What we could all learn about customer experience from the mountain men

Last Saturday we celebrated my daughter's tenth birthday by having a party for her at Wolf Mountain in Wolverhampton.  For the uninitiated, the folk at Wolf Mountain describe it as an 'indoor climbing and caving centre' although they seem to offer far more activities, both indoors and outdoors, than that.  This might seem like an unusual party venue for young girls - but my daughter is quite adventurous and likes to try new and different activities.

The party was a big success.  The girls climbed a variety of climbing walls - and loved the guide from the centre who was there to support them and look after their safety.  After completing their climbing they moved on to archery and once again enjoyed the relationship with their guide who kept them safe, helped them to hit the target (surprisingly regularly actually) and did it in a way that meant they had a constant smile on their faces.  The same guide then sat with them whilst they had party food in one of the 'party rooms' at the venue.

As I said, the event was a big success.  All the kids went home happy and smiling.  Not too much to ask I know, but it was nevertheless a surprise to me.

You see the guys at Wolf Mountain are obviously skilled at the activities they lead and they're clearly knowledgeable and experienced.  You need only look at them to see it, they look like they've been around, they've done everything you'll be doing - and far more.  They even looked as you would expect mountaineers and cavers to look.  A bit worn and well.....weathered.  And because of that it was a bit of surprise when the experience we had was .......excellent.

It was all about their focus on the experience their customers had whilst they were there.  They encouraged parents and other family members to also 'have a go', free of charge.  I did by the way!  They communicated in a way that made you realise that the activities difficult and made parents and children alike feel good about what they achieved.  And if there was anything customers couldn't do it was ok because of how tough it is. They were infectiously enthusiastic. And they cleverly involved other, more experienced customers (Wolf Mountain seems to get lots of customers who go there regularly) to interact with the new ones, offer their help and add further enthusiasm.  They didn't watch the clock, actually they took a bit longer than anticipated to ensure that everyone was able to participate fully and succeed.  And they invited people back.

It really was a fantastic experience and we're already planning our next visit as a family.

The experience reinforced my view on three things:

1. Make sure that people who are customer facing are enthusiastic about the product or service.  It's a given that they're knowledgeable about it, but does their experience of it go beyond that?  Do they use it?  And is their enthusiasm for it obvious?
2. Design the experience around the customer, not the organisation.  Better to take a little longer and achieve the desired experience than cut it short, and fail.
3. It's about the experience the customer has, not the service the business offers.  The product at Wolf Mountain is good and the service is ok too, but the value added bits that make the overall experience brilliant are about how the people there make you feel.

Replicate Wolf Mountain somewhere else and it would be good.  But it wouldn't necessarily be excellent, because as great businesses know, the brilliance comes from people.

To anyone within travelling distance of Wolverhampton - try it out, I recommend it!

LinkedIn: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/timhadfield
Twitter: @accordengage
Telephone: 0044 07906650019

Barclays boss tells staff to sign up to five key values - respect, integrity, service, excellence and stewardship.

I've blogged about the culture of the banking industry and about Barclays, before.  On a couple of occasions:

The big banks - customer complain every seven seconds - 4th September 2012

Has there been any change in UK banking culture - 7th December 2012

I was therefore really interested to read today about the briefing boss Antony Jenkins delivered to staff about changing "the bank's increasingly aggressive work culture of the previous 20 years, which, he said, focused too much on making a quick buck instead of upholding the values and long-term reputation of the bank."

He also introduced five new values: respect, integrity, service, excellence and stewardship and indicated that buying in to them was not optional.

The first four of the values are common and might be expressed by any number of organisations.  But it's the first time I've heard 'stewardship' included as a value.

Stewardship: "the responsible overseeing and protection of something considered worth caring for and preserving." 

That's different.  And it communicates a sense of responsibility that seems to have been lacking in banking culture in recent years.  It's the clearest indication to date that a leader of one of the big five banks has grasped the problem and is taking positive action to address it.

Whether it causes genuine and lasting change really depends on what happens from now but it's a very good start.  It needs to be supported by:

1. A clear articulation of the behaviours that bring the value to life in the organisation, and those that don't;
2. Support for people to change behaviour.  Every employee must:
   - have a clear understanding of how they should (and shouldn't) behave in their role
   - be willing to change
   - have the ability to change
   And this doesn't just happen.  People need to be supported through the changes they'll need to make personally.
3. Policies, procedures, ways of working, working environment etc, all being aligned.

It won't happen overnight.  It will need to be a long term commitment.  But I'm certainly more hopeful (and more optimistic) than previously that genuine change might be starting at Barclays.

