Last November I began delivering a series of half-day leadership development workshops (part of their ongoing "management forums" series) for City of Guelph supervisors and managers. This is a rare treat to work with a group of learning leaders just 30 minutes from my home in Kitchener, Ontario. Given our close proximity we pulled out […]
Read post »We often hear the axiom that "perception is reality." When it comes to assessing the service/quality levels delivered by our teams/organizations just who’s perception of reality are we using? Reinforcing this month’s four-part series of blog posts on The Three Rings of Perceived Value, here are key perspectives on using our customer perceptions of their […]
Read post »Fourth in a four part series on The Three Rings of Perceived Value. Years ago author and speaker on organizational excellence, Tom Peters, declared, “we can no longer afford to merely satisfy the customer. To win today, you have to delight and astound your customers — with products and services that far exceed their expectations.” […]
Read post »Third in a four part series on The Three Rings of Perceived Value. Today’s external customers or internal partners are looking beyond the core product or service (First Ring) to broader levels of support. The Second or Support Ring encircles a huge array of services and factors. Basically it includes anything an organization does to […]
Read post »Second in a four part series on The Three Rings of Perceived Value. The 18th century English potter, Josiah Wedgwood, once declared “a composition for cheapness and not excellence of workmanship is the most frequent and certain cause of the rapid decay and destruction of arts and manufacturers.” That’s as true today as when he […]
Read post »First in a four part series on The Three Rings of Perceived Value. Customer service and continuous quality improvement have always been important. As organizations struggle to grow revenues and reduce costs in our challenging economic times, service/quality is becoming even more critical. It’s where organizations thrive, survive, or nosedive. The June 30 blog post, […]
Read post »The company is at a critical leadership crossroad. As with many fast growing startups, their pioneering product development and marketing power made them a major international success. Now Lazaridis and Ballsillie face the critical entrepreneurial growth test: can they shift from building the business to building an executive team that builds the business?
Read post »The CLEMMER Group has been purchasing our computer equipment from Dell since we began in 1994. We like their technology, customizing equipment to our needs, value, and next day onsite service. That may change. I just got off the phone from a painful hour of experiencing Dell’s inward focused bureaucracy as Gary, our IT support […]
Read post »I just returned from a visit to Karachi, Pakistan for follow up work with the very extraordinary Aga Khan University. Once again, I thoroughly enjoyed working with a fascinating group of exceptionally energetic and determined leaders providing vital services in tough circumstances. To read about my first trip when my work with AKU started, go […]
Read post »Peter Drucker was often called the father of modern management thinking. Warren Bennis has been described as the father of leadership. I’ve long been a reader of Warren‘s books on leadership, change, and team/organization dynamics. I’ve often quoted his study findings and leadership wisdom in my books, blog, and presentations. When he said my book, […]
Read post »It’s a classic good news, bad news story. Consumers are willing to spend from 7 – 22% more for better customer service. But 60% believe organizations haven’t increased their focus on providing good customer service. That’s slipped from 55% in 2010. And 26% of this group feels organizations are paying less attention to service. The […]
Read post »During our April trip to The Netherlands, I was fascinated by the extensive water management skills the Dutch developed over decades of draining and reclaiming land. After learning that 25% of the country is below and 50% is at sea level it’s very clear why this region of Europe is known as “the lowlands.” Polders […]
Read post »In these days of frantic activity and whirlwinds of change, many management teams are so caught up working in their team they invest little to no time working on their team effectiveness. As the daily flurry of e-mails, meetings, and firefighting overloads everyone, most teams scramble to respond to all the demands coming at them. […]
Read post »During my e-mail exchanges with Jeff Liker we agreed on the critical role leadership and culture play in boosting or blocking major organizational change and improvement efforts (“Lasting Organizational Change Balances Doing and Being”) Jeff is Professor of Industrial and Operations Engineering at the University of Michigan and the author of numerous books on how […]
Read post »A three decades long trail of failed organizational change efforts stretches back to include excellence, customer focus/service, total quality management, continuous improvement, team building, reengineering, employee engagement, process management, strategic planning, new technologies, IT systems, safety, and Lean/Six Sigma. And that’s to name just a few! Failure rates of these efforts are 50 – 70% […]
Read post »Many organizations today are striving to increase their customer service or product quality levels. Legions of executives are declaring themselves "customer-focused" or "customer-centric." Yet customer service levels are slipping and many of us are frustrated by attitudes of indifference, navigating technological mazes ("press one to hear that your call is very important to us"), or […]
Read post »As many organizations work to focus on customers and increase service/quality levels, we’re seeing a growing problem with “internal customer tyranny.” That’s where one department uses its status as a “customer” of another department or support group to make their own lives easier. Too often there’s little or no connection to whether the real customer […]
Read post »A key element of my work last month with Qantas Airways in Australia involved linking customer focus, employee engagement, and process management. This month I was engaged by a national insurance company to help their executive team understand their role in implementing Lean/Six Sigma. My experience with Lean/Six Sigma began in the late eighties with […]
Read post »Has your executive or management team fallen into a few of the traps identified in my last blog post? If so, you’re in good company. Those common team traps are highly interconnected. Getting out of them takes a fair bit of work and approaches unique to each team. Following is a menu of resources and […]
Read post »In the last few months I’ve been working with three executive teams to help strengthen team effectiveness and boost their leadership of major culture change and development efforts. One team heads up a large commercial construction company in Western Canada, another is a European based international mining company, and the third are senior partners in […]
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