Читать книгу The Leadership Challenge - Posner Barry Z. - Страница 5

For Brian Alink, the digital revolution is as profound as the Industrial Revolution.1 The way organizations solve problems, drive innovation, and scale those innovations to millions of people so quickly and efficiently is massively changing the workplace, the marketplace, and the community. But as exciting as all this is, something else energizes him even more: the chance to learn how to be an even more effective leader in this new context.2

The opportunity to do just that came when Brian was asked to help refine how the credit card business at Capital One Financial Corporation serviced customers across all channels. This challenge was different from others he had spearheaded because it was about “how we change the mind-sets of leaders across the credit card business to use a digital-first approach for servicing. It was about solving real problems that cause customers pain, anxiety, or frustration, and about how we can make it better for them.”

When Brian moved into his current role as managing vice president at Card Digital Channels, he began working with a newly formed team that had just come together. “This put a whole lot of uncertainty into what we were doing,” he acknowledged, and so Brian spent the first few weeks meeting with the executives and other leaders who owned parts of the customer experience, “just listening, learning, getting context, and immersing myself in the situation.” He did the same one-on-one with his immediate team. Guiding him in this initial relationship-building process was a leadership philosophy that had served him well over the years: “At the very beginning of a journey like this,” he said, “it's about getting to know each other personally.”

It's about knowing who these people are that are working with me, knowing their values, what they love to do, what they care about, and what they stand for. I also love the opportunity to introduce myself – not as a leader or as a strategist or as the analyst or whatever we're trying to do – but just as somebody who is with them as a real human trying to have a greater experience in life and trying to make the world a better place.

Brian pulled his entire leadership team together for a four-hour discussion. He began by explaining how he was attempting to build an environment of trust:

This is the kind of environment where we want to do the greatest work of our lives, where we want to truly make a difference, where we're feeling committed and we want to do something that matters, that has meaning to us personally.

Trust comes from understanding each other's values and understanding our experiences and what we stand for. In order for that to happen, we've got to be vulnerable, and we have to be open. Then we can build on that base of values and trust.

Brian had found that every time he's had this conversation with a new team the experience had been “magical.” Without exception, people opened up and shared their personal challenges with one another. As Brian appreciates, everyone has challenges in their lives, and that it's those hard moments that shape who people are and what they stand for. “What drives all of us,” Brian says, “is that we want to do something meaningful for the people we work with, where it really helps them grow and do something better for the people around us. We want to have that same kind of impact on our customers.”

Through those early meetings, Brian and his team got clear about their shared vision and values. They developed their core strategy and determined how they were going to operate. With this collaborative effort, everyone on the team felt they had created their approach together and developed ownership for it.

Brian and his leadership team then designed and conducted an all-hands meeting that included both his immediate team and extended teams outside the Card Customer Experience organization. They walked everyone through the process their team had gone through together, then rolled out the new plan and engaged everyone – the developers, the software engineers, the designers, and others – in learning about their mission. This approach helped to dissipate much of the concern and ambiguity, and, Brian observed, “communicated clearly that the leadership team was emotionally committed, had each other's backs, were here to help support our entire team, and to do something big that really mattered.”

But they didn't want this to be only a priority for the customer experience team. They needed to make the idea of helping customers become more digital, and have effortless experiences, a shared vision across all of the credit card business. They wanted everyone – people from product design, credit policy, fraud, collection, credit lines, lost and stolen cards, and other functions – to see themselves in the bigger picture. Brian's team set up meetings with leaders from across the business, shared their aspirations with them, showed them where customers were running into problems, provided them with insightful data, and told them how they could work together to create painless experiences for customers.

As essential as it is to create a vision for and to serve your own vertical team, Brian told us, it's equally important to do the same for your peers and those you don't directly manage:

If we can get leaders who are adjacent to our area to come help us and then be willing to give them the credit for the help they provide, it doesn't take away from my leadership or my team's contribution at all. This is a powerful way to get a lot more intelligence and mind share and support for something bigger that we all need to be working on. In doing so, we create a win for everybody.

