Organizations struggle with how to be successful.
They craft a strategically brilliant plan that would make the pundits proud. It’s replete with industry and competitive analysis, internal strengths, weaknesses and a set of objectives that are time bound with accountabilities assigned.
Then they launch their plan but are disappointed in the results they achieve; they are unable to deliver the results they expect.
And they wonder why they aren’t successful.
But reason is right in front of them.
Also read: This Is What A Success Culture Looks Like
Success isn’t about the inherent brilliance or efficacy of the strategy; great plans have been know to fail and mediocre plans have earned amazing success.
The execution competencies of an organization separate those that achieve the results they intend from those that underperform.
And those that standout in the ability to consistently execute have one thing in common: they all have a huge “care factor” in their culture. They understand that people caring about people is a critical ingredient to consistently deliver superlative results.
Care about customers; they return the favour by buying what you have to sell. And they do it repetitiously.
Care about employees and they not only individually produce tremendous results, they also work together across the organization to deliver what customers want when they want it.
Effective organizational processes requires seamless handoffs, or “touch points” in order to flawlessly deliver products and services to their customers. These are facilitated when people respect and care for the roles and responsibilities of others.
Also read: How To Make A Culture Of Successful Renewal
What do organizations with a high care factor look like?
— they have caring as a critical component of their stated values; “We care about others” in some manner is explicitly stated.
— their business strategy is consistent with caring. The customer service plan is based on serving customers intimately in order to create memorable experiences s for them. Marketing’s mandate is to develop solutions that are based on what customers desire and care about as opposed to what they “need”.
— they measure caring outside and inside. Every customer and employee survey includes questions on caring and the extent to which employees practice the value.
— they have a recruitment process that looks for the caring attribute. You can’t teach people how to care; they either have the innate drive to do it or they don’t. They are born with the gene to honestly serve. The human resource effort is geared to discover people with this gene.
— their leaders care and they show it relentlessly. Caring starts from the top; it’s what leaders do to build higher levels of employee engagement. And they make it visible to everyone.
— they include caring in their performance and compensation plan. Specific targets are built in to the employee annual compensation program. The basis of measurement is perception; do customers and employees THINK employees act in a caring manner; do they think they care?
— their employee communication is overwhelming with stories of caregivers and what they’ve done to live the caring values. What is talked about is what culture is all about. If the airwaves are consummated with caring stories, what conclusion do people reach?
— they consider caring to as the essence of their competitive advantage. You can’t build anything if you don’t care, ergo growing a business requires a strong human feeling element exercised through every fabric of the organization from customer contact to web management.
Some might consider caring soft, unnecessary and perhaps a bit weird to consider as a critical element to shape culture.
These folks don’t get it.
They don’t get that mind-blowing performance and competitive uniqueness doesn’t come from the pristine strategic idea; rather it is the result of individuals working together in harmony towards a shared goal.
And that only happens if there is a caring culture at play.
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