Opening Insights
Growth is a wonderful thing to experience in an organization. Expansion of market share, diversification of products and services, increased revenue and profit, as well as more employees with new ideas and perspectives all contribute to an organization's ability to pursue the goals and values upon which it was founded.
Unfortunately, as many organizations grow they begin to lose touch with their customers and employees. When this occurs, the gap widens between leadership, followship, policy makers, customers and employees who interact with them on a daily basis.
Informational Insights
As new branches, stores, departments, and third-party partners spring up, management is tasked with the challenge of monitoring these different entities, evaluating them, and ensuring they are conducting business in a way that aligns with the rest of the organization. The easiest and quickest way to do this is a standardized formatting of accounting reports that allows for fast comparison of one store to another. Everything is broken down into 1's and 0's of different revenue streams and cost categories. Deviation outside of a "normal" parameter throws up a red flag that can quickly be addressed.
Unfortunately, this method does not provide any data as to why a particular store or department may be struggling. It also doesn't allow for the discovery of new opportunities. What ends up happening, through no official direction from leadership, is the narrow focus on profit alone and often at the expense of the goals and values the organization strives to achieve.
I see recurring problems every day. Despite these problems and the subsequent poor customer service and quality that is provided I don’t believe this is intended. I like to believe that those who founded the company and the ones who run it today truly care about their customers. They must. No organization will last long term if it doesn’t provide a safe quality product or service, especially in an ever increasingly competitive market.
I believe the challenge of not fixing these problems comes from either not truly knowing about them or their severity, or not knowing what to do about them. With any large company, who has a high number of stores and employees across a country or even the world, it’s not easy to measure and evaluate stores. What ends up happening in these organizations is that individual stores and their managers are measured by the books; by how much profit they are churning out.
Unfortunately, this results in the employees at those levels perceiving that the bottom line is only what the company cares about and that’s what they strive to improve upon, often sacrificing the quality of the product they are providing. Mid and low level employees, and sometimes misguided higher-level ones, make decisions with the mindset of never wanting to sacrifice profit, decrease revenue, or incur additional costs.
In my store, and others I have worked at this results in not ordering the proper tools we need to do our job, such as having enough mobile devices to efficiently handle returns and transactions across our property. Stores are understaffed, working skeleton crews, prioritizing serving customers on site and with no other labor resources available they do not look ahead to plan for later in the day, properly scheduling for the next day, making sure inventory is checked in and put away, inspecting equipment and properly repairing it, etc.
The salaried employees are quickly burning out. I’ve seen a large turnover in General Managers for my district in the short time I’ve worked for this company. Because they are salaried, they’re working 50-60+ hour weeks because they’re not allowed to have more employees on staff because of payroll constraints they have no say in creating.
Stores steal business from other stores, even if they’re part of the same district. Employees are taught to mislead customers about the size of the vehicle they are getting if the size that is requested isn’t available at that store. Ex: “Is a customer really going to notice the difference between a 15-foot truck and a 17-foot truck?”
All this culminates into a stressful, unhealthy environment for the organization’s employees and poor service to the customers. Unfortunately, because the only evaluation methods that are in place measure a store’s numbers and nobody seems to recognize the huge impact all these problems are causing. If a store’s numbers are down we’re told to return more phone calls to get more business. Never looking at improving what needs to be done better.
Currently, there is no feedback mechanism for employees to suggest ideas for improvement and nobody apparently willing to listen if an employee brings forth suggestions. More importantly, other than an extremely weak comment section on a company's website or on Yelp.com, customers have no way of providing feedback either.
Again, I believe that this is not done intentionally, out of some greedy desire for money. I believe my company has grown tremendously over the years, like many others, and has simply not been able to keep up with the challenges that come with that growth. The quick solution has been to measure numbers because that can easily be done through automation. Spreadsheets and dollar signs are easy to compute but that method doesn’t provide long-term sustainability.
Companies go through the same 5 stages, no matter what industry they are in: birth, growth, maturity, senility, and death. I believe the one I work for is already in the maturity stage and if something isn't done differently it will soon enter the irreversible decline of senility. It can no longer be just about numbers.
Instead, we need to grow and improve the culture of our company which will allow us to implement lasting solutions to the problems that have taken root.
Click here, to learn more about possible problems, answers and solutions facing your organization.
Possibilities for Consideration
Take a moment and examine…
- As you reviewed the material above, what stood out to you?
- What is the potential impact, economically and/or socially?
- What action is needed to stop or support this idea?
- You may want to consider whether you:
- want to be aware of,
- should become supportive of,
- would want to be active in this topic?
Add Your Insight
I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply.
Being willing is not enough; we must do.
LEONARDO DA VINCI