Growth & Leadership Insights

The Customer Experience Advantage

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The customer-driven market grows stronger every day, propelled by relentless disruption and change. Those who thrive in this market deliver exceptional customer experiences, synced with their product or service, and based on their awareness of customer goals, as well as needs.  Such experiences build enduring relationships which subsequently provide awareness about trends, changing customer demands, feedback on strategy, and innovation opportunities – all valuable inputs for decision-making and value creation.  Your company’s customer-service personnel, serving as …

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Consensus Is Not Commitment

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Achieving goals requires a team commitment. Consensus is not commitment, but leaders can confuse the two outcomes in the pursuit of collaboration.  Fostering a culture of dialogue in which teammates are encouraged to share their opinions, suggestions and concerns is a necessary first step towards commitment and shared accountability. But the objective is not to build team agreement or to create harmony versus conflict. On the contrary, the objective is to discover and assess differing perspectives that enable …

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Faster ROI on Leadership Development

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Measuring ROI on leadership development is elusive. At the strategic level, it can take time to generate the improved results expected from leaders in whom such an investment is made. But achieving those results is actually the culmination of multiple, interim actions, taken by the leader’s team who were motivated by the leader to do more than fulfill assigned responsibilities, to invest their energy and talent in making something better. Each change initiative included KPIs which identified …

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Preserving Culture in a Downturn

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When business turns down, and layoffs are necessary, preserving culture can be challenging for leadership.  Leaders who sustain the dignity of those who must depart, who communicate clearly and honestly, employ a fair, ethical process, and offer resources to assist are seen as modelling a company’s core principles, thus preserving some trust with the survivors.  A poorly managed downsizing damages that trust, perhaps irrevocably. It also crushes morale and loyalty, increases resentment, and reduces employee engagement …

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Investing in Appreciation

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During this prolonged time of disruption and stress, those you lead benefit from your personal attention in letting them know that they are appreciated and valued. The return on these efforts is higher individual and team performance, greater collaboration, increased willingness to invest in changes that deliver improvements, and enriched job satisfaction for your people.  Good employees are hard to find, develop, and keep. And replacing trained, experienced people is often quoted as the #1 non-productive cost …

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Kindness

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We defeat disruption, fear, and uncertainty by relying on our beliefs, values and stories. Challenging situations can dismay and paralyze, or they can inspire and energize. Each of us chooses which path we will take. I’m writing this on Martin Luther King Jr. day. Dr. King chose to take control rather than be controlled. And on this day, we honor his choice, his decision to persevere with his message and methods which continue to be reasonable, positive and …

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It’s Not The People…It’s The Leadership

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We begin our careers by accepting an entry level job with specific requirements and responsibility only for ourself. If we do well, and increasingly master our assigned duties, we get promoted; if we sustain our high performance, then we continue to earn greater responsibility. Eventually, given our reliable performance and high mastery of skills, we’re promoted into a leadership role and required to lead others who are responsible for doing the tasks we excelled at doing. We’re …

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Altered Urgencies

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For many of us, it’s back to work in a new year. Catching up, answering emails, checking with the boss, revisiting pending deadlines. It’s typically a time when fewer things are urgent, a time for resolutions and reviews, a time to reflect on what worked well during the past year and what could improve. Remember those process deficiencies you wanted to fix but couldn’t because daily urgencies consumed you? Now is the time to make those process improvements …

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Customer Experience Insulation

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The customer-driven market is the future of business. Those who thrive in it anticipate disruption, partner with key customers, relentlessly challenge the status quo, and drive, rather than adapt to, change. Decisions related to these strategies rely upon urgent, unfiltered feedback from customers. How insulated are you from this direct feedback? When a small business delivers a poor customer experience, the leaders quickly learn about it. Complaints rise and customers leave. Post-purchase reparations are expensive, and goal achievement is …

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Evolving Values

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For numerous companies, this is the 2021 planning season. The widespread disruption to business during 2020 raised awareness about what can and cannot be managed when overwhelming, unexpected events occur. Uncertainty is no stranger to business leaders, but the profound, unprecedented impact of the Covid challenge caused many to reconsider their purpose, values, and vision before delving into goal setting, strategy development and action planning. Among the results of this foundational review is a refocusing …

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