During difficult times, everyone must know how they tie to profit, and become a master of the actions that allow for them to move their correct critical drivers—the leading indicators that move the lagging indicators. You see, during difficult times like this, one of the big mistakes that a lot of executives do is they start doing some massive layoffs. When in fact, if everyone ties to profit, there is no need for those layoffs.

Video: How to Avoid Layoffs: Tie Every Person to Profit

But the problem is, that most people who haven’t been moving the profit needle really don’t understand how they tie to that profit needle. They don’t understand the purpose of their job. Let me give you an example. If you have a lender, maybe the job is to make sure that they’re bringing in top 100 prospects, in other words, highly profitable, new customers at a certain close rate, maybe 80-95% close rate. If that in fact is one of the critical drivers, that now lets them understand that this is the behavior we’re looking for. You see, during difficult times they could be bringing in bad loans. They could be bringing in loans that are underpriced.

All of these do not help move the profit and safety needle of your organization. And yet, most people, when they are busy with those activities, don’t understand that they’re not aligning themselves to profit. It’s not just the lenders, it’s every position within your organization I assure you.  Getting clear about what it is that drives performance and profitability, and safety in your organization and making sure everyone in your organization understands that, and reports in on a weekly basis is critical to making sure that the end of this recession you come out on top.

– Roxanne Emmerich

Please watch the video above and share it with your exec team and board.