Pushing the noodle uphill...

As I look back on my career (as early as last week) and think about the number of times I believed I had the power to alter someone's behaviors/character through my actions I have to laugh. I started 20+ years ago in Leadership and honestly I had the belief I could change people. I was wrong, but it took me years to realize that. (So let me bring the 800 lb. gorilla into the room so we don't have to go outside to see it...) Coaching, while the intent is good, is useless when your aim is at quantum growth. There, I said it - and now everyone can take a deep breath and start thinking of how egotistical I must be.

Okay, I am introspectively narcissistic (it's kind of like being a narcoleptic insomniac - talk to your doctor if you need more info). I really value my own opinion, but I value the fact it is right above just the fact I have one (I like myself - and it took me thousands of dollars and years on a counselor's couch to finally admit that - so don't take that away from me...). Enough about me, let's get back to coaching for ineffectiveness...

Just like Sesame Street's version of "one of these things doesn't belong here..." when it comes to making quantum change in an organization and sticking with the old form of "coaching for results" your quantum leap can quickly become trivial drudgery. Don’t get me wrong – there is a place in the workforce at all levels for identifying behaviors, telling someone what behaviors you see them exemplify, telling them the behavior they need to exemplify and then pulling a Professor Cluso (standing back and watching them through your legitimate power magnifying glass – otherwise known in some circles as micro-management). Based on the 1920’s idea of the “Hawthorne Effect” (Google it…) people will tend to do better when you pay attention to them.

But, and this is a big but, one to one development will never get the quantum change you can get by taking a one to many approach. People are smart, and so often, the front line of the organization is viewed as expendable labor. What’s funny is “expendable labor” comes right after revenue on the top line of your favorite financial report. So, sometimes we look at the frontline as this hunk of labor cheese and when it is time to cut cost the best way is to “cut the cheese” (had to throw that in for my daughter Madison) and push the other parts of the team to do more work. Seems logical, and for most sweatshops, and outsourcers, it seems to work just fine; again, no quantum leaps here, just playing trivial hop-scotch in your organization again.

So, how do you accomplish one to many developments? Simple, it comes from tapping into the very essence of what is happening in every moment of truth with your customers. You have to define what is important, define how you are doing against those things today, and put priorities in place to improve. If customer experience is most important to you and creating a better experience that yields higher satisfaction levels, or sales you need to go to the source – go where the action is… TPS calls this genchi genbutsu – or go to where the work is being done (another blog all together).

If you define your needs by thinking “customer:back” and tap into the teaching and learning power of your frontline by engaging their knowledge and expertise and helping them become teachers of knowledge you will win.

Here is what that looks like. I had the opportunity to change a decent sales force into a much better sales force while with a company I worked for. When I started I could read the back of the box we sent to the customer and get the same conversation on the phone (“our product will… it is great because… you can save time by…) and the ABC (always be closing) concept was grating my nerves like nails on a chalk board. So, I took a "one to many" training approach to alter the overall thinking of my organization. Long story short, I built bridges and relationships with all of my internal and external suppliers and customers that were aimed at developing my sales force.

I certified them in the product so they knew it inside out (how it worked, what it did, how to install it, why it did it) and then I married my sales force to the marketing team (I mean, who better understands the customer than those folks using demo/psychographics to divide customers into yummy little segments that are willing to improve our wallet share with the right messaging…). We created a partnership that actually allowed those people interacting with the customer thousands of times per year (frontline) to produce their own marketing materials to target customers. Marketing spruced up the winner and sent it out to 250K customers (not a huge segment, but the right segment), and my sales force started to understand branding, messaging, engaging, segmenting, and all the other fantastic tools to identify and reach customers. They became hungry for more info coming from marketing that would help them target better identification of their customers and improved sales.

Now that we understood the customer better from a marketing perspective, and the tools were second nature to use, I tackled the idea of “easy to install and use”. This was our mantra and wow did it get used like a pair of Michelins on a teenager’s car. I spent days during the week taking sales people away from their normal day and placing them in the customer’s process (at their place of business). We would install product (threw out the idea of easy to install), brought existing data into the product or put new info in (killed the thought of ease of use) and then we would use the systems to interact with customers. Long story short – quantum change in sales because of how we positioned our product when we talked to customers. We now knew everything a customer went through and we could honestly answer the "what's important" questions for customers.

Finally – we married ourselves to the support team. At one point we were very siloed. We sold it, someone shipped it, and then all the promises we made in saes were handled by the support team (some promises true, others were pie in the sky). By having sales folks interact “in the moment” with customers they started seeing the downstream effect their sales process. Conversations changed, realism set in, and customers started feeling cohesion in their shop/buy/use process.

Overall, we were able to make quantum leaps into double digit sales above budget. All it took was stepping away from the ol’ one on one coaching (even though that is still helpful – I will admit) and took a holistic approach to teaching an organization (a one: many approach) and from there the quantum leap happened.

See you on the left…