SERVICE MATTERS Leading from the front Andrew McMillan
Last month Andrew McMillan, Principal at Engaging Service, looked at how company statements can become a foundation for improving the overall customer experience, but for this to be successful there must be a clear understanding of the true nature of management and leadership.
Organisations that spurn their most precious responsibility to create a remarkable customer experience will lose out to rivals who react proportionately to the high value they place on winning and keeping their customers. That’s according to Andrew McMillan, Principal at Engaging Service, who specialises in customer experience and
employee engagement. He is best known as the architect of John Lewis’ customer-driven culture and now operates as a leading business consultant. Last year he inspired Comms Vision delegates to create massive competitive advantage by better managing staff, customer experiences and corporate branding. Here, we present the latest in a series of articles in which McMillan explores the elements of defining company culture.
L
ooking at my previous articles in this series we now have a definition of
our customer experience and have communicated it clearly and regularly to staff and customers. We also have internal and external measures against which we can track how our aims for customer experience and internal culture are being delivered. Arguably, we could stop at that point, and there is a school of thought which suggests frequently publishing performance measures is enough to elicit consistent improvement against those measures. Sadly, in my experience, that’s rarely the case and to achieve sustainability and improvement strong, supportive, directional and inspirational leadership is critical.
That visible leadership has to come from every manager in the organisation from the board to team leaders. Unfortunately, all too often, in every business sector I see managers managing
but not leading. A simple test for this is to look at a manager’s weekly diary and try to identify what proportion of each day is spent talking to and coaching those that report to them. Often that time simply does not exist as their weeks are filled with back- to-back meetings or other ‘important’ administrative tasks that take them away from being a role model for the teams they lead.
A fast and simple way of starting to alleviate that issue is to list all of the tasks a manager has to do each month in order of importance. Often, those at the end of the list aren’t critical to the businesses’ performance and are there ‘because we have always done that’. A conscious decision can then be made, balancing those less important tasks against the benefits of developing an enhanced internal culture, and consequently improved customer experience. Try asking yourself these questions in relation to any routine task or meeting that takes you away from leading your teams: Does the activity directly benefit the team (would the team agree if asked)?; does the activity directly benefit customers (would they be prepared to pay for it)?; is the activity business critical (would your
Have you entered the Comms National Awards yet? Visit
www.cnawards.com
34 COMMS DEALER JULY 2013
business cease to function)?; and is the activity related to strategic planning (for senior managers only)?
Being brave enough to change the status quo and stop a few unnecessary routine tasks can create a significant window of opportunity for leadership rather than just management. Sometimes, however, it isn’t as easy as that and can lead to a piece of organisational development work to establish what processes can be simplified and/or delegated up or down the line to free managers’ time to lead. Either way, this issue must be addressed as it is crucial to the development, sustainability and consistency of customer experience.
That’s likely to be the hardest part, but there can be another key leadership issue to address. Some managers may have historically been recruited or promoted for their knowledge or on their ability to complete tasks to a high standard rather than their leadership potential. Once the volume of tasks has been reduced and these individuals are expected to interact with and lead their teams on a daily basis, these managers can find themselves very exposed. A full suite of leadership skills training should be made available to them, particularly
focusing on goal setting, coaching and dealing with conflict. Many will respond well to this support and relish the new challenges, but some will not and, sadly, if they cannot transition from managers to leaders, they should be removed from their positions. That applies to all levels within the organisation.
That is where the benefit of the individual accountability within the measurements, both internal and external, comes in. That detailed measurement creates the opportunity for managers at all levels to identify both outstanding performance against the desired aims for recognition and poor performance for coaching and support, so making the most effective use of the time available to them.
In this way, providing the aims of the business have been clearly articulated and the measures have been skillfully aligned to those aims, the managers can start to lead the behaviours that will deliver those aims rather than just reacting to the operational performance results. It is this leadership informed by frequent measurement of outcomes that gives the organisation its consistency and sustainability when embarking on a customer experience development programme. n
Hospitality sponsor
www.comms-dealer.com
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64