Where's North?

(Time to read this article: 6 mins)

"Why don't they use their bloody brains?" stormed one of my collegue’s clients recently when faced with costly inaction by one of his crew in a challenging situation.

I asked him whether it could be a matter of their needing "values" more than "brains" in situations like this.

If you want your team to solve problems by following a set of "rules", the Rule Book is going to be huge - and is likely to stifle initiative, and produce stilted results.

If, on the other hand, you equip your team with a set of "first principles" from which they can deduce solutions to a whole range of problems, you are likely to experience a better class of outcomes, and to witness some real initiative and engagement.

When one of your team finds themselves in unchartered waters and faced with a situation outside of their experience, have you equipped them with a set of answers to the question "What's important to us?" so that they can work out what's acceptable or, in a moral sense, which way is North.

Do they have first principles to work from that will enable them to work out just what they have to do, and so be empowered to act with certainty in a way that will advance your Company's goals?

Or will they be lost? Will they sit and wait for help to arrive? Meanwhile, the customer...?

And when it comes to the modern equivalent of "The Wilderness" - those vast white swatches on your GPS where the map makers have yet to catch up with the property developers - a compass, and a hill from which you can gain some perspective, are what's needed.

In corporate life, The Wilderness can be any new situation, and the proof of the quality of your business often rests with the clarity with which you have installed your core values in the team member on the spot. If they strike a challenge, but are clear on the Company's core values, they are likely to be able to improvise a solution that will exhibit and align with those values - and save the day.

Your Company's Core Values

One of the more interesting exercises we run with new coaching clients fairly early in the piece is to have them clarify their Vision for their business (their "Big Hairy Audacious Goal"); then their Mission (the path they will follow to achieve it); then their Values (the "boundaries to behaviour" within which they choose to operate in the pursuit of that Mission).

We find that when you get your Core Values right, and then share them sincerely and passionately with your team, some pretty interesting things start to happen.

Firstly, Core Values tend to polarise people - Passion and Values tend to do that every time. You'll see the Good step to the right; the Bad step to the left; and the plain Ugly curl up their lip and - with a bit of luck - depart! It's almost like shaking a clove of garlic at Count Dracula - the uncommitted, non-joining, I'm-here-for-me-and-nobody-else protest, shrivel, and leave!

Secondly, they form a great foundation for your Code of Conduct, Team Charter and Customer Care Commitment. In that sense, your five to 10 well-considered values provide ready and real rules of thumb for a wide range of situations.

And they're easy to remember!

Thirdly, they form The Compass we were talking about above; a set of first principles that can be used to infer a host of solutions to a host of not-yet-encountered situations.

Values Elicitation & Alignment

Eliciting values can be an interesting exercise because they are often unconsciously held. We often treat our values as "given"; as being so fundamental to our beliefs that they don't need stating. And they don't - if you restrict your hiring processes to select only psychics.

However, if you hire lesser mortals, then it's really handy first to make explicit what you value implicitly, then to articulate and contextualise those values into a range of situations that illustrate precisely what you mean.

If you run the same process of Value Elicitation for your team members to assist them to articulate their personal values, you've taken the next step towards a Values Alignment, whereby you find correspondences between what you say is important and what your team members say is important.

For example in our business "Effectiveness" is one Director's core value, and "Professionalism" is another's, but when the two parties talked at length about what they meant, each discovered that the other meant very much the same, and both came to understand that Professionalism for one is what Effectiveness looks like from the outside, for the other. That understanding then made it easier for both Directors to talk about their two core values with each of their team members to lead them to a crystal clear understanding of "what matters to us".

If you'd like more information on Values Elicitation and Alignment, and to understand how it can add tremendous value to the quality of your team's actions, then please email me.

Free Values Elicitation

Here's a chance for you to find out what really matters to you in business. The first 10 of my readers to email me on this offer will be provided with a free 40 minute "Values Elicitation" with a Master NLP Coach. The only condition is that you must have more than five employees in your team.

What's Working in Retail?

(Time to read this article: 3 mins)

How can a business founded in 1864, with 69,000 owners - each of whom works in one of their 215 outlets, on-line business or administration centre - win the UK's Customer Satisfaction award against all comers for years in a row?