It's going to be fascinating watching their progress over the next couple of years....

LinkedIn: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/timhadfield
Twitter: @accordengage
Telephone: 0044 07906650019 

A bakers dozen of the most common (and damaging) mistakes organisations make with employee engagement activity

During my time as an employee, and more recently as a consultant I've worked with numerous organisations to help them improve their levels of employee engagement. Through these many experiences I've studied what's working well - and not so well, and many organisations are making the same mistakes. Across organisations, industry sectors and national boundaries, variations on a number of common problems come up time and time again.

Here's my baker's dozen of the key issues I've found:

1. Failure to identify and agree the business case at senior levels.
Some business leaders pursue engagement because "it's the right thing to do." That might work in the short term but when business pressures increase or worse still, when the prime sponsor of the work moves on, commitment to it often dissipates. It's important to have a robust business case, with clear business benefits so that it's grounded in sound business logic rather than ethereal generalisations. The view that some leaders still have that employee engagement is 'pink and fluffy' is caused by poor articulation of the hard business benefits.
Learning No 1 - Always identify the business case and secure senior level agreement to it.

2. Inadequate articulation of the purpose of engagement i.e. What should employees engage   with?
An extension of point 1 above, every organisation should be clear about what they want employees to engage with. Employee Engagement shouldn't be about creating 'happy' employees. It should instead be about creating engagement with the purpose of the organisation and generating commitment to help achieve it's business objectives. This implies of course that the organisation must have a clear strategy and that senior people can articulate and explain these to others.
Learning No 2 - Clearly articulate the purpose of engagement in your organisation i.e. "What we mean by engagement is..."

3. Confusing employee satisfaction (and the factors influencing it) with engagement.
Employee satisfaction does not equal engagement. It is very likely that engagement cannot occur without satisfaction and it's often necessary to address the issues preventing satisfaction at the outset of an employee engagement programme. But it's important to remember that the factors causing satisfaction are hygiene factors rather than those which cause deeper commitment to the organisation and motivation to help it succeed.
Learning No 3 - Understand both satisfaction and engagement and the relationship between each state.

4. Making HR responsible for engagement.                
Whilst it may be sensible for HR to 'own' engagement activity it cannot be responsible for engagement across the organisation. Ownership has to be within the organisation and across all areas of it. It starts with leaders, whose role in engaging their people is critical, so a good start point is to ensure that leaders accept and feel responsible. Rational and emotional elements are important. As an aside, it's interesting to consider whether leaders feel responsible for their area only or for the organisation as a whole. Typically engagement progresses as leaders sense of cross functional responsibility increases.
Learning No 4 - Ensure ownership lies with and across the organisation.

5. Viewing it as something that ‘management’ does to everyone else in the organisation.
Traditional organisations were, and many still are, characterised by a culture driven by parent / child behaviours. Management believe their role is to tell and direct people who work for them and they in turn do as they’re told (and no more) and usually look for the ‘ catch’ in whatever it is that they’re told. Those behaviours just won’t produce engagement. Instead everyone must feel valued and able to contribute fully. These are pre-requisites to feeling involved.
Learning No 5 – Ensure everyone is involved and feels able to contribute.

6. Making it all about a survey and / or about the score of the survey.
In some organisations it’s all about doing a staff survey, and then maybe, taking a few actions based on the scores. For others the only important thing is the score. An example of this, illustrating a very narrow and introspective view is that some organisations are happy providing their score is higher than an external benchmark. And if it’s not, then they change the benchmark! I read a comment somewhere last week that suggested that this is like being sick but pretending it’s ok because others are even sicker!
Learning No 6 – Make the survey nothing more than an assessment at a particular moment in time. Instead make it about the relationship between employee and their work and everything that contributes to or impacts it.

7. Assuming you can improve engagement directly.
People are complicated. When groups of people come together the organisational cultures that emerge can be even more complicated and difficult to understand, and change. It’s not like shifting the track and changing the direction – as a signal operator might do with a train. There’s rarely a direct link between cause and effect so there’s no lever to pull which will produce a guaranteed response. Instead it’s about taking actions which affect the environment in which people work so that the conditions are more conducive to engagement. You can’t make them engaged, but you can create conditions in which they are more likely to choose to be engaged.
Learning No 7 – Seek to change the conditions and environment in which people work, and the meaning people attach to their work such that people are more likely to choose to engage.

