organizational culture
The Value Created by a Strong Team
One of the best team-building exercises that I have participated in was as a Board Member for the Children’s Hospital Foundation of Wisconsin. We were going down a path that led to a decision on whether or not to invest $150M in a new addition. The CEO at the time, Jon Vice, wisely determined that strong teams were needed for each committee in order to thoroughly vet the idea from every possible perspective.
The process started by being given a book to read (“Now, Discover Your Strengths” by Marcus Buckingham & Donald O. Clifton, Ph.D.), and then completing the “Strengthsfinder” assessment using a code provided in the book. The goal was to understand gaps in perception (how you view yourself vs. how others view you) so that you could truly understand your own strengths and weaknesses. Then, teams were created with people having complementary skills to help eliminate weaknesses from the overall team perspective. The results were impressive.
Over my career, I have been involved in many team-building exercises and events – some of which provide useful insights, but most failed to pull the findings together in a way that was concrete, had context, and offered actionable recommendations. Key areas that consistently omitted were around Organizational Culture, Organizational Politics, and Leadership. Those three areas have a significant impact on value creation vis-à-vis team effectiveness and commitment.
When I had my consulting company we had a small core team of business and technology consultants and would leverage subcontractors and an outsourcing company to allow us to take on more concurrent projects as well as larger, more complex projects. This approach worked for three reasons:
- We had developed a High-Performance Culture that was based on:
- Purpose: A common vision of success, and understanding of why that mattered, and an understanding of specifically how that was defined and measured.
- Ownership: Taking responsibility for something and being accountable for the outcome. This included responsibility for the extended team of contractors. Standardized procedures helped ensure consistency and make it easier for each person to accept responsibility for “their team.”
- Trust: Everyone understood that they not only needed to trust and support each other but in order to be effective and responsive the others would need to trust their judgment. If there was a concern we would focus on the context and process improvements to understand what happened and implement changes based on lessons learned. Personal attacks were avoided for the good of the entire team.
- Empowerment: Everyone understood that there was risk associated with decision making, while at the same time realizing that delaying an important decision could be costly and create more risk. Therefore, it was incumbent upon each member to make good decisions as needed and then communicate changes to the rest of the team.
- Clear and Open Communication: People on the team were very transparent and honest. When there was an issue they would attempt to resolve it first with that person, and then escalating if the two people could not reach an agreement and decided to seek the consensus of the team. Everything was out in the open and done in the spirit of being constructive and collaborating. Divisiveness is the antithesis of this tenet.
People who were not a good fit would quickly wash out, so our core team consisted of trusted experts. There was a friendly competition that helped raise the bar for the entire team, but when needed the other team members became a safety net for each other.
We were all focused on the same goal, and everyone realized that the only way to be successful was to work together for the success of the team. Win or lose, we did it together. The strength of our team created tremendous value – internally and for our customers that we sustained for several years. That value included innovation, higher levels of productivity and profitability, and an extremely high success rate.
This approach can work at a Business Unit or Department level but is most effective when it starts at the top. When employees see the leaders of their company behaving in this manner it provides the model and sets expectations for everyone under them. If there is dysfunction within an organization it often starts at the top – by promoting or accepting behaviors that do not benefit the whole of the organization. But, with a strong and positive organizational culture, the value of strong teams is multiplied and becomes an incredible competitive advantage.
Creating Customers for Life (4 minute read)
This should be the goal for any business, regardless of the products you sell or the services you provide. The idea is to create a mutually beneficial relationship that motivates people to want to continue working with you, despite the availability of competitive products and/or the possible concerns or objections of others (e.g., those pushing for a “Corporate Standard” involving another product.)
The best part is that this concept applies to all companies and all Product Life Cycle stages. Whether your company is on a rapid growth trajectory towards ‘Unicorn status,’ your offerings are mature and may be viewed as ‘less exciting,’ or your products are on the decline and you are seeking the ‘longest tail’ possible – this will help. At each phase, there are credible threats from competitors that seek to grow through the erosion of your business.
