Leadership Circle

Have you faced a situation where many of the projects/ programs of the organization running on track because they are led by good leaders however these leaders were burning themselves due to lack of leadership / ownership type of support from the team under them and there are associates who want to lead but have no leadership experience and hence can not be deployed in leadership roles in projects. It is a time bomb ticking and one snap can lead to a major problem for a customer. You are looking for a solution to build the leadership capability at every level in the organization which is,

• Scalable to be used with large mass of consultants at medium to junior level,
• Has a good pull (It cannot be forced on to anyone),
• Is able to provide leadership experience beyond any theoretical knowledge,
• Is cost effective

“Leadership Circle” , which has inspiration from Quality Circle movement, is the solution for the same. 

  

Leadership Circle is a group people who want to become leaders in whatever work they are doing coming together. The typical size of a Leadership Circle is @ 7-8 people comprising at least one mentor. They meet once a week for an hour to discuss various topics like

• What it takes to become a leader,
•  See videos, listen to various leaders in person
• Discuss key learnings from various leadership books and how the team intends to use them or have used them
• Present various situations at their workplace and deliberate possible way to lead in these situations,
• Identify real projects to experiment the learning
• Execute the projects and present learning in the circle

There is no relationship between leadership circle and performance management system within organization. It is expected that results will automatically be seen in the regular work performed by these consultants and reflect in their performance review. This is a voluntary participation initiative and no special concessions accorded for participation.    

Key observations and experience from running Leadership Circle is collated in a few points:

• These are open and semi-structured meetings. The outcome depends on acceptance of this mechanism and participation. Typically the team participating in Leadership Circle is used to get the instructions from their leaders and execute them and not used to make decisions. Mentor needs to play a big role here to coach the team through different methods.
• One of the critical thing which takes a very long time is, to internalize the key aspects of leadership. It was very easy to describe what qualities a leader should have from various books, articles; however doing an introspection to check where one stands on each of them, accept shortcoming and consciously take efforts to build them, was very difficult for many. Mentor needed to take the team slowly on right path, once they understood how to inspire themselves to learn new capabilities; we have achieved a major milestone.
• Sometimes members are sensitive about identifying problems within them for the fear of adverse action from the organization as a result they find difficulty in their improvement. It is important from mentor’s side to provide that confidence that nothing disclosed in the circle goes in to any of the HR records. Once team gets this confidence, they start opening up and positive results start showing up.
• The success of this program depends on self-driven efforts by individual and each person progresses at his or her unique speed. There will be some drop outs and one needs to be prepared for the same.
• Providing some kind of experience of “leading” in everything the circle does is key. Devising simple rules like each circle meeting would be led by a different individual every meeting helped. He/she will have complete freedom to design the meeting and conduct the same within a base framework. He/ She will intimate others in advance if it is expected that team should be prepared in specific area for the meeting. Many members were confused how to do this, many of them continuously sought validation from Mentors, many were hesitant to establish protocol for their meeting. Mentors helped the specific individuals and after a couple of months this protocol started working nicely.
• Identification of projects for the team to experiment within organization was important and I want to talk about one project of conducting an organization wide competition. The project was assigned to one of the leadership circle team. They did everything from conceptualization, presenting the concept to management, get budgetary approvals, creating theme and detailed design for competition and popularize the same within the organization, generating some additional volunteers to help them run the competition, actually run the competition, identifying the right panel of judges, get the entries evaluated and finally organize a prize distribution for the same. This was a big challenge as none of the faces from this team were familiar to the larger audience (barring a small group of friends of each member) within the organization. Team worked hard, faltered a few times, mentors spent some good time with the team in terms of guidance only (no actual participation in any of the activities). There was significant hard work but the team had first hand experience as to when they own something, what all things they need to do to complete the same. Big change was observed in circle members in the way they started looking at things they are doing in day to day work life.    
• As a result of such successes, confidence levels of the members increased tremendously and aspirations for taking such challenges in professional life also increased. This was expected result and we were happy about the same.       

Many members were happy on personal level that they now understand what it really meant by “Leader” and they have experienced the same in some or other capacity. They also feel nice that they have a peer forum where they can discuss some problem they might be facing on the work front and find a solution.

This initiative is like a movement and takes time to provide results. However when the results come, they are really beneficial to organization as well as individual.