8. Adopting a ‘one-size fits all’ approach.

It’s worth reiterating the above. People are complicated. And we’re all different. So it just doesn’t make sense to expect everyone in an organisation to respond in the same way to actions intended to improve engagement. A better idea is to be flexible and provide a framework within which people with diverse thoughts, ideas, beliefs and so on can choose to engage.

Learning No 8 – Allow for diverse thoughts, ideas and beliefs by providing a framework within which more people are likely to engage.

9. Failing to take a planned and coordinated approach.
Engagement doesn’t just happen. It requires a series of actions which create (as previously stated) an environment in which people are more likely to choose to engage with and commit to the achievement of the organisations purpose and objectives. Nothing corrodes engagement like inconsistency and over promising and under delivering. To prevent both, actions need to be carefully aligned and rigorously delivered.
Learning No 9 – Produce a roadmap, a schedule of activity designed to achieve your engagement objectives and then rigorously deliver it.

10. Not realising that it requires behavioural change (as well as changes to policies, benefits, conditions etc) and supporting people to change.
The reason engagement is so valuable is that it produces changes in behaviour that are helpful to the organisation and produce improved performance as a result. But before these changes can occur, prior changes in behaviour need to create the right environment in which it can emerge. Organisations should be clear on what behaviours are needed and then support people to make those changes. This is why some of the most successful engagement programmes are inextricably linked to the espoused values and behaviours of the organisation – they’re clear on what behaviours are important and do all they can to embed them.
Learning No 10 – Identify the desired behaviours and support people to ‘live’ them.

11. Not planning holistically so that all elements of the employee experience are aligned to create the conditions in which engagement can emerge.
As hinted at in point 9 above, the actions taken to create an environment in which people choose to be engaged must be intentionally designed and carefully aligned. Inconsistency and contradiction should be prevented at all costs. The positive impact of one action can easily be reversed by the unintentional inconsistency of another.
Learning No 11 – Take a holistic approach, intentionally design and align everything that contributes to engagement.

12. Expecting immediate results and changing approach when there isn’t an immediate improvement or, worse still, giving up on the programme altogether.
Improvements in satisfaction can happen quite quickly as issues impacting it are resolved. As described in point 3 above, satisfaction is more about hygiene factors and as issues are addressed satisfaction can change almost instantly. But engagement is a deeper construct. It takes time to develop numerous contributory factors that need to come together and be experienced over a more prolonged period. So look for changes in satisfaction first, expect slow initial progress with engagement but know that if you are doing the rights things progress will accelerate.
Learning No 11 – Consider engagement as a long term commitment.

13. Closing down the programme (or project) when it’s ‘done’.
Organisations are complex systems. Change in one part of the system can produce unexpected consequences in another. As change is constantly occurring and impacting the organisation, challenges to the development (or maintenance) of employee engagement are also occurring all the time. And this means that constant attention is essential.
Learning No 13 – Embed engagement in and through everything the organisation does, permanently.

Employee Engagement may have been around for more than 20 years but it's clear that organisations are still struggling to meaningfully engage their people. Learning from the mistakes made in other organisations may be a good place to start if you're planning your engagement programme or seeking to re-energise it in 2013. Engagement is complex, but it needn't be difficult!

LinkedIn: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/timhadfield
Twitter: @accordengageTelephone: 0044 07906650019

Same old same old - back on the chain gang

Isn't it strange how sometimes days seem to have a theme?  I had one of those days today - the theme: back to work (or school) after the holidays.

It started first thing this morning with my 10 year old daughter telling me how excited she was about going back to school.  Somewhat surprised, I asked her why and she explained that "I'm getting a bit bored at home all the time and it'll be good to see my teacher and friends again."  Reassuring affirmation of the quality of the school she attends.

A little later, as I was getting into my car, I got into a conversation with my next door neighbour.  When I asked him if he was back to work today he sighed and said something like: "Unfortunately yes, back on the chain gang.....".

Subsequently I rang a client and after exchanging the obligatory happy New Year sentiments I asked if today was her first day back in the office.  Her response: "Yes, new year but same old challenges!"  Later this afternoon, a similar exchange with another client who used very similar words "Same old problems though, nothing bloody changes!"

And then, whilst driving home, the DJ on the Drivetime programme on Radio 2 said he was playing 'Same old, same old' themed songs to reflect the numbers of people back to work / school today.

What struck me most about all this was that most people (my daughter excluded!) seemed genuinely fed-up about going back, their words summarising how they felt and the underlying meaning of the key phrases perhaps being particularly telling:

'Same old same old': an idiom for when a situation remains the same, especially when it is boring or annoying;

'Chain gang': phrase describing when convicts were chained together for outdoor labour.

