Many organisations role out marketing, CRM, and loyalty programmes without establishing what is important to the customers they are about to inflict their ideals and offers upon with reckless abandon with little thought as to why
You can encourage your staff to deliver excellent customer service until the cows come home, and you can buy a top-of-the-line CRM system. But if your organisation isn't clear on its values – on what it stands for - you’ll very likely undermine your efforts.
For employees to be fully empowered to consistently create customer experiences that foster loyalty, they must understand and live the organisation’s values – what they are, and how they show up in employee behaviours. Values provide a valuable framework for the day-to-day choices employees make and actions they take toward organisational goals.
Unifying values are the blueprints that drive an organisation's culture. If employees know that ‘excellence’ is an organisational value, they will make more choices toward that end. If 'teamwork’ is a corporate value, they’re more likely to make choices and take actions with the team’s best interests in mind. In addition, values:
* Make it easier for employees to figure out how to ‘do the right thing’
* Foster strong feelings of personal effectiveness and pride
* Facilitate consensus about goals and understanding about job expectations
* Reduce levels of job stress and tension
* Provide a sense of order without imposing ‘rules’
* Promote high levels of company loyalty
One of the biggest mistakes companies make is believing that they're already living the values they feature in public relations and marketing materials. There’s often a huge gap between the values organisations say they have, and the values they’d like to have or are actually living.To close that gap, the following steps are for defining, refining and reinforcing organisational values:
1) Brainstorm, explore and clarify organisational values. Give everyone a clear, common everyday understanding of how you define your values and what they look like in daily behaviour. Just using words like ‘integrity’ or ‘balance’ is not enough since everyone has their own definition of what words mean. The time it takes to zero in on what your organisation is really about is well worth it.
2) To achieve or maintain your competitive edge, make sure your values are ‘customer-focused.’ This means you’ve taken the time to look at what your customer’s value, and usually requires an ‘outside-in’ view of your organisation. Spend some time truly understanding what the customer expects from you, what their goals and dreams are and how they feel about doing business with you.
3) Give each and every employee the opportunity to uncover his or her personal values. Why? Research shows that even if personal values are not in sync with corporate values, employees who are clear on what their own personal values are tend to be more engaged in and committed to their work.
4) Reinforce values. Make sure they’re an integral part of your hiring, orientation and ongoing training programs. Management should consciously model organisational values, and encourage and praise staff members when they exhibit behaviours that support them.
5) Revisit values regularly to determine if they still make sense, or if changes may be necessary.The bottom line companies that live by their values and keep customers more easily create profits. Today’s more cynical, demanding customers are looking for companies that are driven by their values - not just their profit motives. Organisations that know and live their values tend to create great places to work for and to do business with. They enjoy healthy profits as a result of their customers returning to buy more, with their like minded associates in tow.
John Logar
Professional Speaker and Consultant
Showing posts with label values. Show all posts
Showing posts with label values. Show all posts
Your Ego Could be Hurting Your Career
Sometimes our own self importance gets in the way of what we’re trying to achieve, whether that be meeting our objectives, providing the best support service for our members, or simply putting off dealing with those little problems that can turn into major issues. Our ego pops up everywhere to protect ourselves and yet, it may be the very thing that inhibits the growth of our organisations.
How often do you find yourself defending your point of view, even to the point where you’ve realised that what you’re saying is off the mark yet you don’t want to be seen to be wrong? When someone poses a new idea, do you bring up all the reasons why it won’t work? Have you heard people in your organisation justify following a procedure by saying “because that’s the way we do it around here”?
These are just some of the ways we allow our egos, or ourselves, to get in the way of getting the results we talk about. Why do we do this? The ego is our self image, based on how we would like to be seen by others. By living through our ego, we seek the approval of others, we are always searching for a response, we feel a need to control things and to have or gain power. Based on what we believe, if we feel that any of these things are being changed, altered, challenged or threatened then we will take action to protect our image. Your ego wants to control and it is sustained by power because it lives in fear. However, your ego is not who you really are. It is only how you want to be seen by others.
When your ego kicks in, this stops or diminishes:
*Communication – you stop listening and considering new information
*Collaboration – you become autocratic “Do as I say don’t do as I do”
*Objective outcomes – you take everything as a personal attack and become defensive and confrontational which makes the other person agitated and accelerates an argument
*Efficiency – you waste time and energy on non-productive discussions and activities
*Trust – you separate and distance yourself from others
What do you think you gain from being in your ego? What results are you getting from being in your ego? What results do you actually want?
