Archives: December 2010

Are you being served?

There’s a statement on our Future Shape of the Winner (FSW) model that often gets singled out – Statement 34. We exploit the latest techniques and technologies to deliver our products and services more efficiently, to provide a more intimate and personalized service, and to expand our offering through new products, features, and/or services for our clients/customers.

In an Excellence Audit Survey, this statement often has one of the highest gaps between the current and future ratings, which puts it near the top of the list for improvement attention. It is also very common for people to point the finger at the IT department by way of an explanation – saying they don’t get enough support/investment for this kind of activity.

But in these days of Social Media, surely this kind of connectivity is much more freely available? And do we really need the IT folks to lead the way for us?

Frank Eliason, (formerly of Comcast and now of Citi Corp), has become a bit of a guru of the use of Social Media to connect with customers. In a recent interview,with Social Media Examiner, he explains how SM can be used to transform relationships with customers. His early experiments focused on dealing with unhappy customers, and nipping service issues in the bud before anyone had the chance to get the word out in the Twittersfere!! But what he/Comcast discovered was that the potential of SM is much greater than that. Well handled, these virtual conversations with customers became a revolutionary way to connect with both happy and unhappy customers. And as well as providing great customer experiences they are also great for getting the Brand message out to a wide range of people.

This is a brilliant example of our Excellence Model (FSW) in action. FSW focuses on the options leaders have to put their people into a position to do their best work. The model also acknowledges how interconnected the various elements of an organization are, and how it is people that are the constant factor. Rather than people being seen as one of the elements within an organization, we make people the central element. Take a look at our Gyroscope model to see how we explain the model.

In Frank’s example, the use of social media gives people a simple and immediate way of delivering a personal service to clients and lets them put their own personality into their work.

Have you dipped your toes into the Social Media waters yet, and if you have, how is it going? Tell us about your experience!

Full Steam Ahead!

It’s that time of year again! However well we’ve done on meeting this year’s targets, 2011 looms large. So what does next year look like for your business? What fresh initiatives are you dreaming up to add impetus to your efforts?

If you are finding the challenge a bit uninspiring, it could be that others in the organization can provide some fresh insights. TPC’s Excellence Audit is designed to do exactly that.

In one recent audit, the boss of a manufacturing organization that has weathered the recession surprisingly well was keen to build on the year’s success. He instinctively felt that he was getting moderate rather than excellent levels of commitment. As well as his executive team colleagues, he chose a broad range of people that he trusted from right across the organization, and asked them to complete the audit.

His data pointed him squarely at specific aspects of leadership in which he and his executive team were found lacking; in particular people questioned whether innovation and innovators were valued, and did not feel enough effort was put into their development

Here are some of the verbatim comments which put a bit more relief around their survey scores:

“Our Function doesn’t encourage us to think about self-development. This makes it hard to stay self-motivated.”
“Leaders give too much time to day to day and operating stuff (they generally “do” too much). A way should be found to dedicate more time to strategy, tactics and implementation around people”
“Although management gives the sales force the impression that they do not trust them, the salesforce has a very, very high level of self-motivation. Management should be happy having such persons.”
“Not everyone currently demonstrates high commitment. I see that we have departmental thinking and it seems that different goals among Functions reduce commitment.”

These audit results sparked a lively debate amongst the executive team. We discussed reward and recognition and whether their moderation in these areas was stifling innovation. We also debated their conservatism around investing in people; what kind of message was that giving about the confidence they had in people?

We went on to discuss how to incorporate the survey findings into their plans for the year. Times are difficult, and there is not much spare money around, but it turns out there is a lot that can be done at very little extra cost;) Here are just three of the decisions the team made:

They will choose a small number of projects and use them as development for their people; invitations will go to people who don’t normally get considered, and they will encourage the team to be creative and come up with ideas outside of the norm.
They will target themselves on regularly finding and acknowledging individual acts of excellence.
They will host a meeting of all the survey participants to discuss the results of the ExAud and to make a commitment to act on the feedback. Who knows what else will surface as ideas for improvement from that meeting?

So, one way or another, next year’s plans will definitely have a different flavor.

How does 2011 look to you? What is going to be different about the plans you are making?