Entrepreneur.com
Written by Paul Levesque of Entrepreneur.com Author and consultant Paul Levesque has spent many years interviewing management and staff in all kinds of high-performance businesses all over the world.
Most of us with childhood memories of learning to ride a bike can recall one exhilarating moment in particular: when our parent's hand let go of the bike and we were on our own. At that instant, ownership of the experience passed to us. We were responsible for not falling down or getting lost.
As a customer, step inside any neighborhood business and try to determine who "owns" the customer experience in that particular operation. It's usually not difficult to distinguish between friendly employee behavior that's spontaneous and voluntary vs. behavior -- even pleasant and courteous -- that's "required" by management. Genuine, sincere friendliness almost always looks and feels very different than the mandated variety.
Many managers already know this, but they also know that unless they mandate friendliness, it won't happen. Their employees lack the motivation to be responsive to customers on their own.
The Fear of Letting Go
This piece helps summarize the research I've conducted in high-energy, high-performance businesses of all kinds over several decades. My objective has been to isolate the cultural aspects that make these businesses so different from all the others. I've boiled my findings down to three primary factors.- For the employees, work feels more like play.
The organization is customer-focused, rather than profit-focused. (Read more about this in "The Biggest Motivation-Killer.")
Employees are allowed to experience high levels of involvement and ownership.
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