I worked with an organisation that outwardly promoted itself as an employer of choice by supporting its staff through flexible working hours, great career opportunities and having a great culture. Within the organisation, the CEO was focused on creating a great culture –
organisational values had been established and were incorporated into the performance measurement framework. Staff enjoyed the approach that was being taken to create a fun and lively culture yet where it failed was with the senior managers of the organisation. They were so focused on building their own “empires” that they would not share information with other departments or undertake activities that would make them look good to the detriment of the organisation as a whole. While some made attempts to encourage a culture of growth, the end result of the growth was so they could meet budget and achieve their financial remuneration through bonuses. Therefore the culture of openness, sharing and growth that was trying to be developed at the highest levels in the organisation was undermined by the senior managers’ desires to fulfil their own needs.
So what can you do to stop your ego getting in the way of creating a great career for yourself and help build a successful organisation?
*When you notice you’ve become agitated or irritated by a comment or action, stop and listen.
*Step outside of your importance or opinion and become aware and open to what’s going on around you.
*Before you make any judgements or decisions, take into consideration the entire situation i.e. look at it from an outside-in perspective.
*Relate what is being discussed or decided to your outcomes – how will this help to achieve the organisation’s objectives as opposed to your objectives?
If you find this hard to do for yourself, recognise what bothers you through the actions of other people. Your response to someone else’s behaviour is a direct reflection of what you like or don’t like about yourself. If they irritate or annoy you, ask yourself “What about that behaviour aggravates me and do I do or say this to others?” You’ll very quickly identify behaviours that are based in your ego and inhibit your performance.
Your ego blocks you from the truth. It stops you from looking at things clearly and objectively and taking the most appropriate course of action. By removing your ego, your decision making process becomes easier and faster, a culture of trust and integrity is fostered and a clarity of direction and purpose is achieved, leading to personal and organisational success.
How often do you find yourself defending your point of view, even to the point where you’ve realised that what you’re saying is off the mark yet you don’t want to be seen to be wrong? When someone poses a new idea, do you bring up all the reasons why it won’t work? Have you heard people in your organisation justify following a procedure by saying “because that’s the way we do it around here”?
These are just some of the ways we allow our egos, or ourselves, to get in the way of getting the results we talk about. Why do we do this? The ego is our self image, based on how we would like to be seen by others. By living through our ego, we seek the approval of others, we are always searching for a response, we feel a need to control things and to have or gain power. Based on what we believe, if we feel that any of these things are being changed, altered, challenged or threatened then we will take action to protect our image. Your ego wants to control and it is sustained by power because it lives in fear. However, your ego is not who you really are. It is only how you want to be seen by others.
When your ego kicks in, this stops or diminishes:
*Communication – you stop listening and considering new information
*Collaboration – you become autocratic “Do as I say don’t do as I do”
*Objective outcomes – you take everything as a personal attack and become defensive and confrontational which makes the other person agitated and accelerates an argument
*Efficiency – you waste time and energy on non-productive discussions and activities
*Trust – you separate and distance yourself from others
What do you think you gain from being in your ego? What results are you getting from being in your ego? What results do you actually want?
I worked with an organisation that outwardly promoted itself as an employer of choice by supporting its staff through flexible working hours, great career opportunities and having a great culture. Within the organisation, the CEO was focused on creating a great culture –
organisational values had been established and were incorporated into the performance measurement framework. Staff enjoyed the approach that was being taken to create a fun and lively culture yet where it failed was with the senior managers of the organisation. They were so focused on building their own “empires” that they would not share information with other departments or undertake activities that would make them look good to the detriment of the organisation as a whole. While some made attempts to encourage a culture of growth, the end result of the growth was so they could meet budget and achieve their financial remuneration through bonuses. Therefore the culture of openness, sharing and growth that was trying to be developed at the highest levels in the organisation was undermined by the senior managers’ desires to fulfil their own needs.
So what can you do to stop your ego getting in the way of creating a great career for yourself and help build a successful organisation?
*When you notice you’ve become agitated or irritated by a comment or action, stop and listen.
*Step outside of your importance or opinion and become aware and open to what’s going on around you.
*Before you make any judgements or decisions, take into consideration the entire situation i.e. look at it from an outside-in perspective.
*Relate what is being discussed or decided to your outcomes – how will this help to achieve the organisation’s objectives as opposed to your objectives?
If you find this hard to do for yourself, recognise what bothers you through the actions of other people. Your response to someone else’s behaviour is a direct reflection of what you like or don’t like about yourself. If they irritate or annoy you, ask yourself “What about that behaviour aggravates me and do I do or say this to others?” You’ll very quickly identify behaviours that are based in your ego and inhibit your performance.
Your ego blocks you from the truth. It stops you from looking at things clearly and objectively and taking the most appropriate course of action. By removing your ego, your decision making process becomes easier and faster, a culture of trust and integrity is fostered and a clarity of direction and purpose is achieved, leading to personal and organisational success.
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