One core tenet of management or owning your own business is that in order to improve a process of any type, you need enough data about where you're starting to test the viability of any solution you decide to try.
 
But often, those same managers hold that data close, sharing it with front-line employees only an a "need to know" basis.
 
Solution provider executives might want to read a recent article in the Harvard Business Review, which suggests that by providing more specific information about key financial metrics to employees in the field – not just their managers – businesses can be far more effective at improving performance.
 
The essay, "Share Your Financials to Engage Employees," is written by Bill Fotsch and John Case, who are advocates of "Open Book" management and coaching. "Most people think of engagement in individual terms – feeling fulfilled by the task at hand, wanting to do a good job," Fotsch and Case write. "We see engagement as being part of a team that's competing to win."
 
The article cites the example of a travel management company in which front-line managers at several branches worked with their teams to identify core metrics that were illustrative of their company's performance and then established regular meetings to brainstorm ways to review results and perform them.
 
"In the past, the company's front-line travel counselors had behaved pretty much like employees everywhere," Fotsch and Case note. "They did a competent job, but they didn't worry about the financial implications of a changed itinerary or a new hotel pricing policy. Now – engaged in the business of improving their branch's numbers – they began spotting opportunities that an owner might think of."
 
The three branches that piloted the approach described in the article outperformed their "profit budgets" by at least 10 percent. Naturally, this particular company rolled out this strategy across the rest of them.
 
Over the past decade, successful solution providers have gotten that way because of the key performance indicators that they developed to help top-level executives and managers get a better handle on which processes or people needed some extra attention or, potentially, a refresh. Maybe it's time to become more of an open book, sharing relevant metrics more openly with field employees, especially those directly responsible for shaping client impressions. You might be gratified by the results.
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