Several years ago I was responsible for two product lines in two major geographic regions (Americas and APAC/Japan). Our attrition rate (“churn”) had traditionally been slightly below the industry average. We began seeing an increase in churn and a corresponding slight decrease in organic growth. Both were indicators that something needed to change.
After discussions about tactical approaches to address this, our small leadership team agreed that this was a strategic issue that we needed to address. The result was an understanding that we needed to create ‘Customers for Life.’ Everyone agreed with the concept, but due to a variety of differences (culture, who our customer was – end customer vs. channel partner, buying patterns, etc.), we agreed to try what was best for our own businesses and share the results and lessons learned.
My approach was to focus on developing strong relationships that fostered collaboration and ultimately led to growth and success for both parties. The basic premise was simple:
- People tend to buy from people they like, respect, and trust. Become one of those people for your customers.
- Helping companies achieve better outcomes leads to greater success for both our customers and us.
How did we do it? It was a systematic process that included the following:
- Develop simple profiles for each customer (e.g., products used, date of first purchase, size of footprint, usage and payment trends, industry).
- A minimum size – based on either the size of the product footprint, annual amount spent with us, or size of the company, was used to prioritize companies and organizations having the greatest potential impact.
- Make contact multiple times each year, and not just when you wanted money.
- These “out of cycle” contacts turned became very important.
- Ask questions about key initiatives, milestones, and concerns.
- The responses were documented, and that helped seed following conversations and demonstrate an interest in what they were doing.
- Follow-up!
- Request meetings to understand how they are using our products and get a brief update on what our company has been doing.
- Meeting people face-to-face is always good.
- Learning more about their business, systems, goals and challenges created opportunities to really add value.
- Look at what they were doing with our products and offer suggestions to do more, do something better or more efficiently, call out potential problems and offer suggestions and discuss best practices. Often, I would have a technical expert follow-up and provide an hour or two of free assistance relating to those findings.
- Look for opportunities to congratulate them.
- It demonstrates that they are important enough that you are paying attention.
- Google Alerts made this easy.
- Regularly ask our customers if there is anything that we could do to help them.
- They would often reciprocate, which led to an increase in references and referrals.
- Continuous Improvement – Analyze the results and refine the process as needed.
As I met with our Customers and Channel Partners I would explain what ‘Customer for Life’ meant to us, and the potential benefits to them. Prior to the meeting, I would check to see if we had (or they wanted) an NDA in-place so that they could speak freely without having concern that this information would be shared with potential competitors. It was a good step towards developing trust and helping them feel comfortable in disclosing information that would help us understand their situation.
Prior to the meeting, I would spend an hour or two researching the company, their history, major events for that company and within their industry, and identify their top 2-3 competitors. This is where my consulting background really came in handy. Showing interest and understanding created credibility and ask relevant questions, which allowed conversations to progress to substantive issues in much less time. From there I could focus on specific points that would add the most value to that specific customer.
Over the course of two years, my team and I helped our customers innovate by providing different perspectives and ideas, modernize (e.g., move to spatial analytics to get a more granular understanding of their own business, or cloud-enable their systems to increase responsiveness to their business and control costs), improve their systems and grow their businesses. We also received feedback that helped us improve our products and a variety of processes – something that benefits all customers. Collaboration and success created strong relationships with many of those customers.
From a business perspective our customer churn decreased by 50% over the same period, and organic growth increased slightly more than 20%. We had achieved our objectives and improved our bottom line. The concepts behind Strategic Account Management, Voice of Customer, Customer Loyalty and Customer Success had blended into a practical approach that was not burdensome and provided a great ROI.
One of my biggest lessons learned was that adopting this mindset and creating a repeatable process is something that can be done anytime, and really should be done sooner than later.
Every day that you are not creating your own ‘Customers for life’ there is a good chance that your competition is.
Edit: Added category and tags
Good Article on Being an Entrepreneur
Nearly every morning I start the day out by reviewing news on business, technology, and finance / markets. Occasionally there is a general interest article that I stumble across. Today it was a short article about Curt Culver, Co-Founder of Culver’s restaurants.
