If at all we can put organizational change in a general framework we will see that it involves making a plan, implementing it and finally controlling the outcomes of the change thin an organization. However, in many cases changes within an organization has occurred for the sake of change which resulted in zero development in company performance. It is imperative that organizational change should be planned and must adopt a systematic approach.

There are several successful approaches to organizational change and systems theory is one of it. A change for an organization, whatsoever it may intend to, is a change for each and every element embedded within the organization. Hence, a change in the system is a change for the subsystems as well. The people within the organization need to have a broader perspective of the organizational that they are about to bring through their new decision over all the sub-systems. This is a system thinking that is essential for the management. This can only ensure a change to be good for the entire system of a company. After all organizational change is actually an organizational development at the end of the day.

Consider a few thoughts to get you started with sales compensation plans in the right direction.

Reward your stars and they’ll reward you

Don’t be stingy with the rewards you give out. Create a plan that recognizes the best performers in your group and reward them for being outstanding in their work. Let’s say your staff has a quota of $100,000 per month to fulfill and most of your staff should be outperforming that figure by 5 to 10% if they are good sellers. But there will be those that rake in $175,000 in sales each month while others will get in $150,000 each month. Incentivize performance in tiers then, with a slight reward available for outperforming the standard sales quota by up to 10% with greater rewards for greater performance. Obviously, those getting $150,000 will not get as much by way of reward as the person selling $175,000 each month. Creating these reward tiers will entice those top performers to at least maintain if not improve on their performance.

Hold a sales contest

Keeping aside a portion of sales aside each month for a sales contest is a great idea. You could either offer cash bonuses and gifts or you could give something in kind. A rep winning tickets to a movie or a concert or even a gift certificate to a popular store makes a big difference to morale among the sales force. They end up feeling good about the business that they are working for and they feel good about the job that they are doing. And this reflects in their performance. I have often observed that sales representatives stick longer with companies that hold sales contests and incentivize sales a lot.

It just takes a while to change the whole scenario only if we could get to the core where the problem actually lies, people commit to themselves to attain a particular target and when it all fails – uncertainty creeps in boosting lower self-confidence. The low self-confidence gives inferiority complex that in turn leads to degradation in the work quality, disability to take the right and logical decisions and low motivation. Here are some of the things or methods that you can apply in your organization to re-build the morale of your employees or even top management people:

• Start with holding company meetings where you separate the company employees that have been successful in their work. Single them out so the other employees know that successful people are surround them. This helps to build their own confidence and move towards achieving their goals of life.
• Always be willing to accept the management’s mistake and talk to upper management and employees to get together and fix the problem. Most of the times we see that people are willing to join smaller companies to show the impact of their joining these small companies. When the contribution of an individual really matters to the employees, leaders should acknowledge their efforts and reward them in terms of monetary benefits or other similar benefits.
• Talk to each of your employees working in the company whether what they feel needs to be changed, ask them steps to get the company back on track.
• Let your employees know about new sales policy or compliments given by the client, this helps them to become more confident and proud of their accomplishments even without someone telling other company officials about their achievements.
• Know the strengths and weaknesses of your employees and get them on to success tracks. Before giving any task to any employees it is important to know whether if they would really be able to achieve those tasks.
• Give compliments to your employees in front of their clients, give them confidence to achieve even more by making them feel better about the work they are doing.
• Promote the talent that is already there in the company, let the company clients know that company promotes the employees that are excellent in their work.
• Let your company people know when the management has implementation a suggestion sent in by one of its employees, this helps them to build confidence and also help value the company.
• Encourage the company people to take risks and reward the people who innovate different ideas and strategies for the betterment of the organization.

Rebuilding the morale of the company would surely take some time to show the actual improvements but it will surely be a successful step in bringing back their confidence levels.

• The Grading system

  The grading system ensures that each job is graded properly from the simple rank order starting from the highest to the lowest one. The committee that comprises of management and also the employee representatives decides this. The committee first compares the 2 jobs to grade the important one and then compare other job with the first two jobs. This continues till the time all the jobs have been done assessing and ranking.

• The factor comparison method

  In these methods the evaluators select the key position jobs as the standard jobs for evaluation. These jobs are well known and established in the community. These jobs represents the cross section of all the evaluated jobs that starts from lowest to highest level in the company, the selection would consist of 25 odd jobs. The key factors required in these key jobs are the skill and physical requirements, mental requirements, responsiveness and a good amount of working conditions. After deciding on the key jobs and the policies, the committee starts ranking the key jobs. They decide on the base rate of the job and then rate it among the five criteria we discussed.

