“We will not compare ourselves with each other, as if one of us were better and another worse. We have far more interesting things to do with our lives. Each of us is an original.” – The Message
“When writing a resume or any kind of business writing, a handy trick is to ask yourself if there are any words in your first draft that you would be willing to remove for $100. Here’s the simple formula:
Each unnecessary word = $100
When you apply the formula you surprise yourself by how well it helps you prune your writing to its most essential form.”
- Scott Adams (of Dilbert Fame)
“Arguments are ineffectual unless supported by events.” – Philip Rieff
“If I find myself asking a student who claims that he is an ‘identity crisis’ whether he is complaining or boasting. The pertinent question would be ‘what do I want to make of myself, and what do I have to work with?’” - Erik H. Erikson
Jeff Hilimire and his marketing agency, Dragon Army, knows something about change. The firm had already earned the distinction of the fastest growing agency in Atlanta for the years 2016-2018, when Jeff and his management team considered acquiring two new agencies, at the same time. Watchword, a branding firm founded by Rachelle Kuramoto, and Atlanta web design agency Sideways8, led by Adam Walker, were established and well-respected when they joined forces with Dragon Army earlier this year. The three of them talk about how they maintained cultural alignment and customer-centricity amidst change.
Weave a Culture that Works
The first and last thing to consider in a merger or acquisition is company culture and this one benefited from familiarity and respect. “The three of us had gotten to know one another over a number of years collaborating on client and philanthropic efforts,” said Kuramoto. “Our values and respect for one another have formed the connective tissue during this process.” This was illustrated in their integration process and in the results to date. “We started by making sure the leaders at the top of each organization fit the company culture,” recalled Walker. Once that was established, then leadership teams and all of the employee base was considered. “In the end, it was an amazing fit all around and the merging of the companies has been very smooth,” he said. But smooth integration after a merger comes with a lot of work.
Finding the initial common ground required a look at the company values and leadership styles. Hilimire speaks often about PVTV, which stands for Purpose, Vision, Tenets, and Values, a series of guiding principles and guardrails that he outlines in his recent business fable book “The 5-Day Turnaround.” Hilimire describes two of Dragon Army’s values as “team first” and “think positively.” These combine to create a powerful recipe for positive change management when team members are “able to accept the changes, see the path forward, and encourage other teammates to see the way through in a productive way.” Regularly pointing employees back to the PVTV “continues to guide us and shepherd us through the transition,” Hilimire notes. They serve to “remind people how to behave and work together.”
Kuramoto said that they “spent a lot of time ahead of the acquisition giving people a chance to know each other” in order to begin the endeavor with strong relationships, even with people who were remote. Making choices about what to do next was made clearer with leadership alignment. Kuramoto said they “put a lot of rigor into when, how, and why we meet at leadership, and much of that time has been focused on prioritizing, setting objectives, and staying on track.”
Take Away:
Spend time on the purpose and values of the company. When adopted at all levels and across all locations they will help to do the work of alignment.
Practice Change
Walker noted that the leadership style and structure across all three companies had not been overly hierarchical which helped prepare the organizations for change. “We embrace a node leadership structure with coaches leading teams of people.” The teams are dynamic allowing them to “flex and bend, but also scale, as needed.” Kuramoto noted that paying attention to each other during the merger and now in operating mode requires some regular practices. “As an expanded team, we do many things to attune to one another as people, from a weekly huddle during which we discuss every important detail and allow for questions to highly agile processes. From Slack channels like #nodumbquestions to regular team round tables dedicating to articulating what’s making people happy, challenged, and available to one another.” Walker credited the regular team check-ins as being critical. “Also, creating documents outlining any struggles and our plans to fix has helped a lot,” he added. “Just having issues written out where people can really see and understand them builds a lot of momentum towards fixing them.” Kuramoto noted that having things documented also helps not having to answer questions multiple times and helped integrate their remote workforce with their physical one. “We’ve had lots of conversations and learned what to put in writing to make everyone feel secure and empowered.”
