The Seven Equishare™ Fundamentals
LEADERSHIP
Organizational Discipline—“He makes ‘routine’ his challenge as only a dedicated professional can”. US Army Training Command regarding Drill Instructors. “Routine” is a very good word. There is a beneficial routine and cadence to the daily leadership of operations that requires a personal discipline to maintain, considering the multitude of other attractive distractions. Dedication to the fundamentals listed below are essential to establishing the Equishare culture. “Trust comes from consistency of behavior”, BF Skinner. The drumbeat of the four Equishare metrics throughout the organization every day breeds consistency, trust, and results.
CLARITY
Define and Measure —“More than two objectives are no objectives”, Deming. United States Marine Corp says three, Harvard says four. Equishare utilizes four relational metrics at the strategic level, three at the operations level and two at the department level… linked and vertically supportive. These metrics strongly correlate to Profit without noise or distraction.
PURSUIT
Discipline of the “The Plan” hourly, daily, weekly—Rigorous construction of, and adherence to, the daily/weekly/monthly Equishare Pro-forma Scoreboard is essential to the effort. This discipline determines scheduling, staffing, objectives, requirements, and resulting Profit/Ebitda. This must be a non-negotiable, no excuses, rigorous discipline. This is The Plan.
FOCUS
Organizational Noise the Enemy of Focus—Finance and IT’s have only two questions to ask of Operations…what do you need to know, and how often do you need to know it? Forcing a simple message and avoiding data overload or dashboard “assault”, drives focus. The constant mantra of the organization needs to be… how much payroll do we have, how much do we need to produce? Balanced every day.
Corporate entities should focus their division expectations along the same 4-3-2 requirements, to maintain uniformity of language, measures, message and requirements.
CULTURE OF URGENCY
A command center mentality scheduling, operations, and staffing/payroll dollars are being monitored real-time/hourly/daily to optimize production. How many dollars are we producing this hour, this day, this week. Are we above or below our required ratio? Why? What is running, what isn’t, who is here, who isn’t, why? Adapt, re-position, re-schedule — within a culture of urgency to optimize financial outcomes.
ACCOUNTABILITY & CONSEQUENCE
Corporate and local leadership participate in the construction of the budget and the subsequent design of the Equishare Formula; with full knowledge of opportunities and constraints. There is an inherent understanding and premise that the objectives are achievable and a commitment to them is expected. It is understood that leadership must lead the organization to this new level of performance via aforementioned methods. Success is rewarded, failure is not.
ENGAGEMENT & REWARD
Once employees are led across the goal line a few times and taste the rewards of victory via the cultural shift and the compensation, they will engage. And with engagement comes better cooperation and greater performance still. Both of which will further improve cooperation and performance. Resulting in a continuously improving environment. Profit and employee bonuses grow in unison, while sharing improvements equitably. SUCCESS.