Go beyond productivity to real effectiveness. Improve strategic plan implementation and bottom-line company success by enlightening your employees with accurate knowledge of your customers' general and precise priorities. This will enable you employees to collectively make millions of "just right" decisions and perform their work as effectively and efficiently as possible.
Employee Effectiveness by Design Edward B. Goodwin - President, Demand Facts Inc En-light-en: 1. to give the light of knowledge to; free from ignorance, prejudice, or superstition. 2. to inform; give clarification to (a person) as to meanings, intentions, etc. Slang – wise up. Enlighten Employees to Increase Their Effectiveness Productivity does not equal effectiveness. The productivity of many of your employees can be increased though Human Capital initiatives such as employee engagement and performance management processes, but their impact on the bottom-line may not be substantially improved. A substantial number of your employees may be productive in the sense that they are working hard and staying ahead of their schedules, but if their decisions and actions are out of sync with the priorities of your target customers, they are neither advancing your company’s success as much as possible nor realizing the true intent and power of your company’s strategies. In other words, they are spinning their wheels because they are heading in the wrong direction. Some may actually be productively hurting your company’s success by wasting the time and resources of other employees, missing improvement opportunities, creating less appealing products or services, causing or not solving customer support problems, and ultimately losing more prospective and existing customers due to offering inferior value. To be productive and effective, your employees need up-to-date and precise knowledge of your customers’ priorities to enable them to consistently make the decisions and take the actions which best lead to meaningful contributions toward your company’s goals. Your employees will be in a much better position with this intimate knowledge to implement and execute your company’s strategic plan in the most effective and efficient ways possible. We call this Employee Enlightenment but customer knowledge management would also be appropriate. Enlighten Employees in All Key Groups Operations/ Production IS/IT Quality Management Finance & Accounting Sales/Account Management General Executives Human Resources Customer Support Strategic Planning CI & Market Research Marketing & Product Mgt R&D/Product Development Operations/ Production IS/IT Quality Management Finance & Accounting Sales/Account Management General Executives Decisions Human Resources Customer Support Strategic Planning CI & Market Research Marketing & Product Mgt R&D/Product Development The decision-making roles of executives and other managers are widely recognized. Less recognized are the many decisions made by individual employees. The millions of work- related decisions made collectively by your employees across the numerous organizational groups have a dramatic impact on the ultimate success of your company’s strategic plan and, as a result, in achieving your short-term and long-term goals. Most, if not all, of your employees have discretion to make work- related decisions every day. Of course some employees make decisions which have greater impact on company success than others, but
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Employee Ef fect iveness by Design Edward B. Goodwin - President, Demand Facts Inc
En-light-en: 1. to give the light of knowledge to; free from ignorance, prejudice, or superstition.
2. to inform; give clarification to (a person) as to meanings, intentions, etc. Slang – wise up. Enlighten Employees to Increase Their Effectiveness Productivity does not equal effectiveness. The productivity of many of your employees can be increased though Human Capital initiatives such as employee engagement and performance management processes, but their impact on the bottom-line may not be substantially improved. A substantial number of your employees may be productive in the sense that they are working hard and staying ahead of their schedules, but if their decisions and actions are out of sync with the priorities of your target customers, they are neither advancing your company’s success as much as possible nor realizing the true intent and power of your company’s strategies. In other words, they are spinning their wheels because they are heading in the wrong direction. Some may actually be productively hurting your company’s success by wasting the time and resources of other employees, missing improvement opportunities, creating less appealing products or services, causing or not solving customer support problems, and ultimately losing more prospective and existing customers due to offering inferior value. To be productive and effective, your employees need up-to-date and precise knowledge of your customers’ priorities to enable them to consistently make the decisions and take the actions which best lead to meaningful contributions toward your company’s goals. Your employees will be in a much better position with this intimate knowledge to implement and execute your company’s strategic plan in the most effective and efficient ways possible. We call this Employee Enlightenment but customer knowledge management would also be appropriate. Enlighten Employees in All Key Groups
Operations/Production
IS/IT
QualityManagement
Finance & Accounting
Sales/AccountManagement
General Executives
Decisions
HumanResources
Customer Support
StrategicPlanning
CI & MarketResearch
Marketing &Product Mgt
R&D/ProductDevelopment
Operations/Production
IS/IT
QualityManagement
Finance & Accounting
Sales/AccountManagement
General Executives
Decisions
HumanResources
Customer Support
StrategicPlanning
CI & MarketResearch
Marketing &Product Mgt
R&D/ProductDevelopment
The decision-making roles of executives and other managers are widely recognized. Less recognized are the many decisions made by individual employees. The millions of work-related decisions made collectively by your employees across the numerous organizational groups have a dramatic impact on the ultimate success of your company’s strategic plan and, as a result, in achieving your short-term and long-term goals. Most, if not all, of your employees have discretion to make work-related decisions every day. Of course some employees make decisions which have greater impact on company success than others, but
Employee Ef fect iveness by Design Edward B. Goodwin - President, Demand Facts Inc
even your employees at the lowest levels have to regularly make the following types of effectiveness-related decisions:
Which tasks to work on and in what order? Related information and training to seek for each task? Specifically how to accomplish each task? Amount of time and effort to devote to each task? If and what additional resources or support to request for each task? When reach adequate quality level for each task (i.e., when done)? If should obtain and use feedback from others before moving-on to next task? Who to talk to about what for each task (i.e., managers, peers, experts, etc.)? What, if anything, do when notice errors or faulty decisions made by others? Whether or not to help others with their tasks? If so, when and how help?
