow and serve clients as though the organization does not already exist.  We build it to our ideal, from scratch.   By focusing on the  structure of the organization first, we avoid limping along with an organization accommodating the people in it.  .

As Dasher grows, our organizational needs change, and roles within the company change.  That’s why we grow our team continuously so they add skills necessary for performing different roles. . We also cross-train, so our team is deep on talent.

Dasher is a data-driven, customer contact services operation with a focus on communicating complex messages to diverse populations. Specific capabilities include face-to-face communications provided by our field teams, customer engagement strategies provided by our call center and member engagement staff, and secure, complex, variable mailing services provided by our production team. Dasher is an experienced Minority, Women and Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (MWDBE) with a bestselling book, “The Talent Pool,” and is certified by AICPA with the SOC2^SM Type2 data certification and validation.