There are several great points that seem like common sense in hindsight, but are often well out of focus during the “heat of the battle” as you are building your business. Mr. Culver touches several of them:
- The Importance of having the proper Work / Life Balance
- For me personally, this was one of the toughest aspects of growing my business. I was working 100+ hours a week, traveling a minimum of 50% of the time, and was often “not there,” even when I was spending time with my family.
- My habits also set the expectations for others on the team, and I later realized that this created some strife at home for them as well.
- The turning point for me was when my youngest daughter, then 4 years old, was telling her twin brother and her older sister that, “Daddy really does love us, he just works all the time so that we can live here and have all of this stuff.” It was painful enough to hear that, but was a wake-up call about what is really important in life – people (especially family and friends), not “stuff.”
- For me personally, this was one of the toughest aspects of growing my business. I was working 100+ hours a week, traveling a minimum of 50% of the time, and was often “not there,” even when I was spending time with my family.
- The Need to Develop others on your Team
- From past experiences I understood the need to hire the best people who you could afford – people with complementary skills (not just clones of yourself), and who were better than you in at least one aspect. That diversity added value while the similarities made it easier to “get on the same page” quickly. From there it was important to understand their goals and work together to on career planning early – something that adds value to both parties.
- One of my goals around developing my team was to have everyone understand the big picture, and then empower them to make good decisions for the business.
- While most of this occurred, my goal was to have each and every person think and act like owners of the business. That level of engagement and accountability only happened with my most senior person, who was also my first hire and actually did own a small part of the company.
- The moment when I recognized success was during a mission-critical ERP system upgrade for our largest customer – a multi-billion dollar semiconductor reseller. I sat-in on project and team meetings, reviewed reports, and asked a few questions, but that was it. It was a very proud and empowering moment for me.
- The weekend of the pre-migration test I received a call telling me that everything had been successful and that the migration was going forward the next weekend.
- The following weekend I received a nightly summary email, and on Sunday afternoon received a call telling me that the new system was operational and supporting production with ease.
- Culture
- Mr. Culver states that, “Culture is all about people.” From my perspective that is mostly true, but there are other important dimensions of culture based on my experiences.
- To me, the Cultural Identity of your company starts out as something aspirational, and later grows into the glue that bonds each and every member on your team. It helps bring out the best in everyone, including the camaraderie and support that comes from working with people who you like and trust.
- There were two unexpected consequences of actively focusing on culture, which were:
- We quickly transformed into a High Performance Organization. Everyone pushed to continuously “raise the bar.” There was healthy competition between people, but each member of the team was there as a “safety net” for others. Having the team win was far more important that winning as an individual.
- New Hires that were not a good fit recognized that very quickly and usually quit within the first 2-3 weeks. I only had to terminate one person during the probationary period who wasn’t a good fit.
- There were two unexpected consequences of actively focusing on culture, which were:
- Having a Support System
- Mr. Culver addresses failure and the importance of family to help support you in times of need.
- One of the biggest lessons learned for me personally was nothing that I did or accomplished with my company would have been possible without the support of my wife, children, parents and in-laws (the later two providing financial support during the early years in times of need).
- With understanding comes humility.
These are lessons learned that can be applied to any size organization, and in my opinion are a great investment in the future growth, value, and longevity of your company.
Good Hires and the “Generousity Gene”
I ran across this “How I hire” article from Jack Welch today. It talks about some of the qualities that you look for in a game changer. Most of the attributes mentioned are not controversial. But, Jack writes about what he calls the “Generosity Gene.”
This is interesting to me because it makes assumptions about the organizational culture that these people will be working in. People like this can thrive in companies that want to foster collaboration, raise the bar for all – but provide a safety net for teammates as well. These are environments where mistakes are welcome as long as they are not repeated (“you’re not trying hard enough if you never make a mistake”), and where winning the right way beats winning at any cost.
So, what do you think makes a good hire? Does that criteria change if you are a business owner versus a manager?
Where Ideas, Experiences, and Lessons Learned Intersect 