Enlighten Employees on All Important Customer Needs Senior executives usually receive solid information on the most meaningful overall customer needs and perceptions in order to make major decisions such as setting company goals, strategies, plans, resource allocations and policies. However, up-to-date information on customer needs is rarely made available to other employees who are responsible for making the millions of “sub-decisions” which are required to fulfill the strategic plan in the most effective and efficient ways possible. On the rare occasions when customer need-related information is widely distributed, it is typically very general and of little use for the day-to-day decisions and tasks of most employees. For example: Strategy Maps and Balanced Scorecards are “best practices” that appear to be gaining in use. When well done, these practices can be helpful for strategic planning and general management purposes. However, the strategies and related customer needs included in the “Customer Perspective” sections of these tools are quite general even in the cascaded versions for distinct business units, divisions and departments.
Top StrategicTop StrategicPrioritiesPriorities
Other Customer Other Customer Key Drivers Key Drivers
To consistently make the right decisions and perform the right tasks, your employees need to be knowledgeable on all the relevant needs of your company’s target customers. Of course this knowledge should encompass the customer needs which are designated as Top Priorities in your company’s strategic plan. Your employees also need tbe aware of and, when appropriate, give some prioto Other Key Drivers of customers’ purchase decisions. In addition, your employees need to understand and pay attention to other customer needs such as Basic and Emerging needs. These needs may not be decisive for as many customers as the higher priority needs, but weak performance on Basic needs (i.e., minimum requirements) can cause severe problems, and ignoring Emerging needs is short-sighted and very risky.
o rity
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Employee Ef fect iveness by Design Edward B. Goodwin - President, Demand Facts Inc
Enlighten Employees on the Precise Requirements Because the strategies and plans contained in company strategic plans are predominantly general in content, they leave plenty of space for different interpretations by the employees who are involved in their implementation and fulfillment. While the strategic plan establishes each company’s overall priorities, your company’s processes and employees must somehow accommodate all the needs of all prospective and existing customers. Furthermore, your employees must fulfill customer needs at very precise levels (i.e., C and D).
For each General Performance Area (A), there are usually several key general attributes (B)
AB
C
D
AB
C
D
Top Priorities AB
C
D
Other Needs
Other Key Drivers
A = General Performance Areas C = Secondary & Tertiary AttributesB = General Performance Attributes D = Performance Level Options
AB
C
D
AB
C
D
Top Priorities AB
C
D
Other Needs
Other Key Drivers
A = General Performance Areas C = Secondary & Tertiary AttributesB = General Performance Attributes D = Performance Level Options
For each general attribute (B), there are usually many related Secondary & Tertiary Attributes (C)
For each specific attribute (C), there are usually multiple Performance Options (D)
Example
Post-Sale Customer Support
Easy to Reach Knowledgeable Reps
Send Email Request for Rep to Call Me
Know Status of Invoices
Call Same Day
Call in 24 Hours
Call in 48 Hours
Immediate Answer
24 Hours to Get Answer
2-3 Days toGet Answer
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A
+ Others+ Others
+ Others
Post-Sale Customer Support
Easy to Reach Knowledgeable Reps
Send Email Request for Rep to Call Me
Know Status of Invoices
Call Same Day
Call in 24 Hours
Call in 48 Hours
Immediate Answer
24 Hours to Get Answer
2-3 Days toGet Answer
+ Others+ Others
+ OthersB C D Since your employees can not collectively ignore any relevant customer need completely, there are an enormous number of specific performance attributes which your employees must address in some manner. In the absence of precise strategic plan direction and definitive customer priority knowledge, on what basis have the millions of employee decisions been made in the past? The most likely possibilities:
Personal, boss’s, associate’s or “expert” consultant’s opinions, gut feelings, or best guesses Limited past customer exposures, general information provided in the past, feedback from Internet forums or chats, or feedback from a few current customers
What competitors have done, what past employer would have done, or technical standards Self-interests such as easiest, cheapest, most interesting, most politically savvy, best for insuring good relations with others, best for own group, or choices that are most likely to produce a bonus, promotion, or some other internal recognition (i.e., metrics game).
