By Jerry L. Little & Paul Wright
“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently.”
-Warren Buffett
A favorite word in the business lexicon is “strategic.” We hear about strategy, strategic thinking, and strategic planning. Engage a CEO or any senior leader in a process to define business strategy and, chances are, you will find a willing participant.
A problem arises, however, when it comes to translating strategy into action: attention spans wane, time suddenly grows short, and exasperated voices express frustration at the complexity of the task.
High-sounding and simple formulations by consultants get eager nods, but unrolling the details that lie behind them can lose listeners fast. In other words, another Great Business Dilemma has made its appearance.
Step outside of the boardroom and consider a strategy-related business dilemma from a different perspective: that of a customer. Each of us has had countless experiences with businesses that have left us dissatisfied, affronted, or alienated from companies that profess a deep commitment to service (when is the last time you flew on an commercial airline, or dealt with your cell phone company?). These experiences run the gamut of miscommunications, cumbersome procedures, unfulfilled objectives, or perceived corporate indifference from the employees.
By itself, one stray customer service episode may seem a minor event, overlooking the fact that word-of-mouth – or worse yet, word-of-Internet -- can amplify its impact enormously. Need more convincing? Check out “United Breaks Guitars” on YouTube, and note the number of views it has received.
Contrasted with a company's strategic plan or grand mission statement, a customer service glitch is an insignificant detail - frequently, in fact, the sort of detail that gets overlooked as “too hard or petty to solve” by high-level leaders.
Yet each one is rooted in an internal process error of some kind. Failure to pay attention to these “minor details” can lead, over time, to toxic systemic failures and a deep-seated cynicism among customers and employees, a sure sign of organizational rot setting in and a large sucking sound around company profits.
Given the vast universe of problems that confront owners, executives and managers today, the impulse to “K.I.S.S. it” - Keep is Short and Simple - is understandable. Leaders’ preference for business solutions that focus on broad principles but sweep complex details under the rug often seems inevitable.
It is also dangerous, and possibly even deadly.
The Devil Is In The Details (or D.I.I.T.D. instead of K.I.S.S.): it is those critical details/glitches, though, that are delegated to increasingly lower levels of an organization. In a perfect world, the right person in the company would resolve the customer problems quickly before they fester. We need only consider our own customer-and-employee experiences to recognize that we are not in that perfect world. Most companies and leaders are too far removed from even recognizing the fundamental business dilemma (K.I.S.S. vs. D.I.I.T.D.) that may account for most crises.
The solution to this destructive business dilemma: courage to establish a structure. By understanding, designing and building a clear structure for their business, leaders give everyone in the business the best chance to win. Get it right, right now, for the customer.
So here is one more acronym to overcome the seemingly impossible dilemmas day in and day out, for the customers and employees: GETW, Good Enough to Win. GETW is the balancing of K.I.S.S. and D.I.I.T.D: a structure that enables problem resolution quickly and where it needs to happen will create winners at every level of your business.