Tag: Organizational Excellence

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Applying Filters to Your Speaking

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Have you ever found yourself with the proverbial “foot in your mouth” because of something you said?  We all do that sometimes – and often in situations where we then feel foolish or embarrassed.  I once heard a great way to filter your thoughts before they come out of your mouth, and to consider what you are going to say before you say it.

Before you speak, ask yourself first, “Is it true?”  Meaning, is what you are going to say a truth …. Or is it a rumor, or gossip, or something that you are spreading that doesn’t merit discussion?

Secondly, ask yourself, “Is it kind?”  Who will be hurt if you speak your thought out loud?  Is it a kindness to speak it, or hurtful?

Last, ask yourself, “Is it necessary?”  Do you really need to say it?  What would happen if you didn’t?  Does what you are planning to say create positive action or unintended consequences?

This simple routine for considering what you are doing to say – BEFORE you say it – will ensure that you are always a positive influence to those around you.   Using this simple routine might mean that you stop gossip rather than extending it; that you curb the impulse to share an exaggerated story.  In asking yourself if what you are going to say is true, kind, and necessary, you will also be modeling effective speaking behaviors and encouraging others to do the same.

I have a client who struggles with her place within a management team.   She tends to think faster than most, and as a result also talk first and is often the first to raise her hand or react to an idea in a meeting.   Together, we discussed a new technique that she successfully used when with groups of people.  She simply counts to five before she speaks.   In that way, she can allow the space around her to slow down, she can consider what she is going to say, and she can apply this test as well – is it kind, is it true, and is it necessary?   When she does speak, then, her words serve her well, and she has become known in that management team as someone who is wise, thoughtful, and kind.

Have you considered how you can apply this simple filter to what you are going to say?  How might it make a difference in your interactions?  Let us hear from you!

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A Winning Team

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As children and teenagers most of us have played on a sports team. Can you remember what it felt like to be part of a winning team or a losing team? Remember the elation you felt when your team won a big game and the despair of losing the big game or championship? It is something special to experience being part of something bigger then yourself.

In my experience the concept of a “team based culture” is something a lot of entrepreneurs, business owners and executives want but find very difficult to achieve.  The difficulty begins with the definition.  Plato said that wisdom begins with the definition of terms. So what does Webster’s Dictionary have to say about teams: “a number of persons associated together in work or activity”. Webster’s goes on to describe teamwork as: “work done by several associates with each doing a part but all subordinating personal prominence to the efficiency of the whole”.  This is a good start but does not give us enough practical detail and guidance in the business world. Steven Yelen a New York based Business Coach with over 20 years experience in supporting organizations and teams give us some guidance with his ideas on fundamental principles and behaviors that work.

Fundamental Principles of a Successful Team:

-Common Purpose

-Clear and mutually agreed to working approach

-Appropriate balance of task focus and relationship focus

-Agreement on Measurements and Aligned Rewards

Behaviors that support Successful Teams:

-Push for high quality communications

-Help create a climate of trust

-Play your position and bring talent to the team

-Help drive discipline into the team

-Be prepared to sacrifice for the team-be a good sport

-Help new members make the entry

-Strengthen the leader through good followership

-Play down yourself and build up others

Why Teams fail to deliver results?

The biggest root cause of team failures in business can often traced to the lack of establishment of clear purpose, goals, measurements and rewards. Without these foundation pillars in place trust is often the first casualty followed by a lack of energy and sense of helplessness.  Finally, if the leadership is not walking the talk then you can expect cynicism to spread quickly and undermine any opportunity for success.

Final Thought:

There are many examples of organizations that have achieved excellence and delivered exceptional results by creating a team based culture. Some examples include GE, Motorola, McKinsey and Pall Corporation.   Do your research and look at the top players in your industry and you will often find a team based approach separating the leaders from the followers.

A great resource for helping you understand and build high performance teams can be found in the book “The Wisdom of Teams” by Jon R. Katzenbach and Douglas K. Smith. 

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Moments of Truth In The Customer Experience

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Nancy complains, “Why can’t they get their act together? This is so frustrating. The first person I talked to wasn’t even nice. The second person was much nicer but couldn’t make a decision. I got sent to a technician and got lost in their phone system. It turns out they don’t have the fix I need. Then when I try to return what I bought, it sounds like the person in accounting doesn’t even know what to do to give me a credit.”

Has this ever happened to you? Not a pleasant customer experience.

Each organization’s moments of truth are when it touches each customer. Is the customer experience delightful, positive and successful? The whole point of all the company’s strategizing, structuring, systematizing, training, employment practices, service/product creation and testing, marketing and sales efforts, is to get that customer to buy and to buy multiple times. Most of us have heard that it takes 5 times as much money to get a new customer as a repeat customer. Also, we’ve heard that raising customer loyalty by 5% can increase profitability from 25-100%. So creating that positive customer experience (first time and every time) is the focus of everything we do when we build a business. Whether or not we’re thinking about ‘total customer experience,’ the customer is always thinking:  Do I like this? Will I stay? Will I come back? Is the product/service good? Is it worth the hassle if other parts of the experience are not good?  Will I tell other people about my good/bad experience?

So if your organization’s total efforts are not leading to good customer experiences, you are missing the boat and leaving money on the table.

What goes into the Total Customer Experience?

Let’s look at Nancy’s complaint and the ‘moments of truth’ that are revealed. What does it mean ‘to get their act together?’

Emotional Connection – The first person wasn’t even nice. People buy from people they know, like and trust. If someone isn’t personable, caring and relating to Nancy as a unique human being, your company isn’t even getting to first base.

Empowered Decision Making – Too bad Nancy had to get passed around.  It’s frustrating to get passed from person to person until there is finally someone who has any authority.. Companies who are recognized for their superior customer experiences empower the person who answers the phone to make most decisions. In order to make this happen, they recruit wisely and invest in developing their people to make good decisions, to buy into the company’s values and vision, to understand the customer’s needs, to gather feedback. 

Infrastructure – The phone system, the staff’s capabilities using phone and technology, availability of information about each customer (customer relationship management), knowledge database,  technology to track trouble tickets or complaints. This kind of infrastructure allows caring staff to do a better job with the resources they need. It allows for quicker troubleshooting and availability of information on a broader basis for more empowered decision making. It would have allowed Nancy to find out sooner rather than later that ‘the fix’ she needed wasn’t available. But even better it would collect information about how many customers were having the same issue so the company could create ‘the fix’ sooner and take the issue off the table.

Systems – If the accounting team had a documented system for handling returns and credits, and each person was trained in it, then Nancy would not have had such a terrible experience. In fact, if the processes were really systematized and the right infrastructure was in place, the initial person who took the call could have handled it himself.

These are just a few of the things that companies who manage the total customer experience look at. Of course, it all starts with leadership. Leaders who get their heads out of the sand and recognize the importance of the customer experience want to infuse attention to the customer experience as they do strategic planning, diagram the organizational structure, create systems and processes in all departments, design their internal reward and recognition structures, and recruit, develop and empower their personnel. That’s what Nancy’s comment about ‘getting their act together’ is really all about.

If you have a story about a really great customer experience, please share it here along with your thoughts about the components that came together to create the delightful experience you had. Thanks for sharing.