Delivering customer service – at least the way it is practiced in most companies – is easy. The customer asks you for something, and you give it to them. Building a culture that is obsessed with serving customers is hard. Carl Sewell’s family of auto dealerships is at or near the top for sales and service with the brands they represent for one simple reason: They are the best at sustaining a culture that serves customers.
Culture change follows behavior and performance change not the other way around. If you buy into that premise, the behavior and performance you expect, enable, measure, reward, and hold people accountable for will become the habits that define the culture. The best organizations have clarity, alignment, and execution across each of these areas. And that leads to the question of “how do you know a change is taking place?”
There has to be something we can learn from Washington’s failure to address the debt limit, right? There are three very important lessons about leading change you can take from the chaos over approving the federal budget and raising the debt ceiling.
Don’t worry about the sale. Just take care of the customer. Give the customer the best customer service you can deliver, even if the customer isn’t buying, and eventually the sale will come.
Imagine this: An e-mail arrives from the chief executive officer of your company with the following message: It is no secret that the past few years have been a struggle. Our competitors are buying market [...]
Another blog post about change? Really? The last three I posted aren’t enough? How about the thousands of other books, blogs, and articles on the subject? I am with you. I don’t need to hear [...]
Why did you write a book about change? The host of a recent radio interview was being polite and, I suspect, genuinely interested. But the question is an important one—a quick search on Amazon.com found over 150,000 book titles that have something to do with change. Let’s assume that some of those titles are duplicates for hardcover, paperback, Kindle, etc. That still leaves thousands of books written on the subject. Aren’t those enough? The short answer is, “No.”
Scott Keller and Carolyn Aiken, consultants at McKinsey & Company, suggest that 80 percent of what leaders care about and talk about when trying to enlist support for change does not matter to 80 percent of the workforce. To gain the commitment for the change that you want, you must connect with people where they are. You do that by making the change relevant and real.
Another blog post about change? Really? The last three I posted aren't enough? How about the thousands of other books, blogs, and articles on the subject? I am with you. I don’t need to hear another message that changes are coming and I need to get on board. And yet, we are confronted with this reality: Most of our efforts to make change work don’t work as well as we had hoped … or even at all.
Don Draper, the fictional advertising guru on the television show “Mad Men” says, “Change is neither good or bad. It simply is.” Good luck convincing your team of that. We all want the change we [...]
“When will things get back to normal?” That question has been asked countless times since the economic meltdown of 2008. Most people want to know when the job market will bounce back; the economy will return to something close to sustained growth; uncertainty will subside; or the rate of change will slow to a more manageable pace. But, what if this is it? What if instability, rapid change, and uncertainty are the new normal? And, what if I’m wrong and things bounce back quickly? If you can succeed now, you will crush it then.
Your long-term success will quite possibly come down to a simple question: Are you a dodo bird or a coyote? Learn if you have what it takes to thrive in a world of constant change.
The old-fashioned view of mentoring is someone outside a learner’s chain of command who equips that learner with new skills and knowledge. It is an archaic expert to novice or smart to unwise philosophy. The goal is the transfer of information or expertise, much like pouring knowledge into the head of a passive learner. It is the model that antiquated teachers used to teach facts students only recalled long enough to score favorably on the test.
Liars – we've all seen them, fallen victim to them, and if we are truthful, joined their ranks from time to time. Some do it for malicious reasons. Others do so out of a sense of kindness or benign indifference. But, we all do it. There are times when that article of clothing makes us look fat. There are times when we feel like crap, and there are times when we feel the pressure to say what is untrue to cover for our lack of performance. And that is why you need to read The Truth About Lies in the Workplace.
You own your logo and marketing message. Your customers own your brand relevance in the marketplace. And when your customers say you are irrelevant, no amount of advertising, positive press, or sales promotions will convince them otherwise. Two iconic American brands are proving that every day.