don’t attribute failures, or at least 70 percent of them, to bad
mean to your company’s future if your top two competitors
that: not getting things done, being indecisive, not delivering
ence their top three pri-
strategy. Instead, they state, “It’s bad execution. As simple as on commitments.”
Of course, your front-line employees are usually the ones
who touch customers every day. Unfortunately, in a Harvard
Business Review article, Robert Kaplan states, “95 percent of the typical company’s workers are unaware of, or don’t understand, its strategy.”
Data drives the customer experience
Peter Drucker famously wrote, “What gets measured gets
decided to make planning, execution and customer experiorities? Surely it would
90 percent of organizations
loss of market share.
fail to execute their strategies
mean
a
significant
So, here are 11 proven leadership
opportunity.
solutions
to
help
tackle
your
execution
• Complete a company-wide leadership talent assessment
• Instantly make leadership development an organizational priority, including in your budget
managed.” So what data is critical for leadership teams to
• Launch a leadership training curriculum of core
moving forward? Systems need to be in place to measure the
• Conduct an organizational employee engagement survey
possess in order to allow measurement of the improvements following:
• Customer loyalty
• Where new customers are coming from
• How effectively each leader is performing
• The implementation of each leader’s individual development plan
• Employee engagement
competencies
o Hold
every leader accountable for the design and
implementation of the survey “action plans” for every team or department
• Design a company-wide, quarterly strategic planning system
• Modify or improve your company’s performance management system
• Employee turnover
• Hold leaders responsible for effectively using the account-
• How effectively leaders hold other leaders accountable
• Conduct a complete audit of your talent management
• Customer retention
• Internal customer satisfaction
In a recent national study performed jointly by Premier
Development Solutions and Naviga Business Services, busi-
ness owners and executives were asked, “What percentage of your organization executes its plan of top priorities con-
sistently?” Nearly 40 percent of those executives surveyed
ability system systems:
o Recruiting o Hiring
o Onboarding o Training
and development
o Accountability o Compensation
answered that less than half of their organization does.
• Remove every employee or manager whose performance is
rehire less than half of their entire management team as top
• Do not allow any leader to remain in his/her position who
said that less than half of their entire management team
• Create an effective one-page leadership scorecard
Additionally, 36.1 percent of respondents said they would performers. And the icing on the cake? Almost 35 percent
could effectively articulate their individual top four priorities for 2012.
With statistics such as that, most of those companies
likely have poor morale. Even worse, customers’ experiences
with those companies’ products and services are surely low as well.
At this point, many executives might begin to rationalize,
“That is not true in my company,” or “We just do not have
the budget to make the necessary changes.” What would it
www.customercarenews.com
is not an “A” or “B” performer
How many millions of dollars of revenues and profits are
being left on the table because YOU have allowed it? Are you ready for change? CCN
John Lankford is a Master Business Advisor and the founder
of Premier Development Solutions. He is a highly sought after keynote speaker, author and former syndicated business
Fall 2012
Leadership responsibilities/solutions
not at an acceptable level
columnist whose business expertise has been tapped by the New York Times and CBS. Lankford can be reached at john@premierdevelopmentsolutions.com.
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