Take Away:
Have communication mechanisms in place that will scale. Write things down. Create documents for problem solving and communication, as a form of inclusion to remote employees.
Create New Opportunities | Minimize New Distractions
The strategy behind the merger was to provide a greater capability to serve a larger customer base. “We brought together agencies that worked with small to mid-sized companies and agencies that worked with larger companies,” Walker observed. “This enabled us to work on projects small and large while also dramatically expanding our service offering.”
However, in times of change, the focus can shift internally and away from maintaining momentum on new business. To minimize this distraction, the team implemented road shows to clients, “introducing them to the new team members and talking with them about the changes, specifically focus on how the changes would positive affect them,” Hilimire said. Kuramoto added that “once the deal is done, the number of details involved in the M&A transaction is monumental. As a leader in the organization, you’re accustomed to putting the lion’s share of attention to client service excellence, team members, and growth.” So things like integrating timekeeping software platforms, making sure roles across the company are similarly defined, or aligning internal communications, although critical, can consume the leadership capacity. “Operational to-do lists can’t distract from those customer priorities,” Kuramoto noted, “so it made for a few weeks of long days.”
Reflecting on lessons learned, Hilimire noted that he would have focused more on ensuring growth without disruption. “Growth is important for many reasons, and can be the lifeblood of an agency,” he explained. Kuramoto added that Dragon Army is committed to grow through relationships and that the “whole leadership team, led by Adam in his specific growth role, helps to nurture new and organic growth through relationship-based activities like board work, networking, speaking, and supporting endeavors and causes that are important to our partners.” This helps ensure growth is on the top of the agenda.
Take Away:
Never take your eye off the company’s growth engine. Know your levers for growth and keep management attention there.
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This article was originally published on Forbes.com.
“In the midst of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.” – Albert Camus
“Every day is a lesson. The key is to listen.” – Brother Christopher as quoted by Jesse Itzler
“He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master.” – Ben Johnson
“We remember the black swans. Not because they are common, but because they are rare.” - Levitt and Dubner
“We must risk delight.” – Jack Gilbert
“You don’t go broke by making money.” – Rick Jackson
“No one matures in bitterness.” – Lynch, McNicol, and Thrall
“The holy trinity of retail customer obsession: price, selection, availability. “ – John Rossman
“A true gift never leaves the given.” – Don Paterson
“Do the right thing before figuring out how to do it right.” – Shane Jackson
You can know all the techniques for fishing, but be on a lake with no fish. You can know all the approaches to marketing or sales success, but not be focusing on a market that is big enough or a customer problem that is not solved in some other way.
“The world is filled with interesting things to do. Don’t lead a dull life in such a thrilling world.” – Dale Carnegie
“An intimate relationship is a study in everything that is wrong with you. Think about it.” – Gweneth Paltrow
“Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.” – George Bernard Shaw
“Nothing happens without asking for it.” – Jesse Itzler
It’s no secret that organizations today face unprecedented challenges and leaders, including marketing executives, are under pressure to deliver growth and think beyond the confines of their particular function. Jay Weiser from the Weiser Strategy Group, whose career in business strategy consulting has led him to work with top leaders across multiple industries, has seen businesses succeed and fail in their effort to keep pace. “With near-constant change and disruption, leaders and their organizations must recognize that stability is a relic of the past and what differentiated in the past isn’t adequate for the future,” he said. Here are ten concepts to help you think about cross-functional alignment and delivering an exceptional customer experience in your business:
Stability is dead. In a business landscape now characterized by constant change, companies and leaders who “wait for the dust to settle” will be left in that same dust by competitors. "Understanding context is key to change,” Weiser said. “Industries are being disrupted. Customers are now better informed than company salespeople. Competitors are more aggressive."
The future belongs to the nimble. “Companies who are prepared, ready, and able to act have a significant advantage over those who are not,” he noted. “They can bounce back from disruptions faster and pounce on opportunities quicker. Conversely, those who are not, often do not bounce back and miss opportunities.”
