Create and explain your vision
For people to be most effective, they have to know what the company’s vision is and how they play a role in it. Like most things in business, this starts at the top.
“It starts with the founder or the leader or whoever it is that’s running your organization,” Lewis says. … “First, the leader has to have a vision of what is the significance and importance of what they’re trying to do. Then, it’s rallying other people around that shared vision, that commonality of where we’re trying to go as a group. Then [you have to have] the communication necessary with everyone in the company that is a shareholder or stakeholder in the enterprise and say this is what we’re trying to do, this is where we’re trying to go and, most importantly, why are we going there.
“A vision is simply an expression of what the objective of the business is. What is it that you’re trying to do? Where are you trying to go? Why do people benefit from this? How do people win from being a part of this? Creation of a vision comes from helping people understand what is the relevance and what is the essence of what you’re doing. When people understand that, it’s easy then to get them excited about a vision with goals and objectives and a plan to accomplish that vision.”
For example, Family Heritage is a major player in the supplemental insurance market, and the company strives to take care of customers to continue that growth.
“This is the vision we have for the company; this is where we’re trying to go,” he says. “Until we break that up and pull that apart and make that understandable by every person, all 100 of us here in Cleveland and our 1,200 sales associates across the country, until every person understands their role in that mission and that vision and what we’re trying to do, we’re not going anywhere. So obviously the communication has to be very thorough and specific to the people and the group that you’re talking to. They have to see and understand what is their part of this. What is the contribution that’s needed from them to make this work?”
Because no deal is a good deal unless everyone benefits, you have to show employees how they benefit from the vision.
“If everybody involved understands what’s in it for them and why they have to do what it is they’re doing and why their goals and objectives are so critical to the overall success of the mission, then I think you’re well on your way,” Lewis says.
But the key is to do this without bombarding them with so much information that it becomes overwhelming or irrelevant to them.
“It’s taking these macro objectives and breaking them down into component parts at every level where the person has the responsibility to do the work,” he says. … “You can approach it from either a bottom up or a top down, but the first thing we do is when we decide as an organization of where we’re trying to go at the big, macro goals, then you have to, by function, by department, how does everybody contribute and what do we need from the most base level?”
For example, Family Heritage has a board with 100 numbers on it. Whenever a customer calls up to cancel a policy, but the policy is preserved instead, employees get to pull off a number. When they get down to zero, then they get to have a lunch party to celebrate their success of preserving 100 policies. It shows them that every policy is critical to the company and encourages them to handle each one with care.
Breaking down the macro goals also helps you realize how work is distributed.
“It’s also a reasonability check of, ‘Can a person process this much business? Can a person secure this much new business? Can a person handle this many claims or whatever?’” Lewis says. “The reality of it is that then you can start at a macro level and go to the bottom, but then you have to take the base level and build it back up to make sure there’s continuity and congruity within the organization to be able to handle what’s there.”
