adminShelter Chieza Change Management
While volumes of books and recipes on successful companies have been written, I prefer taking pick from real life companies that have gone through hurdles and recorded major successes. Closer to home, we have companies like Econet Wireless that have recorded strong brand equity that has instilled confidence within the Zimbabwean market.
The Apple story
I have a personal admiration for Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. He was certainly not a perfect man; he had a very dark side which I prefer not to focus on. Steve Jobs was not a perfect leader who would exemplify the best at any given time. Steve was one that was very passionate about product excellence; he appreciated what elegancy and simplicity stood for. Some other CEOs leave the design details to their managers, but he was there on the ground combing through every minute detail. He set stretch goals for hardware and software and pushed people to accomplish more than they dreamed possible. Of course, having your CEO manage your very operations is not easy, he stepped on a few toes in the process and some proclaimed that he was rude, unreasonable and arrogant. What I like about him is that he identified the strengths he had and worked on them.
As a leader, find ways to magnify your strengths and lead with them. They will make you into a truly extraordinary leader. Don’t just strive to removing the negative behaviours without developing standout strengths.
The Google architect story
You may remember Lise Buyer a Former investment banker, venture capitalist and analyst, Lise Buyer <http://vator.tv/user/show/LiseBuyer>, who was a key architect of Google’s unconventional, auction-styled initial offering. It was a first for her and this made her reach dizzy heights in her career. I once watched an interview of her success story where she said that the biggest lesson for her was learning how to accept change. “Just because it hasn’t been done that way before means it should not be done”, “there are all sorts of ways to make the process efficient,” she said in this video. Many of us that prefer sticking to tradition, she revealed may end up in a no man zone because “time-honoured” traditions have a shelf life. She revealed how she learnt to be patient in the process.
The Starbucks story
The coffee chain, one of the world’s most recognizable brands had its fair share of challenges. Starbucks was suffering from a rough economy and its own strategic missteps, and Schultz felt compelled to return to the CEO seat. It wasn’t easy for him and his leaders to come up with a confession to say that the reason the company was in major trouble was a result of the leadership. How many leaders amongst us could dare say that?
But to Shultz, it was one of the major turning points in his career. He described it like “a secret that when you get it out, the burden is off your shoulders”. He even confessed that there were times during the day when they didn’t have enough sales per hour to justify the labour. During that time, no one had any answers. Sounds like some of our businesses that are being faced with extinction that would do anything to capture and intercept customers.
Shultz and his team spent countless hours defending their integrity as a company. Ultimately Schultz said that success “is not sustainable if it is defined by how big you become or by growth for growth’s sake. Success is very shallow if it doesn’t have emotional meaning.”
They started building on maintaining intimacy with customers and their employees to the point that they would make a decision to come to work every day and try to exceed the expectations of employees and customers.
During his interview he said that what kept them afloat was the 100 pecent belief in their core reason for being. There was pressure for him to dramatically change the strategy and the business model of the company – it would have made sense to do so for the sake of shareholder and a way of increasing return on capital, but he chose not do to so. Shultz believed that he felt that it would have fractured the culture of the company.
“You can’t get out of this by trying to navigate with a different road map, one that isn’t true to yourself. You have to be authentic, you have to be true, and you have to believe in your heart that this is going to work.”
Shultz did a lot of unconventional things though; he would close down shop to retrain employees. He received a lot of phone calls saying “Have you lost your mind”, his answer would be, “We are retraining our people because we have forgotten what we stand for, and that is the pursuit of an unequivocal, absolute commitment to quality.”
The Zappos story
Zappos realised that their biggest problem was customer service – specifically, finding the right employees to staff their call centre. Someone would not see the logic of focusing on the telephone, when only about 5 percent of our sales happen by phone. They discovered something unique that on average, customers telephone them at least once at some point, and if they handled the call well, they would have an opportunity to create an emotional impact and a lasting memory. They understood by their philosophy that most of the money they might ordinarily have spent on advertising should be invested in customer service. They worked on their area and it worked for them, they produced a wow effect to the customer.
Till next week, may God richly bless you.
Shelter Chieza is an Advisor in management issues. She can be contacted at [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
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