Over the past 25 years I’ve worked with front-line employees, union employees, engineers, customer service representatives and a host of other professional and technical employees. I’ve served as a supervisor, manager, director and executive at a FORTUNE 200 company, championed a successful company transformation effort that improved thousands of processes and saved more than $1 billion, led a corporate-wide United Way campaign that achieved national recognition, facilitated a customer experience transformation that resulted in a 50% reduction in complaints, a 15% reduction in cost and a significant increase in customer satisfaction and sponsored a Customer Outreach Program that achieved an Industry Excellence Award.
Notice the action words I used to describe my role in these accomplishments: served, championed, led, facilitated and sponsored. That means I didn’t achieve all these fabulous things myself but instead was able to build high performing teams who were focused on a goal, empowered to take action and committed to deliver a successful outcome. Time and time again the approach has proven to be successful. I’ve dubbed it the Everyday Excellence Leadership model. Envision. Empower. Engage.
- Envision the Future: Define meaningful goals to achieve the company’s vision and mission, connect each employee to the goals and establish metrics to measure success.
- Empower your Workforce: Provide employees with tools and skills to develop innovative approaches to their work and empower them to make change.
- Engage Employees: Facilitate an engaging work environment where employees feel appreciated, valued and heard and are willing to put forth discretionary effort to achieve goals.
In any business results matter. Just as important is the way results are achieved. By envisioning the future, empowering their workforce and engaging employees, Everyday Excellence Leaders can build the organizational capability to deliver sustainable results that bring value to their company, customer and employees.