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Focused on Business Concerns
By Richard Flint

Recently, we have been sharing a research project I did with business leaders regarding their business concerns for the future.  As they have read the information, most have told us you are right on with what any business leader needs to be looking at as they plan for the future.

 Here are some of my views on these four areas of common concern.  First let me restate them for you.

-  We must be able to retain our quality people and attract others who can continue to   

make us better.

-  We must get better at creating a healthy business environment that stops abusing our quality people and allows for a more motivated and focused internal environment.

-  We must step up and do a better job of taking care of the customer.  With all we have taught about customer care, many still haven’t gotten the message.

-  We must do more to help relieve some of the damaging stress in the lives of our people. It is apparent that a person having issues outside of work becomes a non-productive person at work.

Any company or organization wanting to improve must address these issues.  My research says they are going away.  They will grow in emotional presence.

Retaining and Recruiting Quality People

This is the  #1 issue facing companies today.  A tight labor market can create a stressful business environment.  The result becomes leadership driven by a fear of loss.  What happens then?  They are willing to hang onto people who don’t support the mission of the company, make exceptions, change the rules, overlook behaviors that are negative and justify it with there are not a lot of quality people out there.  Reality is — there may be more quality people out there than we have had in a long time.  Truth is, there are not a lot of quality companies designed to attract them.

            Quality people don’t move to average companies.  Any time a company lowers its standards, makes exceptions, or makes the bottom line more important than it’s people, they become average.  Being average will not only cost you your quality people, but also make it challenging to recruit quality people.

            Lowering the standards changes the design and punishes those who are committed to quality. Lowering the standards rewards those who simply show up and aren’t committed to a mission of customer care.  The tragedy is the number of talented quality people who are leaving because they are tired of giving 100% to an unappreciative leadership who continues to take advantage of their commitment to quality.  Rewarding negative people is a costly mistake!

Understanding the Meaning of Motivation

            Many managers are exhausted from trying to keep people motivated.  For some strange reason they have made themselves responsible for the energy of their people.  What they don’t understand is that is not their job!  It is not their responsibility to emotionally adopt people.  Their role is to design and maintain a healthy environment where motivated people can excel.

            When you emotionally adopt a person, you become responsible for them.  That means that they act and you react by taking care of them or fixing their mistakes.  So, they spend their days fighting fires, not doing their work and becoming an emotional wreck.  Improvement demands people are held accountable and responsible for what they should be doing.   Protecting negative people simply validates their behavior and increases the stress on the leader of the orphanage. Soon, the leader gives up and unknowingly becomes a participant.  At this point leadership stops!

            Motivation demands people know who they are, where they are, and what they want for their life.  Without these understandings they show up and hold the company environment hostage with their behavior.

Strengthening the Customer Connection

How important is the customer’s experience with the organization?  Is it important enough to monitor their experience and make sure that their experience is one that brings them back?  All GREAT companies are more focused on bringing the customer back than getting them in the door. 

            To most companies as long as they are making money, customer satisfaction is a concept, rather than a process the company takes seriously.  But, let the people go away and profits slip and what do they start preaching? CUSTOMER SERVICE!  GREAT customer care is not happening; it is a process of building relationships.  That process tells the customer they matter.  Products don’t demonstrate that; people do.

            I designed a customer research where I visited with 100 customers whose company loyalty was destroyed by people disappointments.  In talking with them it was interesting hearing their expectations and disappointments.  If those companies had just lived up to the promise of customer care, they would have not lost these people.  Of all customer complaints, 99% are generated by people disappointments.  How costly is that!

Helping People Find A Definition Of Balance For Their Life

            Smart leadership understands that unhappy people hurt a company’s profitability.  Too many come to work for the check, not because this is something they want to be doing.  Too many have unstable lives outside of work and bring their personal issues to the work place.  These people lack focus, are constantly exhausted, driven by a negative presence, and rarely give their best to what they are doing.  GREAT companies are striving to link business to living a totally healthy life.  They are providing counseling, workout facilities, and activities for them and their families.  Several understand the growing number of single parents and are working to take some of the stress from these people.  They understand the need for balance.

            A life without balance is a life without direction; a life without balance is a life that lives with exhaustion; a life without balance never seems to be able to complete what it starts.  A life without balance is a life that is in conflict with itself.

            It really is an interesting time we are living in.  Many businesses are positioning themselves to avoid dealing with the customer.  They are putting systems in place that make it difficult for one human to talk to another.  Yet, the excitement of doing business is when people come together with people.  The challenge is many who have been given the role of leadership don’t enjoy people, so they are building walls using technology to insulate them from that evil necessity called people.  The internal customer translates that as saying I am not important to the company that creates behaviors that tell the external customer we don’t care about you.  Result—companies with great products and disappointed internal and external customers.  This disappointment removes the desire to be loyal from the mind of the customer.