Three guys laying bricks are asked why they’re doing it. The first guy says, “I am doing it for the wages.” The second guy says, “I’m doing it to support my family.” The third guy says, “I’m helping to build a cathedral.”
Changing organizational culture is much like building a cathedral. It is a slow long-term process and not everyone is on board with the cathedral idea. Many employees go to work as the first two bricklayers, “I am doing it for the wages,” or “I am supporting my family.” They are very real concerns, and let’s be honest it is the bottom-line why we all work. But to build a cathedral requires fundamental change your workforce, one brick at a time.
Where Service Culture Initiatives Go Wrong
This has been my experience with major culture changes. There is a kick-off meeting with beautiful new snazzy collateral, a catchy slogan, and the executive leaders telling the team something to the effect, “Today is a new day. We will now provide X (transaction of business), at a superior level than yesterday. You will attend a training class and all your leaders are on board. It’s a great time to be at X.”
Inevitably, there would be a training class for a couple of hours, again accompanied by said beautiful new snazzy collateral and this time a way too many power point slide presentation that had little to no real world relevance to my normal day-to-day work life. It sounds like a wonderful idea, but not followed with many details.
So I would put the new promotional product on my desk, do what was asked of me, but did my heart change? Did I behave differently? No, and neither did my fellow team members or leaders. We jumped when a big person wanted us to, but it was all for show, i.e. not to get yelled out. We were not building a cathedral.
In my opinion, and I have many performance reviews to support my hunch, I was pretty good at providing X service before so, was what I was doing yesterday so bad we needed to rewrite the book today? I think in general it confuses the team, the people in fact whose hearts you need to change to start building that cathedral.
How Would The Customer Service Gurus Change a Culture?
One word, slowly. It’s ideal, and yes I know this isn’t always possible, but I am stating how I think you truly change the culture of an organization. Using this format superior customer service becomes organic, not something that needs a new logo. Behavioral change takes only three things, application, repetition, and positive reinforcement.
The approach I advocate is taking one small change and hitting it using multiple methods for a designated period of time, but at least one month. For example, almost every customer service program starts with creating an effective greeting. Typically in a traditional in class event, about 20 minutes is spent on the subject. First the facilitator demonstrates an effective greeting. Next he or she will lecture why it is important, and then give the class a few minutes of practice time.
But the employee will go out of the classroom and their immediate director will walk right by them without saying a word, or acknowledge their existence. What are the overall chances of true adoption of the behavior? Not much, because it will get muddled in with the other points of the eight hour class and by an environment that does not ‘walk the walk.’
Using the Customer Service Gurus method, the organization first would only focus on the greeting of any transaction for one month. This might also be provocative, but I would only quality control the greeting through formal or informal monitoring for that month.
The next piece to create it in the environment is make everyone, executives on down, use a warm friendly greeting in the office. Emphasizing positive reinforcement, give everyone a token of some sort to hand to other employees, and all are empowered to reward a genuine warm greeting. It’s possible to offer an incentive, whoever has the most tokens wins a prize. The key here is it has to be everyone! Promote the greeting concentration in all employee communications, in all your meetings, and I just might tell my customers too. There is nothing wrong telling your customers you are building a better tomorrow, one brick at a time.
Why would this work? As we all know, if your greeting is sincere and friendly, then the likelihood of having a successful transaction increases exponentially, either in an office meeting or with a customer.
Imagine what your culture would look like if all truly embraced this?
Now the organization is ready for month two to start again with another small, but a repeatable positive behavioral change that involves everyone. It will take time, but in even two months the change will be meaningful and long-term. Your customers will truly feel the difference and not feel as if they are simply participating in a checklist.
This could work with other initiatives besides service. Think of whatever is the desired change in the workforce and break it down to small detailed actionable behaviors. Then use the approach above, enacting a specific repetitive campaign for change.
And that’s how you build a cathedral.
Monday, April 16, 2012
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Learning After a Certain Age
The Guru has had writer’s block the last few weeks. Perhaps it is the time of year, the excitement of a new year has faded as we return to more normal routines after the holidays. But I think it is more than that. Lately, I have been on quite a thought of how we, as adults, change or do not change professionally as we age. Can an old dog learn new tricks? Old being the over 40 age protected class that I find myself in too.
What if, as your leader, I submitted to you that you must attend a workshop on subject X? I emphasize the must because you have no choice in the matter. It’s not that you will be tested on the behavior after class, but I need you to go because you are not doing something well, or I need you to be better at something that you are already doing. I have not expressed it to you exactly as such, but that is my motivation of signing you up, or in other words ponying up the money, for the class.
What would your reaction be?
If I had to guess, if it is not something that will keep you out of trouble, by trouble I mean legal or ethical bad stuff, yes fancy HR term, or something you are interested in, or something that will make your job easier (even though I have seen participants resist this as well), then you will go because you are required. But you will spend most of your time thinking about what you are missing back at the ranch.
You will go because I said you had to go, but your engagement with the material or the openness that maybe there is something that could help improve your performance, will be small.
So what is the ROI when this happens? Of course, almost 0.
As a learning professional, I see this happen a lot. I also think it is why training departments usually have bad reputations. It is not that a training event is poorly designed or delivered in or itself, as I have rarely seen a poor facilitator or developed class once a certain level of professionalism is reached. It is the value added component is completely lost on the participants, especially those of seasoned managers, directors, or above levels.
I certainly understand the point of view and have found myself in classes saying, “Hey, I have heard this before.” But I almost always hear something new or a new idea that makes it stick better in my head. I ask myself too, was it a waste of my time to get those one or two ideas? The answer is yes if I did not change my actions afterwards.
