Posts Tagged ‘Best practices’

Partnering with Employees

Thursday, March 19th, 2009

TeamworkIn an unusually positive business report, a welcome respite from the current gloomy news, the story of how the CEO of one Boston hospital resisted the idea of laying off workers as the first line of business cost-cutting is instructive. Faced with declining revenues and increasing costs, the CEO of Beth Israel Hospital turned to staff to ask their ideas on how the budget gap might be closed. He expressed particular sensititivity about the need to preserve employment for low-wage, unskilled workers. The employees rose to the challenge and suggested how they could each make sacrifices to preserve employment. For a large organization, this may be an unusual approach. As small business owners, the initiative and creativity of each employee is a valuable resource that we cannot fail to utilize.

One of the key lessons I learned in business school was that the work product of our team was always better than what any one of us could have produced on an individual basis. Take the opportunity to solicit the feedback from your employees as to how you might improve your planning process.