Reinforce your values. Talk about the core values of the company. One of our core values is to contribute to the success of our customers through technology and service. Maybe I’m talking to somebody in client services about something that happened and it didn’t go the way I felt it should go. I would bring up the core value as the way to evaluate what the right behavior should be, so that they would automatically learn, ‘OK, to know what the right decision is, start thinking about core values and then weigh it against that. OK, that makes it easy. I don’t have to know the rule that in this situation, do this — I just have to know that I’m trying to help this customer through service; therefore, that feels like the right thing to do, so I’ll do that.’ It’s talking about it, reinforcing it, keeping it top of mind for people.
Have a plan. Each year, we do a road map of what we’re going to do in R&D, in sales, in marketing, in client services, etc., and have an overall road map in the company. That helps because it’s not about activity — it’s about productivity. It’s easy for people to get off on tangents that are interesting but not necessarily on the critical path.
It deals with an honest assessment. You have to understand where you are now, what you might be able to accomplish, and then you start prioritizing and organizing in terms of what things are dependencies — sometimes you need to get this done to be able to do that. It involves meeting and talking about it — ‘No, I don’t think we can do that because this will take us off of that,’ or, ‘That’s more important because it will help our customers this way.’ Meet between the different departments because something that happens for R&D will affect what’s on the road map for marketing. … All of these things have to line up.
Be honest. Doing well has to deal with telling the truth, and this seems like a Sunday school thing, but it’s really critical. … If you are truthful with yourself, you can properly evaluate where you are and make changes. If you lie to yourself about ‘I’m this,’ or ‘I’m that’ and you’re not, you’re going to run into roadblocks. You’re depending on your abilities that aren’t there.
You have to have honest self-evaluation as a company, and you have to promote, ‘I don’t want you to fluff this. I want you to just tell me what you think. I don’t care if you use any flowers around the words. I just want you to say what it is, and then we’ll deal with it.’
If you don’t do that, then things that are wrong build because they never get taken care of. If you are building a culture of telling and facing the truth, then you find the errors. Maybe it hurts you to know that they’re there, but at the end of the day, you actually deal with it, you fix it and you move on.
How to reach: FreedomVoice, (800) 477-1477 or www.freedomvoice.com
