Читать книгу Selling With Noble Purpose - McLeod Lisa Earle, Lisa Earle McLeod - Страница 34

The primary purpose of an NSP is to create competitive differentiation and emotional engagement, and to give you a North Star during times of challenge and uncertainty. Having said that, an NSP can also keep you safe from costly mistakes and ethical lapses. Your NSP keeps your team from going down a rabbit hole of unethical behavior simply to hit their numbers.

The Harvard Business Review 2019 issue's lead article, “Are Metrics Undermining Your Business?,” describes a problem the authors refer to as strategy surrogation. Surrogation occurs when the metric of a strategy replaces the strategy itself.

Using Well Fargo to illustrate, authors Michael Harris and Bill Taylor describe how employees at Wells Fargo opened 3.5 million deposit and credit card accounts without customers' consent in an effort to implement its now‐famous cross‐selling strategy. CEO John Stumpf frequently told his team, and the press, cross‐selling is the centerpiece of Wells Fargo's strategy.

To be fair, sometimes Stumpf added that cross‐selling was the result of serving customers well. But Wells Fargo didn't spotlight daily measurements of how well they served customers. Instead, they measured and rewarded cross‐selling. In effect, the metric became the strategy. And we all know how that turned out.

The HBR piece says, “The costs from that debacle were enormous and the bank has yet to see the end of the financial carnage. In addition to paying fines ($85 million) reimbursing customers for fees ($6.1 million) and eventually settling a class action lawsuit to cover damages as far back as 2002 ($142 million).” The authors note, “Wells Fargo faces strong headwinds in attracting new customers.” The reputational damage will follow the company for at least a decade, and probably closer to a generation.