You Better Have the Right People in the Right Seats

One thing I’ve seen over and over through the years:

When the boss finally makes the hard people decision he should’ve made six months earlier, the good people around him usually come back to life.

You can feel it almost immediately.

·       The people who’ve been carrying the extra load every day stop walking around frustrated.

·       The technician, tired of covering for somebody else starts moving with energy again.

·       The dependable manager who’s been putting out everybody else’s fires finally gets to focus on moving the business forward.

And the people out in the yard, the ones in the mud, the shop, the service lane, and on the job site start feeling like somebody finally sees what they’ve been dealing with the whole time.

That changes a place fast.

Not because somebody rolled out a new mission statement. Because the people doing the real work finally feel like accountability applies to everybody, not just the dependable ones carrying the place every day.

I’ve said before in The Yard that you need to understand how the mud gets on the tires and this is part of that same conversation.

Bad people decisions don’t stay in the office.

They eventually show up:

• beside a broken truck

• in the missed handoff

• in the customer frustration

• in the service delay

• or in the employee who’s flat worn out from carrying somebody else’s weight

The yard always knows.

The people in the trenches know too. Usually long before the boss wants to admit it. That’s why good employees watch people decisions so closely. They’re watching what management is willing to tolerate. And when weak performance, bad attitudes, or wrong-seat employees keep getting protected, the strongest people around them eventually start asking themselves a dangerous question:

“Why am I carrying this place while somebody else keeps getting a pass?”

That’s when good people start mentally checking out.

Or eventually walking out.

But when the boss finally steps up and makes the hard call? The good people notice that too. And most of the time, they respond by raising their level even higher. Because now they know somebody is finally protecting the people actually pulling the load.

That’s not corporate theory.

That’s life in HD truck, equipment, manufacturing, and dealer operations.

And if you spend enough time in The Yard, you can feel the difference almost immediately.

— HAMP