Give Me a Number

As many of you know, I spent a couple of decades working for Payless Cashways.  For those of you that don't know what Payless was (it's been a while now), it was a retail lumber company that competed with Lowe's, Home Depot, & Menards.  At this point, I guess that I should say "tried to compete", but that's another story.  Anyway, I had the privilege of working with one of the finest group of leaders that I've ever seen assembled.  The group that I am speaking of was the store managers in the Midwest region.  This group was energetic, smart, and driven to succeed - all of the attributes that really differentiate good leaders from those who are challenged to be the best.

When I worked with this group, I had an opportunity to learn a lesson that I've never forgotten.  It came from our Regional VP.  At one point he told me that if he wanted results from our group, all he needed to do was figure out how to attach a number to whatever project we were working on and then generate a list showing how we all did.  From that point forward, all that he needed to do was sit back and watch the fun.  This was long before the days of discussions about metrics and driving the business through the numbers. Dave knew instinctively that this would work with the group in front of him.  And wow, did it.  Whether we were looking at the number of credit cards that we put in customers' hands, or the footage of woven wire fence that we sold, we would compete to be at the top of the list.  On the other end, we would do darn near anything to stay off the bottom of the list.

I have discovered that this works on virtually everything.  Here are a couple of examples.  About 18 months ago I decided to get serious about losing weight ... again.  But this time, as part of what I was doing, charting my progress became part of the ritual.  At this point I have lost over 17% of the weight I began with and I will tell you that one of the reasons that I was able to do it was because each and every day, I want to see the number on the chart get better.  I know that there are some people that this would not motivate, but for me it is a big thing.

When it comes to motivating others, I ran across a great example just last week.  Many of you know that one of the organizations that my family supports YESS (Youth Emergency Service & Shelter).  They are a great organization - taking care of kids who really need help.  Each year their largest fund raiser is an event that will occur this weekend.  They take several (45,000) small rubber ducks and float them down a body of water.  The winning duck, or actually their owner, wins prizes.  Anyway, back to the important part of the story.  All of these rubber ducks need to have numbered tags placed on the bottom of them.  For the second year, DMB Supply agreed to tag ducks at our location.  Last year we tagged 5,000 ducks and it took about three and a half hours.  This year, we tagged 6,000 ducks and we did it in only two hours.  What was the difference?  We had a baseline from last year.  We knew what we had been able to do and everyone jumped in to make it better this year.  And of course, I was in the middle, acting like a cheerleader, letting everyone know how we were doing.  Next year who knows; maybe 8,000 in two and a half hours or 10,000 in three?  We will have to see.

I really enjoy the fact that we are living in a time that there can be numbers attached to virtually everything.  Weight loss, ducks tagged, the list is virtually limitless.  But one of the things that is so important in this is that there needs to be someone that makes hitting the number important, and probably even more-so, makes everyone know that doing it is possible.  This really helps to bring the best to the top in almost all groups of people.

Management textbooks used to talk a lot about Theory X & Theory Y.  Although I do not remember which is which, one of them asserted that people were generally good and would try to do their best.  The other believed that people generally had to be pushed to get them to do anything.  It was the proverbial stick vs. carrot argument.  Do you lead a person to the right place, or do you have to drive them there.  I clearly believe that it is about leading them there.  That is how Dave managed the group of Payless store managers. Last week when we were tagging ducks, it was all about talking to people about what they could do.  Give them a graph that shows where they are and show them what direction "better" is, and I know they will rise to the occasion.  If you don't work this way, try it, you may be surprised. If you do, keep after it.