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Why Organisational Alignment with Service Partners Matters.

October 28, 2021

As previously discussed alignment looks at how well an organisation functions as whole. But how can we function in a complete and meaningful way, when most people put no stock in the power of vertical and horizontal alignment?

More organisations are connecting to the idea that vertical alignment can benefit their overall longevity and profitability. Yet, those same organisations seem to put limited stock in the idea that horizontal alignment with service partners plays an equally important role.

Vertical alignment

Vertical alignment within an organisational context, is the way resources and strategies are engaged in the same direction to work towards to the organisation’s goals, mission, or purpose. Having this kind of vertical alignment as a main focus, drives every part of the business the same way. When this happens everyone involved knows what they are contributing towards, and that their contributions are valued as a small part of a larger whole.

Vertical alignment also encourages efficiency from the top down and bottom up. Those at the top will know their front facing employees are aligned with the organisation’s values and mission. These felt sensibilities are passed onto the customer through them. In return, lower-level employees will feel valued and able to express their experiences up the ladder in a way that sees changes made to retain proper alignment. If you don’t know how your employees feel about your management, or aren’t sure if they understand your organisational values, it’s time to ask them.

Horizontal alignment

As well as aligning from top to bottom, it is also possible and important to align across all areas of connected business. Any company, organisation, or business that you work with, even if not a part of you directly, is still an important part of your eventual success. How clear you are about who you are as an organisation, and how well this aligns with the values and purpose of the people and groups you do business with, will define how beneficial and long lasting the working relationship will be.

Alignment between organisations and service providers

As well as vertical alignment, horizontal alignment is an important, if underrepresented concept. Many studies and personal opinions show, that while people are starting to understand the importance in aligning vertically, the major still aren’t considering horizontal alignment with service partners/providers as being of the same importance.

Aligning expectations

In order to find the right service partners, managing expectations and creating an environment of effective communication is key. If your organisation is not well aligned vertically, and struggles to communication its values internally, how can you hope to express yourself correctly to any service providers you may need to work with.

Money makes the world go round, but it is not the only factor that should be considered. Look carefully at who you say you are. Is it clear? Can anyone looking in immediately know who you are and what you stand for?

The same applies when considering who to partner with for services or outsourced production. Alignment won’t exist in organisations that claim a set of values that are not adhered to in all areas of business. Even down to selecting who to work with. Customers can always detect inauthentic businesses, those that claim to have a strong set of values, yet partner with organisations that don’t represent those same values at all.

Communication is key, you have to be clear about who you are and what you expect from your service partners. Once engaged by you, they will become a part of who you are. If they don’t understand what you represent, how can they communicate your brand, message and values to your customers or service users?

Post-pandemic opportunity

The pandemic has offered a rare opportunity for organisations to re-evaluate and reconsider some of their service arrangements. As more service providers realise that value delivery is just as important as service delivery.

What gets done is important, but even more so is the way in which it is achieved. Claiming to be an organisation that values service quality, who then outsources part of their offering to people who aren’t paid a living wage or trained in any way to represent the business in the right way, will always negatively affect customer relationships.

Cheaper is easier, but it isn’t better. There is a unique opportunity now to renegotiate these relationships, so that they better reflect the type of organisation you are striving to become. So that your values are understood, not only internal, but externally, across all customers and service providers.

SERVICEBRAND

Those that aren’t considering both forms of alignment are missing an opportunity to generate lifelong customer loyalty and sustainable market share, through a more consistent approach to business and organisational management.

If you are having trouble with organisational alignment, the SERVICEBRAND approach provides a framework, which can facilitate the creation of joined up approach to help you create a more aligned and thus more efficient organisation.

Values and Governance

October 21, 2021
Word Cloud with Corporate Governance related tags

Your organisation’s values are the heart and foundation upon which everything you do is built. They serve as signposts or as a compass, guiding the way to fulfilling your organisation’s mission and purpose.

When you have strong organisational values, they shape how your organisation runs and is governed, allow your employees to feel aligned and connected, and make it simpler for customers to build a bond with you, when they know clearly who you are and what values you stand by.

Values-driven Culture

Having a values-driven culture means having clear and present organisational values that enable employees to align with your organisation emotionally as well as physically. Centring your company culture around your values will bring your entire workforce together to deliver on your mission and purpose.

With 94% of executives and 88% of employees believing a strong culture at work is important in a successful organisation, there has never been a better time to ask yourself, who are you and what does your company value.

Culture can be created and driven from both ends of the employee scale. New employees don’t learn about company culture from leaflets and 5-minute briefings. They learn by observing the behaviours of the leaders and colleagues around them, especially long serving ones.

Even though it is the leadership and governance teams that decide the culture and direction of the organisation, it will be the employees that are responsible for embodying those messages and passing them on to customers through their words and most importantly their behaviour and actions.

