I believe almost every person can DOUBLE their productivity at work.

In this episode, I’m going to share with you a process I have used over and over again to not only double but often times quadruple the profit per employee within a few years!

If you’re the kind of executive who feels like your people are already performing…well, you’ll be delighted to see that often those people are the fastest to double and quadruple their productivity.

Or maybe you are one who believes some of your people are on “corporate welfare” and you’ve had it. If so, this is perfect for you because you will have a process to make sure none of your people are a “tourist” on your trip to greater results.

Or perhaps you are one who has some extremely high performers AND some, well, “not so much” performers. If that’s the case, you’ll love knowing you can bring up the consistency of performance for all.

Where there are solutions, there are problems. In this case, three recurring challenges get in the way of helping people understand how they are tied to profit:

• First, new employees tend to get trained in by the person who had the job before them. But that person may not have been a top 5% performer for that position. As a result, your high-potential person is not realizing high performance—they weren’t trained for it.
• Second, if your team members are like most bankers, they don’t really understand that your Top 100 customers account for, if you are an average community bank, at least 50 to 120% of your profits. As a result, they have no plan of how to best spend their time and effort to get and keep more of those Top 100 customers.
• Third, your operations people probably don’t think they have a role that ties to profit. They don’t understand that they too, by doing their job better, can substantially move the profit needle.

EVERY bank seems to have these same challenges that keep them from even higher profitability.

So, I’ve come up with three steps that will help you get some traction over the next few weeks on aligning each of your teammates to profit.

Step 1: UNLIKE so much of what is taught as “conventional wisdom” in banking, the best way to improve your efficiency ratio is NOT tightening salaries, laying off people, or cutting marketing, travel and training expenses.

I’ve helped hundreds of banks lower their efficiency ratio by over 20 points in a few short years by getting them to make sure their people are doing the most important, i.e. profitable things, and doing those things in the most effective way.

Step 2: In contrast to thinking that the next gadget, software, or tool will lead to more profit per employee, realize that there are top 10% activities for EVERY job in your financial institution. If people know what they are and how to do those jobs as top 10% performers, the efficiency ratio plummets to a miraculous level AND your people feel GREAT about themselves because they go home each night feeling like superstars.

Step 3: Unlike most attempts with employee performance improvement where a whole project is done at one time and rolled out, start with the fastest path to the money for the bank: The highest revenue producing jobs. Give those people the skills and the clarity of what success looks like in the position.

If a commercial lender can increase from $15 million to $35 million of new business per year and get 100+ basis points more on better quality loans than she’s brought in before, that’s a massive impact move—and more impactful than improving quality and quantity of a lower-level operations position.

To sum up and give you clear action items:

1) Stop cutting travel, salaries and marketing expenses—the things that will tank your future potential. Instead, help people clarify what really matters and how to do those things.
2) Help each team member understand what top 10% activities are and get them the skills to radically improve HOW they do those top 10% activities.
3) Start with those positions that can have the most profound impact on your profitability fast so that you drive improved profits within a quarter instead of a year.

Join me for the next episode because I’m going to show you that without the right visibility system, one that doesn’t create guilt and shame, you can’t ever achieve sustainable accountability to what matters.

– Roxanne Emmerich

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