Founder’s mentality – lessons for the new normal

I have always been fascinated by the key ingredients that make for a successful and legacy organization – one that survives all the vagaries of business cycles and still continues to grow and thrive. An organization worth emulating, keeping in mind their longevity and continued success.

Having been a part of successful and globally dominant family businesses, for me 3 critical and Key Success Factors (KSFs) standout, from amongst the rest, as follows -

1.?????Simplicity – successful legacy companies have ensured that the products, services and/or solutions that they take to market are simple – simple to understand and hence, execute successfully for both customer facing employees and the targeted customer segment.

The NBFC that I was part of (Muthoot FinCorp Ltd) had a clear strategy that since the target customer segment are people at the bottom of the pyramid, with simple needs, the financial products and services should be simple in design. This ensured that not only the customer facing employees were able to understand the same and hence explain it better to the customers, but also the target customers were happy that the products, services and solutions are easy to understand and addresses their immediate financial requirements. It is no wonder that the organization has been thriving and in existence for more than 130+ years.

2.?????Agility – speed is of essence, especially in the business world of today. In most cases the first mover advantage or the early mover advantage is the only key differentiator in the market place, before the competition copies and clones the products, services and/or solutions. Agility to understand the changing and the emerging needs of the customers, agility to understand the pain-points of the customers and proactively address the same, agility to preempt the changing ways of doing business will differentiate the successful companies from the not so successful ones.

The classic example of agility was seen when the Covid related lockdown happened, during which some companies could migrate to the new way of working, much faster than others. The Covid 19 triggered transition from “actual” to “virtual” could be accomplished by those companies which were more agile than the rest.

Agility is a culture that organizations lose, as they grow in size, shape and spread. While agility was one of the key factors that played a role in making the organization a successful one in the first place, when the organization was a start-up and in the nascent stage, companies tend to lose this, as they grow and evolve. At the beginning, the employees knew each other in person, the customers are known by name and in person and in short everyone knew each other and it was a collaborative effort to make the company a successful one. However, as companies evolve and grow, more structures and processes are brought about to manage the complex and growing company, which in many cases make the organization lose out on the agility front. While systems and processes are needed, successful companies have been able to use the same as a facilitator, while continuing to stay agile and nimble, in decision making, in understanding and addressing the needs of the target customers.

Successful companies continue to be agile and nimble, in spite of their growth. To continue to have the agility DNA is one of the ways in which successful companies remain successful.

3.?????Last mile connectivity – both with employees and customers. Successful companies continue to focus on both the last mile employees (customer facing employees), who take their products, services and solutions to the market, as well as the customers whom they service. Many companies make the mistake of only focusing on the customer, to the exclusion of the employees. Employees First and Customers Second, has been spoken about as nice to have, but the time has come for it to be a need to have, for companies to remain relevant. Since customers evaluate a company and form opinions mainly through their experience with the customer facing employees, it is common sense to look after the needs of this critical stakeholder group i.e. the customer facing, front line employees. While it is obvious, unfortunately companies ignore the same resulting in customer unhappiness and attrition.

Successful companies have been able to positively connect and ensure customer centricity, since they focus on the last mile employees who are customer facing. Organizing employee connects with the intent to listen and take action, understanding and addressing their pain points, making them feel safe and secure, taking care to skill, reskill, cross-skill and upskill so that they continue to grow, especially in the new normal, will make employees do and deliver much more than what their KRAs demand.

In the aforementioned company that I was a part of, delegation, making each branch a profit center and hence empowering people, bringing about a culture of trust, taking last mile employee feedback while creating products, services and solutions for the target customers were some of the tangible actions taken to keep employees front and central, which yielded great dividends in continuing to make the legacy organization thrive and remain relevant, even during the Covid times.

Companies that focus on these 3 Key Success Factors of Simplicity; Agility and Connect with the last mile employees and through them the customers, will be laying strong and solid foundations, on which the company could be built for long-term success.?