It's a sad state of affairs if that's really how people feel about returning to work.  And the evidence suggests it is.  Depending on which statistics you trust, levels of engagement have been at best stagnant over the last three or four years and less than one in three employees is truly engaged with their employer.  The approach most companies are following clearly isn't consistently producing the results they want.  So what's the problem and what do practitioners need to do about it?

I'll cover this in my blog this Friday (January 11th)......

By the way, I know this is going off at a bit of a tangent but I've had two songs in my head all evening, both fitting the theme.  They're here:
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmZdvVnMXCc
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CK3uf5V0pDA

Two great songs from different decades, at least in my opinion.  Enjoy!

LinkedIn: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/timhadfield
Twitter: @accordengage
Telephone: 0044 07906650019

Epilogue: Has there been any change in UK Banking culture?

On 7th December last year I wrote a piece about the culture of the UK banking industry.  A link to the full article is here: Has there been any change in UK Banking culture? And will there be in future?

I stumbled on the following quote this afternoon and was immediately reminded of what I'd written previously.  It articulates well the direct and inextricable link between leadership behaviours and the culture of an organisation.  The example has to come from leaders and filter down through the organisation. 

"Our efforts to inculcate core values is failing because as an institution we have lost the ability to set a proper example at every level of the chain of command, those below are losing faith in those above. Without this trust, loyalty is impossible. We are left with slogans and lesson plans, the dry shells of concepts that should be the life blood of our organisation.”

US Marine Corps Matthew Jones

Naval Institute Proceedings 1997

Ultimately my conclusion remains unchanged: The prize is enormous for the bank that shifts its culture, and sustains it, but the size of the challenge facing leadership is also enormous. And so far it's been too big.

LinkedIn: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/timhadfield
Twitter: @accordengage
Telephone: 0044 07906650019

The value of good deeds in a naughty world

I did a lot of reading during the Christmas and New Year break and some of the stuff I read really stimulated my thinking.  One article particularly resonated with me - and I wanted to share it with you in my first post of 2013. 

It was entitled 'Why kindness can help businesses grow' and was essentially about Henrietta Lovell, a UK based entrepreneur who is gaining quite a reputation as she grows her business: the Rare Tea Company.  It tells the story of how, after an experience of drinking a wonderful tea in Hong Kong, she began to question the quality of the big brand teas available in UK supermarkets and realised that the tea she had fallen for in Hong Kong was simply not available in the UK.

She travelled to tea-growing places in China and Africa, and "fell in love with tea and the people who grew it."  And as a result she started her Rare Tea Company to sell some of the enticing teas she bought straight from the growers in exotic places.

Much of the rest of the article details how, as a result of extraordinary acts of kindness, she has been able to rapidly grow the Rare Tea Company brand and her own reputation.

The author of the article, Peter Day, then goes on to comment on the "business of kindness", as he calls it.  He writes:
"Why shouldn't this be another way of doing business, far removed from the brash competitiveness that businesses think they are all about? There is, surely, far more to running a company than the preposterous cut-throat competition of the TV challenge show, The Apprentice.

Why can't businesses be run with a generosity of spirit and a lot of goodwill? Henrietta Lovell says it can be done, but hers may be just a good deed in a naughty world.
I would like to think not. It may be the start of a trend. Companies have got away with nominal good behaviour for years. They do what their lawyers and their marketing people tell them they are obligated to do, and nothing much more.

As the banking crisis demonstrated, they did what they could get away with, driven by what they maintained was the interests of their shareholders, and the bosses revelling in the status symbol of their bonuses.

Now blinking in the glare of publicity - businesses may be waking up to other, more deep-seated, obligations. Good people may in the end decide they do not want to work for inhuman or merely operationally effective companies. They will want more from work than pay and promotion. They will want to be nice. They will want the organisations they work for to be kind.

That is what customers are discovering they want, too. They want to deal with businesses that work in decent ways, that reflect their own feelings about the world."

There's no doubt in my mind that he's right.  This trend has been underway for some time already, and I'm convinced it's going to accelerate in the coming years.  It's the big opportunity for businesses that respond to it, and a huge risk for those that don't.

Peter Day goes on to write: "It would be nice to think that the business of kindness will not be captured by professional marketeers and become just another device for paying lip service to how people think business ought to behave.

It would be nice to be un-cynical about it. It would be nice to think that kindness is a way of doing business that might infect lots of big business rather than just a few pioneers."

I guess we'll see.....

The full article can be found here: Why kindness can help businesses grow

LinkedIn: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/timhadfield

Twitter: @accordengage
Telephone: 0044 07906650019