The Point
The point is we seem to expect different outcomes of the people we send to mandatory training than we do of ourselves when we attend mandatory training. If leaders tell a team member they are registered to go, then we expect change, regardless if the person wanted to attend or not.
I would argue we rarely expect that same change out of ourselves. We rationalize that we somehow already know this information, that we are doing X behavior well – even though we have no metric to prove it one way or the other, or that we are so busy getting through the business of the day that we have no time. Our time is important. Now when our time became more important than our employees, I will leave that for later. We have been profiled, assessed, educated, but do we change?
The Customer Service Guru’s Solution for Leaders
When you are sent to training, someone wants a ROI from you. Your challenge is to find out what it is. Training is an expensive business, so no one would approve the dollars spent without expecting something from you.
Sometimes the improvement is quantitative, such as employee surveys, turnover rates, reduced mistakes in dollars lost on projects. I think sometimes the score is emphasized so much that we miss the bigger picture. The score is a measure of something that we are doing. The score is never as important as the behavior it measures, and that is what should be driving us to do better or get better at whatever it is.
Many times it is something more qualitative, which is more difficult to understand because we live in a business world driven by metrics. For example, team members are not getting along well and your job is to improve those relationships. That is a murky, but very real, objective.
As a leader, you set the example for your team by your actions. Let them know that you respect the training and development function. Let them know what behaviors you are attempting to change or enhance. Let them know that training is not something to simply check off, but an opportunity to truly improve performance.
Also, when you send anyone to training, mandatory or developmental, explain thoroughly why they are going and what you expect when they return from class. As an HR partner, my job will be more valuable to everyone if my participants come in with clear expectations from their leader, not just objectives I present on a power point. Make it personal! They see me for a few hours, but they see you every day. Trust me, they will be more inclined to make you happy than me.
I have seen individuals make very significant change, personally and professionally. It almost always starts from a seed planted in that individual. It is either a seed they planted in themselves, or an idea someone put in them. As a leader, be the person to plant the seed of change in your employees. Find that seed too in yourself the next time you are required to attend training.
What if, as your leader, I submitted to you that you must attend a workshop on subject X? I emphasize the must because you have no choice in the matter. It’s not that you will be tested on the behavior after class, but I need you to go because you are not doing something well, or I need you to be better at something that you are already doing. I have not expressed it to you exactly as such, but that is my motivation of signing you up, or in other words ponying up the money, for the class.
What would your reaction be?
If I had to guess, if it is not something that will keep you out of trouble, by trouble I mean legal or ethical bad stuff, yes fancy HR term, or something you are interested in, or something that will make your job easier (even though I have seen participants resist this as well), then you will go because you are required. But you will spend most of your time thinking about what you are missing back at the ranch.
You will go because I said you had to go, but your engagement with the material or the openness that maybe there is something that could help improve your performance, will be small.
So what is the ROI when this happens? Of course, almost 0.
As a learning professional, I see this happen a lot. I also think it is why training departments usually have bad reputations. It is not that a training event is poorly designed or delivered in or itself, as I have rarely seen a poor facilitator or developed class once a certain level of professionalism is reached. It is the value added component is completely lost on the participants, especially those of seasoned managers, directors, or above levels.
I certainly understand the point of view and have found myself in classes saying, “Hey, I have heard this before.” But I almost always hear something new or a new idea that makes it stick better in my head. I ask myself too, was it a waste of my time to get those one or two ideas? The answer is yes if I did not change my actions afterwards.
The Point
The point is we seem to expect different outcomes of the people we send to mandatory training than we do of ourselves when we attend mandatory training. If leaders tell a team member they are registered to go, then we expect change, regardless if the person wanted to attend or not.
I would argue we rarely expect that same change out of ourselves. We rationalize that we somehow already know this information, that we are doing X behavior well – even though we have no metric to prove it one way or the other, or that we are so busy getting through the business of the day that we have no time. Our time is important. Now when our time became more important than our employees, I will leave that for later. We have been profiled, assessed, educated, but do we change?
The Customer Service Guru’s Solution for Leaders
When you are sent to training, someone wants a ROI from you. Your challenge is to find out what it is. Training is an expensive business, so no one would approve the dollars spent without expecting something from you.
Sometimes the improvement is quantitative, such as employee surveys, turnover rates, reduced mistakes in dollars lost on projects. I think sometimes the score is emphasized so much that we miss the bigger picture. The score is a measure of something that we are doing. The score is never as important as the behavior it measures, and that is what should be driving us to do better or get better at whatever it is.
Many times it is something more qualitative, which is more difficult to understand because we live in a business world driven by metrics. For example, team members are not getting along well and your job is to improve those relationships. That is a murky, but very real, objective.
As a leader, you set the example for your team by your actions. Let them know that you respect the training and development function. Let them know what behaviors you are attempting to change or enhance. Let them know that training is not something to simply check off, but an opportunity to truly improve performance.
Also, when you send anyone to training, mandatory or developmental, explain thoroughly why they are going and what you expect when they return from class. As an HR partner, my job will be more valuable to everyone if my participants come in with clear expectations from their leader, not just objectives I present on a power point. Make it personal! They see me for a few hours, but they see you every day. Trust me, they will be more inclined to make you happy than me.
I have seen individuals make very significant change, personally and professionally. It almost always starts from a seed planted in that individual. It is either a seed they planted in themselves, or an idea someone put in them. As a leader, be the person to plant the seed of change in your employees. Find that seed too in yourself the next time you are required to attend training.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)