Keys for Success of Leadership Circle:

• Visible support from Management for this initiative. Teams put in efforts on their own to build their leadership quality and demonstrate them through various projects they undertake; this should be recognized and supported
• It is a voluntary initiative and the results depend on the drive each person has. So it is critical to have at least 5-6 persons out of 7-8 with passion to lead while beginning a circle.
• The success of this initiative depends on the “Mentor”. Higher investment from mentor’s side better are the results. It is important to have a mentor for this Circle from business (not from HR) who is somewhat recognized as leader within the organization at least at some level and understands that he/she needs to “mentor” and “not to lead” this team. A battery of good mentors is critical for success.
• Organization should help this initiative with identifying various projects that these teams can take and execute to gain experience of leading. There is always an apprehension to use any customer projects for experimenting so all the internal initiatives could be run through these circles and can bring in the experience portion to the team.
• Based on the observed performance, some of the team members should be assigned to some leadership roles within the project world to provide a clear signal that organization is serious about this initiative and if they find some good talent, they will pick it up for better roles. Few members do start aspiring for a better role as their confidence improves and there is always a risk of they looking out for leadership opportunities if not provided in-house. This aspect needs to be managed well and business leaders becoming mentors helps in this aspect.
• It is important to remember that the idea of this initiative is not to create more project managers but to create a leader who in any capacity can lead when needed and measurement of its success should be with the same yardstick. It is more like a movement and not a focused training.
•  Leadership Circle takes some time to see results and it is important to have patience from mentors as well as team members

Leadership Circle is the right movement that every organization should embrace to build the leaders within. 

Delivery Excellence a new approach

When any organization thinks about “Delivery Excellence”, it is always a top down approach and using a guiding framework like ISO, CMMI, ITIL, Malcom Baldridge, Deming’s principles, etc. Many a times a special department or authority is created to run this program. This authority creates all the necessary processes and supporting templates and tools. These are implemented through training, coaching, and auditing to ensure uniform progress and results across the organization. There are several measurement criteria defined to measure the progress along the way to final destination. There are external audits/ assessments carried out to understand the progress made and results achieved through an unbiased view. The whole structure works like a uniform machine and each person knows the expectation from him/her and performs to that expectation in anticipation of good results. I have observed that organizations try to maintain the highest level of certification/ assessment throughout and it is herculean effort on both employees and organization every 3/5 years to undergo an external audit. There is no roadmap beyond this certification for further improvement, there are still stray cases where things fall through the cracks but the life goes on.

In my earlier blog on Delivery Excellence on Auto Pilot*, I had discussed how to make this top down process more effective and lasting in terms of results. However I am going to discuss a different approach here which will remove all the pitfalls of the top down approach and provide a fresh outlook to achieve the delivery excellence.

Organization is made up of people. Each person is responsible for several activities and part of several teams for whom these activities are performed. These teams are also part of some larger teams and so on. Finally all the teams form one team at organization level which is responsible to achieve organizational excellence. In this new bottoms-up approach we keep the definition of excellence in mind i.e. “Excellence is the commitment one makes with one self to continuously do better than what one has done previously in the entire activities one performs on personal and professional life. The benchmark is oneself and it is continuously moving upwards. There is not end as to final level of excellence” and encourage each person to the following; we are sure to have a positive result

• Self Question* the way he/she is doing a specific activity and see how it can be done better and how it can help the team he/she is working for to achieve its objective
• Experiment* with new way of operation and see the results. If the results are encouraging, then implement the new way of working and share this improved way of working along with results with others in team. A new and improved way of doing a specific activity has been found and registered in the repository for reference by others in the organization. A small step in achieving delivery excellence has been taken and multiple such steps create a momentum necessary for big result
• Repeat this process from individual level to team levels up the hierarchy

One question comes to mind; - If everyone in the organization starts thinking and implementing his/her own improvements then will it not be chaotic and uncontrolled delivery?  The answer is NO

The definition of excellence guides the individuals that their improvement actions are required to achieve better results than their current level and thus all the new improvements will direct the results in positive direction. We can build a common high level metrics for each team (which we already have) and performance be measured based on the same. As long as we are able to measure the performance through these metrics, the teams can have freedom to do their improvement journey as per their thought process. Building certain individual metrics like Say-do ratio* and Ownership Quotient* will help teams to monitor themselves on regular basis. In the beginning, the process may look un controlled as there is a significant level of freedom available to the teams on ground, however it enables teams to contribute better in achieving overall results. Allowing people to perform* provides a great motivation and ensures results.

*- There are separate blogs for each of the idea mentioned here and can be referred for detailed information 

Customer Experience and Organizational Excellence

“Customer Experience” is the current battle ground for the industry to win new customers as well as retain customers and drive better revenue and profit. Simply defined, Customer Experience (CX) is the product of an interaction between an organization and a customer over the duration of their relationship. This interaction includes a customer's attraction, awareness, discovery, cultivation, advocacy and purchase and use of a service. Forbes say that customer experience is the "cumulative impact of multiple touch points" over the course of a customer's interaction with an organization. It involves hard aspects like physical experience during interactions at stores to softer aspects like interaction over digital media, perception, social, psychological impact, etc. With the developments in technology, significant changes have been introduced in the way customer is engaged and experience is measured and improved. Significant investments are being planned in this area and many companies have appointed Customer Experience Officers (CXO) to spearhead the activities around it. One very important characteristic of the CX is; it has a start but no end point, it needs to be improved perpetually. If we do not improve the level of customer experience it automatically diminishes in terms of customer perception.

