Vision Driven: Lessons Learned from the Small Business C-Suite. Mallary JD Tytel
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is excellence. Meeting those expectations means that organizations must find a common ground between total customization for each and every client and the rigid consistency of products and services. For example, are you building each and every computer to your customers’ particular specifications and requirements; or are you creating a line of finely-tuned training shoes that are ready off-the-shelf to meet the needs of fitness enthusiasts with varying degrees of skill and form?
Alternately, clients may not know about their intended outcomes and opportunities. Therefore, it is your role to provide support through trend analysis, use of competitive intelligence, asking good questions and being open to radical inquiry. For example, your customer is far from home and an emergency situation erupts. Is your answer, “Of course we’ll take care of it,” or “We’re not allowed to do that?”
Corporate staff needs to know what the important it is, how to do it, and whether or not they are meeting customer expectations. As a customer-oriented organization your targets should be obvious.
•Adding customer value
•Focusing on results
•Seeing the bigger picture (the big it)
•Educating the customer and expanding their view
•Developing consulting relationships with clients
•Building and maintaining credibility
•Opening the door to finding out about the client’s world
•Asking questions
•Using an inquiry stance
Think also about your own desired outcomes for your customer interactions. Anyone can be a vendor; your aspiration, however, is to partner with your clients for mutual benefit and satisfaction.
Ultimately, the goal is to raise the quality of service you are providing in order to enhance and manage the customer’s experience. Think about the last time you had a question or problem with a product or service. What were you hoping for? Well that is the resolution you want to be for your customers. Even if you do not make the sale, your customer can walk away without that pair of cross-trainers but with a positive experience they will remember, talk about, recommend to others and lead them to return another day.
Finally, remember your critical internal customers as well: the folks who work with you and beside you every day. This is, after all, your team we are talking about. Your efforts here are no less essential so be sure to include an abundance of respect, fairness and appreciation.
What actions or changes does your organization need to make in response to customer expectations and feedback for maintaining an overall excellent customer experience?
11
Managers as Leaders
“Leaders grow; they are not made.”
Peter Drucker
Dear Senior Team:
As a group of individuals who have the day-to-day responsibilities of managing a corporation, you have the honor and the responsibility to be consistently participating or otherwise involved in what is going on around you. On the one hand, your roles are defined. On the other hand, they also continue to emerge and be redefined as circumstances dictate. Gleaned from the extensive body of business literature, my own random thoughts on leadership go something like this.
Leaders are people who:
•Lead as well as manage
•Motivate and set an example for others in all that they do
•Know what they are responsible for and do it
•Recognize and understand the big picture
•Exemplify personal integrity, respect and fairness
•Participate in defining and implementing corporate strategy
•Support staff at every turn
•Participate in corporate growth, success and the accomplishment of excellence
My expectations for you as a group are that you will:
•Do the job
•Learn the business
•Pay attention
•Lead by example
•Be strategically in sync with organizational goals and each other
•Stand behind and for the CEO
•Get the best out of each others’ brains
•Focus on the customer
•Actively participate
•Carry each others’ water
•Push the frontier of our collective thoughts and actions
That is where I would set the bar. I know you are up to the task!
Thank you,
Mallary
What do your managers need to hear from you?
12
Preparing for the Unknown
“Trying to predict the future is like trying to drive down a country road at night with no lights while looking out the back window.”
Peter Drucker
We learn to deal with change however it comes. When crises occur, we face a new paradigm. In the midst of upheaval to the system, there is an event or turning point in the evolution of the organization. The organization may recover and continue along a generally desirable path, or the organization may suffer a serious decline in capabilities and performance – perhaps to the point of no return.
As such, according to noted author and business guru Warren Bennis, we must operate with certain assumptions. Crisis cannot be stopped; it is, after all, part of life and part of doing business and the impact can be far reaching. At a minimum there is disruption of normal functioning. This includes a significant loss of focus. Fear and uncertainty are pervasive and values and priorities are questioned. The result is an undeniable desire to retain and sustain a degree of normalcy. The most important piece, however, is maintaining business continuity.
A crisis-mitigation process gives you options for action and ways to understand what needs to be done. Where is the organization right now and where does it need to go? Working with your entire team, you must divine and then design the future organization, creating the strategy, plans and materials to get you there. Then, do it! Execute your plan, monitor progress at all levels and learn together what you need to do to continuously improve the process.
Part of your capacity then as an organization is to develop resiliency, that ability to recover quickly from change or misfortune. Your keys to success are:
•Confident leadership
•Strategic planning
•Smooth coordination
•Eager cooperation
•Open communication
•Competent execution
•A pinch of luck
Start by returning to and relying on your foundation: your mission, values, culture, diversity, quality and balance. Next, take advantage of your leadership strengths. Believe in the possible, approach others with unconditional positive regard, support an honest ongoing conversation,