December 2006 - Communicating for results

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Communicating for results

Executing at the store level means getting all hands on deck

By Terry McKenna

Terry McKenna is principal and co-founder of Employee Performance Strategies Inc. (EPS), based in Chantilly, Va. You can contact him at (888) 788-9090 or
perform@eps-i.com

One of the frustrations we often hear from our clients is the inability to fully execute at the store level. Thoughtful strategies, initiatives and programs are developed at headquarters and communicated down to the various classes of trades: jobbers, dealers and company-operated store managers. The operators are then responsible to communicate to the most important constituency in the process: store sales associates. After all, the most critical point of any strategy is the customer contact. And the majority of the customer contact made in the store is done not by headquarters personnel and for that matter, not even the dealer or manager — it’s the sales associates. And therein lies the execution breakdown, a communication gap.

Ensuring Alignment
Communication is the lifeblood of a strategy; without it, your strategy will either never get off the ground, or at the very least, will never deliver it’s full potential. Consider these staggering facts:

Harris Interactive Survey of 23,000 U.S. Employees:

73 percent said they do not have a clear understanding of what their organization is trying to achieve and why.
Only 1 in 5 was enthusiastic about their team’s and organization’s goals.
Only 1 in 5 said they have a clear “line of sight” between their tasks and their organization’s goals.
85 percent said their organizations do not fully enable them to execute key goals.
80 percent do not fully trust their organization.

Franklin-Covey 2002 Study of 11,000 U.S. Employees:

56 percent do not clearly understand their organization’s most important goals.
81 percent do not have clearly defined goals.
91 percent do not believe their work has a strong link to their organization’s top goals.
81 percent do not feel a strong level of commitment to their organization’s top priorities.
51 percent of their time is spent doing work that does not relate to their organization’s top priorities.

Mercer Human Resources Consulting 2002 Survey of 2,600 U.S. Employees:

71 percent of employees do not believe their performance is rewarded when they do a good job.
58 percent do not receive regular feedback from their boss.
75 percent do not receive coaching from their boss.

Based on these sobering facts, is it any wonder organizations are not performing at a higher level? So how does your organization stack up? Before you answer that question, do you have the evidence to support your conclusion?

Commit to Communicate
Most people are not thriving in the organizations they work for. They are neither fulfilled nor excited. They are frustrated! Employees are not clear about where the organization is headed or what its highest priorities are. They are bogged down and distracted. Most of all, they don’t feel they can change much. We live in a “Knowledge Worker Age,” yet our business model absolutely suppresses the release of human potential.

It pays off when you communicate to your employees what your organization’s goals are and what their three to five key goals should be that feed into the company goals. You need to develop a clear line of sight between your employee’s compensation — their job performance — and company success. As for the employees who do not work for you, but for your dealers, both direct and jobber-served, every effort must be made to directly communicate to them what your strategy is and their role in its implementation and execution success.

The communication link is at its greatest risk between your dealers and/or store manages and their sales associates. If you want your strategies to succeed (and who doesn’t?), then you must tighten the link between the dealer/store manager and sales associate. Sales associate territory meetings are your best bet in ensuring that the message not only gets to the right people, but that the message is not filtered or miscommunicated in the process.

Expensive you say? How much did your strategy cost to develop and what is its profit potential? Investing in the communication of your strategy is the most important investment of all. Just look at the statistics above when you don’t.

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