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Ready, Set, Go! Get Strategic on Values

Guest post by: Bill and Katharine White

Article Overview: Imagine this...your company spends dollars, time and energy to refine your mission, vision and values in a long needed retreat to reorient the team toward business success. Similar to the evangelist that comes to town to rev everyone up, the passion can often dissipate as the evangelist’s tent is disassembled and goes off to the next town. How can the passion become self-sustaining long after the retreat and into the future? The answer rests in getting and remaining strategic around the values you and your charges spend so much time identifying and marketing.

Ready, Set, Go! Get Strategic on Values

Imagine this...your company spends dollars, time and energy to refine your mission, vision and values in a long needed retreat to reorient the team toward business success. Similar to the evangelist that comes to town to rev everyone up, the passion can often dissipate as the evangelist's tent is disassembled and goes off to the next town.

How can the passion become self-sustaining long after the retreat and into the future? The answer rests in getting and remaining strategic around the values you and your charges spend so much time identifying and marketing.

One of the main competency shortfalls among leaders is the ability to strategically implement values. Being strategic means actualizing a game plan for making the organization's values come alive for the company. The Business Values: Customers First^TM model developed by White and White (2004) begins with strategy and achieves ongoing results.

A strategic plan needs first to be "live"; meaning it is imbued with organic energy that puts the words on the plan's pages into action. The plan needs to include those non-negotiable goals of becoming the business of choice for customers and the employer of choice for workers. Without a dual leadership focus on customer service excellence and optimal worker engagement, there is little hope for breakthrough results.

Here are some introductory principles that will get your organization strategic on values:

1. Commit to excellence with each and every opportunity; mediocrity is not ok. Every transaction and interaction is evaluated for how it can be elevated beyond the status quo. Remaining static on service quality, will mean "settling for less".

2. Measure important things; identify what is important, measure them, and communicate the results. Get bold about going beneath the surface and finding out what is falling short of delighting customers and fix it fast.

3. Create and develop leaders; leaders can be developed, but not by osmosis. Leadership first needs to be a priority focus for breakthrough performance. Too many companies put up with mediocre leadership performers which not only sends the wrong message, it deflates passion practically to extinction. Get serious about stellar leadership and employee "values" will shine brightly through each and every department and division in the company.

4. Focus on employee satisfaction; unhappy employees are unmotivated to find innovative solutions to customer problems, and can be downright testy with customers. (So much for customer loyalty!). The Gallup Q 12 is one of many assessments that measure the degree to which the workforce is engaged and satisfied at work. Asking employees how they are doing is a good start; actually acting on their suggestions is a mandatory next step. Improving the quality of work-life will go a long way toward employees living the values that are mission critical to the company.

5. Build individual accountability; you cannot observe every interaction as a manager. Therefore, employees, no matter where they are, need to have the internal drive to behave according to the mission critical values. This invariably results in decreased need for direct supervision, which is already in short supply in our global organizations.

6. Align behavior with goals and values; short version? Walk the walk. Why is it that lip service is the most common response to the well wordsmithed values crafted in the board room, when what is really needed is to behave accordingly? A key step is to describe in measurable terms, what the required behaviors are to live the values and achieve the goals, then hold iron clad accountability for them.

7. Communicate at all levels; remembering that communication includes the message, the sender and the recipient. Equal attention needs to be paid to all three.

8. Recognize and reward success; too often we only communicate when people do the wrong thing. When asked what do employees want, they often say "a pat on the back". A manager in a telecommunications company told us that the company had required so many changes, people were tired and burned out. He said they stopped the company picnic, a simple affordable and family oriented event that sent a message of acknowledgement. Instead they put GPS in all company vehicles, and only communicated when the technicians were slightly off schedule. The missing "pat on the back" is now leading to significant, and preventable, union unrest.

Poise your company for success, now and in the future through getting strategic on values.

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Article Tags: business success, communication, employee satisfaction, excellence, mission vision, passion, reward success, strategic values



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