Just returned from my weekly trip to the library; also in the stack are a few new acquisitions to my library.
It’s a varied list that’s for sure, but I believe that wide reading develops deep leading.
Look for a few short ideas from these books in the next few days.
If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.
–Haruki Murakami
In my continuing pursuit of a GsD (Doctor of Guestology), I’m really excited about the next month:
Reading Perquisite
A long-anticipated book just arrived yesterday –
Look for details on the thirteen powerful lessons Lipp delivers in Disney U coming soon.
Learning Lab
In late April, I will be headed to Disney World for a 2-day learning lab. The first day, I will be spending the whole day in the Magic Kingdom with my wife. We’ll be focusing on the newest attractions and restaurants that have recently opened up in Fantasyland.
The second day, I will be spending about 7 hours behind-the-scenes on the “Backstage Magic” tour. It’s a tour of all 4 parks plus a few extras.
During the ‘semester” look for regular updates on how ChurchWorld leaders can translate the magic of Disney into WOW! Guest Experiences for your church.
the GsD (Doctor of Guestology) journey: Spring 2013
Several years ago the Barna Research Group conducted a study to determine the general accessibility of church representatives to people who contacted the church by telephone. The results indicated that personal contact was never established in 40 percent of the churches called, in spite of multiple call backs. Of those churches in which no one answered, almost half didn’t have a voice mail system or answering machine to record messages ( from Simply Strategic Stuff, Stevens and Morgan).
This statistic is a few years old, so I’m sure the numbers have gone up – but the implication is still there nonetheless:
We don’t care enough to answer the phone.
What an indictment on the church’s ability to respond to the needs of our communities!
We need to make it as easy as possible for people to connect with our churches. Even if you are unable to hire someone or recruit volunteers to answer phones, most phone systems today have the capability to provide voice mail or call-forwarding services so no call goes unanswered.
Even if you already have a system in place, don’t assume it always works as intended. As a ChurchWorld leader, you should get in the habit of periodically trying to call your church to see how the systems are working.
Once you receive calls, you must be prepared to respond to them. Do you have systems in place for emergency care and counseling? When people leave voice mail messages, are they responded to promptly?
Here’s my biggest phone pet peeve of all: of all days to have a “live” person answering the phone, Sunday mornings (from an hour before to an hour after your services) is the most critical time.
Think a live voice is a thing of the past in today’s high-tech world? Think again:
There’s a lot of buzz these days about social media and “integration marketing.” Our belief is that as unsexy and low-tech as it may sound, the telephone is one of the best branding devices out there. You have the customer’s undivided attention for 5 or 10 minutes, and if you get the interaction right, the customer remembers the experience for a very long time and tells his or her friends about it. Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos
These first impressions communicate a lot. If people have initial encounters filled with frustration because they can’t successfully maneuver through your phone system, they’ll quickly assume your church isn’t capable of helping them.
I’m pretty sure that’s not the message you’re trying to communicate.
Everyone is talented – it’s natural to us.
Watching my 2 ½ year old granddaughter over the course of the last week has reminded me of that. I’ll see another expression of it this weekend at my grandson’s 5th birthday party – all about dragons! And even in the curious eyes of his 4 month old sister – her expressions are just waiting to blossom.
As the parent of 4 children, I think I knew that at one time – but the youngest is now 20, and those kinds of memories tend to fade…
It took the exuberance of my granddaughter and a special focus on children at my church last Sunday to remind me of the truth in the title above.
The reality is that everyone is talented. It’s very evident in watching and listening as a young child learns to talk. Language is a creative tool from the first words we speak to mastering the art of storytelling.
Then there’s the fridge art, the bathtub crayons, and the sidewalk chalk masterpieces – all reminding us of the evidence of emerging ability.
Talent isn’t just the ability to paint a portrait, compose a symphony, or sculpt a statue – it’ about the possible.
A creative mind is always working.
Where and how it gets expressed is your choice.
A new world is waiting for your creative mind and talent, so make a choice: Focus on the abilities that come naturally to you and make things possible.
part of a series of ideas to shape and tone your creative muscles
Inspired and adapted from The Imagineering Workout
Yesterday’s post approached the topic of front line engagement from the perspective of the leaders in your organization. Today, it’s time to look at the other side of the coin – your front line team members.
Involving team members in decision-making processes, enabling them to innovate, and providing the autonomy and resources to solve customer problems collectively offer frontline team members the essential elements that have been shown to drive team member satisfactions and engagement.
Research has provided many labels for the drivers of team member commitment, but authors Chris DeRose and Noel Tichy, writing in Judgment on the Front Line, summarize them as the “four C’s.”
Context
Frontline employees want to connect their daily interactions with the customer to the achievement of larger long-term goals. This requires an understanding of strategy and customer and business objectives.