Knowing that getting others to collaborate isn't always easy, Brian offered technical resources from his own team in order to help others help him. He operated on a compelling premise: “We are going to win if we help others win. We've got to give in order to get. If we can move the whole organization, what we are going to get is so much bigger than what we could ever have done on our own… Being humble and letting others shine comes back to you many times over.” Brian's team created moments when leaders from other parts of the organization would come together and showcase their work. These forums elevated others, honored them, and gave them public recognition and credit for the contributions they were making.

While the core of the customer experience approach to leading is elevating others, staying in the background, and giving credit to others, Brian makes sure that those who do the giving are refueled with the energy they need to keep on giving. Each week, he and his leadership team hold standup meetings at which they highlight what everyone is working on and look into problems, successes, lessons learned, and even failures they've had. Those who work in different geographic locations join by video. During these meetings, the leadership team looks for “praise moments” where they can draw attention to exemplary behaviors in front of everyone. When they hear or see something they want to shine a spotlight on, someone will say, “Let's pause for just a moment. That right there was a wonderful example of what we are striving to do.” When people see the successes and hear the positive feedback, it creates momentum.

“When working to transform a company into a customer-focused, digital organization,” Brian told us, “it's immensely helpful to frame the leadership scope as a mission that transcends organizational boundaries. Customers don't know which part of an organization they are dealing with! Limiting the leadership model to the immediate team greatly limits the scope and speed of impact a leader can have on transforming a complex customer journey through an organization.”

This is definitely a leadership philosophy for a new era. It's a 360-degree view of leadership that is more inclusive and more open than what many people have experienced in the past, and it produces results. In less than a year, this collaborative effort at Capital One improved a multitude of customer experiences. For example, customers saved hundreds of thousands of hours of calling time in 2016 as a result of enhanced digital experiences and customer touchpoints. The ratio of customer calls to accounts began a steady downward trajectory to the lowest level since being measured – a major driver of efficiency for the business. At the same time, scores tracking the percentage of people recommending Capital One hit all-time highs.

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For Anna Blackburn, “the values match was the biggest driver” in taking her first job with Beaverbrooks the Jewellers, Limited, a family-owned retailer in the United Kingdom. Eighteen years later, these same values drive her as its chief executive officer – their first non-family member, and first female, to hold that position. Honoring values is also at the heart of Anna's Personal-Best Leadership Experience.3

Founded in 1919, Beaverbrooks has a long and honored history. Today it operates seventy stores, has a significant online presence, and employs nearly 950 people. It's not only dedicated to offering customers quality jewelry and watches, it's also very proud of its dedication to a mission of “enriching lives.” Beaverbrooks contributes 20 percent of post-tax profits to charitable organizations, and it invests heavily in its colleagues – which has earned the company recognition by The Sunday Times (Britain's largest-selling national Sunday newspaper) for thirteen consecutive years as one of the 100 Best Companies to Work For.

Anna's appointment as CEO came at an unsettled time. Her predecessor, a family member, left the company to pursue other ventures. The company had veered away somewhat from its core strategy and culture, and colleagues weren't embracing the new ways. Her fifteen years with the company, however, prepared Anna well for the challenge. Starting on the sales floor, she had served in almost every role and function, worked in locations throughout England and Scotland, and spent five years on the executive team.

None of that meant she could assume she knew what people wanted from her in this new position. One of her first actions was to send out a survey inviting everyone in Beaverbrooks to say what qualities they most wanted to see in the new CEO. At the next annual managers' conference, Anna shared the survey results. People wanted her to be honest, inspiring, competent, forward-looking, caring, ambitious, and supportive, she said, and she pledged to them that she would do everything she could to live up to these expectations.

These actions were an early signal of how Anna intended to be a collaborative and inclusive leader, and her next steps reinforced that aspiration. For example, over the years, Beaverbrooks's operations had become increasingly complicated and formalized, and people had lost a sense of ownership in the business. Instead of introducing any radical new direction, Anna initiated changes that were “always within the context of building on our strengths,” she said.

It was back to the basics and keeping things simple. Where strategies often go wrong is that you lose connection with the person who's going to be making the biggest difference in your business. They needed to buy in and understand the impact they were having.

