May 10th, 2019 •
Blog •
Comments Off on The 3-legged Stool of Business Success
The three legs of a stable stool of business success are:
· Strategy
· Customer satisfaction
· Employee engagement
Just as the legs of a stool are most stable and dependable when they
are of equal length, these three elements are of equal importance for
sustained success and stability in business. Let’s unpack each of these
three legs.
Strategy
If you own or manage a business you know your strategy and your team
knows this as well. After all, that’s what everybody is focused on as
they show up and work every day, right? Not necessarily. I had a client
that was a family owned (closely held) corporation. They had been very
successful for several generations and held a dominant place in their
industry. The current CEO had a clear picture of the company’s
strategy. Yet, for some reason he reached out to me because he feared
that the company might fail on his watch. Imagine being the head of a
national company with family members in most of the senior leadership
and many key management positions. The company has been a success for
roughly 125 years. You think everybody knows your strategy and works
every day to execute on that strategy. But, something in your gut tells
you that this may not be true. Your doubt is keeping you awake at
night. Compounding your worries is an anticipating that you may need to
make significant changes to continue to be competitive. You know that a
viable and sustainable business must adjust as markets and technology
changes. Doing what you did for the past century plus is not working as
well as it used to and you need help figuring out where to go from
here.
When I first met with this CEO he was sure that he could call all of
the senior leaders in for a strategy session (which he hired me to
facilitate) and after a weekend we would have a shiny new strategy that
everyone would love. Since I do a lot of facilitation work, I suggested
that we survey the senior team find out their answers to two questions
that I had already asked the CEO:
1. What is your current strategy?
2. Are we where we need to be to remain competitive?
The CEO didn’t think that this step was necessary but he agreed. When
we got the results of the survey he was a lot more worried than he was
before because we got as many different answers to these two
mission-critical questions as there were people responding to the
survey. Since this is what I expected, I was prepared to talk him off
the edge and explained the steps that we would take at their strategic
planning meeting to move from a whole group of people who thought they
were all moving in the same direction to actually having a team with one
strategy and a plan to succeed. The happy ending is that we did that
work over 20 years ago and the company is still successful and that CEO
sleeps at night.
Customer Satisfaction
Without a unified strategy, that defines what you do for your
customers, it’s difficult to know what to do to assure that you maintain
customer satisfaction. Your business may have identified key
performance indicators (KPI) to measure customer satisfaction but are
asking the right questions? Are you addressing what matters to your
customers? If your leadership team isn’t working from the same strategy
is it likely that you are looking at the right stuff to know? It’s
possible to be asking a lot of questions, measuring KPI, and have no
idea what keeping customers requires. Keeping customers is a significant
element of customer satisfaction.
“Satisfied” just means the customer isn’t actively looking to replace
you. “Satisfied” can be an easy win your competitor. Especially if they
are clear on their company’s strategy. When the competition
communicates a clear message to the customer, your customer, “satisfied”
may be replaced with “I want what they are offering!” All of your
people need to know your strategy and buy in to that strategy. This
provides a base for your employees to create excited customers. The good
news is excited customers are generally loyal customers.
Employee Engagement
This one is actually pretty simple. If you create a culture where
your leadership team communicates a clear strategy, one that they buy in
to, the team will have a lot fewer “why” questions. The team will find
it much easier to know what to contribute and what they need to
communicate to your customers. Employee engagement is tough to have when
your employees look at the senior leaders and see that they are not all
working to execute on the same strategy. It’s often easier for front
line workers to see that KPIs are not measuring stuff that really
matters to customers and that the bosses don’t have a unified strategy
because your employees are trying to make the connection between you and
the customers. Once employees discover a lack of strategic focus they
tend to disengage. To build an engaged high-performance team start with
doing the work to assure that the leadership shares one strategy. And
that they all buy in to that strategy (if it’s the right strategy and
someone on the senior team can’t buy in they may be working at the wrong
place). Once you have a clear strategy, align your KPIs and customer
satisfaction standards to that strategy. Finally, communicate with your
people so that they are clear on the strategy, their role and
responsibilities, and how the strategy is being measured (KPI). Remember
that communication is two-way so be sure to have a plan to listen to
your employees so that you are able to benefit from front line feedback
for future adjustments to your strategy.
This is simple but it is hard work. Once you build the stool, you
will need to maintain it so that you don’t drift off and lose focus.
October 12th, 2017 •
Blog •
Comments Off on Culture by Design or Default
Every organization has a culture either by design and intentional leadership or by default. Evaluating your existing culture is valuable but keep in mind that assessing something doesn’t in and of itself change anything. If you have a culture that does not serve the outcomes that your business wants you already know that you have a culture issue. Do you need an assessment to validate a problem that you have already identified? If you are unclear on the full scope of the problem it can’t hurt. However, once you are aware of a culture issue what you really need is proactive action to move toward a culture that is positive and gives you your desired outcomes.
When the culture concern is tied to a merger/acquisition situation you may be inclined to attempt to take the good stuff from each and blend them to create a best of each culture. If you’ve ever done that you probably experienced “this isn’t how we did things!” push-back along with divisions between old guard elements from each pre-merger team and folks who want to see a new and different culture. Your best intentions may result in multiple factions rather than a productive and inclusive culture.
Creating a shared culture when two teams become one can be a lot like a marriage. Not a first marriage where it’s just two lovebirds who want to become one and build a life of love and unity. It’s often more like a second or third marriage where there are kids, extended family, and a lot of other stuff that comes with the deal. The good news for a business merger is that, unlike the blended family that may never discover that blissful existence where everybody is aligned, creating a new, common culture for a business can be accomplished through a process that helps everybody to discover the why, strengths, and values of the new team. At the same time they discover how their personal why, strengths, and values fit into this new team and the outcomes that all need to pursue. It’s a different tack than trying to patch two cultures together. It’s a process where the players are invited to lean-in, to contribute all that they have to this new culture. The individuals build an engaged culture where they are playing from their strengths and bringing excitement to the new team. It’s about building a new team with engaged players. Once that’s done they will have a culture that is new and is about the engagement and outcomes of this unified group. They’ll be busy pursuing exciting new goals rather than grieving lost old and comfortable ways. They’ll be communicating to assure that outcomes are clear to everyone rather than lamenting that “this isn’t how we did things!” Building a high performance team in this way has people looking forward instead of in the rear view mirror. Whether you need to create a positive culture with a team that has lost its enthusiasm or when you need to build a new culture that unifies factions in a merger, look at developing leadership that will create a new and vital culture. Focus on equipping leaders and you will see great culture as an outcome of the team doing great stuff.
