How to Create a Workforce that Dominates
This article explains why the details matter and how to integrate the details with the big picture to create a workforce that dominates.
This article has the chance to be one of the most impactful posts I’ve written. People Are Who They’re Allowed to Be, Manager Edition, is the best, most informative article about how The Framework gets applied to heal your business. This article tells how The Framework heals your business by connecting the details and how to help those struggling to do so.
Why the Details Matter
I worked with a company that, like many, focused on three main areas: development, sales, and delivery.
Almost any business can focus on these three pillars. They must develop an idea, sell it, and deliver it to the customer. The customer pays market value so the business can better develop products (or services), sell them, and deliver them. Repeat ad nauseam.
But, when it came to connecting these three pillars, leadership left it up to the goodwill of the employee.
What do I mean?
The heads of development, sales, and delivery all sat in the same room once a week but rarely spoke to each other outside their forced group session.
Development, after all, had to focus on developing. They couldn’t be bothered to communicate with sales what they had developed or listen to the issues delivery ran into. Their job was to develop.
Sales was too busy saying the product could do whatever the prospect wanted. They couldn’t be bothered to take time out of their revenue-producing activities to learn what the product actually did. And, of course, it was never their fault when they didn’t sell the right services that were supposed to set up delivery to do a great job.
Delivery was always running around with their hair on fire, so how was it fair to ask them to communicate with sales on what they needed, let alone working more closely together with sales or product when issues arose?
None of this even brings into consideration the technical and administrative teams
that are the invisible glue that connects every department!
Does this sound like your company?
While I hope the answer is an emphatic, “No!” have you ever heard anyone at your company say things like:
Just do your job.
You should be more worried about your job than about how the information will get to you.
You don’t need to understand why. Just do as I say.
That’s [some other department’s] job.
Not my circus, not my monkeys!
Why are they worried about the details? Can’t they see the big picture?
They’re not leadership material; they’re too focused on the details.
Worse yet: have you ever said any of these things?
Look, I get it. The higher up you are in an organization, the more your focus should be on the seemingly-detail-sparse strategic. But the number of c-suites and VPs who think that means they don’t need to listen to or be aware of how the details will be handled is alarming.
Why is it alarming?
Because the details are what the customer experiences.
They experience the handoffs, the miscues, the recoveries. They experience the intimate connections that carry them from one experience (or department) with your company to the next.
When leadership ignores the details, they teach employees that connections don’t matter.
Whether your customers buy on-demand items they get in an instant or whether they enter into partnerships with you that last decades, the connections throughout the process impact the customer’s perception of the big picture.
Think about the last time you bought something online from a company you had never purchased from before.
What happened?
Suppose you got onto a website, entered payment information, and the webpage said, “Thanks! Order confirmed.”
And that was it.
The website said shipping would occur in 1-2 business days and that you should get your package within 5 days. But, how do you feel when you don’t get a confirmation email? When they don’t tell you it’s shipped? When there’s no tracking information? When it doesn’t show up at your door on time? When you aren’t able to talk to customer service about the package? When you finally talk to customer service and they can’t find your package? You try and cancel payment, but the credit card company won’t let you. Frustration grows. You wonder if you should cancel your credit cards. Oh no! Now you have to update all your auto-pay accounts. What a headache!
Then, after 10 days, the package shows up. And thank goodness—the item is what you expected, albeit in lackluster packaging.
But what was your buying experience? Would you repeat your experience?
Probably not.
So, why do companies feel like it’s OK to do this to their employees? To their customers?
Oh, don’t worry about the impact to this other department when you sell this. Just sell it. Our job is to hit revenue goals.
Don’t waste your time talking to delivery. They don’t read what you write anyways.
I don’t care what the customer says. Put that project on hold.
Sales didn’t give us everything we need, so it’s not our fault.
Oh, don’t worry about fixing that bug, it’s not a big deal.
How many of you have heard or said these phrases?
Let me be clear:
Neglect towards other departments create cultures of neglect towards your customers.
If you are not actively combating these things at your company, then they are happening at your company.
This kind of attitude drives out top performers because top performers care about the lifecycle of their work—not just their piece of it.
Even worse for your company, the employees that don’t care about the lifecycle of work thrive in these environments. They love a culture that tolerates poor work because that’s what they’re comfortable creating. But, if you’re trying gain market share and differentiate yourself from other businesses, why would you stick to the lowest common denominator?
Do you want your business to simply be “tolerated”?
Perhaps worse still, this kind of attitude creates friction. The handoff between product and sales is less like a rely-race and more like lobbed grenades. Maybe the grenade pins haven’t been pulled, but what does sales do with these munitions? Do they hoard them? Take the apart? Pull the pin and blow themselves up? No wonder the handoff to delivery is the same game of hot potato, lobbing live grenades at their coworkers, not realize everyone is in range of becoming a casualty, including the customer!
Deals take longer to close leading to lost opportunities. The deals that do close end up taking longer to process through the internal systems. Commissions are over- or under-paid. Invoices go out incorrectly. The people handling these things are at their wits end trying to salvage a broken system. Delivery never knows what they’re going to pick up, so of course they don’t call the customer or want to tell them what’s going on. Delivery barely knows themselves! Product has already moved onto the next shiny object, far too busy to understand why existing customers are leaving.
Information flow is necessarily restricted in companies with a neglectful culture.
So, what can you do about it?
How to Integrate the Details with the Big Picture
Again, I get it. You’re in leadership. You have worked hard to get out of the details because someone must focus on the big picture.
But.
You must not dismiss the details, especially when they’re brought up by those who live in the details.
Here are three steps to help you:
Create connection to why work matters
Put work in terms of how people think of their work
Include handoffs as part of the definition of complete work
Create connection to why work matters. Start by creating connections to your big picture. Take the company vision and make sure every department has a written, stated purpose as to how it helps fulfill the vision. Don’t settle for, “Everyone knows what HR does, they’re not important.” No, they don’t know what every department does. Write it down. Be clear about how each group that takes part of the customer’s money supports the company’s vision.
Put work in terms of how people think of their work. Don’t just give people company or team metrics and apply them to an individual. Those aren’t individual metrics. They’re company metrics misapplied by lazy leadership to an individual. Put work in terms of how people think about their day. What do people do to create those company measures? This must be made clear. Beyond clarity, make sure these work items support the purpose. When you do this, people can connect their work to the vision. This gives people meaning to their work.
Include handoffs as part of the definition of complete work. It’s not enough to have work connected vertically to the vision. Connect it horizontally across the organization. Be explicit about how work flows through your organization. Product’s purpose isn’t just to develop shiny new objects. Their purpose is to create the best product, including continued feedback from delivery so that the customer’s voice is always heard as the company moves forward. Product’s purpose includes working with sales to ensure they’re equipped with an understanding not only of what the product does but of how it solves the customer’s problems. Sales purpose isn’t just to get revenue. It’s to create lasting relationships with customers so that they keep returning to buy more. They do this by working with delivery to ensure they understand what the customer views as important. And, now that delivery is set up from the start with an understanding of what success means for the customer, they have an opportunity to over-deliver.
This three-step guide is part of how The Healthy Company Framework helps your business. When you apply The Framework and adopt it in your company, you develop a leadership team that cares about the other parts of the whole. The people who tend to the details are included or informed about changes. Do this, and you will create a workforce that dominates the competition.
The missing piece of the puzzle to creating a workforce that dominates just might be paying closer attention to the details.