Build success by design
by Kelly Schwedland
What does your management strategy need to look like to give you the type of satisfied customers you need?
We last talked about your organizational strategy and how to use that to create true delegation in your organization.
As we looked at the organizational strategy, we also realized that we need to move up into the creation of a management strategy. Even though you have created a system for the positions in the organization, you still have to create a way of making sure they get done as they should, time after time.
I don’t mean you should go out and hire high-priced managers from Harvard. For most of you, it would put you out of business. I am talking about a simple process that holds those delegated positions accountable for their required results. Not something arbitrary, but something consistent and planned.
Treat each customer the same
The purpose of all this is not just to make your people more efficient, but more effective. No one cares how fast they can get it done if they are doing the wrong things. Your management strategy has to be designed to create a marketing result.
As I’ve said before, you are trying to create a consistent perfect experience for your customers. Once you know what that experience should look like, you have to faithfully recreate it for each customer. For your business to work, your customers are going to have to reach for your product or service because they know what to expect. The fact that McDonald’s has served more than 99 billion is not necessarily because it has the best food on the market, but because the chain can repeatedly provide the expected experience over and over throughout the world. That is an effective management system.
Internal checks monitor quality
In order for you to get it set up, you are going to have to create simple ways to check the results of each position. These can be through your customers or internal checking procedures. Use either with the purpose of finding places that the systems in the business might not be effective at meeting a customer’s expectations.
I know of an example of a hotel in California. The owner had created systems for how the rooms were cleaned and prepared for the evening. As part of the system, employees signed a checklist guaranteeing the work they had done. A supervisor then did spot checks of the rooms. An employee who signed for something that had not been done faced firing. This system delivered consistent results to guests.
Kelly Schwedland is president of American Business Dynamics, a small business consulting firm focused on issues related to growing companies.