Rules of engagement
Zac de Silva’s ten commandments
Why do we put up with things that we know are not good enough? Most of us are not big fans of confrontation, and we push some conversations into the toohard basket. These things that we put up with are a bad look in the eyes of customers and team members.
I am going to share a very easy to implement tip on how you can address some of these recurring ‘‘average to bad things’’ that you need to knock on the head to have better customer retention, more word of mouth recommendations and to have your team more motivated and excited about taking your business forward.
In my younger days, I ran a large finance team. I had done a good job of running a finance team of about 25 people and got a promotion to lead a team of 150 accountants. I was reasonably confident of doing a good job and having every person in the larger team step up and add more value to their mainly internal customers.
I was going to replicate what had already worked for me. The key to my previous team being successful was that we had very clearly agreed on our minimum standards of performance and behaviour. We called them ‘‘The Ten Commandments’’.
This was the agreed way we would do our job and how we would make our customers feel. Some would say they were like our core values. I am a big believer in having known core values that are lived and breathed. Our Ten Commandments were part core values, but also identified some practical, physical things that we would do 24/7.
They were not our KPIs – rather, a checklist that every person had to physically go through when they finished a job for an internal customer, to consider if they delivered on the list of what should be delivered to all customers.
With these ‘‘Ten Commandments’’, we wanted to give the high-performing people something to exceed, and we wanted to show the lesser performers or the up-and-comers what was considered world-class.
When I was running the smaller team we all got together one day and identified what the best in our team did day in, day out. We also identified what set them apart from the average or weaker performers. We identified what our customers loved and what they hated.
All of this came together to form our Ten Commandments, the list of what had to be delivered, day in, day out so that our customers would love us and our team members would be considered A-graders.
Within six months, these minimum standards were lived and breathed 99 per cent of the time and our customers really noticed our efforts to make them happy and to truly add value.
And thanks to us implementing, it made me personally look good. Bosses look good when their teams perform well. We formally reviewed our performance against the minimum standards every single week.
What part of your business or your team are you constantly accepting as second-best? What do the best people in your business and team do that others do not? What do your customers tell you they like, and what have you done to make sure that your customers get more of what they like and you ensure they are not disappointed?
If you have not identified the minimum standards you expect, then there is every chance that some people provide a great experience and others are letting you and the greater business down.
Brainstorming the ‘‘dream’’ minimum standards necessary will greatly help any under-performers, as they will have more clarity in what you expect and the performance level they need to attain.
And when they know the formal standards you expect, it makes your job in managing people so much easier, too.
If you think about ‘‘work’’ at all over your Christmas break, how about you consider the minimum standards you need to implement so your business has the highest chance of extremely satisfied customers, and of the general standard of performance in your team jumping up a notch or two.
Zac de Silva is an award-winning business coach who owns businesschanging.com and accme.co where you can sign up for regular business-thinking questions and build a living action point list. He is cofounder of nurturechange.com the Fiji business retreat November 2016.