• The classification method

  The evaluators identify the common elements like the skills in processes, the knowledge, the responsibility, etc. that goes well with the desired goal and the type of jobs for example clerical jobs, sales job and more. These are then ranked according to the organization’s important priorities.

• The point method

  The important areas are identified and the job break down is done and the points are given according to the criteria. Based on the importance of each of the criteria, the points are summed and the jobs identified with same points totaled and put in pay grades.

Any of the above human resource pay structure can be used for the job assessment of the organization. Once the job evaluation is done in an organization, it becomes the center point for improving the pay structure of the organization.

• Make your work environment a more pleasurable experience to work in, offer free snacks and coffee with a good relaxing and entertaining area with Television and games on the computer. Your working facility should not bore your employees of anything. Provide a clean and neat environment to your employees by providing them with good hygiene facilities.
• Explain your employees the importance of the work they are doing, help them realize the value of the work they are doing. Always thank your employees for the good work they are doing. Tell them the ways they can improve on their work, help them understand the processes more clearly. Develop a desire in them to learn new things and how to face the challenges at work.
• Appreciate your employees in front of everyone for the good work done. A pat on back is always welcome from employees who are hard working. Take opportunity to always spell out good work in front of other employees or during meetings or announcements.
• It’s obvious, that employees are working to earn a living and pay their bills. There are just a few of them who are working for emotional benefit at work. Reward your hard working employees with monetary gains and benefits. Make monetary benefits, rewards and perks as a part of the monthly routine. You will see in no time, your employees are more than motivated to work harder.
• Take notice of the difficulties your workers are facing at work. It is very important that your employees communicate their frustrations or work assignments with colleagues in the office. Try to make time to meet all the employees individually at least once in a month and help them speak out their emotional quotients. Let your employees express honest answers and be responsive in helping them.

Its highly important that your employees feel happy about the work they are doing and are highly encouraged to achieve the objectives at work. The motivation in the workplace helps employees give their best productivity power.

Remember your childhood days, when your mother, father, teachers, brothers and sisters advised you to take up the studies of your interest and how you nearly managed to get admissions in the specialized colleges of your choice by just being yourself and becoming self aware of the things that you like to do that is only when you become self aware and for the people who can’t become self aware hardly get any chances to excel in life or take up the path or profession of their choice. Just remember, you can only be happy when you are aware of the things that would make you happy and be yourself without worrying about anything else.

Always take up the things you are really attracted to, this rule is a simple rule which when applied creates a milestone in anyone’s life, here are some of the things which restricts you from becoming self-aware or rather from being your own self:

• There may be times when you don’t know what the thing is really about.
• You don’t want to trust yourself or rather accepting the good things coming your way.
• You might not be having time to take up your responsibilities.
• You may be deliberately trying not to pay attention to the things you are really attracted to.
• You might have a negative feeling about the things that you like.
• You might take up other’s tasks as important priorities.

Self-awareness is an important part of any human being, may it be professionally, spiritually, mentally, or at home front, when you become aware you are said to have gained an upper hand on your feelings and you automatically take yourself in that direction.

The best things you can do in such kind of situations is to step one foot at a time and be mindful about each of our steps but one may argue what if the step itself doesn’t seem to move, these are basically our mental blocks which we form in our developing years that stops us from doing any particular activity. Our mind acts like a block of ice, very adamant to move or even melt a little for the good cause. Here are some few points, which will help you take easy steps towards achieving your targets:

• Take Small steps

  The smaller the step you take, more mindful you become and hence you are better at managing your steps which will lead you to the successful road ahead. You don’t need to take some major steps to win success over your failures, the important criteria here is to keep moving forward even if it means moving at a snail’s pace. But some might have bigger doubts, what if they are unsure of taking the small step (the answer to this lies in the next point).

• Consider your step

  There may be tasks or situations in which you don’t want to step forward, there might be varied reasons for which you don’t have courage to take up those steps or you just mentally anticipate that you would face failure or would be uncomfortable doing it.

Generally, becoming self aware about our goals, our functions, our responsibilities, our endeavors are the basic requirements that fulfills our mind goals. It’s our ability to take up new things that helps you become self awareness about yourself and your professional needs. Self awareness is one of the important factors that should be prevalent in the employees working in any organization.