Employee Ef fect iveness by Design Edward B. Goodwin - President, Demand Facts Inc
This customer information void has become even more problematic now that the needs and preferences for many of your current and prospective customers have changed in some important ways due to the difficult conditions and challenges in the New World. As a result, much of the information, knowledge, expertise, standards and benchmarks that were accumulated in the past on customer needs are now at least partly obsolete and could actually be counter-productive. Even absolutely brilliant general strategies and plans will not produce the desired results if the millions of subsequent decisions made by your employees are not truly in-sync with target customers’ priorities. In this light, it is easy to understand why the vast majority of companies fail to execute their strategies effectively each year. On the other hand, providing your employees with accurate and precise information on the relevant customer priorities will yield millions of “just right” decisions which can directly lead to enormous cost savings, significant sustainable customer demand gains, and other major improvements for company stakeholders. Fortunately, most groups and individual employees do not need to receive detailed information on all general and precise customer needs. Instead, a bottom-up approach is recommended to pinpoint the customer need-related information, and their level of detail, which would be useful for each involved employee group. The relevant customer information should be specified within the context of each group’s strategies, plans, roles and activities which directly or indirectly have an effect on your company’s current and prospective customers. For example, an Accounting group may just need to receive information on customer needs and perceptions pertaining to invoices and payments, a Customer Service group should receive all need-related information on all post-sale support dimensions and options, and a Sales group should become familiar with the full range of potential needs but perhaps just provided with detailed info on the top priorities for the types of customers they are selling to. Marketing, Strategic Planning, division executives and a few other groups may not need the granular details for all of the specific attributes, but they would benefit from strong insights on the master list of all relevant general performance dimensions which are linked to the company’s top priorities plus other decisive customer decision criteria, basic requirements, and emerging attributes among the customer segments of interest to them. Achieve Strategic Synchronization
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t nment.
Enlightenment initiatives ensure that each employee clearly understands their own work roles
Comprehensive alignment of employees is one of the most beneficial outcomes from well-designed and executed Employee Enlightenment initiatives. Enlightened employees become simultaneously aligned with [1] their company’s strategies and plans, [2] their target customers’ priorities, and [3] each other. Complete strategic synchronization is the term we use to describe this end-state among enlightened employees. Igoes well beyond basic employee engagement and strategy alig
and contributions. They also become familiar with the essential roles and contributions of other employees in their group and in other groups. All enlightened employees operate under the
Employee Ef fect iveness by Design Edward B. Goodwin - President, Demand Facts Inc
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and
ertise
A shared understanding develops across employees on customer priorities, critical
intained
for
pgrade Other Management Processes
Another beneficial application of Employee Enlightenment programs is use of the up-to-date
The processes, programs and
al
ns. nt
if
prove Employee Motivation
Employee Enlightenment initiatives will also naturally provide incremental improvement in the
n
to
same set (or “tree”) of facts and insights on customers’ general and precise needs, priorities preferences. As a result of this widely-shared definitive knowledge base, little room is left for conflicts and effectiveness barriers which result from differences in …
Customer data or information Past experience or claimed exp Personal opinions or gut feelings Personal backgrounds or cultures Personal or group self-interests
performance short-falls that must be improved, and the key strengths that should be maand used for advantages. Once this happens, everyone moves in the same direction. They know what they personally need to do, know who is doing what, agree on the best priorities company resources, and become more willing to team-up and coordinate decisions and tasks with others. U customer need-related outputs to supplement and upgrade several current management processes. This allows all of these processes to be closely synchronized.
Strategic PlanningStrategic Planning
functions shown here would most obviously benefit from facts and insights on the full range of generand precise customer needs, priorities and related perceptioPlus the outputs from Enlightenmeinitiatives would save substantial funds over what would be requiredthis up-to-date information was gathered separately for each process.
EmployeeCommunications
Market & CustomerCommunications
Training & Development
Performance Mgt(Job Descriptions, Goals,
Appraisals, etc.)
