Is Your Growth Company Bigger & Stronger?
“Deep roots are not reached by frost.” - JRR Tolkien, Lord of the Rings
Leaders involved in growth companies talk a lot about growing bigger. But as they focus on bigger, they forget to be stronger. And, as a result, the company gets weaker the larger it gets.
As I walked with a CEO preparing for a planning session, we passed a spectacular tree that appeared to have a root system as wide as its 150’ to 200’ branches. Beside it was a spindly tree.
As we walked by, the CEO compared his company to the little spindly tree – which could easily have been blown over if a tornado hit - and said that’s exactly what they were when starting out. But the banyan tree, with a root system that was so massive and strong, was ready for anything.
It’s a great metaphor.
As your company grows its revenue, you are vulnerable if your internal system and the clarity around strategy don’t get stronger too.
People are so busy growing bigger they don’t ask what they can do to be stronger.
Avoiding Regrets in Life by Staring Death Straight in the Eye
Nothing is quite as clarifying as staring death straight in the eye.
Every time someone I know becomes seriously ill or passes away, I get crystal-clear on how well I’m living my life. And what I need to change to live it better.
And so this article from the Daily Mirror struck me. It’s insight from a palliative nurse who shared the 5 most common regrets she hears from her dying patients.
The top 5 regrets in order are:
- I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not what others expect of me
- I wish I hadn’t worked so hard
- I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings
- I wish I’d stayed in touch with my friends
- I wish I’d let myself be happier.
I challenge you to the full article and ask yourself what single thing you would change in your life so you don’t end up regretful in the end. Let the dying teach us how to really live.
Never Forget Who’s the Boss - The Customer
“There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.” - Sam Walton, single dime store owner who parlayed his company into Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer.
In the business of work and desire to streamline processes, increase profitability, and engage with colleagues, do you forget who is your boss?
I’m the person who pays your bills – and your salary.
I’m the person who exists for you to please.
I’m not your manager, your CEO, your board of directors or shareholders.
I am your customer.
If, in your daily decisions and actions, you forget that I exist, that you work for me - that I employed you to solve one of my problems, we’re going to have problem.
Time and time again, businesses get into trouble if people see the boss as the person they report to, or who signs the pay cheques. As a result, they make bad decisions, and layer in extra processes and bureaucracy that the customer doesn’t care about - or want to pay for.
So how do we continually remember who’s the boss, and that our job is to please the customer?
It’s simple: you must have some sort of data continually reporting back to everyone in the company about how happy the customer is. In fact, many of the companies I work with circulate customer feedback through the entire company on a daily or weekly basis that helps keep it top of mind.
To measure customer satisfaction at different points in the transaction or relationship, many use the Net Promoter System (NPS), which gives not only a score of how well you are doing, but information on what customer likes, and the things that would make them more even more thrilled to continue to be your customer.
The System becomes an automatic reminder that the customer is the boss - and, with customer-facing teams, becomes a game to continually fix the things that make the customer crazy.
And remember the wise words of automotive pioneer Henry Ford…
“It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages.” - Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company
Consumer Experience - The Good to Phenomenal Impact
“To create something exceptional, your mindset must be relentlessly focused on the smallest detail.” - Giorgio Armani, Italian fashion designer
Recently I stayed at one of my favourite hotels - the Kahala Hotel and Resort just outside downtown Honolulu, Hawaii. The property is beautiful, the service is excellent, and the staff friendly - all impressive, but the best part is what happens when the service doesn't go right.
When I checked in, something wasn’t working properly in my room, so as I left in the morning, I let the front desk know, and went on with my day. And completely forgot about it.
When I returned, I found this card in my room. Not only was it a nice gesture that they had confirmed the problem was fixed, they also showed the time it was fixed. I had left the hotel at 5 minutes to 7, and it was fixed at 7:10. On top of that, they left me a little gift, which made me smile…a chocolate wrench.
When you look at it from a customer experience – they take an issue, and turn it into a delightful experience.
So there are many ways to create service experiences:
- Good - Do what the customer wants and fix it
- Appreciated - Do what the customer wants, fix it and confirm it was done
- Phenomenal - Do what the customer wants, confirm it, and use it to create an additional impact.
In this case, they made me smile.
Now flip this around, and look at it from the employee’s view: I’ll probably never see or meet the technician who fixed my problem, but that person is going to feel very good about their work.
They know I’ll smile when I see the note and the chocolate wrench - and will want to do even more.
It’s a wonderful circle. It’s unique and special – and the evidence is this blog: a special story I want to tell, in a world where sometimes just getting something done is an accomplishment!
I stay in hotels a lot and, surprisingly, these exceptional experiences are rare. You get basic and sometimes appreciated, but not this phenomenal opportunity to win a customer over.
