John KaiFounder and CEO, Alignment Health.
Many organizations start from passion. That starting place often looks like a tight-knit group of founders bound together by a clear mission statement and an unwavering commitment to customer service. But as an organization scales to grow, say from $500 million to $2 billion, the practical need for stewardship skills increases.
As founders begin to delegate to more experienced business professionals, they risk creating a gap between operational performance and their original mission. That disconnect is starting to look like good people solving unrelated problems within their sandboxes rather than cross-functional teams working together on a common mission.
In the end, I found that the trick is to hire the right people with the right skills and train them to think like founders; in our case, training them to lead with a serving heart and commitment to our members. When you can do this, uncompromising growth becomes much more sustainable.
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Bold moves lead to better results.
Here are three bold leadership moves I’ve used to help my team recognize the incredible power of one decision. Every decision your employees make impacts other teams and reflects back to your customers.
1. Hold your leaders to higher standards.
It’s hard to perform effectively if you’re not willing to be realistic about your people’s strengths and leverage them accordingly. When it comes to leaders, this is even more important. A promotion to the next level does not guarantee that the individual has the skills to lead. In fact, according to a 2015 study by Galluponly one in ten people has the natural ability to lead.
At my organization, we look for those leaders who score higher on a defined set of strengths, such as listening, empathy, foresight, self-awareness, and accountability. We also offer a comprehensive, month-long training program to help our leaders better understand what servant leadership, a core value, means in our company.
2. Give accountability and actionable data to your leaders.
Focus on empowerment through accountability. Require cross-functional teams to use and share actionable data that keeps them transparent and accountable to each other. Use that data to ensure you identify and solve the right problems and opportunities in a cross-functional way.
For example, at the end of a recent leadership meeting, we asked each leader to personally write a letter to our members with direct contact information. The activity brought our mission to serve seniors to life and gave our members direct access to someone who is accountable for the quality of their experience. Simple moves like these drive the employee mindset toward servant leadership at every level.
3. Make the customer experience a company-wide value, not a department.
Putting the customer first is a cultural necessity that all employees should possess, whether they are customer-oriented or not. Accordingly, there should be transparency of customer experience data – this means sharing both positive and negative reviews. Positive reviews help build team camaraderie. Negatives help identify the opportunities to better serve your customer and curate solutions.
At a recent town hall, I shared both good and less good reviews with the entire team. Why? Everyone needs to understand that positive and negative member experiences can result from one decision that sets off a chain of events throughout the organization. The goal of the exercise was to help each employee understand the company-wide value of putting the customer first and how one decision can impact the customer experience, and to empower them to make decisions that can positively impact the outcome for our customers. change.
If you are charged with growth, I encourage you to embrace and embody bold leadership. When you empower your people through accountability, it’s amazing how they rise to the challenge.
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