Dynamic stability is the key. Weiser calls “dynamic stability” the key to the future. “Flying a helicopter is a great example of dynamic stability,” he proposed. “Helicopter pilots maintain constant awareness of changes in the environment and actively and frequently adjust the controls to hover or fly to where they want.” Leaders and their organizations need the same capabilities to guide and manage their companies. “There is no other way to fly a helicopter successfully and the same goes for leading and managing a business into the future.”
Customer-centricity is now table stakes. "Even before it became trendy to talk about customer experience or customer engagement, many successful companies were already putting those concepts into practice,” observed Weiser. “While it used to be a differentiating choice, now it is a necessary requirement." Customers in the past put up with a lot of cost, inconvenience, and opacity in their buying choices. “Now, power has shifted to the customer,” he continued. “They know more and have more choices. Now it’s imperative that companies quickly resolve these business issues or face, possibly irreversible, consequences to their businesses. “
Your metrics might be holding you back. “A new CEO at a well-known national grocery chain recognized that the chain was not consistently delivering on their long-held and core brand promise of superior customer service,” Weiser recalled. “He quickly realized that one of their main metrics of success, items per labor-hour (a productivity/efficiency measure) disincentivized management from encouraging customer-centric behaviors and investing in customer service like training. De-emphasizing this metric and raising the importance of key customer service metrics helped them pull ahead of competition and achieve better than peer financial results.” It’s time to review how you are measuring your success and ensure that it aligns with the things upon which your customer is measuring your performance.
Tomorrow’s customer might not have a voice in your decision making processes today. “Organizations need to see and consider the need to change earlier, even if it puts some of their present business at risk,” he proposed. “One company I worked with had built a very successful company based on their website.” Salespeople and some leaders were asking for a mobile solution saying that is what customers will want. Management response was that current customers were using and valuing the desktop solution. “Our desktop solution is what makes the company money,” they said. “We don’t know how to do it on a mobile device.” In reality, the customer of the future might not have a seat at the table yet, but should and if they did they certainly don’t care much about how you make money today.
Talk is cheap. Alignment is hard. "Being aligned for or talking about customer-centricity is not enough,” Weiser claimed. “Functions like Marketing, Sales, IT, Finance, and HR need to collaborate and act in an integrated manner to successfully to improve customer experience, increase customer engagement, and drive growth and employee engagement and experience.” To be successful, strategy execution must be a team sport.
Functional excellence is the ball-hogging of business. Weiser recounted that recently too long a CMO at an executive team strategic planning session said his departmental goal is to “build a world-class marketing organization, recognized by the industry.” The CEO pounded the table and said in colorful language that he didn't care about building a world-class department or being recognized by the industry, but rather he wanted to know how the CMO and the marketing department was going to help him grow their business. This is true of any function. Prioritizing functional excellence can undermine overall customer centricity.
C-level leadership needs to coach a new game. "Watching cross-functional leadership mature is like watching children learning to play soccer,” he offered. “At first, they just are amazed at how far the ball goes when kicked. Then they start playing in parallel they all chase the ball.” Which in itself is an early form of alignment. “Then there is some role differentiation and ultimately the most successful teams are the ones that will play as a team, passing the ball and actively assisting each other.” This is accomplished because players learn not only how to play, but more importantly how and why to play together and to keep score. “Not by the number of points they score individually or minutes of playing time, but by how the team performs overall," he concluded.
Change has a cost, but it might be less than you think. "When considering whether to change, organizations need to ask themselves and seriously consider the risk and cost of doing nothing,” Weiser reminded. “Leaders most often over-estimate the cost or risk involved in changing and under-estimate or do not account for the impact of not changing." Whether the change is an adaptation of success metrics, a delegation of decision making, or a strategic pivot, consider the cost of grasping to the illusion of stability.
Achieving dynamic stability provides a chance for your organization to satisfy the customers of today and tomorrow and become the positive disruptor of the customer experience in your industry.
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This article was originally published on Forbes.com.