New Year, New Ideas!

Each year as business leaders, we have specific goals. Focus of increasing profit, hiring, improving efficiency, saving money or increasing customer loyalty. Each of these goals is strategic in nature, but requires some fundamental management practices to ensure success. Take a look at some ways to accomplish your new year, new ideas!

1. Lead your talent: This means pay attention to any hiring opportunities, to developing or managing the people in your organization that you see as important to the overall success of your business.   Remember that your employees are the best reflection of your company.
2. Leadership Development:   Who are the real leaders in your organization and are you providing learning culture for them so that they can continue to work at a high level and bring more value to the company? Are you ensuring that they are properly trained? Are you ensuring that they are involved in strategy setting? Are you delegating responsibility to them to improve their decision-making ability?
3. Succession Planning: Every business faces the prospect of employees reaching retirement age and needed a strong transition process to the next generation. It is sometimes difficult with small businesses to under-estimate the importance of how to transition information, process, procedure and institutional knowledge to someone else. A seasoned employee…just does it!   How do you ensure that there is an appropriate back-up that is ready to take on the responsibilities once that individual decides to leave?
4. Employee Handbook: Each year the employee handbook should be reviewed and updated to reflect the most recent changes in state and federal laws pertaining to employees and employee rights. All of your written policies should reflect actual current practices and comply with current laws.
5. Employee Compensation: There have been many laws put in place to protect employee compensation. Make sure that employees are properly classified and compensated under new wage hour laws. Employee compensation should be part of the strategic plan for any company regardless of size.
6. Salary reviews, increases and promotions: While we would like to think that employees maintain confidentiality as it relates to their salaries, the reality is come wage increase time, employees are the first to share this information.   Make sure that your increases and promotional opportunities comply with your employee manual. Nothing is more distracting to a company than unfair wage practices.
7. Rewards and Recognition: Many companies believe that the only form of recognition for employees is a wage increase. The reality is that different types of reward systems are the most beneficial. Reward and recognition is a very individual practice. Saying thanks or giving out gift cards year after year begins to lose effectiveness. Be creative; ask questions to see what employees really want. Make sure that whatever reward system you put in place promotes work force efficiency and ensures that all employees are working to their potential.

Happy New Year!

Whether you run a small family business or lead a Fortune 100 company, a single discontented employee can damage customer interaction.   Most companies recognize the importance of customer loyalty and many create an a value system that holds employees accountable for customer interaction. Without a concerted effort by everyone to maintain a customer-centric organization the effort fails. Maintaining customer focus means that all must buy into a change in attitude and culture. Leaders in small or large companies must balance business needs with executing business strategies that improve the customer experience in to create growth and sustain competitive advantage over others, and profitability.

In order to sustain a customer-centric business model, leaders must be willing to practice specific customer strategies and hold all members of the team to filling these goals.

The following are suggested tips to ensure sustainability:

1. Every company must have strong leadership and support. Leader must be consistent and visible proponents to ensure that all business decisions, expenditures and changes result in stronger customer retention. Employees need to understand the behaviors associated with what this type of culture looks like in the daily performance of jobs. In addition, employees should be recognized and measured for their contributions through performance reviews.
2. Employees must be able to identify with the prescribed behaviors and leaders must be able to define, articulate and gain universal acceptance throughout the organization to ensure consistency. Behaviors must be practiced from the top down, and those who exhibit the behaviors should be recognized and rewarded.
3. Behavior changes if incentives match the behavior you want repeated. Incentives can come in many shapes and forms as long as employees are rewarded. Some incentives may be financial; others may be a symbol or a personal note from the leader to the employee recognizing the specific accomplishment. This practice takes work and consistency but the benefit to the company in the long-run can’t be measured.
4. Review your on-boarding practices. Does every new employee understand expectations as it relates to customer-centric practices and behavior? Be able to share specifics behaviors and client successes.   Reinforce key goals and content and reward staff who exhibit these practices in a consistent manner.
5. While leaders must demonstrate consistency from the top, it’s the employees performing their jobs on a daily basis that really create success in customer-centric organizations.   Leaders must identify staff to help lead the organization and exemplify through actions what is expected.   Oftentimes, these staff members are given the responsibility to mentor others in order to integrate these practices into the daily functions of job responsibilities.
6. Hiring practices must evaluate not only skill but desire for supporting a customer-centric organization. Make certain that questions are geared toward evaluating whether the new candidate demonstrates understanding and has examples of behaviors leading to customer retention.
7. When possible, involve customers. Make sure that members of the team understand what customers appreciate. Whether you are a large or small company it is always important to “hear” the voice of your customer. Make the customer who is unhappy a case study for your team. Help them understand what they can do as individuals to change perception or turn a difficult customer situation in to a positive one. This practice leads to stronger employee commitment.

Customer service and even customer experience are only a small part of becoming customer centric. You need to engage every employee in the business of serving customers. Using these seven tips will help you create a powerful customer-centric culture, and drive more profitable business results.

The top skill that companies seek in leaders and in senior executives is the ability to motivate and lead others, according to a survey of 1,270 business leaders from around the world.  Top leaders said they preferred a leader that is inspiring and motivating to a leader that consistently performs well.  “While high performance is required to reach the executive level in companies, an executive’s ability to motivate people to do what he or she wants them to do is the number one differentiator between a good leader and a great one. (Source:  HR Magazine, SHRM.org).

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t is a management book by James C. Collins that aims to describe how companies transition from being average companies to great companies and how companies can fail to make the transition.  “Greatness” is defined as financial performance several multiples better than the market average over a sustained period. Collins finds the main factor for achieving the transition to be a narrow focusing of the company’s resources on their field of competence.  One of critical component of good to great is having Leaders who are humble, but driven to do what’s best for the company.  To do so requires the ability to instill these values throughout the company.  This type of company culture can ONLY exist if the leader has the ability to instill these values, hold employees accountable, and recognize that a “high performing team will always produce more than a single individual.”

Other valuable management traits include the ability to manage change and develop talent as well as innovative thinking.   If your company is interested in a free leadership consultation, please complete the attached form: