Jamie was preparing for his 2:00 meeting with one of the company's largest customers. As the head of operations it seemed an improbable call for him to be making. Sales was always worried when they had to take ops types on the road with them. There had been, somewhere back in the annals of the company's history some poor performances by a member of operations during a series of visits to clients. A proclamation had gone out - well, maybe it was just an off-handed comment but the effect was the same - no ops people at sensitive client meetings.
The sales team had always preferred to talk about the "sausage" with their clients and avoid any discussion of the actual details of making of the sausage. It's a messy distasteful process that goes on in the back room of a service business like theirs. But Jamie had done much to overcome that concern. His style was calm, confident and he had a presence about him that made clients feel he was the perfect person to be handling their business. The client didn't know he'd had to clean up a series of messes to earn the confidence of the sales team, and now he was to help them make a sale for new services to the client. What a day this would be. Or so he thought.
But this day did, in fact, take an unexpected turn . Starting with so much promise and ending with Jamie boarding a plane a day early to get home and address a new crisis. That there was a crisis wasn't unique. The new twist to this challenge is that the client had made him aware of it immediately following their flawless presentation about the new service, how much it would help the client's employees and what a great value it was at twice the price. He'd thought the clients lead representative had acted strangely during introductions; cold and distant. Throughout the entire presentation they had avoided eye contact and not seemed at all enthused - not asking a single question.
When they were done, the client's executive director looked at Jamie and asked, "Did you know that 11 orders of ours have been lost and never processed over the last year?" Jamie was stunned, how had he not known about this? She answered that question, asked only in his head, by adding that the issue had been identified by her internal auditors. He'd come so far with his operations team, and now he was the reason the client would be making no purchases on this day. In addition, they had threatened to cancel current orders if these issues were not cleaned up quickly.
As he sat in the plane, stuck on the tarmac, he could do nothing but think. How had this happened and what would he do to clean this mess up and break the cycle of crisis?
Jamie and his firm need a wider view.
Jamie and his cohorts are facing a situation with both immediate and long term implications. Jamie's processes and management oversight to address past issues had apparently not been as thorough as he'd hoped and that fact was now standing in the way of executing the company's strategy of offering new solutions to it's customers. The reality is sinking in that best new products and services designed to help customers cannot overcome poor daily execution. Are you being blocked in your efforts to change you client's view of your business? Do daily snafus block their view of your future? If so, you are not alone.
Broadlight(T) addresses disconnects between strategy and execution.
I designed Broadlight(T) quite by accident. In fact I didn't even know I was doing it while I was solving problems. By addressing operational challenges in the business, we were gradually improving our client's views of our ability to deliver on new promises and opportunities. Broadlight(T) has three primary parts:
1. Diligent review of where you are. What are your current results and how do your customers view their experience with you? Our friend Jamie's firm launched a full 3rd party survey of their clients in all segments. The results were humbling across the board. But they had taken a critical step in bringing the customer into the room at every step of their business model. One of the great things about internal scorecards is that one can get a picture of how they are performing against pre-set goals and measures. It is a dramatic moment when your internal measures tell you one thing and your customers tell you something else. Fight the urge to explain away the feedback. Accept it and set to work on the highest priority items.
2. Review your ability to execute. What is the company/business/division/department's history of delivering on new promises and of making timely and successful change? Change and adaptation to competitor's moves as well as a society that is constantly morphing is here to stay. The most successful firms will be those whose management thinking and initiatives are supported by processes and people committed to focused execution. This does not mean that one needs to build a Utopian world where no one is interrupted and competing real-time issues don't arise - that is fantasy. It does mean, however, that discipline and rigorous attention to finishing what is begun are critical. If your latest output from leadership offsite meetings doesn't force something off the plate, or off the table altogether, then you aren't ready for the discipline that's needed to alter course as the current - and I believe permanent - environment demands.
3. It's got to fit on one hand. There was an occasion once when my boss was escorting his boss's boss (for those keeping count that's 3 levels above me as a director level leader. He asked me to prepare a couple of thoughts to share with them. I did, but I didn't need them. The senior leader asked me a great question that took all our time and it was this: "Lance, what do you think are our biggest challenges...ones that you'd like me to have in mind as I meet with the senior management team?" I could almost feel my boss praying that I'd pass on the question because he'd heard my pitch before. I said that we had too many priorities, initiatives, change efforts for people to allocate a meaningful amount of time to - as if we were going to try everything and see what stuck. I encouraged . . . almost begged . . . her to get the group so focused that we could all tick off - on one hand - what we were trying to get done and how we were going to do it. She then asked me what I thought those were and I told her. Even if your leadership can't get it's message down to one hand, you have to!!!
Jamie did solve the problems with his group. The client did order the new services and extend their contract for current services. The company prospered from a new insight - our customers will tell us what's important.