Control
Frontline workers, like most people, want to feel empowered to make autonomous decisions and take action when necessary. There must be established boundary conditions in which employees feel free to make decision, and they must be given the training and tools to make effective judgments.
Care
Ultimately, if employees do not feel connected to their organizations and have a sense that coworkers and managers are unconcerned with their well-being, they will not care about he organization or their job.
Creativity
Work is a personal endeavor that occupies the majority of waking time for most people, so frontline employees need the opportunity to exercise their individual thought and creativity and invest their own personality in their work.
The concern and trust that senior leaders exhibit for all team members in a front-line focused organization translates into strong culture and improved work environments.
That’s something both sides can agree on!
Trust helps you move quickly. It increases your speed. When it’s absent, you can see it – more checks, controls, and processes. That’s bureaucracy.
Randall Stephenson, Chairman and CEO, AT&T
ChurchWorld Frontline Facts
Front Line Teams are uniquely positioned to create value in your organization
Part of an occasional series translating the best of Customer Experience in the Corporate World into Guest Experiences for ChurchWorld
Adapted from Judgment on the Front Line, Chris DeRose and Noel Tichy
On Undercover Boss, the brilliant CEO goes undercover on the front lines of his company to learn just what’s going on, and how he is going to make it better.
Fail.
In the shows that I’ve seen, it’s more like a Three Stooges comedy from my childhood, only this time there’s only one stooge – the Boss.
Without fail, the Boss learns that he lacks the skills, intelligence, and experience required to keep up with his tasks. His coworkers and supervisors, though clearly frustrated with him, try and try again to train him.
The end result? Big Boss CEO, now humbled by his front line, vows to make changes to the policies and procedures which will improve his team’s working conditions, performance, personal lives, and, by the way, maybe even his bottom line.
I’m not too cynical of Undercover Boss – just thinking there has to be a better way for the CEO or senior leadership team of any organization to find out just what’s happening on the front lines.
If CEOS and senior leaders don’t create routines for understanding customer needs through the eyes of frontline workers, they run the risk of creating strategies that can’t be put into operational practice. Building a business model that is aligned with customer needs is only the beginning – once these needs are identified, the leadership team must work backward from the moment of truth when their team is face to face with the customer.
Chris DeRose and Noel Tichy, writing in Judgment on the Front Line, show just how to make that happen. They don’t advocate that CEOs try to do the jobs of their front line workers (like Undercover Boss). Instead, DeRose and Tichy think that leadership teams must design and build a front-line focused organization. They begin at the top:
Five Responsibilities of Leaders in a Front Line Focused Organization
Now isn’t that better than any episode of Undercover Boss?
My name is Herve Humler and I am the president of Ritz-Carlton… and I am a very important person. But you are more important than I am. You are the heart and soul of this building.
– Herve Humler, addressing hotel staff shortly before the grand opening of Ritz-Carlton’s Hong Kong property
ChurchWorld Frontline Facts
Strong leadership is required to unleash the front line
Building a front line-focused organization is a process
Part of an occasional series translating the best of Customer Experience in the Corporate World into Guest Experiences for ChurchWorld
Adapted from Judgment on the Front Line, Chris DeRose and Noel Tichy
If you’ve spent anytime on Amazon, you are probably familiar with their recommendation feature – you know, the bar of products across your screen with the title “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought”…
It has been very successful to say the least – many shoppers, having found what they are looking for, are delighted to look at other items that compliment their find. (Especially me, when it comes to books!)
When the engineer who developed the idea, Greg Linden, developed a prototype and took it to his boss, he was expressly prohibited from proceeding further with the project.
Wow – Talk about a missed opportunity!
In the vast majority of other, larger, older organizations, the idea would have been killed right then and there. But, as we all know, Amazon was (and is) different.
Customer centricity has been deeply ingrained in Amazon’s culture from the outset. Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos has been known to leave an empty seat open at a conference table to remind all attendees that they should consider the seat occupied by their customer, “the most important person in the room.”
Amazon’s overriding respect for the customer gave Linden the freedom to proceed with his trial – even over the objections of his senior vice president. The results were so clear and irrefutable that the feature was fast-tracked, and shopping cart recommendations, as we know them, were born.
That’s the power of the Front Line.
In my experience innovation can only come from the bottom. Those closest to the problem are in the best position to solve it. I believe any organization that depends on innovation must embrace chaos. Loyalty and obedience are not your tools; you must use measurement and objective debate to separate the good from the bad.