CustomerSupport
Title
EnlightenmentKnowledge Baseon Customers’
Needs
Compensation& Incentives
Executive Reporting& Monitoring
Direct &Channel Sales
ProductDevelopment
Quality Management
Market & CustomerResearch
EmployeeCommunications
Market & CustomerCommunications
Training & Development
Performance Mgt(Job Descriptions, Goals,
Appraisals, etc.)
CustomerSupport
Title
EnlightenmentKnowledge Baseon Customers’
Needs
Compensation& Incentives
Executive Reporting& Monitoring
Direct &Channel Sales
ProductDevelopment
Quality Management
Market & CustomerResearch
Im inspiration, engagement and enrichment of the involved employees. Imagine the possibilities. Your employees will have complete visibility on their roles, duties and importance to your company and your customers, and they will receive strong, fresh and precise information ocustomers’ needs and perceptions which are tailored to their specific responsibilities. They immediately realize that your company values them and their abilities. They no longer have take big risks by guessing or relying on bad data or others to figure out what they should do to perform their job well. They won’t have to repeatedly redo their work based on unfounded personal opinions and preferences of others. The wisdom of their decisions and actions becomes more and more evident, so they see a very positive future at your company.
Employee Ef fect iveness by Design Edward B. Goodwin - President, Demand Facts Inc
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he most likely possibilities: ptimism in the success of your company
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al players)
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company success s
mpower and Enable Employees to Contribute 100%
To achieve substantial business results from Employee Enlightenment initiatives, employees
take
s,
Enlightened employees also require some vital “whole-life” support to allow each to nd
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ment
tart with the On-target Customer Value Strategies
It is important to mention that the benefits produced by Employee Enlightenment initiatives
T Greater confidence and o More clearly understand their role and potential contributions More deeply understand your company’s and group’s strategie Greater freedom to make more decisions, with greater confidence Directly involved with solving the needs of real customers (vs intern Reduced micro-management by their supervisor Make fewer errors (incorrect decisions or ineffecti Less negative feedback and push-back from others Increased ability to see the impact they are having on Better ability to prove their value for promotions, bonuses or other reward Greater understanding and empathy with managers and other employees Greater recognition by their peers, managers and high level executives Fewer conflicts and barriers created by others Feel more secure and comfortable Have more fun and excitement
E must be sufficiently empowered and enabled. Management command & control processes must allow employees the freedom to follow the wisdom inherent in the provided customer need information. With greater freedom and empowerment for employees to make decisions and actions comes greater engagement and enrichment, key ingredients for stronger motivation. Greater freedom does require greater accountability by employees for their effectiveness in generating positive results. To enjoy all the potential pay-offs from Enlightenment investmentthis type of accountability should become the primary basis for employee management including job roles and goals, supervision, appraisals, compensation, promotions, and other recognitions. contribute as much as possible. Benefit programs such as EAP, Work/Life, Wellness, aTraining must be closely attuned to the employees’ personal needs and issues to enable thto be physically and mentally healthy, present, focused and skilled enough to effectively accomplish their individual goals. While some of these programs do help companies savmoney on health insurance and claims, the gains which result from these programs in emplproductivity and effectiveness are much more significant. This is particularly true among employees who are eager and sufficiently informed to be effective as a result of Enlighteninitiatives. S will not be fully realized if a company’s strategic plan does not include on-target customer valuestrategies and related plans. If a company is pointing their employees in the wrong directions, and set strict boundaries around those directions, then employees will have limited opportunityto generate significant improvements for the company even if they become extremely
Employee Ef fect iveness by Design Edward B. Goodwin - President, Demand Facts Inc
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very
knowledgeable on the priorities of target customers. The enlightened employees will beproductive in implementing the strategic plan, but the results will be proportionate to the abilityand power of the designated strategies and plans to create and maintain the type and level of value sought by target customers.
nlightening Your Employees for Greater Company Success
The direct and indirect outcomes from Employee Enlightenment initiatives can add up to
security,
To achieve these results, your company must begin with on-target customer value strategies,
Best DecisionsBest Decisions
E many significant gains for all stakeholder groups. Your employees benefit from greatly enhanced job satisfaction as well as improved confidence, recognition, self-esteem andwhile your entire company and shareholders benefit from the much improved bottom-line results generated by increased employee effectiveness along with other meaningful efficiencies and synergies.
fully inform your employees on the precise priorities of your target customers, and provide your enlightened employees with sufficient “whole-life” support to enable each to contribute as much as possible. Only the second vital step needs implementation in most companies.
