What if the Quarterback is Disengaged?

 A friend recently posted a good article on the importance of communicating your organization’s and your team’s purpose. While it certainly is important, it is not everything. It solves one of an organization’s problems according to a Harris Poll:

• 60% don’t know what the business goals are i.e. only 4 people know they’re supposed to be moving the ball into the other end zone—communicating the purpose can certainly solve this problem
• 82% don’t know exactly what they’re supposed to accomplish and how their activities relate to the goal i.e. 9 of 11 people aren’t sure what they’re supposed to do on this play—maybe how you communicate the purpose can mitigate this problem

If you combine these probabilities, chances are you only have one person who knows the goals and exactly what they’re doing to accomplish the goal. And on a football team it’s probably the quarterback. However, without the offensive linemen, running backs and receivers, it’s impossible to be successful. So it’s important that the business purpose is communicated and that there’s a line of sight between what each person does and how the goal is to be achieved.

But the problems don’t stop there: 82% don’t care to be on the team. Not only does the Harris poll describe this incidence rate, but look at the history of Gallup’s Engagement studies. The level of disengagement is essentially the same despite decades of organizations paying attention to it. And what’s worse, 82% probably want to be on a different team. [The only good news in this is that your competition has the same problem.]

Also engagement—commitment and enthusiasm—is not going to change nor is corporate alignment to be highly successful without a lot of extra effort unless…leaders pay attention to the foundation of any organizational dynamics, change and improvement: trust throughout the organizational levels. The team needs to believe others are dependable, have integrity, accepting of strengths/weaknesses/mistakes/victories, open and vulnerable with each other (e.g. willing to ask for and offer help) and have sufficient levels of competency. Without this, Gallup’s prescription is fruitless. 

So how bad is it? Trust Edge (www.trustedge.com) reports that 87% have less than full trust of leadership.

Until we rebuild trust, everything else will be seen as manipulative and engagement is going to stay low. And you can communicate your team’s purpose well, but your team won’t care. They’re ready to jump ship.

You’ve Woken Up the Customer!…and the Competition!

 In a recent post, I discussed marketing plans that fail to account for buyers’ habits, i.e. our target market segment’s predilection towards repurchasing, re-contracting for the same old products and services they have before. It’s like they’re in a hypnotic trance and we need to snap them out of it. Somehow, we need to figure out a disruption to that habit. (This is why a business owner’s customer list is not really an asset past 30 days of selling the company. “New management” is the disruption.) Once the disruption happens, our potential customers can rethink the decision they made some time ago to buy from our competitor.

Now what? What’s the next move?

Either through different pricing, promotion, location, features, etc. we’ve shown our target customers a competitive advantage. This may or may not cause them to come to us. As they rethink their purchasing decision—socks, for example, in the previous post—they may not only leave our competition but they may go to an indirect competitor—sandals, for example. 

This is not the only problem. We forget our competition are sentient beings capable of reacting to changes in the market also. Too many companies assume they can strip away one percent, two percent or even 20% the total customers from the competition. And the competitors will do nothing different; they’ll keep the same pricing, promotion, product features, etc. as before. Unfortunately, we don’t put ourselves in their position. We don’t consider the change from their perspective. We might only take 1% of the total market but in a highly saturated competitive field, we might be taking 10% of a competitor’s business. Would you sit back, do nothing if a competitor took 10% of your customers? Neither will they.

Our next move needs to consider the competition’s response. What if they drop prices? What if they increase the warranty period? What if they go on a social media blitz? What if they disparage us in press releases? What if they deny those customers some other product or service bought from the competitor as part of the extended product/service line that compels the customers to stick with the competition? What if they finally roll out the Version 3 prototype they’ve been working on? What if they move next door? What if they bundle other products or services in the core offering? Our strategy needs to have a menu of contingencies, anticipating our “woken” competition’s moves.

Therefore, the marketing strategy is not just phase 1 but should also include phase 2 after the competition sees what we’re doing.