|
|
Articles |
|
What The Leader Needs To Know:
Model Your Brand Or Your Employees Won't Deliver It
The Opportunity
A company's financial performance is the lagging indicator of
its competitiveness. It tells us that competitiveness has already
changed for the good or the bad. Therefore, many executives focus
on customer loyalty. Clearly an important metric, if you carefully
and thoroughly look at your customer segments . Customer loyalty
information is critically important for crafting your strategy.
It also tells you how your customers are about to behave. Will they
increase their purchasing? Will they cross-buy other products and
services? What proportion of your customer base is at risk for switching
to a competitor? But it doesn't tell you how to improve your execution.
Execution is what brings sustained profitable growth. What about employee loyalty? That's further upstream - is that
the right place to focus to assess execution? Actually, employee
loyalty information can give you a very clear sense for the type
of experience your customers are receiving, or are about to receive.
It tells you how you are executing - but not how to immediately
improve execution. So what's the right metric to focus on to improve execution? The
answer is Leadership Behavior. Leadership Behavior at all levels
drives or inhibits the execution of your strategy. All the other
metrics are important to track and understand. But Leadership Behavior
is the leading indicator of how well your strategy is being executed. You have financial, customer and employee metrics - do you have
leadership metrics? Are they the right metrics to drive the execution
of your strategy? Are your resources limited? Then focus on Leadership Behavior
first. If you have 500 retail stores with 100 employees each you
have 5,000 employees. Factor in turnover and you may have closer
to 10,000 a year. Think about the leaders you have. Perhaps you
have 7 Regional VPs, 50 District Managers, 500 Store Managers, for
a total of 557. Factor in turnover for this group and it's approximately
600. Clearly the ideal solution is to focus on your employees and
your leaders. If resource limitations prohibit a comprehensive approach,
focus on your 600 leaders. Research has shown that Leadership Behavior
is responsible for 60% of the effectiveness of any business strategy.
Put your resources where the leverage is. Whether you deliver products and services through retail stores,
call centers, field sales and service or professionals such as attorneys
and engineers - leverage Leadership Behavior for fast, reliable
execution.
How To Leverage It
- Set & Communicate Your Brand Strategy
Strategy is about making choices - really tough choices - and
sticking with them. Many executives get caught up in rethinking
their strategy on an almost constant basis. For example, in one
company in four weeks, there were four presentations from the
CEO and CFO. Each presented a different definition of the company's
brand strategy. The cause was a stream of new announcements from
competitors. The result was confusion even among the most senior
leaders of the organization.
In contrast, four years ago another CEO determined that delivering
a very clearly defined, differentiated and valued branded service
was the best strategy to pursue. Since then he has relentlessly
communicated this message at every opportunity. The message is
always the same: "Our brand stands for the delivery of a differentiated
service valued by our customers. Competitor moves will not cause
a change in our brand promise." As a result every leader knows
where to focus resources - especially Human Resources. They focus
on their two primary responsibilities: 1) Personally demonstrating
client focus by spending time with clients and ensuring they receive
the promised service; and 2) Coaching every employee to be client
focused and to deliver the specific type of service for which
the brand stands.
To enable your leaders to execute your brand strategy set it,
stick with it and communicate it relentlessly. Charge each and
every leader with the responsibility of communicating and clarifying
the brand strategy with all your employees.
- Model The Behavior You Promise
Most companies are not able to reliably and consistently treat
their customers as they have promised. The few exceptions are
The Ritz Carlton, SouthWest Airlines and …? So your employees
have little personal experience with the type of consistent, intentional
treatment that leads customers to be fiercely loyal to a brand.
Their experience is one of advertised brand followed by broken
promises.
Consequently when you tell employees how critical consistent customer
focus and service are, it doesn't fit with their real world. For
employees to understand the value of differentiated, consistent,
i.e. branded, service - you have to deliver it to them first.
For example, let's say one of your brand values is responsiveness.
The specific behaviors included in responsiveness are: speed,
focusing on specific needs, and providing realistic solutions.
