The GiFT of who matters most !
The Harvard Business School service/profit link case study from the late 1990s transformed my thinking from the widely held belief that customers are the most important people in business. It evidenced it is actually 'those who serve customers'. The role of everyone else in an organisation is to support the customer facing teams so they feel able & empowered to deliver exceptional service. Traditional hierarchies create bureaucratic 'chains of command' that frustrate, slow down & stifle those who interact directly with customers.
The GiFT was simple. To deliver great service & performance, the team needed to be highly engaged, feel really good about themselves, energised about what we wanted them to do & supported in their ability to do it.
My Mozart time, led me to translate these learnings from the HBS case study into 4 simple and connected words: Morale - service - sales - winning.
This became my virtuous circle of success & many of my leadership practices grew from this simple but powerful model.
Although motivation is intrinsic, I worked relentlessly on 'rules of motivation' creating a praise, recognition & celebration culture where everyone felt they could win by achieiving their personal bests. Every effort was made to create clarity about what mattered most & reduce bureaucracy to ensure people felt empowered to help customers in their moments of need. It was a tough culture for those with a victim, cynic & spectator mindset as we worked hard to get 'the wrong people off the bus.' This is a strong motivator in itself - people see leaders taking action with those who are not team players, who are negative & constantly moaning.
People who feel really good about themselves have a high level of self-belief and confidence. They bring positive energy to everything they do and it translates to all those around them including their customers.
Overtime this leads to a high quality, consistent service. You create 'Raving Fans' (thanks Ken Blanchard) who tell others about you. The higher the level of service, you sell less, the customer buys more (& recommends you to others) as they trust and love doing business with you. Ultimately you 'win.' The business performs every stronger & team members win both big & small, starting with praise from your colleagues/customers/leaders to extra training and responsibilities to the material factors like payrises, promotions and bonuses.
The more you win, the better you feel, the better you feel, the more positive impact you have on customers who do more business AND tell more people about you. The virtuous circle goes round again & again.
#whatwinnersdo #legacy #motivation