Building more than a manager, building leaders

RCS Influencer Patrick Cochran says he encourages managers to make decisions based our on the company's core values, the principles they follow and the standard operating procedures.

As an organization we recently took a look at our job descriptions, role responsibilities and department key performance indicators (KPIs). We have worked to make sure everything is clearly defined and we have used these updated documents and metrics to retrain our staff. Wherever we noticed staff was unclear or undertrained on a topic we made sure we held trainings to demonstrate the tasks, then our leaders would monitor and report back. In addition to this, we are in the process of recreating our employee review model. These reviews will happen once a quarter to give employees feedback about their performance. Each employee will also have an opportunity to give our leadership team feedback on what they feel could be done better, make request on what may be needed for their role or department and an overall perspective on the company. This feedback is going to allow us to see where our managers need to be trained and focus on specific tasks each quarter to help our leaders grow into their roles.

During our day-to-day operations we have weekly meetings set up to get department leaders to discuss current projects, concerns and any positive feedback or insight that may be helpful. We make sure department leaders are working together to make decisions and when a decision is not finalized we ask them to present the ideas and options to upper level leadership to get a final decision. This helps the team take ownership when changes happen within the organization.

We train our leaders on our processes, explain why we do certain steps and talk about what happens when things do not go great. From there we encourage our leaders to make decisions based our on our core values, the principles we follow and our standard operating procedures (SOPs). We want them to take ownership of their department and responsibility for their results. We demonstrate in their reviews how their actions effect the organization as a whole and when decisions are made that did not go great, we use them as stories and learning lessons for future decisions and trainings.

Overall we have a younger organization with the median age of approximately 36. This year we have worked to really segment departments and develop mid-level managers for each department with chief officers to have a few direct reports. As we continue to grow, our goal is to develop leaders within the organization and create career paths for new hires to work their way up within the organization. Doing so will allow us to teach someone the industry and help them as they develop as a leader if management or leadership is something they desire.