Here’s a link to the article published on Linked In

The 4 Key Reasons Most Organisations Underperform Against Targets

Please follow this link to see the review published in Edge Magazine  from the Institute of leadership and Management

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6369869543795363840

So, you are committed to discovering your own Customer Focused Mission (CFM). The collection of words, crafted by your organization, that expresses your beliefs about your organization and the vanguard for development and progress that everyone is going to stand behind to deliver their actions to enhance the reputation of your organization.

At some point, I am sure we have all had something like the flu or the horrible symptoms of it. Cold, shivering, runny nose, coughing and spluttering, no energy and really hot, a fever.

It stopped us doing anything apart from feeling sorry for ourselves. Maybe it became an excuse for not getting things done or avoiding something we just did not feel we had the energy to commit to.

If you are going to discover your CFM then be prepared for similar symptoms if you are going to do it justice. It is not achievable without effort, commitment and engagement. You need to continually ask your team “ What are we trying to achieve here?”

Discovering your CFM can be thought of as a FEV(V)ER! I recommend you approach it on that basis for the best outcomes. It’s a bug that needs to affect everyone in your organization.

There are cures for this FEV(V)ER, and they are simple, but each one is equally important. In discovering your CFM (note: discovering, not developing) there’s only six simple things to consider:

FOCUS – on delivering your Customer experience, not sales.

EMPOWER – your people so that their actions are based on the CFM they have developed.

VISION – think through your vision of the organization

VALUES – the foundations you are putting in place

EVERYONE –  it’s a shared responsibility both internal and external

REAL – keep it clear, short and simple. Make it easy to understand and measurable.

We deal with these “cures” in our book in more detail and consider how the CFM is interwoven with the other key steps to building your reputation.

Just picking up on the “Everyone” statement. It takes effort to get everyone involved, explain it to them and gain their engagement. To do that, you must be genuine and honest in discovering your CFM with both internal and external customers. Discovering a CFM is not something that can be communicated by email or developed on a shared drive and thought about on the commute to work. It needs face to face engagement ( Facetime or Skype permitted ) in groups across your organization. So long as you can look into people’s eyes and know they are engaged!

Please! Please! Remember that a Customer Focused Mission is not to be confused with a corporate mission statement. Mission statements are mostly short term platitudes, developed by the few and misunderstood by the many. A great CFM will be timeless!

Russell Wood

We must have a Mission Statement! Our competitors have one and it sounds really good. In reality, it is just corporate peer pressure.

Many of the old-fashioned Mission Statements were forged out of the corporate need to satisfy investors or to sound good in the corporate world amongst competitors. I am not saying that they were all bad but many were not, and are not fit for purpose because;

• They may have been forged during a corporate junket on the 19^th green
• They may have been delivered at great expense by a detached third party
• They sounded great but had no substance in practice, process or performance
• You had to do it because our customers expected one, it’s a box ticker!
• They are too inward looking and doesn’t understand the Customers Real Needs

In the Social Revolution world, the world of instant judgement, your mission must be customer focused. We call it the Customer Focused Mission (CFM). What’s the difference?

Firstly, the CFM is yours. You develop it and you own it. It expresses Your beliefs about Your organization.

You need to discover your CFM by continually asking your team “ What are we trying to achieve here”?

If you are going to genuinely think about this and you want to build the reputation of your organization then the best advice I can give is to do it yourself and engage with your own internal and external customers. By starting with this approach, you are demonstrating that your people and customers are important; you want to understand their real needs and you want to imbue great pride in what you do.

After all, why hire people if you are not prepared to listen to them? Everyone in your organization must be important. You are paying them a wage. You chose them, and I assume that you are content with your recruitment process.

So, most folk want to add value, or at least do a good job. Most folk like to feel like they belong and most folk take pride in what they do. Therefore, everyone has a view about the organization. Whether listening is formal or informal, it’s worth just putting the kettle on and asking your employees what they think.

It’s no different with customers and your feedback systems need to provide simple opportunities to understand the Customers Real Needs and listen to what they are saying effectively.

People are BEAR’s so invest time in understanding your customers Beliefs, Actions, Emotions and what Results they expect and you have the foundation of a fantastic, relevant CFM that your organization can genuinely believe in and not just buy into as part of a personal induction process and tick yet another box.

In this Social Revolution world having the bedrock of a relevant CFM reinforced by genuine feedback and managed by your team is more powerful that any tweet or post. It is much easier to engage in social media, it is just the click of a button to the sender, than it is to actually speak to someone and truly understand what they are saying to you. That takes a little bit of organization, a lot more confidence and you just cannot hide behind your screen.

Of course, it will be deemed to be more efficient and easier to score if feedback is done electronically. You will always be able to justify the fact that 8 out of 10 is good, or at least better than most! It’s much more revealing when someone tells you personally that the service you provided was either “Great” or “Poor”. There’s no hiding place there! Be honest, isn’t that what you really want in 2018? To be effective, to plan your next development inches with your team and to use your resources efficiently at the lowest cost?

