Zealise Blog

Aaarghh! It's enough to drive you nuts!

Chocolate-box pretty! That was our garden when the cherry tree blossomed: the symbol of summer finally arrived. Then last year – nada! Absolutely nothing! We called our local garden guru to ask what could have happened, and he explained that there had been a virus doing the rounds and a number of cherry trees had just died off. Ours apparently was simply another sad statistic.

He warned, however, that it would be under a tree-preservation order and that we would need town council permission to cut it down. That’s right – we need council permission to cut down and replace a dead tree!

Like good citizens we duly phoned the council to explain the position and request permission and were told we had to make the request in writing. We eventually got around to this about a year later when we realised it was almost cherry-blossom time again! (Oh, how time flies!) This week, several weeks later, we received the response in the mail.

So far, so good. But what do you think it said?

Employees as assets

It is ironic – and not a little frustrating! How often have you heard a colleague or senior executive say, “Our people are our greatest asset”? And they are not being facetious or hypocritical when they say it. Yet they never treat their people as assets and their people certainly don’t feel like assets. And that is a problem.

Why? Because feelings shape perceptions and perceptions shape behaviour. Consequently if you want to create employee engagement – if you want your people to show more interest in what they do and how they do it  – you have to make them feel like assets.

Collaboration, Collective Intelligence & Employee Engagement

Do you ever give collaboration any conscious thought? I hope so, because it is integral to virtually everything you do, and certainly a key aspect of any leadership role. After all, collaboration literally means “working together” and no organisation can exist unless people work together. So you could define management as “the art or science of enabling people to collaborate more effectively.”

Actually this definition of management may be more powerful and profound than you realise, for it makes people paramount: it makes them the centre and the circumference of management and reinforces the fact that, as a leader, managing people is the most important aspect of your job. It is powerful because it exposes something you possibly never consciously recognise: that your people are your brand! Your

The Semantics Say It All!

You may – and most likely do – use it unthinkingly. It is such a little word; seemingly innocent, innocuous and insignificant. Just three letters long!

Yet, it can be profoundly significant.

In fact, if you were to think about it more deeply you might recognise the intention behind the word as a primary cause of conflict: for toddlers and tyrants alike, every race and culture and possibly every species of creation from aardvark to zebra.  At all levels: individual, family and community; personal and organisational; micro and macro.

So can you guess what the word is?

The Tyranny of the Task!

Have you had a bad customer experience recently? Unfortunately the answer is most likely yes. And more than likely your frustration has been caused by someone’s rigid adherence to rules, even when the rules don’t appear to make sense. All too often the person serving will even agree, but say they are powerless to do anything about it “because those are the rules and that is the way things are!” 

Hopefully such experiences make you more alert to ensuring that your organisation does not operate with a radical, rigid and almost religious reliance on rules. They do prompt you to talk to your people and find out if they ever feel that way, don’t they? You can never expect to provide an exemplary customer experience if you don’t.

However, rigid reliance on rules has a near cousin that also impacts negatively on your organisational effectiveness, and thus on your service and ultimately your customers’ experience. You could call this “the tyranny of the task.” Let me give you an example. 

Will RISES prevent a fall?

After writing about values for the past few weeks, it seems only appropriate to pause to consider the new values-based direction that Barclays Bank is taking.

The new CEO has apparently decided that 5 values should be at the centre of the business. These are respect, integrity, service, excellence and stewardship (RISES). (Now I have no idea whether Barclays is using this mnemonic or not, but having come up with it I cannot help thinking it would be brilliant if they are, because it would mean without any effort at all they could now claim their logo is a phoenix and not an eagle!) But, jokes aside, the values themselves seem reasonable.

In fact they are just the values you would expect from a bank. They seem so obvious that you have to ask yourself how they managed to move so far away from them in the first place. So encouraging though this is, there are aspects that still give cause for concern.

Consistent Values: Key to Community Building

If values define your vision and your vision shapes the behaviour that builds the community that drives your organisation, you would have to agree that your values are key, wouldn’t you? Certainly the clearer, the more comprehensive and the more consistent your values are the stronger your community will be – and the more successful and the more sustainable your organisation will be as a result. Remember: “No community = no business.”

So how well are you doing at communicating and cementing yours?

One thing is for sure, you cannot do it properly if you are not consistent. And the problem is that very often businesses are sending out conflicting messages. Let me give you an example.

Earlier today I received an email with the headline, “We are helping businesses to thrive and survive in 2013. Can we

The Core of Effective Communication

Effective communication is a life-skill and certainly a core competency for any leader. Whether you are trying to change the culture of your organisation, transform its business entirely or simply battling to cope with the constant change that is an integral part of everyday business life, good communication skills are vital. If you cannot communicate effectively you don’t have a snowball in hell’s chance of succeeding.

Unfortunately, communication is a two way process. Thus it is not something you can do on your own. No matter how good at it you are, you depend on someone else. And the thing is, the other person does not feel exactly the way you do about the situation. And, organisationally at least, effective communication means getting someone else to feel the same way you do.

Why?

Survival, Sustainability & Employee Engagement

Would you say that employee engagement is essential for organisational survival?

Possibly not. After all, if reports and surveys are to be believed, very few organisations today have the levels of engagement that they can be proud of. And yet …

A report in the January 13 business section of the UK Sunday Times questioning the ability to revive the fortunes of the 129 year old institution that is Marks & Spencer, tells a sad story. It describes conversations with two named employees. The first apparently states, “The ready meal section is great and the dips are perfect for a dinner party.” However, when asked about the clothes (the historic foundation of the retailer’s business) she says, “I’ve never been upstairs. I’ve never asked a friend where her top is from and heard ‘M&S’. And you wouldn’t want to admit it if it was.”  Her friend agreed. “The last clothing I bought was a pair of bed socks for my dad. My mum is 50 – too young to be getting clothes from here.”

Wow! With comments like that from the company’s own employees, you really do have to worry for its future, don’t you?  But is it the employees’ fault or management’s?

When marines cry!

It seems unheard of to make a US marine cry – especially in public. So to achieve this through something that can only be described as poor customer service is really remarkable. Yet apparently Delta Airlines managed it.  

To their credit Delta in a prompt response have promised to “make it right.” However, how do you “make right” such personal humiliation?  

Of course Delta claims that, “This incident doesn’t reflect the care with which Delta people serve our customers every day,” and that, “We strive to exceed expectations with every customer.” That is likely true but, unfortunately, this incident happened. So, even if it is a lamentable one-off, it is evidence that there is a lack of organisational integrity and that such good intentions do not always translate into the appropriate action in the work place.