Hey, it’s Bob Negen, and in this episode of Real Retail TV, we’re going to explore how to tap into your team’s unique genius.

So the old model of management goes something like this. I’m the boss. I know what’s supposed to happen. I’m gonna tell you what to do and you’re going to do it. In exchange for that, I’m gonna give you a paycheck.

And that is a model that you know, has served businesses well for a long, long time, but that model is entirely obsolete now.

You don’t need to be told that especially younger employees, younger team members, they want to feel like they have a voice They want to feel like they can contribute.

They want to feel like they’re part of something.

And so that particular employer employee dynamic really, really opens up a huge opportunity for you.

And that opportunity is what I call ADD.

Now ADD in this case is not an acronym for attention deficit disorder.

In this case, ADD is an acronym for ask, discuss, and decide.

So let’s go back to this idea of you don’t have to know everything as the boss. It used to be that you wanted to know everything and it was very, very top down. Right? I’m the boss.

You’re the employee. This is what you’re gonna do. You made decisions and passed it down. But that, again, that model is obsolete.

What you want to do, if you want to match sumize the potential of your team and you want to take all of that stress off of your shoulders as you want to bring your team into your decision making process.

Let me say that again. You want to bring your team into the decision making process. The shift is, from, I’m the boss. I need to know everything to I’m the boss. The I don’t need to know anything.

I just need to know how to find the thing that needs to be found. And ADD is that model.

So it goes like this.

Anytime you have a problem or an opportunity, you go to your team, whether it’s through your Slack channel or your Facebook group. However, you communicate.

Whether it’s sort of through that group communication, channel that you use. It could be that you talk to people individually.

It’s best if you talk to your team as a group and you come to them with that problem opportunity or opportunity and you ask them what they think. Let me give you an example. Let’s just say your inventory is all awry. It’s all askew. It’s all whacked out. You know your numbers aren’t right and you know how important it is that the numbers in your point of sale system are accurate. So rather than stressing out, rather than, you know, getting furious, you go to your team and say, look, we know the numbers aren’t right.

How do we get them back to accurate?

And then that’s the ask. Then the discuss, let them help you come up with the solution. You discuss and then you make a decision. Okay. We’re gonna do this, this, and this. And then if it doesn’t work, rinse and repeat. Go back and ask them again.

You see, when you ask your team what they think when you ask them for their ideas, you get them to buy into your business. You get them by to buy into a decision that gets made. If you’re taking notes right right now, write this down. Let them help you plan the fight and they won’t fight the plan.

So this is just a wonderful, wonderful way for you to tap into the genius of your team.

Here is the final thing that I want you to think about when you consider using ADD in your business.

I’d like you to think about the combined experience of your entire team. Let’s just say you have six team members aside from you, and they’ve worked for you on average five years. That means that you have thirty years of experience to tap into. If you’ve got ten employees with an average of ten years, you have a full century of experience, wisdom, creativity, energy that you can tap into. And by tapping into all of that energy, all of those ideas, and creating essentially a mastermind from your team. Not only will, again, will you get to better decisions will you get better buy in from your team, but the decisions that get made will be implemented with a lot more enthusiasm the results you’re going to get are going to be a lot more positive and everybody, including you, is going to be a lot happier.

So a d d.

Ask discuss decide. It is a great, great model to tap into your team’s potential.

I would love to encourage you to make a point. Your action item is to find a problem or find an opportunity in your store this week and put ADD to work and see exactly what I’m talking about here and see how powerful a tool it is for you to build an amazing team.

So I’m Bob Negen. I hope that you found that helpful. We’ll see you again next week.