3 Questions Your Organization Should Always Be Able To Answer
I live in a town with a huge waterfall. People come from miles around to see it. Whenever people come visit from out of town they always want to go there. But to me, someone who has been in town all my life, I take it for granted. In the same town is a nice large river that cuts the center of town. No big deal, I have seen that river almost everyday of my life. To me, the things that others find appealing offer very little because over time the influence has worn off.
This wearing down can influence people in your organization very easily. Companies can get into a rut of allowing the same things over and over, because they have worked in the past, to continue to degrade the performance of employees. When an idea becomes institutionalized, that sacred cow becomes a part of the organization to the point that any alteration will be seen as sacrilege.
Outside the city I live in there is a town that had a ferry. This ferry represented everything about the town to the point that it is on the town seal. Just one problem, several years ago the ferry was sold because the costs of keeping it up were too great. The ferry is gone but the town still identifies itself with something long since lost. Sadly, most people never used the ferry, never realized it was sold and for all I know many did not know the town had a seal.
Eventually, the best ideas have to advance, adapt or change altogether. Without improvements, an organization’s single best idea may become its single worse block to growth. This can happen with employees. One employee stays a little too long with the organization. Through a set of perceived activities in the past, he is able to secure a position now. When you ask the question of his performance, you are scolded. How could anyone question him? He has given us decades of his life. Really, because we paid him for all that and in the beginning he was doing something. I would not need to ask the question if I saw results would I?
This led me to asking three general questions to organizations about how they do what they do. It works quite well with every entity I have worked with including government agencies, para-government agencies, non-profits and for-profits.
What was the thing we are known for?
Before you throw out and answer there is a second part to the question: what do our customers/prospects say we are known for? Our perception of our own capabilities is generally overrated. This was never more so the case then with a small regional company that saw itself as the premier provider of support. Just one single problem, they were, now no so much so.
When I sat down with the executive team I was painted a beautiful picture of organization. As the conversation went on thought there were the small cracks of reality seeping in. This was in things like follow up time, client retention and overall satisfaction. Follow up time was higher then the industry average, which no one on the team knew. Just saying client retention completely quieted everyone. We moved from real numbers to “value-added” and “influence driving” terms. When you cannot quantify a number, then you have a problem. No one had ever asked the clients if they were satisfied: a big red flag for client issues.
The problem was perception was not reality. Within the organization, particularly from the executives, there was an air of make-believe. The way they saw themselves was not reflected in the numbers. This was important to realize that they were not seeing reality. Sadly, after the meeting, several of the mid-level managers said as much. The executives were more worried about giving positivity to the Board of Directors to maintain their jobs. That told me it was not a reality altering approach, it was a save my own job approach. Needless to say, no new ideas could be developed because the perception, more like a rouse, had to be maintained. Major changes would alter everyone that something was not working. That company is no longer in business because reality caught up.
If you are not willing to listen to your clients then why are you in business? Listening to them, then balancing that against what the internal perception of the organization is difficult. It will most likely bring up tough questions, but by embracing reality rather than fantasy means we fix the problem; instead of waiting for Prince Charming to show up.
What is the one thing we have done in the past 6 months, year, 5-year period?
In a meeting with a CEO, I am given the entire history of the organization from day 1. It is a fascinating idea that helped to start the company. In the beginning, the company was a major innovator. More than just innovation, the organization was introducing technology on a major scale to an industry that had never realized the value. Over time, the organization was a powerful player in the marketplace. So what happened? Why was that the way thing started and not the way things progressed? They were a great example of a company resting on its past accomplishments.
The idea of what has happened in the very near past is close to my own heart. As an Alabama Crimson Tide football fan, the past was all we had for a while. Most college football teams had a great past, but the present – well that is another issue. Without a desire to improve the situation, after we realize what the reality of the situation is, we will accomplish nothing. For Alabama, it was an issue of finding the right coach that was already a winner, not finding one who could be. Organizations that have low self-esteem, and yes companies can have that, tend to look for people that will match their incredulous approach.
If all your innovation is in the past, it is time to change the present and take some risks. What worked 20 years ago will work today. It was not the innovation then it was the approach of wanting to be unique, innovative bringing something that was not there to the marketplace. That attitude gets lost when there is sudden growth. The growth creates fear, not of doing it wrong, but of making a mistake that takes the company away. Ask any organization that is less than 5 years old, nothing is off the table. They are willing to try any cockamamie idea out there.
However, come back 5 years later and see if that Wild West approach is still present. As the organization grows, more people are brought in by necessity. The loss of that innovative, take no prisoners approach has to be tapered. This is a necessity to institutionalize some aspects of the organization to create stability. Some companies cannot transition to this, which is why many entrepreneurs start a company then move on once the challenge of building it is over. Larry Brown, the NBA coach, is notorious for building a team then leaving. The thrill is in the building up, not the grind of daily management.
The trick, as it were, is to balance the influences entering the organization to institutionalize just enough to create a platform to build up to the next great thing. It requires bringing in people who have an innovative, progressive mind-set poised on maintaining while growing. Few people have it. This leads to the idea of nothing new in quite a while. When out of balance like this, it leads to a sense of stagnation in the minds of your clients. In technology for example, that is a deathblow. Stagnation in other organizations does the same. If you do not believe me think of Kmart, RadioShack and even CompUSA. All innovators in the early days that did not see the market change and were left behind. If you do not want that for your organization, change has to be more than a buzzword, it has to be a way of life.
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Let me put a caveat here for a moment on this one. As you read this you may be tempted to say that your organization is a non-profit and therefore this would not apply. You could not be more WRONG. Churches are the universal committers of this mistake. Assuming that what worked in the distant past will work today. Every institutionalized idea in a church was a new idea at one point. The same is true for every other organization that depends on the contributions of others.
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What is your vision for the organization moving forward?
Most every company I have dealt with has a mission and vision statement. They are properly printed on nice paper, sometimes framed in exquisite frames and displayed prominently for everyone to ignore. The sad thing is that most of the mission and vision statements are not bad. Granted, they were sometimes copied from another organization because they had all the right buzzwords.
A vision is more than just a statement. It is where leadership, which should be the executive team, sees the organization in the near future. With it in hand, the vision should be the approach that all team members know where the organization wants to go. It helps management within the organization plan better for the future, rather than being focused on today. Management is going to reflect the vision of the leadership. Good, bad or indifferent, management will follow, not lead, that is the job of those in leadership.
Never was the need for a vision more evident then in a direct mail company I consulted with. If you do not know print is very expensive, the marketplace is contracting and many have either gotten out or made major changes to their business model. Their idea was counter to the flow of the marketplace, they planned on staying right like they were, not changing anything. When I consulted with them I recommended major alteration to match a new vision. They could not be more disinterested. It led me to asking about the background of those I was called to talk to. Both were from a print background, one never worked anywhere else. It was a recipe for disaster that lead to the company making major cutbacks until they were eventually bought up for their name in the regional market: a sad result of not having a vision on the future.
If you did not notice, all three are related. More to the point, they represent a process that brings you from a lack of growth into a mindset that will aid in growth. In the simplest way; they are who are you; what do you want; and where do you need to go to accomplish it? Try it today and I will promise a change that will help elevate you from being the mediocre provider that is on the way out.