Team cohesiveness promotes stronger communication amongst the team players and brings all the common characteristics of team together. The team cohesiveness is based on mutual reliance which helps the group players stay informed about the developments happening in the team and gets them the clear understanding of the group’s goals. Team cohesiveness brings around developmental changes in raw teams and let the teams use the word “WE” instead of “I”, which brings the teams together. There are 2 forces, which bind the members of the team together; they are positive and negative forces. Here are some of the factors that influences team cohesiveness, which helps individuals gel well with each other:

• The members of the team are of same age, gender and share equal values, etc.
• The success factor that each individual in the team shares and the tasks accomplished for the betterment of the team.
• The external threats faced from other competitive companies or individuals, they are bound together with the common objectives and fight against the danger being caused to their processes.

A team is said to be highly cohesive when there are increased levels of motivation amongst the team players to participate together in the team activities in accordance with the social norms that are agreed upon by the team.

It wouldn’t be surprising for you, if some day you see me talking to stranger in a train or catching up with some businessperson at business meets or asking well known business person as to how is their business faring? I don’t feel any embarrassment in asking then why anyone else should? Given a chance I would strike upon a conversation with anyone, anytime, I am just being straight, rather than winding myself the other way by getting indirect information, why not go the straight way and ask the person itself?

Some people do reply me graciously, feeling nice that they are being asked about their business, it’s a healthy conversation you strike when both the parties exchange their business ideas, it gives place for a new creative stuff which may be beneficial to both the parties in a business. When you talk about your business, it doesn’t necessarily mean you talk finance, your profits or losses statements. Some people literally get surprised when I ask them about their business and how they are doing it; they stare at me as if I am asking for half of their business profit shares. I am not getting prickly by asking their business types or methods, its just a start of a good conversation, men mostly like to talk business. Here are some few things I got as a response to my strange (I don’t think so…) behavior for asking others about their business:

• Most of them clearly liked my idea about talking business and were eager to share their experiences, their methods, their specializations, etc.
• Some get delighted to talk of their business, as they get in the grind of discussing business, all the concerns relating to business come out naturally and both the parties start looking at the bigger picture.
• Some people want to talk about their business secretly; the idea of talking in front of everyone doesn’t suit them. They slowly start your conversation and watch how we interact before stating out their details.
• Some are really rude to speak of their business, now there 2 possibilities, either their business in not faring well or they are just being miser in talking about their business details.

All the benefits at large, concerns to the parties who are in conversation with each other, and there is more probability of learning something new which can be used in your business. Talking of business is really fun if taken in the right spirit, we don’t loose anything by sharing our business details.

I wonder sometimes in disguise, whether what category I actually belong to? And whether I am really comfortable meeting up new clients on my own or do I need someone to introduce to, to get comfortable in speaking with them. That was one incident in my life, when I nearly had a big question mark on my face when my best friend walked in to my cabin and told me that I am an introvert, I was seriously baffled when he said that but later when I argued to tell me the incidences and situations, he had some serious points and incidences which really reciprocated that.

I was an introvert. But I argued with him, that being a pubic speaker, meeting so many new people, giving your speech on some argumentative matter is not a joke but marking all the things which I said a little in detail I noticed that actually I was never in picture while dealing with all the people. Everything was given ready-made, I had to just give my points and speak in front of the audience (who nearly didn’t had any options but to listen though) it took nearly a brave hearted fellowmen and extroverted natured people to talk big talks in open and actually meeting the protesting gang of people. So it’s still a big question mark on my face? Unless, I went through some questionnaire, which gave me a little idea that I was of course not an extrovert.

I was a little saddened knowing all this, as I always treated myself as being an extrovert and took proud in being one. There are some things in life which they just happen even without us knowing it when it approached, created some results and went flying on in the air but it has deeper impact on our hearts, mind and the working approach. This particularly had a deep impact on me, though I have agreed to accept it without any arguments, I live as I was living earlier, it didn’t really made me weak except that I feel a little down but I am really raring to go and learn lessons so that I be an extrovert. Although being an extrovert doesn’t mean you have a big business or a big organization with you, there are people who are the simplest, speak very less, meet very few people who have built empires. Being an extrovert or an introvert is your own decisions and it seriously cannot affect your business, if you are passionate about your work and have your work process in place.