– Greg Linden, former developer and engineer, Amazon.com
ChurchWorld Frontline Facts
The front line is the richest untapped source of ideas and innovation
Winning organizations embrace the paradox of creativity and control
Part of an occasional series translating the best of Customer Experience in the Corporate World into Guest Experiences for ChurchWorld
Adapted from Judgment on the Front Line, Chris DeRose and Noel Tichy
Cross-Utilization (Cross-U) is a Walt Disney World program that operates during the Spring and Winter holidays (their busiest seasons). It gives Cast Members from various parts of WDW a chance to work the front lines and interact with Guests.
With so many Cast Members of WDW working behind the scenes, Cross-U offers a wonderful opportunity for Cast Members to participate in one of the cornerstones of the Disney enterprise: Guest Services.
Participants in Cross-U witness the collective effort it takes to create the great Guest Experience. Regardless of where behind-the-scene (or off-stage) Cast Members work, there is no better way of understanding the impact of magical Guest Experiences than watching kids and their parents enjoying a favorite character or attraction.
According to Disney executives, getting ready for Cross-U takes months of planning, thousands of details to monitor and an untold number of checks and balances.
Is all this trouble worth it?
The answer for Disney is a resounding Yes! In addition to providing much-needed front-line help during busy times, the feedback from participants after their shifts is invaluable. They talk about making a difference with Guests and assisting Cast Members.
In other words, they get it – they understand the critical importance of front-line staff in Guest Experiences. And it’s just not head knowledge – it comes from direct interaction with Guests.
How valuable would that be in any organization that serves Guests?
More importantly, how important would a process like Cross-U be in ChurchWorld?
When I make a mistake, I’m recognized 100 percent of the time; when I do something great, I’m not recognized 99 percent of the time.
– employee in the hotel industry
A 200,000-person study by the Jackson Organization confirmed that managers who achieve enhanced business results are significantly more likely to be seen by their employees as strong in the Basic Four areas of leadership:
Authors Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton used that study as a foundation in their book The Carrot Principle, adding on the accelerator of frequent and effective recognition to illustrate that the relationship between recognition and improved business results is both highly predictable and proven to work.
As in all good things, you must start with the basics – and here’s # 4:
Holding People Accountable
The employee quoted at the top of the page brings the issue of accountability into sharp relief: there’s a fine line between mistakes and failures, and it takes a great leader to know the difference.
Many well-known organizations have developed awards for intelligent mistakes. They realize that in an atmosphere of speed and innovation, team members need to feel safe to adapt, innovate, and experiment. That means, of course, that some mistakes will be made – and that’s all right. In these cultures, part of holding people accountable is celebrating mistakes that were worth being made.
In a culture that has equilibrium between accountability and celebrating success, recognition is frequent and meaningful and reinforces the notion of accountability. Keep in mind that great leaders don’t just hold their people accountable in formal ways – in many cases, you might not even know you’re being held accountable.
It’s just that you don’t want to let your leader and the team down.
That is a home run in accountability.
Goal setting, communication, trust, and accountability. These are the Basic Four of effective leadership. Alone, each one can move you quite a way toward good results, but when a leader is even somewhat competent with the Basic Four and then adds the accelerator of Recognition and Honor to each, leadership effectiveness soars.
And that will be the topic of a future post!
Adapted from The Carrot Principle by Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton
Part 5 of a series
The moment a leader recognizes someone on their team for a contribution, the trust meter shoots off the scale.
– Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton
A 200,000-person study by the Jackson Organization confirmed that managers who achieve enhanced business results are significantly more likely to be seen by their employees as strong in the Basic Four areas of leadership:
Authors Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton used that study as a foundation in their book The Carrot Principle, adding on the accelerator of frequent and effective recognition to illustrate that the relationship between recognition and improved business results is both highly predictable and proven to work.
As in all good things, you must start with the basics.
Building Trust
Trust is often viewed as more of an interpersonal quality than a leadership skill. That’s a mistake, since it turns out that trust is a central concept in organizational health and growth.
In an organization where leaders are trusted, there is a greater level of team investment. When an employee believes a manager has his best interest at heart, it motivates him to give his bet to his work and the organization, which creates overall higher commitment.
Louis Barnes, professor emeritus at Harvard Business School, describes the trust phenomenon as the theory of reciprocity: in short, people respond in kind to the way they are treated. For leaders who want to build trust within their organization, this means respecting and listening to team members, treating them fairly, and worrying about the success of their team more than their own success.
A leader who is trusted displays the following characteristics:
This is an impressive list of qualities – maybe even a little intimidating! A good place to start the process of building trust is by becoming more visible to your team. Experience has shown that the single act of getting out of your office and mingling with team members is a simple solution to a very common trust problem.
Trusting relationships with your team can begin with leaders’ being more visible and available. It’s a place to start – something that will be noticed and appreciated by the people on your team.
Next: Accountability
Adapted from The Carrot Principle by Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton
Part 4 of a series
27gen.com 