To model that for employees, leaders should: act quickly when
an employee asks for help; listen carefully and understand not
only the employee need but their situation as well; and, finally,
offer solutions that the employee can realistically implement.
The leader has to respond to an employee request as quickly, thoroughly
and effectively as they would to a customer's request.
Leaders sometimes delay responding to employees because "the customer
comes first". To the employee, this behavior can look like "when
you are overwhelmed - it's okay to ask somebody to wait". Putting
employees second, gives them permission to delay serving customers
if demands are high. That's permission to break your brand.
Leaders have to deliver your brand to employees before employees
can and will deliver it to customers.
- Make Work Rewarding
There are a lot of rewards that are important to provide to employees
- money, health insurance and personal recognition among them.
One reward is too rarely focused on: the reward of doing great
work itself.
Your brand promises consistent, differentiated value. Your products
or services improve the customer's quality of life. Your brand
gives something that nothing else can. Shouldn't being one of
the people who delivers that be a source of pride and enjoyment,
i.e. reward, to your employees?
If it's not, take a careful look at Leadership Behaviors. Do your
leaders look forward to working with customers? Do leaders talk
to employees about the value of their work to the customer? Do
leaders take pride in the value provided to customers?
Recently there was unusually high call volume in a call center.
In addition, a number of customer service representatives were
out ill due to the flu. The general manager and his leadership
team of 6 held a 3 hour meeting to decide what to do about the
suddenly increased call waiting times and abandonment rates. Seven
leaders meeting about a critical customer service problem - not
one handling calls. The messages to employees: 1) they can't handle
this either; and 2) they'd rather be in a meeting than working
with customers.
In contrast, at another call center when customer calls spike
leaders jump in to help handle the volume. When they are done
handling calls they talk about how rewarding it was to directly
help customers. They ask employees to give them feedback on how
they handled challenging calls. The messages to employees: 1)
handling customer calls is challenging and your expertise is valued;
2) serving customers is energizing; and 3) leaders respect and
enjoy serving customers.
A leader we know says "My employees are the river that delivers
value to our clients. My job is to get the rocks out of the river
so it flows fast and pure." Do your leaders focus on enabling
your employees to consistently and confidently deliver your brand
to your customers? Or do they constantly demand heroic efforts
to meet customer expectations?
A brand is about delivering uncommon value. The hard work to deliver
that promise can be the most appreciated reward if it's valued
and supported.
- Smile Confidently
Is smiling a Leadership Behavior? You bet it is. Smiling - or
the lack thereof - sets the tone for the organization. It is a
powerful way for a leader to communicate confidence, value, respect
and fun.
The Leadership Behavior of smiling can transform even the most
tense, literally life and death environments. Think of the typical
emergency room: often frantic, serious, barely under control.
How does this make the customer/patient feel? Apprehensive at
best, threatened at worst.
Now look at the Southwestern Vermont Medical Center ER. From the
moment a patient arrives until they leave staff members greet
them with a smile. The smiles convey confidence and competence.
Smiles put the patient at ease. Making them easier to communicate
with and treat. This simple behavior transforms the experience
of emergency medical care. It also transforms the work experience
of the staff. Their work is challenging and rewarding. Not incredibly
stressful and frustrating.
- Measure Branded Leadership Behavior
Leadership Behavior is the leading indicator of the execution
of your brand strategy. Measure it and act upon your findings.
Keep the measure to 10-12 questions. Questions about how leaders:
communicate and clarify your brand strategy; behave consistently
with your brand; enable employees to deliver your brand; enjoy
working with customers; and smile and create a positive environment.
Administer these as an employee survey; perhaps only to your top
performing employees. This is the group you should invest in and
that will have the most credibility with your leaders.
The survey is short so administering it quarterly is practical
and recommended. Most importantly share the results as quickly
as possible with your leaders. Demand an action plan within 5
days of sharing the data and hold them accountable for implementation.
© 2004 Flanagan Consultants, LLC. Terms and Conditions
—back
to top—
|
|
