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To Grow Your Business, Grow and Develop Your Team "The best leader, the people do not notice. When the best leader's work is done, the people say, 'We did it ourselves.'" By Todd Palmer CONTRIBUTOR Todd Palmer is the president of Diversified Industrial Staffing, a national skilled labor recruiting firm, based in Troy, Michigan. Contact :: tpalmer@diversifiedindustrialstaffing.com A s a business owner or business leader, no matter how hard you work, you can only get a certain amount of work accomplished. e limitations we all have in the vital areas of time and energy cannot be understated—both have limits. To get more done, we hire employees. Often times, we think the employee should show up and have a long career with us. And all of this should happen, while we assume the employee will be self-managed and self-directed. is is misguided. Leaders, not achievers, recognize that working with and through others to achieve objectives is the key to building a good team and a sustain- able business. ere is a big difference between achievers and leaders. For the great achiever, perhaps a superstar sales person, the focus is all about "me" and reaching individual goals. For the wise business leader, leadership is all about "them" (for example, the employees) and their success. To quote author and speaker Marshall Goldsmith, "e best leader, the people do not notice. When the best leader's work is done, the people say, 'We did it ourselves.'" is isn't what most of the conventional wisdom of leadership dictates. Most books on business leadership exaggerate, even glamorize, the leader's contribution. e implication being that every- thing begins with the leader, that he is responsible for your improvement, he guides you to victory; without the leader, there is no directing the organization. Truly great leaders recognize how silly it is to believe that a leader is the key to an organization's success. e best leaders understand that long-term results are created by all the great people doing the work—not only the one person who has the privilege of being at the top. One of the best demonstrations I have ever seen regarding business leadership, and investing in one's team, was done by Jack Stack, CEO of SRC Holdings Corp., and the leading pioneer in the field of open-book management. In 2004, I was fortunate to see Jack Stack speak about his book, "e Great Game of Business." is was the first time I had ever heard of open-book management. Open-book management is a management approach whereby employees are provided with company financial informa- tion to enable them to make better business decisions. Mr. Stack shared the story of how he took the concept in 1983 and used it to turn around a dying division of International Harvester and save 119 jobs. He shared the company financials with his employees, but needed a way to help them understand how they could affect those financials. Mr. Stack's open-book approach to managing the company grew from simply sharing financials to teaching his employees the "rules" of business. Mr. Stack's approach to managing the company became known as "e Great Game of Business." I was so inspired by the story and the results of his book that I applied several of its features to my business in 2006. It's been almost a decade now since Diversified Industrial Staffing made the move to open-book manage- ment. e purpose is to teach employees that they impact the financial performance of the organization. From our entry-level employees to the vice president level of the organization, each employee can positively—or negatively—impact the financial viability of the company. I know it's not the norm to have frontline employees doing anything related to accounting, but I can state without reservation that teaching our entire staff about all financial facets of our business has been one of the most successful changes we've ever made. By doing so, employees have become more educated, and in turn, will ask better questions of upper management, which fosters better internal company conversations. We've also built commitment from the team, and better decisions are made. It teaches everyone—entry-level people included— to think like an owner. By investing in our people, they have raised their level of productivity, which allowed the company to have its most profitable year ever in 2016. Leading and investing in our staff has produced some amazing results. ABOUT YOUR BUSINESS 26 PRODUCTION MACHINING :: APRIL 2017