Yes, you can get a feeling about how well you are doing from social media interaction but most responses are fully considered, particularly if you are asked to rate 1-5 stars. I am beginning to find those surveys inconvenient, if not intrusive.

It seems as if social media has failed if you cannot connect with everyone, or have thousands of followers, but a good feedback system doesn’t need to talk to every customer because the value and depth of each personal interaction is more likely to lead to a greater number of genuine referrals than relying on the number of “likes”.

2018 is the Chinese year of the Earth Dog. “Dogs” are loyal and honest, but cautious and prudent and according to my research “Dogs” will do everything for the person who they think is most important. There’s no more important person than your customer. 2018 should be the year to make sure you create or review your CFM honestly and collectively with your team and one of the best actions you can take is to talk first and tweet later, the responses will be more insightful and have greater value.

For better or worse we are wedded to the web!

Each of us has our own skills personality and appearance, we all have a different blend of these attributes. It’s what makes us what we are and how people perceive us.

We are in the Social Revolution generation where the web and our individual personas challenge each other. By that I mean that our lives are so interwoven by the web and social media that they are becoming part of our personality. How do we interact with them? How are we expected to interact with them? Should I feel guilty if I am not doing what my peer group do?

There’s huge expectation in the Social Revolution world. One of celebrity culture, instant fame or notoriety and instant access to a global audience which only a couple of generations ago was limited to our family, friends and co-workers and news travelled more slowly and was more personal.

Being yourself is more of a challenge now than it ever has been. So, understanding customers could be seen to be an impossibility, certainly more difficult than it ever was, and more and more customers hide behind their mouse, on line, not face to face. Fewer physical one to one transactions and certainly more limited opportunities to get to really know customers in the SR world.

However, there are four common traits in every customer that you can rely on.

Beliefs

Emotions

Actions

Results

People are BEARs. In our book we explore each of these attributes and how they relate to customers and their relationship with your organization and importantly vice-versa.

Think about yourself. In a relationship with any organization what are your beliefs about them? Do their products or services satisfy your emotions; do they care about you? Do their actions satisfy your emotions? Is the result of their actions what you expect?

Do you refer, or talk to others positively about those organizations which satisfy your BEAR needs? Conversely, do you criticize or complain to others about those that don’t? When you do either of those things, you’ll probably do it instantly on social media more than word of mouth.

As an organization, and accepting that customers are BEARs, you can understand the Customers Real Needs by investing in Feedback. Not 5 star on-line box ticking, short,  interactive, verbal Feedback based on a simple system and process to validate whether you are achieving you Customer Focuses Mission, and if not how you can improve.

So, quality Feedback that you really understand, is meaningful, and allows you to plan your next development inches, only comes from really understanding the common traits of people. You don’t need to second guess their personalities.

People are BEARs, go hunt the ones that like what you do and have the potential to refer you and ultimately have a partnership relationship with you. It’s the best investment you can make.

Russell Wood

Beautiful things symphonies, visualized and written by geniuses and captured on paper forever. Some rousing, some melancholic, some you really must concentrate on to understand the meaning of each movement. Some you cannot understand at all without a good interpreter!

I’m no Andrew Preview (classic Morecambe and Wise, look it up on line!) but isn’t every organization an orchestra? Teams and departments interact, their actions are interwoven. Every individual is an instrument and together, and in harmony, their orchestration can deliver a harmonious output, a glorious symphony with an outstanding result which may receive a standing ovation.

Without Feedback your organization is exposed. Exposed to the inaccuracy of hearsay or organizations not understanding what their customers WANT to hear. Often, organizations can be deaf to real opinion and blind to the Customers Real Needs.

Organizations want Feedback to be GREAT music to their ears and not a POOR cacophony of complaints. The problem is that not enough time and energy is invested in obtaining that quality Feedback.

There’s no rehearsal time. The Feedback systems and processes are not set up and worked on relentlessly. Rarely, did any composer create a masterpiece first putting pen to paper. They all needed an eraser to fine tune their work. Gathering Feedback IS quality rehearsal time!

Great symphonies are also interpreted by their audience. Individuals will hear different nuances in the work and the work itself will be played differently depending on the conductor and the orchestra. The interpretation of what your products or services offer is no different. You cannot assume that what you do is fully understood, by everyone, all the time. You must obtain regular feedback to check your performance and that your Customer Focused Mission is being delivered and that you are are still meeting the Customers Real Needs.

Interpretation is about moving forward. A new twist on a well-established musical work. Fit for a new generation in the Social Revolution world. In the same way, interpreting your Feedback will create more customer loyalty, increased customer engagement and ultimately more value. More importantly, the interpretation of your Feedback will help you to understand where to make improvements inch by inch and which inches to focus on next.

Your organization, just like a symphony will be more attractive to customers if it feels contemporary and your customers can relate to it, and if your reputation for meeting the Customers Real Needs is upheld.

Every business, whatever size and whatever it does can be a” Tour de Force” in its own marketplace. If you get your Feedback right, you will know it because your customers will be the first to say “Bravo!”

Russell Wood