The John Lewis Partnership does just that, and it bases its legendary performance on just four principles:

1. Ensuring the happiness of Partners is at the centre of everything they do.
2. Building a sustainable business through profit and growth.
3. Serving their customers to the very best of their ability.
4. Caring about their communities and their environment.

The "Partners" in principle #1 are the staff - all 69,000 of them.

Charlie Mayfield, their Chairman says, "Performance doesn't just mean making the most profit. It is as much about the happiness of our Partners. They power our business and that's what makes us successful, and profitable."

So, what is it that enables them to 'delight customers time after time'?

Jurek Leon (Retail Service Trainer extraordinaire), went to the UK recently to see for himself, and came back to share these six points with us:

1. Recruit for Culture. Be rigorous with the interview process. Put more time and resource into the interview process. Recruit on personality and attitude to create a culture in which people can be themselves. (Reminds me of another service legend, Nordstroms' rule of "Hire the smile and train the skill." Ed).

2. Lose Control and Let People Deliver the Brand. "We have an identifiable, definable John Lewis experience for people and customers, but within that, people have the space to express themselves. You need to find that middle ground. Make the day customer-focussed not task-focussed. Constantly piling up 'things to do' focuses people on the tasks rather than interacting with the customer."

3. Create a Service Culture for Managers. The emphasis is placed on managers seeing themselves as serving employees, their Direct Reports. People leave bad bosses, not bad organisations, so work on creating a service culture within managers, where they serve their Direct Reports.

4. Make Time for Your Important People. Set the standards by coaching, example and encouragement. An 'I have time for you' leadership culture creates an 'I have time for you' service culture for Customers. Put the focus on catching people doing things right.

5. Use Measurement to Change Habits. The power of habit is enormous but once people are aware of their subconscious habits, they can change them. Measurement helps highlight changes in behaviour and habit.

John Lewis mystery shops every store 40 times a month, then the stores pair up and mystery shop each other (could you make this work with one of your business associates?)

Introduce a KPI targeting a specific change, give six months advance notice, then start measuring and providing feedback - you're setting the willing ones up for a win!

6. Create Legendary Stories Then Share Them. Each John Lewis Partnership store must identify at least one 'random act of kindness' by its team each month. It's a most unusual KPI that helps differentiate them from their competitors and create legendary service stories. These stories are then shared thus reinforcing the service culture.

If you follow these rules (you can find the full version here on Jurek's site) you can expect a change in Customer experience, though we can't guarantee that it will be as dramatic as the lady who wrote on a Comment Card, "John Lewis is my spiritual home. I've asked my husband to scatter my ashes there."

Life Skills

(Time to read this article: 1 min)

If you could get a parking space anytime you wanted one, would that add to the value of your life experience? Yes? OK, here's how you do it:

Programmed Parking Spaces

Goal setting comes in handy for finding parking spaces and switching red lights. And yes, I'm serious about this, so here's your challenge:

Next time you get into your car, just before turning the key, vividly imagine yourself arriving at your destination and finding the best possible parking spot just sitting there, waiting for you! Feel good about this (as though you were ducking into it right now) and build up a little head of "emotional steam" to power the goal. Then set off in the expectation that it will be there waiting for you.

Like any skill, you will get better and better at this the more you practice it and it is important that you realise that as you build your parking spot and green light muscles, you are also growing your "goal getting" muscles for broader application!

This just happens to be fun - and useful!

Thoughts About Customer Service

"If you're not serving the customer, you'd better be serving someone who is."
Karl Albrecht

"It takes less effort to keep an old customer satisfied than to get a new customer interested."
Anon

"A sale is not something you pursue, it's what happens to you while you are immersed in serving your customer."
Anon

"Pretend that every single person you meet has a sign around his or her neck that says, 'Make me feel important.' Not only will you succeed in sales, you will succeed in life."
Mary Kay Ash

"The more Customers I talk to the more business I get."
John Murray

"One act of beneficence, one act of real usefulness, is worth all the abstract sentiment in the world."
Ann Radcliffe

On the Lighter Side

My old boss used to say to me, "Boy, you've got to keep your eye on the ball, your finger on the pulse, your nose to the grindstone, your shoulder to the wheel, your ear to the ground, your hand on the tiller and your back against the wall" - but I could never figure out how I'd get any work done in that position!

Freebies and Special Reports

Free Values Elicitation for 10 readers who have more than five employees in your team.

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