If you want a strong values-driven culture, ask yourself; do I really know and believe in my organisation’s values? Do I behave in a way that aligns with them? Or only pay them lip service.

The most important thing to remember when creating a healthy workplace culture is that ‘do as I say’ cultures are hardly ever successful in the long term, they breed resentment and unfairness among the organisation and are a barrier to full employee alignment. When you focus on a ‘do as I do’ approach and embody your values in all you say and do, your employees and customers will recognise and reward it.

What makes for good governance?

Understanding values and why they are important can also help play a role in establishing and maintaining good governance at your organisation. There are five key considerations, that serve well as a structure within which to plan culture and behaviour going forward.

The first of these is fairness. Any organisational planning that takes place needs to frame your company values in how they affect everyone that engages with you. Planning that only considers the needs of senior management will always result in an unhealthy culture, especially when other employees taking part in the work are not represented or treated equally.

They say ‘the bad’ always rolls downhill. This kind of culture is completely toxic to an organisation’s performance. Cultures of blame and blame shifting don’t serve anyone and only hurt the relationship between different levels of employees. Take accountability for your plans and actions. If something is going wrong, don’t ask “what did they do wrong”, ask, “what did I do wrong?” Especially if you are in a position of power and influence. What could you do to better communicate the values and culture of the organisation so that failings are mitigated?

Good governance needs responsible thought and action. It requires people who are able to see the whole picture and willing to bear the weight that comes with being both a governor and a leader. Too often, governors don’t get involved at all levels. Ask yourself, when was the last time I spoke to a customer or front-facing colleague?

The last two are the hardest to find among organisation culture. Having the integrity to do the right thing, (even when it costs) and the transparency to be open and honest when mistakes are made.

The pandemic highlighted this in a dramatic way. The organisations that have been most successful at navigating these complex and unexpected developments, are those that have spoken publicly and honestly to their uncertainty.

Employees, customers, and shareholders, it turns out, all much prefer organisations that are transparent, even when faced with challenges, compared with those that would hide how badly affected they are. Publicly doing the right thing can be hard, its hard to predict how others will react, but overall being honest builds trust and allows people to feel aligned with and bonded to the culture of the organisation because of it.

What can you do to encourage the above approach as a framework for effective governance? You might have noticed that we have not referred to audit, inspection, and reporting because, whilst these might have a place, they represent a means to an end and need to be handled with care to avoid an unintended consequence (which might be the opposite of the objective!). Focus on what you can do to move away from box ticking to pass inspections, or blame shifting to shirk responsibility and move into well considered, authentic governance. Quality governance is a combination of heart and head, in that order.

SERVICEBRAND

Why not connect with us and see how the SERVICEBRAND approach can help you determine the right courses of action when the desired standards aren’t being met and transform sentiment and platitudes into real and affirmative action.

Values and Reconnection post COVID-19

October 14, 2021

Some of the greatest ‘awakenings’ in the world have come about as a result of disruption. Disruptive events allow for a brief surfacing, a moment of crisis that generates a pause, and in that pause, there is space for reflection and rumination on what is truly important, as well as room for spontaneous and adaptable inspiration to strike.

For individuals, as well as organizations, values sit at the gateway between our inner and outer worlds. They describe what is fundamentally important and meaningful to us and relate directly to our sense of purpose and to our needs as individuals to survive and thrive.

The measures taken to combat COVID-19 enforced a new normal of separation and isolation. As we are gradually emerging from this crisis, perhaps we will come back together with a new and better understanding of who we are and what truly matters to us.

We are shaped by what we care about, the way people feel about their offices, homes and work are important factors in the overall success of the organization. Employees who feel their values are being met, those that are engaged by a clear and consistent set of values with which to align themselves are far more likely to be reliable, productive, and fulfilled.

Employee disconnection

Individuals and organizations face disruptions all the time, sometimes they are minor and manageable, like the retirement of valued colleagues or supply chain issues. Other times they are more serious, like the recent wave of increased cyber-attacks, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

One of the most startling findings to come out of the pandemic, and the rapid shift to remote working, has been the dramatic increase in productivity. At a time when people were panicked about trusting their employees to continue performing well without near constant oversight, they have risen to the occasion with over 71% of organisations saying that remoting work either boosted their productivity or didn’t limit it.

Identifying values

Communication is key in identifying values. A select group of senior leaders distributing a list of values and demanding that employees embody them is not likely to be successful (surely no organization would entertain such an approach – you might be surprised!). Neither is it necessary (nor sometimes appropriate) for all employees to have the same degree of influence in making the decision. What is required is clear and consistent communication explaining the process to arrive at the values, the reasons behind it and the opportunity for questions and answers..

