The walls of the building rest on the foundation
Also, changes in the behavior of your employees (the number of satisfied customers, customer focus, the amount of the average check, etc.) should have a good reason. Let’s take an example. Imagine a male representative, about 170 tall (with a cap), weighing «slightly» over a hundred, with a beer belly. And very far from a healthy lifestyle. Beer in the evenings, eats anything, age over 40, angina pectoris, gastritis… Have you imagined? And so our hero suddenly (in an instant) decided to establish a healthy lifestyle (after another reminder of the body). I bought sneakers, a tracksuit, found a stadium nearby, higher for a run … And pulled it with all my might. What will be the result of such a feat? Most likely deplorable…
The system is not ready for this!
Endocrine, cardiovascular, muscle, bone… It’s devastating stress. Why history? Approximately the same way a good half of business owners want to change. List you your favorite queries:
- Teach (abruptly) our employees how to sell. Yes, so that the speed suddenly soared by 150%. And for the last 2 years they have been steadily falling down.
- Let’s implement a CRM system and redesign the staff motivation system
- I want more money and clients
It seems that we want simple things, but let’s just figure out what it entails. After all, it is difficult to change the foundation of a building without removing the brick walls (which rely on this foundation). What about adding a window to the wall of a building that already has a roof? I would guess that
Company changes can be in 4 interconnected layers:
- Vision and values. Remember Mayakovsky’s poem. “The little son came to his father and asked the baby … What is good and what is bad?”. Also, you have (even if not written) values. A client (manager) comes 4 weeks ago and makes a request. The owner wants to do a training to improve the level of service for customers. I specify for what purpose (this is a tool), what is happening in the company. I understand that in fact the “bottleneck” is not in the service level. There is no elementary subordination, order in management, diligence and discipline at the level of people. In fact, the values are approximately the following: I, as an employee, can work as I want, if I don’t like it, I can whine about this topic, complain and simply not do what the boss asks. And what will service training give in this case? Money and time down the drain. Here, the first thing to do is to establish a culture of «it’s said and done.» And there you look and training on the service is not needed …
- System of strategic goals and indicators. If it is clear what is good, what is bad. You can edit the goal system. In the areas of finance, clients, processes, personnel. What about fig? Another example, another company. Dealing with a request. It is necessary to establish attraction marketing, sales are falling. I ask, can I see the current indicators in the 4 areas above (finance, customers, processes, personnel). Answer: there are no indicators in the last three planes. Yes, and no need, let’s do cool marketing. We understand, it turns out that more than 70% of orders are overwhelmed by production in time. And now imagine that we will “drive” 2 times more customers into this system. Let’s beat the company even faster. It is necessary to set a system of goals and indicators. Measure, evaluate the bottleneck and gradually pull. And most of your changes require a revision of the goal system.
- Business system. If it is clear what we want to do (a system of goals), we can deal with regulations, instructions, standards. Design on paper «as it should be.» After all, you can’t build a good house without a project. And before teaching people to “sell differently.” It is worth sketching a system that will … Sell differently, process applications differently, find people in the labor market differently, keep them in your company differently, earn money differently.
- Culture and people. Only now we reach the people. Again an example. The owner is thinking of setting up sales “in a different way”. To cool, fast, customer-oriented. Let’s catch up with customers (already familiar song). Good intentions, what to say. That’s just leading the team «vegetable». He is already doing well, he “sits” in his garden, receives a salary. And removes around any factors that interfere with its peaceful existence. What to do? Well, just after working with 1-3 layers of changes, change the “vegetable” to the “alpha male”. A question for you: is it possible to make a project of changes with a “vegetable”? In the meantime, I’m throwing the thesis:
2/3 of the changes affect all 4 layers
Let’s analyze an example from the TOP3 queries. Let’s implement CRM and redesign the staff motivation system. Let’s go in order:
- Does it affect vision and values? I think it’s a very «yes». If yesterday you could store information about your customers in your head. Now it is a «property of the company». The value “the client is an asset and property of the company, not a specific employee” appears. In most companies, this is (in fact) far from the case. And still need iron discipline. “Did it — write it down, didn’t do it — write it down twice (in CRM).”
- What about the goal system? And yes again. We need to rebuild processes, people, habits. You need to plan, you need to “leave traces”, you need to get used to being “led on a deal”, etc. We now have new goals!
- Are adjustments needed in the business system? But how. Now you need to monitor the sales funnel, evaluate (calculate) KPI, turn on the carrot and stick based on the results of calculating the final conversion.
- Is it possible to leave people «as is»? Very doubtful. Kolya with scraps of papers, stickers and notes in different notebooks may not fit into the new “format”. And it’s up to you to decide whether to adapt the system to Kolya or take Petya, organized (by dad and mom), in his place.
Summary: Once you have a change in mind, go down the layers from top to bottom.