Now, if someone asks me where to stay in Honolulu, my only recommendation is the Kahala – and they’ve provided me with a compelling story to tell about them.
The other good hotels I have stayed at in Hawaii have faded into the back of my mind...
Delivering Customer Delight
“Don't forget, a person's greatest emotional need is to feel appreciated.” - H. Jackson Brown Jr., author of “Life’s Little Instruction Book: 511 Suggestions, Observations, and Reminders on How to Live a Happy and Rewarding Life”.
As we talked about before, the customer is the boss - the most important person we need to focus on keeping happy.
And while there are many complicated things we can do to improve customer happiness, it’s often the simplest things that can make the biggest difference.
Recently, I was in Dubai for a couple of weeks. One day, I returned to my room in the Oberoi (just voted the World’s Best Hotel Brand by Travel & Leisure Magazine), to find a note on my bed from the housekeeping staff. They had observed that I would soon run out of toothpaste, and thought I might appreciate a new tube.
I hadn’t even noticed! And yes, I did appreciate it.
The interesting thing about this hotel brand (known for their amazing hospitality and service) is that they discourage guests from tipping individual people in the hotel. So the person who helps you is not even trying to get a tip. It’s just deep in their culture to be thoughtful.
So you can provide training, and come up with systems and processes to improve service but, in reality, just looking for ways to make someone’s life easier is extremely powerful.
It’s not difficult. It’s about thoughtfulness - and the intention to do something special for another human being. Here are a couple of examples…
Years ago, while in conversation with a CEO I worked with, during a retreat in a beautiful waterfront home, I admired a unique piece of art on the wall – it was like a sculpture combined with a painting. Months later, at the next quarterly meeting, I was shocked when it was presented to me as a gift. When I expressed my appreciation to the CEO later, she said that she continually looks for clues for the little things that people may want or desire - and that it is her joy in life to get them for them. She was simply paying attention, and I still remember her thoughtful gesture today.
My wife has an absolute gift for knowing people’s preferences for food and beverages. She knows the favourites and the dislikes of everyone we know, and makes sure we have the right things on hand when they come over. It’s her way of looking after people.
So how can you make this part of your culture? To have people look for the little things that make people happy?
The funny thing is that listening for what people need, and being thoughtful, actually leads to more business and deeper relationships. The best performing salespeople are masterful at this: They listen, they pay attention – and, as a result, are the most successful. (“Extra shoes, and a belt to go with that suit, sir?”) And, as a customer, we appreciate it.
Whether you notice the toothpaste is low, or offer a great tie to go with that suit, or see someone with a problem, just do something to help.
In business, we get so focused on processes and the work we have to do, we often stop doing the extra little things that make a big difference.
Now everyone has different gifts. I don’t have my wife’s kind of thoughtfulness. My gift is to help leaders solve their most pressing challenges. And, in that, I’m insanely thoughtful. If I see someone who has a brutal problem, I jump in to help.
So if you recognize that you aren’t good about the little things that make a big difference, look for people in your company who do, and then make it easier for them to be thoughtful – to bring a little delight - to your customers.
Happy Handover Process
“The most empowering condition of all is when the entire organization is aligned with its missions, and people’s passions and purpose are in synch with each other.” - Bill George, former CEO, Medtronic
When Mr. and Mrs. Kaushik arrived to take possession of their family’s new home in Ashiana Group’s new development in Bhiwadi, India, they were stunned.
As they approached, a red carpet stretched from the sidewalk to his front door, and a bright red ribbon wrapped around their front door. It was a moment they’d talk about the rest of their lives – and exactly what Ankur Gupta and his brothers hoped.
This happy customer moment is just one of hundreds and hundreds that take place in Ashiana properties, every year. It’s planned, it’s heartfelt – and it’s only possible because of strong strategic alignment in the executive team, and focused and enthusiastic effort by every one of their 800 employees.
Nurturing Smiles
Many years ago the late Shri Om Prakash Gupta started Ashiana to build happy, vibrant communities for the middle-income group in India – a notably different approach to other real estate developers who make their money and move on.
“One of his biggest strengths was his sense of caring for people,” says his son Joint Managing Director Ankur Gupta. “He would care for everybody, and wanted them to be happy working with us. He also gave a lot of importance to honesty and transparency, internally and externally to consumers - and would always look to see where he could add value.”
Ankur and his two brothers - Managing Director Vishal Gupta and Whole Time Director Varun Gupta -run the company today, and don’t just keep his values alive - they’ve turned them into a competitive advantage. And they do it with a strong, aligned team who do everything they can to fulfill the company purpose of Nurturing Smiles.