Communication can be tricky. As William H Whyte said in ‘Fortune’ magazine in 1950 “The great enemy of communication, we find, is the illusion of it.” Having a full office doesn’t necessarily mean you have good communication, and, in the same way, having remote workers doesn’t always mean they will be left out of the loop to fend for themselves.

Seeking to identify your organizations values will help to drive performance (and profitability), by aligning everyone with the same sense of collectively built purpose and establishing ‘the way things work around here’.

What matters to me?

Before we are able to fit in with a group, we need to spend some time identifying what matters to us as individuals. The impact of the pandemic forced a dramatic shift in consciousness, with many people reassessing the relative importance of family and work and some realising that an office environment is not the most suitable for them.

Figuring out what matters to us is not an easy task and it can become more of a challenge when we try to then align ourselves with an employer that fits our self-perception and matches our values. In the long term however, this values aligned approach can lead to greater clarity and a sense of fulfilment.

Hybrid disruption

Some people thrive in a fast-paced office environment with clearly marked start and finish times, while others prefer working in solitude at a pace that is suitably flexible to their needs. How well your organization manages the balance between rigid structure and flexibility will define how well it bounces back from the disruption of the pandemic.

According to Microsoft, 73% of employees want flexible remote work options to stay, but this is contrasted with 67% who also want more in-person office work/collaborations. This study highlights what we are all becoming aware of; Hybrid work is here to stay. But care needs to be taken not to make this a binary conversation about working in the office and working from home. The place of work is just one dimension, and the real question is “How can leaders enable employees to be as productive as possible, individually, and collectively, in delivering the organization’s values, purpose and business objectives?”

Flexibility will be the key to navigating this new normal. Changing from a micromanaged office environment to a hybrid one is going to take some getting used to. But it also presents an opportunity to dial your values, and to practise trust with your employees. If your purpose as an organization has been clearly communicated, and your values are lived, it becomes easier to trust your employees to make decisions aligned with that ethos.

Inclusivity

Inclusivity is not about micro managing, it’s about well-being, ensuring that all colleagues, whether working from the office or remotely, know they can count on the support they need when they need it. Are you making sure that remote workers are still offered a (video) seat at the table, to keep them represented and involved. How will you protect office colleagues from bearing an unfair amount of the workload purely due to their proximity or ease of access.

It will be trial and error, and a strong set of working values will help align everyone with new working practices and minimise the risk of an ‘us verse them’ culture developing.

Lastly, don’t panic, people had similar reservations and fears when adapting to the increase of a night team/working culture, but over time that has become a key part of our infrastructure, as Hybrid arrangements are becoming now.

SERVICEBRAND

The impact of COVID-19 has demonstrated how we are much less restrained by location and traditional working hours than we previously thought. It has helped us see how we can build fit for purpose work environments in our living rooms and offices, to maintain our organisations in a time of severe uncertainty.

Having everyone in the same room doesn’t automatically mean they are connected; the connection comes from a sense of shared values. These values support employee security, wellbeing, confidence, and resilience, while also driving performance to achieve the organization’s purpose and objectives. To see how the SERVICEBRAND approach might help you build values-based connections in your hybrid workforce, please get in touch.

Values in Crisis

October 7, 2021
Directions to crisis and opportunity

The Covid-19 pandemic, while bringing with it immense suffering, has also brought the opportunity to re-examine and re-evaluate our values and beliefs. It has let us bear witness to those companies and corporations that have shown a reaffirmation of their values, and also those that have shown a complete disregard for their espoused values in the way they have treated their employees and customers during the pandemic.

Examples like amazon sellers price gouging on PPE, and companies profiteering on other medical supplies, furloughing and/or laying off staff while still paying enormous bonuses to senior executives and capitalising on the lockdowns to force smaller companies out of business.

But there have also been positive examples such as businesses re-tasking their products and services to help their employees retain employment and their customers continue to access the goods and services they need in times of limitation and restriction.

Global health pandemics aren’t the only type of crisis that can dramatically affect a business. But a crisis of this scale gives a much wider view of the cultural and moral landscape our societies are built on.

Finding value

Understanding and assigning values to your business can be a difficult process. It requires a great deal of reflection about who you are, what you are offering and most importantly why you want to sell that product or offer that service in the first place.

We become who we are (consciously or not) through what we care about. We only need the space and safety to follow our values and we can create lives and companies that are successful because of how well others can relate to our message.

Our values set the tone for everything to come. They act as a frame of reference in our decision-making structures. They cast a spotlight on our individual and collective behaviours, engaging and directing us to better align with the kind of businesses we want to support and the people we want to be.

But the most important aspect of defining and operating in a specific set of values, is that they are consistent. In this way the reputation and heritage of the company can begin to grow, this builds trust with the consumer base, and other stakeholders letting them feel secure in where they have placed their purchasing power or other type of relationship.

