Frontline Strategy Execution

I’m always fas­ci­nat­ed to be in the unique posi­tion of par­tic­i­pant and observ­er in the board­rooms of so many dif­fer­ent busi­ness­es – to be part of mak­ing deci­sions and then to see them come alive, as a cus­tomer. Some­times, even when we have a beau­ti­ful intent, by the time they are exe­cut­ed — or not — on the front line, they’re either very dif­fer­ent than intend­ed or there are addi­tion­al reper­cus­sions that we did­n’t anticipate.

That’s why I always go back to the ear­ly days of my career, when I worked on the front lines, where we often had con­ver­sa­tions about how out-of-touch the exec­u­tives and lead­ers of our com­pa­nies seemed to be.

Play­ing Office

And that’s why, to the best of my abil­i­ty, I always try to con­sid­er strat­e­gy exe­cu­tion deci­sions by the impact they make on front­line employ­ees, in pro­duc­tion or ser­vice – the peo­ple who are usu­al­ly the ones cre­at­ing the most val­ue and great expe­ri­ences for cus­tomers. I call being on the front lines as hav­ing your steel-toed boots on, ver­sus your Ital­ian-made loafers, in the boardroom.

Very often, peo­ple on the front lines don’t under­stand why the deci­sions made are bet­ter for the com­pa­ny – and, often, lead­ers just don’t under­stand what hap­pens on the front line enough to make deci­sions that actu­al­ly make it eas­i­er for employ­ees to do their job.

I call it ​‘play­ing office’ when exec­u­tive lead­ers are dis­con­nect­ed from the fac­to­ry floor, the store or the call cen­tre or wher­ev­er the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence happens.

That’s why we always encour­age the CEO and lead­ers, through­out the orga­ni­za­tion, to get out, onto the front­line to talk to the cus­tomers, to talk to the ven­dors and to talk the employ­ees. They must go there to touch it, smell it, feel it, taste it and hear it.

Two Dif­fer­ent Approaches

I’ve been watch­ing how com­pa­nies inter­pret, respond to and imple­ment new health and safe­ty reg­u­la­tions for COVID. Some han­dle it excep­tion­al­ly well, and oth­ers not, which I recent­ly found when I vis­it­ed two winer­ies in the Okana­gan region of Cana­da. The con­trast was shocking.

Right­ly so, there are strict reg­u­la­tions in winer­ies that offer on-site tast­ings. The first win­ery I vis­it­ed moved their tast­ing room into tents, in their vine­yard — a bril­liant idea that actu­al­ly enhanced our expe­ri­ence. We were pro­tect­ed from the sun and had spe­cial, social­ly dis­tanced tast­ing sta­tions that were san­i­tized con­stant­ly. Even though we had to wait a few min­utes longer than nor­mal, they did an excep­tion­al job cre­at­ing an excep­tion­al expe­ri­ence, and the ener­gy was absolute­ly amazing.

The sec­ond, much-bet­ter known win­ery felt like a reg­i­ment­ed, insti­tu­tion­al expe­ri­ence. Every­thing was very struc­tured, from the process to get into the build­ing to the tast­ing. Staff were uptight, almost with a look of ter­ror in their eyes. Inter­ac­tion with the staff was not fun at all so, at one point, I com­ment­ed to one mem­ber that every­one seemed real­ly seri­ous. She respond­ed by point­ing out a woman on the side, explain­ing she was from head office to watch them and ensure they were being compliant.

Now, I believe that poli­cies to pro­tect our health and safe­ty are very, very impor­tant and that doing the right thing is non-nego­tiable. But destroy­ing the employ­ees’ abil­i­ty to deliv­er great ser­vice with joy and engage­ment impacts the cus­tomer experience.

This out­come defines the cross­roads between effec­tive and inef­fec­tive lead­er­ship. There are lead­ers who enforce poli­cies in a way that shuts peo­ple down, and oth­ers who find a way to imple­ment them and keep the sparkle in an employ­ees’ eyes and joy in their con­nec­tion with cus­tomers. What­ev­er the sec­ond winery’s lead­ers were doing missed the mark.

At the end of the day, it’s impor­tant to remem­ber that we all serve one boss and that’s the cus­tomer. And the sec­ond that we for­get it and ​‘play office’ too much, we end up mak­ing bad deci­sions that affect our cus­tomers and our employ­ees, and our bot­tom line – and don’t real­ize it.

Now, more than ever, it’s time to slip off those loafers and lace up your steel-toed boots.

The Chal­lenge

• Where might you have poli­cies in your busi­ness that are being you know imple­ment­ed as a direc­tive from head office?
• How can you find a way for them to be deliv­ered in a way that enhances employ­ee engage­ment and the cus­tomer experience?