Performance and Value
Key performance indicators are directly related to basic business values. Quality is a fundamental business value. Unfortunately, most business leaders, managers, and employees do not communicate a clear idea of what constitutes quality largely because they do not have a clear idea of what that value is and how it is delivered. This can be seen at every level business in every industry. There are some companies that have developed reputations for superior customer service. But, is that reputation deserved? Is superior customer service delivered? Too often businesses claim to pride themselves in superior customer service, but do not seem to deliver that level of service in the work they do, in the service they provide, and sometimes in the products they make. This is partly a result of school training where senior executives and others are trained not to look too deeply into the meaning of the important values their business espouses to hold, and as a result end up not delivering those values to customers. To understand the meaning of fundamental terms is crucial. If a value–or a goal for that matter–is not understood, it is impossible to deliver it. Businesses are in business to deliver value, and goals are values. Everything else is done to support that basic activity of delivering value. But, what value and to whom?
Value of Customer Service
Customer Service is typically considered to be separate from the operational and product development side of business. This is often highlighted in the quality of the people hired for customer service positions, the resources that companies devote to customer service and related activities. However, one of the differences between the Shinsei Method™ of Leadership Training and other methods of business of training, is the Shinsei Method™ considers customer service to be synonymous with the business enterprise and sales for that matter. The entire business enterprise is–or should be–devoted to delivering value to customers since customers are the reason a business is in business. For example, the Shinsei Method™ equates sales with customer service and vice versa. One reason for this is basic business logic. Customers represent the primary source of business revenue. There is no business without a customer buying a product or service. That customer purchase produces the revenue of the business. The profit and profitability of the business then is directly dependent on customer patronage. However, why does a customer decide to do business with one business over another? In other words, why do customers buy things? Customers buy value. They do not buy products and services. They pay a business to provide some value that is important them. Not the business. Not the executives. Not the employees. Customers buy products or services because those products and services offer some specific value to the customer. The product or service makes things easier, faster, nicer, or more luxurious. This concept is particularly important for retail operations especially retail operations in the luxury goods markets or pharmacy industry. Retail markets need to understand their customers because retail stores must compete against online businesses some of whom such as Amazon.com make things easier, faster, cheaper, and more convenient for the customer. In other words, many online businesses bring a greater value to customers. However, many retail operations squander their competitive advantages by failing to deliver the customer service they often promise largely because the representatives of that business have a poor understanding of the value and quality they promise to customers. Quality is always promised to the customer even if it is not explicitly stated. The very fact of going into business implies a certain level of quality, a higher level of quality. Otherwise, there would be no reason to go into business. If senior executives and owners had a clearer understanding of customer value, product value, and business value, it would be much easier for them to know to to deliver value to customers.
Delivering Value
Competence is an important aspect of delivering value. Unfortunately, competence tends to be undervalued throughout much of the school experience. This is doubly challenging for leadership, management, and business. School training often represents the first and often the only exposure leaders and managers have to the habit of training. If that introduction to training teaches them to discount practical results, they will tend to follow suit in the training programs they later lead in positions of management and leadership, which is exactly what tends to happen. The general assumption is that a college degree confers competence and professionalism. From a common sense perspective this makes little sense. True competence depends on long term practice in a particular field. This is more and more difficult to find in the various professions not just because too much emphasis is generally placed on college degrees that do not confer competence, but because more and more people remain with companies for short periods of time so that true competence (i.e. value) is never given a chance to develop. It is crucial to remember that competence has two components. Both competence are inextricably linked to quality: amount of time and quality of time. In other words, just being with a particular company, field, profession, or school is not a sufficient condition for competence. Competence depends on what is done during that time period. In other words, professional competence does not just depend on experience, but on the quality of that experience and the quality of the work done during that experience. And, to properly evaluate the the quality of work, the definition of quality must be understood. Clearly, then the principles of quality, work, evaluation, verification, and confirmation all become relevant for deriving, producing, and maintaining value, which in this case is competence. If competence is delivered, then quality and value are delivered.
Developing Competence
Competence comes from many years of analyzing, answering, struggling, and adjusting, until a facility with a subject is developed or internalized so that a sense of efficiency (i.e. competence) becomes intuitive. This level of intuition is called Mushin or Makoto in the Japanese martial discipline known as Bushido, which heavily influenced the development of the Shinsei Method™. Both approaches to training emphasize a total approach to training in that training becomes a way of life and seeks to develop a whole individual as opposed to prowess or expertise in one small area. Notice, this approach is diametrically opposed to the school approach to training particularly in college. Compulsory education and so-called higher education emphasize short-term, flibbertigibbet (i.e. scatterbrained) approach to subjects. College classes typically focus on minutia and trivialities to the exclusion of fundamental principles despite that principles are necessary to develop a practical knowledge base to serve as the basis for figuring things out, a critical skill in leadership. School administrators take the approach of “let’s-throw-everything-at-them-and-see-what-sticks.” So, while students desperately shuffle about to guess what might be on a test for the purposes of regurgitating everything they can hoping that something sticks. As a result, competent comprehension of important principles and material is hardly achieved. This is borne out in the academic achievement as measured by national achievement tests.
U.S. students’ academic achievement still lags that of their peers in many other countries
And, for those students who truly seek to develop a respectable level of competence in a particular field–as I did–the whole experience is demoralizing. Therefore, discouragement becomes the first introduction to training for many leaders and trainers. The very attributes and habits that leaders need: to analyze data, to question assumptions, to verify results, to evaluate facts, tend to be discouraged in school. This does not negate the importance of these leadership principles or the significance of quality education, but that education has to be quality-oriented. In other words, education must actually educate and inculcate critical attributes like discipline, focus, and persistence. The deficiency in educational training makes leadership attributes all the more valuable. Accurate answers still have to be found in business and life for that matter, and accurate answers are only found when individuals look for them. This means that they have not lost the very valuable leadership characteristic of striving to figure things out. Individuals who have been trained to consider principles like accuracy, relevancy, practicality, discipline, will, forbearance, etc., are irrelevant, they will replicate that approach in their leadership roles. This constitutes a significant problem for leaders and for leadership since competent, practical, inquisitive, creative, and productive people are still needed to accomplish the basic tasks of business. If people are not getting the right training in school–as they usually do not–must be had someplace else. Otherwise the deficiency will remain and translate to poor workmanship (i.e. poor quality) and poor work attitude. Poor work attitude contributes to poor work product. Poor work product influences every level of an organization as well: brand, liability, risk, cost, profit, profitability, productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness. This is an unfortunate result that we see time and again in every field from the professions to the so-called rank-and-file employees.
Understanding Value
First, to deliver value to a customer requires knowing what the customer values (i.e. valuing the customer). Second, to deliver value to a customer requires knowing why a potential or existing customer should value your product or service (i.e. product value). Notice that product value entails knowing customer value. Third, to deliver value requires having value and delivering values as goals (i.e. business value). If customer value, product value, and business value are not goals, it is hardly likely that they will be achieved. Competence is necessary to deliver value, and competence derives from knowing where the find answers, how to find answers, what answers are important to find, and the motivation to find them.