There is no simple formula for employee or organizational performance. No one can give you a prescription and guarantee that if you simply do “this” your employees and hence your organization will perform better. Even so, we do know a lot about how to improve performance, and we do have several good models that incorporate this knowledge and attempt to explain how it might work.
I said in a previous blog post that I am a big fan of the service-profit chain. The logic of the service-profit chain suggests a very clear leadership philosophy and set of practices. But let me be clear again, there is simply no guarantee that everyone that adopts this philosophy will experience success. But everyone is operating on a set of assumptions as they practice leadership – a theory or bias if you will – and it’s important to identify your bias and attempt to understand the assumptions you make. Here is my bias.
The service-profit chain suggests that the number one thing we need to do on a daily basis if we want to grow our business (increase revenue) through excellence is to impress our employees in the same way we want our customers to be impressed. We need to make sure our employees are enabled with the knowledge, skills, and abilities they need to impress every single customer in every single transaction, and we need to ensure our employees are satisfied with and committed to what we are doing. That only happens by design, not by wishful thinking or simply issuing a new policy.
How well our employees serve and hopefully delight our customers is a direct reflection of how well we serve and delight our employees. This approach to leadership is often called Servant Leadership, but don’t let yourself get hung up on the labels. Here are the basic precepts of this approach (Greenleaf, et al. 2002 ; Spears, 1995).
- Put service before self-interest. Be resourceful.
- Listen first to affirm confidence in others. Listen to figure out the will of the group and then further it however she can.
- Inspire trust by being trustworthy. Be willing to give everything away – power, control, rewards, information, and recognition.
- Help others find the power of the human spirit and accept their responsibilities. Work exists for the person as much as the person exists for work.
Our job as leaders is to be resourceful. The basic question we need to ask ourselves, and teach our employees to ask themselves, is how can I help? What can I do today to help those I have been given the privilege to lead accomplish our shared purpose?
Stay tuned, I’ll give you some examples of this in practice in future posts.
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Bret,
I’m curious about the practical implementation of this approach. In particular, I worry about the stagnation of employees and their attitudes as a result of a loss in interest or buy-in to continuously changing leadership ideals. Top-down implementation from the executive level at large organizations tends to change like the weather so moving into a new system is like having a new flavor of the day. (My experience was a lack-luster buy-in at the employee level to a mandated Six Sigma implementation)
In addition, if B=f(P,E) (the way you have Lewin quoted on the top of this page is confusing to me because it represents an inverse relationship between environment and person which can’t necessarily be the case, or is it?) then behavior changes at the leadership level need to occur internally to the leader themself. Is that correct?
I really like the ideas here, I’m just hung up on trying to figure out how they can be leveraged. I can influence myself the most and exert some influence by manipulations of the environment but I really want to know more about the need to cater to the individual and the “P” component of the equation.
Is the assumption with application of these principles always that the “leader” is the boss? What about managing up? Do you have any words of wisdom on that?
Alex
[Reply]
Hey Alex, sorry for the slow reply, but I have been in transit to Spain and my internet access here is very minimal.
I appreciate you sharing your thought! The equation notation is not by the book! It is meant to say that behavior is a function or combination of person and environment factors. My math inclined audience always catches this
In practice, this means that as leaders we have a lot of influence over how our employees behave because we, not our employees, control systems. We can blame employees (p or person factors) but the truth is e or environment factors are strong drivers of behavior.
And as employees, we should be making suggestions on how to improve processes and systems. This is the most effective way we can “manage up”.
Great thoughts. Thanks!
[Reply]
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