A major disconnect that Anna observed was that even though Beaverbrooks made The Sunday Times best company list year after year, profits were relatively low. With a firm belief “that being a great workplace and having a great environment should absolutely pay into the bottom line,” Anna set out “to prove that being a great workplace is actually profitable.” However, she wasn't interested in Beaverbrooks being profitable simply for its own sake. She told us that

Beaverbrooks is a business with a conscience. The more successful we are financially, the better we can take care of the people who work for us and the better we can support the wider community. The more successful we are, the more good we can do.

Part of what needed to be done, Anna believed, was to create a greater sense of shared accountability and responsibility: “We needed to have each and every person ready to take their part in making the culture what it needed to be. One person cannot fix, develop, or evolve a culture.” When feedback to the executive level indicated that they worked too much in silos and were disconnected from the stores, Anna introduced new ways to create greater collaboration and synergy. The monthly executive team meetings, for example, became much more focused on strategy, and the quarterly senior manager and corporate office meetings dealt more with operational decisions and with acknowledging the successes experienced in the stores.

Anna also continued the focus group tradition that chairman Mark Adlestone had started: small group meetings of about eight people from similar roles. Annually, she holds fourteen focus groups – six for sales teams, and two each for managers, assistant managers, supervisors, and the office team. The meetings last a half-day, and include discussions of what's working and not working, as well as acknowledgments of individual successes.

Given feedback from the focus groups, Anna devised a new framework for talking about the business, a concept she called The Three Pillars. It is depicted as three pillars standing on a solid base and capped by a header. Written on the base is Beaverbrooks's purpose: “Enriching Lives.” On the header is the company name. The first pillar is labeled “Customer Service and Selling”; the second is “Financial Success”; and the third is “Great Workplace.” “The key thing,” Anna explains, “is that all three pillars are in alignment and the same height. If one pillar were higher than the others, the roof would fall off.”

Another of Anna's major initiatives was a refresh of the Beaverbrooks Way, a one-page document, originally published in 1998, that codified the purpose and values of Beaverbrooks. It was not that the values had changed, but that the document was incomplete and unclear. “There was nothing about being a jeweler, and the family values were not referred to,” Anna told us. “The values were also open to individual interpretation rather than stating what these values mean in Beaverbrooks.” Anna wanted as many people as possible to provide input on a revised Beaverbrooks Way, and she spent twelve months gathering information. She asked questions about it in focus groups, she talked about it with trainee managers, and she sent out feedback forms to all the stores and departments.

She received extensive comments and, with the help of the regional managers, created a supporting document that they introduced at the annual company meeting. In her introduction to this thirty-two-page booklet, Anna wrote:

I received a lot of feedback about what you wanted to see from the Beaverbrooks Way going forward. You asked for clear and simple language, more explanation of our values and behaviors, and more of a working document. This document is a result of your feedback.. [It] includes “The Beaverbrooks Way” (who we are, what we do, why we exist, and our values) and highlights our behaviors – simply. Our behaviors are defined by examples to help bring our culture to life.

As much as Anna's attention focuses on improving business performance, she also takes to heart her constituents' desire for a caring and supportive leader. For example, she told us, “We find as many excuses as possible to celebrate successes. I think it's important that people feel recognized and rewarded and valued for the difference they make.” From quarterly business reviews with regional managers to informal office gatherings, Anna takes the time to turn the spotlight on those who do the right things. As they say in the Beaverbrooks Way, “When we recognize what is working well and creating success, we are more likely to repeat the behavior that helped create the success in the first place.” Repeating behaviors that create success is paying off. In the most recent ranking by The Sunday Times, Beaverbrooks was the top retailer on the list. Profits were also at an all-time high, proving that you can be both a great workplace and a profitable business.

Given her experiences, what's the most important leadership lesson Anna would pass along to emerging leaders? “Being a role model is absolutely key,” she says. “It's something I've held very close to me throughout my career, whether it's on the selling floor or in the executive office. People who model the behaviors that are crucial to business success inspire others.”