Roy's Blog: March 2012
March 15, 2012
Why a wishful dream without a purpose isn’t terribly useful
Source: Unsplash
Why a wishful dream without a purpose isn’t terribly useful.
Dreams without purpose are really useless
Some people (and organizations) dream a lot. Individuals dream of getting that promotion or of going on a trip to Paris; organizations dream of being the market leader or of providing the best customer service.
A dream is aspirational. It is nebulous and lacks the precision necessary to execute the specific actions necessary to fulfil it.
It’s ill defined. It’s a cloud. A helium filled balloon. A wish.
A kluge of possibilities.
Hardly something that will guide you to realizing it without a ton of work. Translating what it requires you to do on ground zero. In the trenches where things get messy.
But if you must dream, dream fierce.
Dream in excruciating detail so you can see what you have to do to achieve it.
Dream with the precision necessary to see an implementation path.
Dream with the passion that you will need to stay your course through set-backs and disappointment.
Dream with the adrenalin rush that will make so tenacious in driving to results you will surprise yourself.
Dream with purpose.
Dream to execute.
Dream to get it done.
Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series
- Posted 3.15.12 at 10:31 am by Roy Osing
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March 10, 2012
How stories are an excellent way to execute your customer service strategy
Source: Pexels
How stories are an excellent way to execute your customer service strategy.
One of the best ways to make your customer service strategy come alive is storytelling.
Many companies use storytelling to breathe life into their vision of service and are effective in getting the message across.
Ask an employee to tell a story about how a customer was dazzled when they were served by someone in your organization.
If they can’t (and for most it is a challenging question) then you either haven’t defined your service strategy in enough detail to clearly understand what is to be expected by employees in delivering it, or there is not enough action around your strategy to be able to observe it and tell a story about it.
Remove the barriers to storytelling and treat telling stories as a fundamental responsibility of your leadership team.
If your leaders can’t describe in vivid terms what is expected of people in serving customers employee won’t get it. Or they will each have their own definition of what the strategy is and will deliver it accordingly with the resulting mosaic of service experiences being delivered to customers with little consistency with respect to the intended strategy.
Get storytelling on the performance plan of your managers and hold them accountable for doing it.
Develop and implement a storytelling development program to:
— first, remind people what your service strategy is;
— second, what it looks like when it is being pristinely executed (i.e. what behaviors do you expect to see from your employees who are in customer serving roles?) and
— third, what storytelling objectives each manager is expected to achieve in their annual performance plan.
Remind your management team that compensation will have a storytelling component and make it matter!
Finally, provide the opportunity for managers to practice storytelling.
This is about effective communication around a critical part of your overall business strategy so it’s important. It’s about painting a picture for people to see what is expected of them and what the desired outcome is. It’s about providing a way for your leaders to be able to fulfil their fundamental leadership role.
Who are the storytelling champions in your organization?
Who do it well? Find them and ask them to help put together and run your storytelling development program. Use them to show others how it is done. Recognize them for the type of behavior expected. Reward them as an example to others.
Once you have storytelling established as a strategic tool to reinforce your service strategy you can use stories as an integral part of how you communicate your value proposition to the market.
Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series
- Posted 3.10.12 at 11:31 am by Roy Osing
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