At our last management meeting I broke a plank of wood in two. First time, no hesitation – I was strong, I was tough, I was focused. Don’t mess with me!
I should explain that this was not a random act of violence on my part (as if!) but a planned activity to inspire team ability and demonstrate how focus and belief can deliver results.
Having focus is important. It is all too easy in any business to lose focus as there is so much to do and so little time etc. One of the ways that we at gem maintain focus on issues of importance for our clients is through the use of cross-functional teams who are collectively tasked with business improvement and identifying and implementing best practice across all our clients. Account Plans are created for all clients and areas of improvement and innovation continuously identified. These plans are reviewed at senior management team and results carefully monitored.
Recently this has included implementing new social media strategies, reducing customer contacts through improved First Contact Resolution and smart self-service strategies, introducing community moderation as a primary support model, creating a web reporting portal that provides our clients with real-time flexible reporting and analysing voice of the customer data among thousands of online comments.
We even make these teams break planks of wood to demonstrate their focus. A couple of months ago we fire-walked; some months before that the team abseiled down the largest hotel in town, who knows what our CEO has planned in the next couple of months – cross-channel team relay swimming, anyone?