John Kao, Founder and CEO, Alignment Health.
Many organizations start from a place of passion. That starting place often looks like a tight-knit group of founders connected by a clear mission and a relentless commitment to customer service. Yet as an organization scales for growth, for example, leaping from $500 million to $2 billion, the practical need for stewardship skills intensifies.
As founders begin delegating to more experienced corporate professionals, they risk a disconnect between operational performance and their original mission. That disconnect starts to look like good people solving unrelated problems within their sandboxes rather than cross-functional teams working together toward a common mission.
Ultimately, I’ve found the trick is hiring the right people with the right skills and training them to think like founders; in our case, training them to lead with a serving heart and a commitment to our members. When you can do this, growth without compromise becomes much more sustainable.
Bold moves drive better results.
Here are three bold leadership moves I’ve used to help my team recognize the incredible power of one decision. Every decision your employees make impacts other teams and ripples back to your customers.
1. Hold your leaders to higher standards.
It’s difficult to perform effectively if you aren’t willing to be realistic about your people’s strengths and leverage them accordingly. When it comes to leaders, this is even more critical. A promotion to the next level does not ensure the individual has the skill set to lead. In fact, according to a 2015 study from Gallup, just one in 10 people have the natural ability to lead.
At my organization, we look for those leaders who score higher against a defined set of strengths, such as listening, empathy, foresight, self-awareness and accountability. We also offer an extensive, months-long training program to ensure our leaders better understand what servant leadership—a core value—means at our company.
2. Empower your leaders with accountability and actionable data.
Focus on empowerment through accountability. Require cross-functional teams to use and share actionable data that keeps them transparent and accountable to each other. Use that data to ensure you are identifying and solving the correct problems and opportunities in a cross-functional manner.
For example, at the close of a recent leadership meeting, we asked each leader to personally hand-write a letter to our members and include direct contact information. The activity brought to life our mission of serving seniors and gave our members direct access to someone who is accountable for the quality of their experience. Simple moves like this drive the employee mindset toward servant leadership at every level.
3. Make the customer experience an enterprise-wide value, not a department.
Putting the customer first is a cultural imperative that all employees must own, whether they are customer-facing or not. Accordingly, there must be transparency of customer experience data—this means sharing both positive and negative reviews. Positive reviews help build team camaraderie. Negative ones help pinpoint the opportunities to serve your customer better and curate solutions.
At a recent town hall, I shared both good and not-so-good reviews with the entire team. Why? Everyone needs to understand that positive and negative member experiences can result from one decision setting off a chain of events across the organization. The point of the exercise was to help each employee understand the enterprise-wide value of putting the customer first and how one decision can impact the customer experience and to empower them to make decisions that can positively change the outcome for our customers.
If you are charged with growth, I encourage you to embrace and embody bold leadership. When you empower your people through accountability, it’s amazing how they will rise to the challenge.
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