People regularly share stories with me that inspire my writing. This story
is of a young lady who was applying to attend a college at Oxford
University. A key part of the process was to complete an application form.
One of the questions on the application form asked prospective students to
declare if they were a leader or a follower. This lady was of the ‘I can
only answer questions completely honestly’ ilk, and so ticked the box
marked ‘follower’.
Having sent the application from to the college, she was
not optimistic. Oxford University will surely only accept leaders. A few
weeks later she received a letter from her chosen college. To her surprise,
she had been accepted. The letter advised her that the college had over 400
applications from ‘Leaders’. They felt that it was imperative that the
Leaders could lead at least one follower!!
The story made me think about the number of people across the world who
believe that they are leaders but actually are not. People who are
‘leading’ organisations, but in a way that is failing to encourage their
colleagues to want to follow. During my career, I have been led by several
men and women. Some have been ‘good’ leaders. Some have been ‘weak’
leaders. The very best ‘leader’ that I had was the one who understood the
importance of one critical thing — people. For an organisation to be truly
customer focussed, it must UNDERSTAND the importance of people. Customers
and colleagues are people. To be truly customer focussed, an organisation
must be LED by someone who understands people. This is why customer
experience NEEDS good, strong leadership.
Let’s have a look at the Wikipedia definition of leadership:
Leadership has been described as “a process of social influence in
which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the
accomplishment of a common task”, although there are alternative
definitions of leadership. For example, some understand a leader simply
as somebody whom people follow, or as somebody who guides or directs
others, while others define leadership as “organizing a group of people
to achieve a common goal”
A good strong leader can almost certainly influence anyone to follow
anything – customer focussed or not. A ‘common goal’ does not have to be of
the customer focussed variety. However, what the Wikipedia statement
validates is that people follow leaders, whether as individuals or as part
of a group. Therefore, if a leader is not particularly concerned about
guiding his or her organisation to be one that ‘puts the customer first’,
it is very unlikely that the organisation will.
Organisations that are not customer centric do not have leaders who believe
in the customer. If they did, the organisation would be customer centric.
In my mind, it is that simple.
Many businesses have ‘followers’ who do not
understand why the business behaves in the way it does. They know what is
wrong, and why customers get upset, yet nothing is ever done about it.
These are businesses who have leaders whose motivation is not one of
customer centricity. This is why the follower sometimes has to BECOME the
leader. In some cases followers have to influence and inspire leaders to
understand that there is a problem and something must be done.
Customer Experience Professionals (CXP) tend to be leaders. They are
leaders because they are passionately driven to do what is right for the
customer. They will not shy away from telling the organisation the truth.
They will do whatever it takes to do what is right. This is not an easy
thing to do, especially when many CXPs do not operate at board level. Yet
this is why customer experience has risen so significantly in prominence
over the last five years. This is why many ‘leaders’ now understand the
importance of customers and colleagues. This is why many ‘followers’ have
risen to become recognised ‘leaders’.
Great leaders display the following traits. Customer experience requires
the following traits:
- Ambition
- Humility
- Patience
- Vision
- Tolerance
- Courage
- Accountability
- Gratitude
- Honesty
- Humour
A leader who possesses these traits is a leader who is likely to do what is
right for their organisation. A leader who possesses these traits is a
leader who is likely to do what is right for the people who the
organisation serves — his customers and his colleagues. A leader who does
what is right for his people is one who is very likely to be the leader of
a successful organisation.
When we think of great ‘corporate’ leaders, we find it hard to come up with
a list of names. Steve Jobs, Jack Welch, Richard Branson – the names are
often the same. Why is it that we live in a business world where there are
so few examples? Leadership is a choice. Not everyone needs to be one. Yet,
if you do aspire to be a leader, make sure you ask yourself every single
day — do I really understand my people?
Who do you think is a great example of ‘leadership’ in the world of
business and why?
Ian, another excellent article. This paragraph says it all: “Organisations that are not customer centric do not have leaders who believe in the customer. If they did, the organisation would be customer centric. In my mind, it is that simple.”
Had the opportunity to work in Marketing department of a large organization which did regular customer surveys, this was 80s so it took a lot of money to design and process the responses on mainframes. The sad thing though was that these results of three to four page surveys were never discussed or even reviewed. This was just an exercise that marketing department did to do what had been taught them at their Ivy League College. You won’t be surprised to hear that this company went belly up laying off thousands of employees.
Am loving this site, being reminded of so many lessons I had forgotten.
Thank you so much for your feedback John – what is perhaps saddest of all is that so little seems to have changed since the 80s :(
Very true Ian. One thing I learned in my 30 year career as an executive is that if you truly want to be customer-centric you have to first become people-centric with your employees. Treat them very well and then inculcate in them the wisdom that the long-term survival of the company depends on satisfied customers and not satisfied shareholders.
I now work for a family owned company that was established in 1911 in Asia on premise of customer service and am surprised to find that they have customers who have been with them for three generations. If we learn the same thing in the US, we will learn the absolute necessity of customer service.
Great post! I like the lady’s answer. She saw herself as a follower. I believe she would make a great leader. It’s all about servant-leadership. A good leader knows how to be a follower and only then will she/he truly understand the internal and the external customer.