This is a key function of management to sit down with each staff member on a regular basis to reinforce all the above points to make sure everyone is fully aware of the difference they are making and that their role is really important in the overall scheme of things. There is nothing worse that feeling that your contribution is not really valuable or not really important.
As manager you have to take every opportunity you can to build the confidence levels of every individual within your team, and you have to be able to explain in language they understand the difference between simply performing the role at an acceptable level and at a level of excellence.
Every team member must get a sense of pride in their work and know that they are doing a great job, when this kind of working atmosphere is created you have a much more productive workforce who are constantly looking for ways to improve their own performance, the performance of the department and the company at large.
You have to give them sufficient space to explore new and better ways of doing the same job, you have to build in an allowance for making mistakes, and give them the tools to correct for these mistakes when they occur. At times making mistakes can be the greatest learning points, however, if a person is making the same mistakes over and over again, this could be demonstrating an attitude or a weakness in a particular area that needs to be addressed.
You have to resist the temptation to jump in and fix he mistakes yourself. Your time is better spent with the employee asking probing questions as to what went wrong and get them to come up with suggestions as to how they should be fixed, then as manager you put the systems and procedures in place to make it happen. You should also build in reviews at regular intervals to make sure the changes that have been made are having the desired effect.
This will encourage true innovation in the workplace, if you say you want innovation and then proceed to punish those who make mistakes, you are not going to get innovation, staff members will prefer to play it safe rather than risk being corrected for making mistakes.
In the old days they used to say “if it is not broken don’t fix it” in the current climate of fast change the new rule is “if it is not broken, break it. Then put it back together again in a cheaper, faster more productive way, and as the only constant in business today is the quickening pace of change, you have to be there at the front questioning everything, not accepting anything as a fact and constantly looking to improve performance with fewer resources.
The businesses who succeed in this, will succeed – the ones who don’t, won’t – it is that simple!