Ankur explain, “We’re not selling real estate but high quality lifestyle. This is the largest purchase – and most emotional purchase – someone will make, and we want to make it special. Dad always used to say that the children who grow up in our Ashiana properties should be smarter, happier, and expect more than the kids who grows up in any other project.”
And so Ashiana not only builds properties, they maintain them forever. And they create opportunities for the families – like providing learning centres, and organizing swimming, dance, art and singing lessons, dance and sports competitions, and many other activities – that build real communities. It’s a magical company.
“The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don’t play together, the club won’t be worth a dime.” - Babe Ruth
Solid Strategy, Aligned Team
Every time I’ve worked with Ashiana over five years, these living, breathing values have informed our annual planning sessions. Like when we met in Singapore, last March, to work on how we could strengthen the company in the coming year. At this point, the real estate market was fairly soft, and after hours of debate and discussion we decided - based on their long-term strategy - to optimize the experience the moment the customer received the keys to their flat. This became our #1 objective, and our theme for the year: Happy Handovers.
It made sense that, with a strong referral-based company culture, we could drive future sales by making sure that every customer had an amazing story to tell their friends and family - and perhaps buy another unit themselves – or inspire someone else to. Every Happy Handover was a solid opportunity to make a positive impression to an estimated 2,300 people that year – to turn them into Ashiana promoters.
(As an aside: when I do facilitation work with this group, Nurturing Smiles is so true – it’s in their DNA. Over the course of three days, my face hurt from laughing so much. It’s an absolute riot. We do work hard, and for long days, but their purpose is so true.)
Time to Get Khushi
Now we already had a good handover program - but not the best possible. So we set five priorities to get us there…
- Establish a system to measure and respond to all the customer feedback - the ‘Khushi meter’ (Khushi means happiness in Hindi) - using a Net Promoter score: extremely happy (promoters), passive (OK), unhappy (detractors)
- Streamline the handover process to make it easy and joyful
- Be operation-ready and make sure all utilities and common areas are ready
- The WOW experience: Make sure each Ashiana family has at least one extraordinary story to tell. We did a ribbon cutting, ran a red carpet all the way to the unit, put a framed photograph of their family on the table when they arrived, offered chocolates and cake, and looked for ways to please every single customer.
- …and, of course, a process to deal with what we learned.
“One buyer was so happy with his Happy Handover,” reported Ankur, “that he invited 24 people over, and made us do it again so that they could see what we did for him in his new home.”
The energy his team puts in is extraordinary – beyond anything I’ve heard any other company doing - in real estate, or otherwise.
“Our team so badly wanted to be the best in the world that they actually put a lot effort behind it. We invited someone from England to train our staff on how to be operational-ready building: document ready, people ready, services ready, building ready.
“We also changed the title registration process for our customers – which is very, very painful in India, and can take whole day to get done. When we sent someone on our senior team to help, we found that the registrar’s offices had no air con, no water, no parking, and computers that didn’t work. So we installed air con, made parking spots, gave customers cold water, and created a working computer system. Now, registration takes 30 minutes, and Ashiana customers are treated with special care at the registrar’s office.
They didn’t just help Ashiana customers. They helped everybody in those communities who needed to register a property! So why did they do it?
“Our customers said they needed it – so we just did it.”
And that effort paid off: Up to 80% of their homes are now sold through word of mouth - and they’ve created extraordinary alignment in their executive team, and galvanized their employees to fulfill their purpose.
Why Did it Work?
- We had a simple goal that made the impact we needed it to make
- The entire executive team was aligned that this was the single most important thing we could do - and those annual priorities involved almost every member of the executive team.
- Most of the other annual goals are directly related to this program
- We made it a ton of fun.
- We aligned all 800 employees around it - all obsessed with doing the right thing for the customer.
Lessons and Insights
The impact on people in the company hasbeen phenomenal – a mindset shift. Staff - so fired up about the Khushi score when a Happy Handover happens - wanted that feedback quickly.
If they scored low, they wanted to immediately correct whatever those issues were. It was unbelievable. They also wanted to close the loop on consumer feedback, so we made a system to understand any repetitive kind of problems. One customer, for example, was hoping to get a light bulb, which we never provided. To please him, we bought light bulbs – and then provided them for everyone. We always scored better when we listened to our customers.
“What we learned along the way made us a better company,” concludes Ankur. “The only way to win is to have people engaged in what they are doing, and let them be creative with their own ideas of what will work in their location. It makes a big difference.”
If you get it right, it could be an amazing.
Based in New Delhi, India, Ashiana Group is a client that began developing real estate over 30 years ago - at a time when quality housing at an affordable price was unheard of. Today, they develop residential projects in eight locations across India and, last year - based on their growth and customer satisfaction ratings – was voted ‘Most Promising Company’ in India for the next decade, by CNBC Awaaz, India’s #1 business media channel.