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What It Takes For A Leader To Sustain a Business By: Ed Yager The academic literature and the research findings of successful and effective organizations - those with continued or sustained high performance and those that have engineered successful turnarounds, are, after decades of research, speaking with one clear voice. Our own consolidation of the tens of thousands of pages of writing and publishing on the topic of effectiveness leads us to "The Five Imperatives". Our consulting and training practice covers 25 years and despite continuous improvements in methods process and delivery, these imperatives are basically unchanged. The first imperative is unequaled customer service. Only those who are more responsive, provide higher quality, add more value, and are more flexible have any chance at all in today's competitive environment. It is not hard as a consumer to figure out why some few restaurants require reservations or generate waiting lines while others are virtually empty, even though the price, quality of food, and ambiance are somewhat equal. Even more problematic are those that begin with a flurry and great promise, but as the crowds come are totally unable to provide the service or the flair to match the promise. Good price, quality food and comfortable surroundings are but the price of entry. Customers come back to good and cheerful service, and to organizations that care about them. The old and outdated cliche that "it is location - location - location" is proven wrong over and over as great service turns almost any location into a worthwhile destination. They avoid businesses who act like they dislike, don't trust, don't believe or are simply unable to take care of them. The number one reason customers leave or go to a competitor is "indifference", whether in face-to-face relations or in response to product or service problems. You had better commit to making your customers feel important. Respectful and attentive service is every bit as important in business to business, business to supplier, and employee to employee relations. Retaining quality employees is a second clear imperative. But employee quality is paradoxical. We call this imperative employee loyalty. Only those employers who understand how difficult is their role in selecting, training, motivating, recognizing and respecting their work force have a chance at retaining employees who will take care of their customer, and of each other, better than even they as owner or manager would or could do. I see far too many managers who spend more energy and time determining policies, and regulations, worrying about legal rights in disciplining, criticizing, terminating, and controlling their employees rather than in a search for methods of selection, retention, and motivation. If they put any where near the same energy into evaluating and improving their own behavior, support, and concern, their hiring, pay and incentive processes, and the degree to which they demonstrate respect, concern, and understanding they would be far more successful. Most employees are doing the best that they can, often in spite of inadequate or ineffective systems, rules, tools, or training. The employee will be loyal and help the organization achieve its objectives only to the degree the organization allows that person to meet his or her own complex personal needs at the same time. The employer who still, in today's world, prefers to act as some sort of master, acting as if employees are lucky to have a job, and who evaluates them by how well they follow the rules has no chance of survival. There has been a great deal of effort in most organizations to increase the levels of participation and team work in the organization in order to increase the employee's individual and collective sense of ownership over their job and the outcomes. Unfortunately much of the empowering that has gone on in many organizations has come with a price, increased regulation, monitoring, and control. The third imperative is operating excellence - creating internal, error free, totally efficient, and stress free processes. Our daughter has just moved into a new home that she and her husband had built. I have been overwhelmed at the unnecessary costs coming out of the contractor and subcontractor's pockets as their employees make trip after trip to correct item after item done poorly, or not at all. One painter drove the 40 miles one day without his brushes and had to return the next day. The carpenter who came to hang the doors on that day had to return a second time because the painter was not done, and this went on and on day after day for 4 months, some subs returning 4 or more times to do just a few hours total work. Even after closing money had been escrowed for 42 separate errors and mistakes ranging from bath tub leaks to bathroom door knobs that locked on the outside instead of the inside, problems continued to occur. Creating a focus on systems, process improvement, cost of quality, simplification, and communications pays in hundreds of different ways. We have worked in some organizations where we found over 70% of the cost of finished goods was pure waste. The fourth imperative is innovation. Continuous change and improvement, new products, product improvement, system changes, etc. distinguish the most successful firms. Creating an attitude in the organization's culture that embraces improvement, change, and innovation is essential. Innovation or change is not restricted to the product or service, but to each and every element of business, from more innovative ways to recruit and retain employees, to innovation in packaging, labeling, shipping. From methods of recognizing performance to small things that requires customers, and wherever else resources are consumed. The fifth is the absolute necessity of working with and through teams, partnerships and alliances, both internally and externally. Successful business owners today are linking their organization and their employees in horizontal relationships, in effect joining hands and eliminating the white spaces on the organization charts rather than organizing relationships top down. Communications, decisions, service, evaluations, measurement, and control are all aligned through a chain of horizontally oriented value added processes - not from boss to subordinate, but from hand-off to hand-off. Managing and leading through teams is extremely challenging. Most teams fail. It amazes me how few senior level executives are successful at working in teams. The egos, the competitive culture, and the independent personal goals create a difficult environment for an untrained team to service. The leader expecting to be successful must understand that the most important contribution she or he can make to the success of the enterprise, to their own family, to the families of their employees, to their customers, to their suppliers, and to their community at large is to study seriously the literature on leadership, on process improvement, on customer service, on problem solving, and on team methods. Then develop, communicate, and implement a strategic path to the future. Reading and adapting the ideas found in Inc., Success, Working Women, Fortune, Entrepreneur, Fast Company, Red Herring, and similar publications should be a first priority for every leader, along with studying the half dozen or so truly significant books like The Goal, The Fifth Discipline, Kaizen, and Competing for the Future. We pride ourselves on being among the best read consulting firms in America. Call and we will be happy to recommend appropriate books or publications to help you resolve your challenges, or visit our web site at www.yager.bizhosting.com for access to some of our favorite books. |
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