This characteristic is very similar to how we define Excellence;  i.e. “Excellence is the commitment one makes with one self to continuously do better than what one has done previously in the activities one performs in personal and professional life. The benchmark is oneself and it is continuously moving upwards. There is a starting point (where you are currently) but no end point / final level of excellence. It is a journey which typically has view of only next milestone or two and remaining milestones emerge as we move forward”.

“Customer Experience” and “Organizational Excellence” are two aspects which have similar characteristics and can be designed to feed each other in a positive spiral giving dramatic benefits to an organization

Author James Allen mentions that although 80% of businesses state that they offer a "great customer experience”, only 8% of customers express satisfaction with their experience. This throws light on the gap between what is perceived great by industry vis a vis by customers. This pushes companies to work hard on understanding customers better and provide them a better experience. One of the mechanism organizations can adopt is to drive organizational excellence initiatives based on the customer experience needs. This will improve the excellence levels of various activities performed by the organization and drive the customer experience automatically. This cycle of achieving higher and higher levels of Customer experience through different innovative excellence initiatives will drive the ultimate objective of better revenue and better profits. A quote by Steve Jobs, “You have got to start with customer experience and work back towards technology-not the other way round” vindicates the approach mentioned here.

There are two approaches to build Excellence initiatives which will be fed by the needs of better customer experience and move the needle in the right direction.

1                     Reverse Planning for a Customer Experience thread

2                     Creating multiple pairs of supplier/customer within ecosystem

1              Reverse Planning for a customer Experience thread

As we know there are multiple aspects / avenues where companies connect with their customers such as in retail stores, on web site/ mobile/social media, through service desk, through advertising campaign, special interest groups, etc. In this approach we pick up one thread and create connecting activities backwards till the raw material sourcing / design stage. Identify critical activities in the same which will have impact on the final customer experience. Analyse each one of them and identify initiatives to improve the excellence level of the organization unit performing these activities. The activity should be analyzed holistically from multiple angles covering People, Process, Technology. Each activity needs to be questioned as to can it be performed with higher level of excellence and what changes / amendments that need to be brought out to do the same. You get a comprehensive set of initiatives which are linked to a specific improvement aspect of customer experience.

Let us take a simple example: “Customer needs help in locating certain merchandise and wants to know some more information about it and she asks an employee on the floor of the store”. How do we enhance the experience customer gets during this interaction?

At the basic level, the employee on the floor must have the information about merchandize, where they are located?, how to reach there?, how much stock do they have in store right now?, are there any similar products which customer can consider?, are there any deals going on the product requested by customer or a similar product?, are there any related products that could be suggested to the customer?. We can assess each of the area and see what is the level of excellence we are working with, identify changes that we want to bring in with respect to people/ process/technology so that we can bring it to higher level of excellence and this have an opportunity to create a better experience. In this case, we can check

•         Is the information available with employee?
•         What is the mechanism of making this information available to the employee on the floor
•         Is it available to a few employees (category wise information distribution) or any one would have this information?
•         How intuitive is the mechanism to provide information?
•         Is the information accurate?
•         How current is the information?
•         How fast is the access to the information?
•         How easy / fast search capability available with person on the floor?  

Look at each and every aspect of information with focus of how are we doing today and is there any better / faster / efficient way to do it. Identify such areas as excellence initiatives and start implementing them

This experience could be further enhanced, if the person on the floor is well trained in engaging customer in an effective manner. Every up sell /cross sell happens through a better engagement.

The third level of enhancement to experience comes when you reach to the location specified by employee on the floor and you find your merchandise, it is not out of stock and has the same deal as mentioned by the employee on the floor. This leads to other aspects of business like store lay outs, stocking as per lay out, matching physical layout and electronic information, stock levels, logistics aspects of merchandise movement etc.  We have started the thread for customer experience for a simple transaction customer has with an employee on the floor and how it traces backward to various activities which need to be performed at a higher level of excellence in order to provide a better customer experience. Analyzing and creating excellence initiatives in each area will help improving the customer experience systematically.     

2              Creating multiple pairs of Supplier / Customer within the eco system

This approach handles the customer experience at a different level. Instead of picking up a thread and going back till the design stage, it works on a chain of Supplier / customers within eco system and improvement in the specific experience at each pair level will automatically improve the overall customer experience that the company can achieve. Some of the pairs could be

•         Customer and Store team
•         Customer and IT Team
•         Customer and Customer Service team
•         Store team and Warehousing team
•         Store team and IT team
•         Warehousing team and Planning team
•         Warehousing team and Production team
•         Production team and Procurement team
•         Production team and Design Team
•         Production team and Sales team
•         Sales team and Design team

Each pair has one service provider and one service receiver and set of activities through which they interact and customer experience of this interaction is noted. This interaction when analyzed gives clues for excellence initiatives to be undertaken.  

So, in summary, road to higher revenues and profits passes through the focused excellence initiatives around customer experience.