CREATING A CULTURE OF EXCELLENCE

CREATING A CULTURE OF EXCELLENCE

Too many people view culture as one of those “soft things in business”, not nearly important as hard results like sales figures or financial returns.  However, having the right culture, one that breads positive energy, passion and success, is critical not just for the success of your current goal, but to buy anything you and your Team want to accomplish, going forward.  A great culture is what will allow you to get those hard results and get them consistently.

What is a Culture?

Culture is about the work environment.  As a leader, what sort of values are you projecting?  What kind of atmosphere do you create for your Team? 

 Is it one in which people are excited to go to work everyday, feel supported, and appreciated, and know they can grow?  There is a huge difference between people working towards a goal because they are getting paid to do it versus working toward a goals because it is a rewarding experience.  That difference shows up in the hard results that we all care about.

A survey of the best practices tour of some of the most successful companies like Home Depot, GE, etc, reveal that when people are asked in these companies what made them successful, they didn’t talk about their operating processes or even about their products.  They talked about their culture and how proud they were, to be part of it.  Numbers don’t run a business – people do.  And people need the supposedly “soft things” that come from a great culture to succeed.  If you build the capability of your people first, then you will satisfy more customers, which will make you more money.  That is why culture is the foundation of any successful business or Team.  It’s up to you to create a Winning espirit-de-corps. It’s the soft stuff that drives the hard results.

 Case for Culture

Southwest Airlines is a perfect example of a company with a great culture.  The company puts its people first, with high energy and invite people to have fun while at the work.  People at Southwest believe “Happy Employee = happy customers.  Happy customers keep Southwest flying”.

If you are skeptical of the importance of culture to your business, just look at this example.  Southwest Airlines culture is their competitive advantage.  Consider the hard results in critical areas of business growth like staff retention, recruitment, customer satisfaction and ultimately, profit that stems from it.

 

 

-          Retention:  Southwest has the lowest staff turnover rate in the industry.  Studies have revealed that the two (2) of the biggest reasons why people leave their jobs are (1) they don’t feel appreciated (2) they don’t get along with others.  Those are culture reasons, not financial.

 

-          Recruitment:  In 2008, the company hired 3,300 new employees and received a whopping 200,000 resumes for 3,300 spots.  That is more than 60 candidates for each position.

 

-          Customer Satisfaction:  According to American Customer Satisfaction Index, Southwest airlines customer satisfaction score beats out every single one of their competitors in the last 10 years.

 

-          Profits:  The Company has enjoyed 36 years of continuous growth in profit despite crash in profit by other Airlines.

 

Most companies produce similar products and services that are interchangeable, you produce the same thing other people do produce, but what makes your organization unique is culture.

A compelling culture that delivers result is the intangible that sets you apart in a world where products and services are viewed as interchangeable.

The Southwest MD, when asked what keeps him awake at night, he said “what keeps me awake at night are the intangibles, it’s the intangibles that are the hardest things for a competitor to imitate, your lose that, you lose the espirit-de=corps of your people, you lose everything”.

Southwest Airlines’ turnaround time, between when an airplane taxis and takes off, is the minimal time period in the history of airline business to date. 

How Does Culture Develop?

Choices we make – lead to actions we take.  Actions lead to habits and daily habits lead to a culture – a way of life.

Choices Companies make to develop a Culture of Excellence

-          Tell yourself the Truth and nothing but the truth and value honesty and candour.

-          Pursue the best over the easiest in every situation or decision you make.

-          Focus your energy on your strength.

-          Leverage on Power of Partnership in relationship building

-          Cautiously grow, learn and adopt to dynamic environment

-          Courage of accountability  

 The decision to pursue the very best over the easiest, changes the way we pursue our goals.  It changes our language, our way of doing things, everything changes.  It means basic fundamentals are our minimal focus.

To be the best, you have to be distinctive, you must add value. 

Harley Davidson is distinctive from other motorcycles in various ways, it’s sound, the outlook, etc.  They do not consider themselves manufacturers of motorcycles but manufacturers of a “lifestyle”. 

When we are distinctive, it changes our leadership, the way we hire, who we hire and how we do things.

The discipline of delivering what the customer wants and expects every single time, is being “distinctive”.

Our Vision, values (what we stand for or represent) are major drivers of the choices we make, actions we take, our daily habits, hence our culture.

Our processes and structure is a reflection of our culture, results occur only when we inspect what one expects.  What gets measured gets done.  What we measure are activities, results and perceptions.

Partnership with Customers

You can make a customer pay more for the same product your competitor is selling if the experience the customer encountered at your outfit, during the purchase, is electrifying.  Through good relationship, experience, value added, we can convert our customers to become our brand evangelists.

How to Grow Partnership

-          Provide a conducive environment for both customers/organization to flourish.

-          Invest the Time in your customer.

-          Maintain trust and recognition for the good work people do.  Lack of trust make people look for personal gain outside the work place and it affects service output.

-          Focus on relationship more than performance.  It’s focusing on emotional connection between a person and an organization base on personal emotional experience over time.  It’s building Trust, Partnership, connecting values and unique experiences over time.  It’s about connecting to the customer personally through your products/services with focus on the person, not your products or services.  Emotional branding where your customer evangelizes you, based on great experiences over the years.

     Bad Profits vs. Good Profits

Whenever a customer feels misled, mistreated, ignored, or coerced, then profit from that customer is “bad profit”.  It arises when you save money for your organization and deliver lousy customer experience.  That profit is not sustainable.  Good profit, however, is creating value, turning customer into Evangelist and building a “Cult Brand”.

 Learn, Grow and Adapt

Smart organizations adapt to meet challenging times to become the very best.  However, people don’t change for the same of change, people only change when the Pain of staying the same is greater than the Pain of change.  To Grow in life, you must learn, you cannot grow without learning new stuff.

 Courage of Accountability

Courage to take responsibility.  Why don’t we have the courage?

-          We settle for efforts rather than results.

-          We lack the courage to confront the problem.

-          We are not accountable as leaders. 

 As leaders, we should wear a tag that says or reads “leader or liar”.  Let people change it as they wish.

 

If you don’t want the responsibility, don’t sit on the big chair.  One of the secrets to success in life, is to be too good to be ignored.

Culled from:  “Creating a Culture of Excellence” by Randy Pennington