Authenticity in a crisis

Whether facing a crisis or not 86% of customers are driven by a desire for authentic interactions with the businesses and services they engage with, especially when those offerings demonstrate core values that closely align with those of the customers.

Those companies that have been upfront and authentic in their handling of the pandemic are the ones that have retained and seen the most support from their customer base. We hope that this is a sign that honesty really is the best policy, even during uncertain times.

Both individuals and organisations share common needs for safety and security, and while the go to may be to project an image of strength during a crisis, it is far more impactful and better for business to be up front about what is happening, being open about uncertainty with customers will build stronger bonds and connections through shared experience.

Repositioning

The companies that have been more able to the pandemic comfortably have done so because of their ability to be agile and flexible without compromising on their values. Companies like 58 Gin, that rapidly switched from producing gin, to the distillation and creation of hand sanitizer.

Maintaining operation, ensuring that employees still had work and the business remained profitable all came because of having strong core values, but being flexible enough to express them in different ways.

Repositioning a brand is often necessary as the times change and we head into an ever more uncertain future. Don’t fear having to make changes that are necessary for the survival of the business. Just ensure those changes don’t come at the expense of your values or authenticity. Consumer trust is hard to build and near impossible to regain once broken.

SERVICEBRAND

Whether its help choosing core values or assistance in implementing them, SERVICEBRAND GLOBAL can help you navigate the crises facing your business, shape your brand identity and align you authentically with your consumer base.

Companies that will successfully navigate any crisis are those with a strong and consistent set of core values, that have a purpose beyond profit.

Why Alignment Could Be the Key to Unlocking your Organization’s Potential

August 25, 2021

“No one can whistle a symphony. It takes a whole orchestra to play it.” H.E. Luccock

Being able to articulate a clear strategy is one thing and yet, the organization’s ability to execute a strategy, is an altogether different, usually more challenging matter. We know that many senior leaders agree.

Contrary to the central premise of many strategy studies, usually, it is not the vision or aspirations of a successful company that allow it to stand out (and these goals are often remarkably similar, irrespective of organisation size, geography or industry sector). What sets the top performers apart is the ‘how’ – the way they organize and operate to make their aspirations a reality.
Continue reading “Why Alignment Could Be the Key to Unlocking your Organization’s Potential”

Could You Benefit from Brand Identity Services?

August 19, 2021

In the current paradigm of consumerism, there are hundreds of competing brands for every type of product or service. That’s why businesses today have to stand out through the impressions they leave on their customers. It starts with a fantastic customer journey and can scale globally with a recognisable brand identity.

77% of consumers purchase items based on a brand name rather than the object’s name and brands with a strong identity can also attract more investors – 82% of investors cite name recognition as an essential factor in their decision-making.
Continue reading “Could You Benefit from Brand Identity Services?”

The Role of a Customer Experience Strategy Advisor

August 13, 2021

The customer experience is crucial to your success as a business. It defines how your brand is perceived and fosters loyalty in your audience. Even traditionally product based companies eg technology, automotive, telcomms are now competing on customer experience because this is a differentiator whilst their products and services are often very similar.

If your business struggles to deliver the desired customer experience, it might be due to several reasons.
Continue reading “The Role of a Customer Experience Strategy Advisor”

How to Achieve Organizational Alignment, and Why It Matters

August 4, 2021

If your organization feels like a patchwork of different teams, competing for scarce resources, with quite different ways of working and lacking a common sense of purpose and shared values, your brand might be suffering from a lack of organizational alignment. A fragmented organization can slow down your growth potential. It creates barriers and separation between departments and limits your employees ability to work towards common corporate objectives.

Today, we’ll discuss the importance of organizational alignment and what steps you can implement in your business.
Continue reading “How to Achieve Organizational Alignment, and Why It Matters”

Can Employee Engagement be Measured?

July 28, 2021

It sometimes takes an outside perspective to help you truly understand the way your employees feel about your brand and how committed they are to their roles. However, not everyone is in a position to hire the services of professional engagement specialists.

As such, it can be incredibly useful to understand how to define engagement levels by yourself, through internal processes and activities. This can put you in a much better position for building appropriate employee engagement solutions to match the needs of your business.
Continue reading “Can Employee Engagement be Measured?”

Customer Service vs Customer Experience – What Are the Key Differences?

July 21, 2021

Customer service and customer experience are both important aspects of any organisation, but these two terms are often used interchangeably with some confusion about the important key differences that exist. This can diminish the effectiveness of specific processes and activities within an organisation.

We explore what both these phrases mean and how you can differentiate your internal strategies so that improvement is more targeted and sustainable.

Continue reading “Customer Service vs Customer Experience – What Are the Key Differences?”

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