Service oriented people

If you had been put in charge of developing a mindset in a group of persons to become very service-oriented, what steps would you take to make it happen?

14 thoughts on “Service oriented people

  1. incorporate their cultural values at the core of their everyday business operations, ie. they implement values-based management practices. Secondly, it is the basics that matter – comprised of both the business values that underpin a company’s culture and the business value proposition offered to customers and stakeholders.

    A more holistic view of business combining these two concepts elevates the importance of the cultural and emotional well-being of a company and its people – the emotional quotient – alongside organisational objectives such as return on investment. The right mix of these should ensure that companies celebrate success.

    By being transparent about values and allowing customers and partners to experience these values at every interaction, a company will distinguish itself from its competitors.

    You must see values as the foundation upon which the edifice of value creation must rest. You need to believe your business are living entities that should constantly evolve. Make the company be an evolving company that, among other things, define their purpose in terms that embrace the common good. They have corporate values that both reflect the collective values of all employees and align with individual values.

    The leaders need to harness the emotions and spirit of every individual toward a common purpose that everyone understands while being authentic in their values and commitment to social responsibility. In other words, the speed of the leader is the speed of the gang. The “gang” needs to be on the same page with the same goals as the head person whether that is the CEO or owner or head of a department or anything.

    My experience has been that companies, especially highly successful ones, operate in a constant state of evolution. In fact, the more successful a company is, the more willing it tends to be to re-engineer itself right to the core. It is also willing to use its values-based management practices to evolve and improve its relationships and co-dependencies in its customer and partner ecosystem to support achievement of its business goals.

    An evolved business knows how to balance self-interest with common good. It understands that to generate and retain customer loyalty it needs to provide more than functional or economic value through the goods and services it provides. Such a business grows by developing an emotional connection with its customers and its partners. This emotionally derived value is driven by intangibles such as service experiences, trusted relationships and brand reputation.

    Despite the logistical challenges this brings, it also provides the means to increase staff morale and team collaboration while increasing accountability across the business. It can also create pride in an organisation, a sense of belonging and put forward the right amount of challenge for high achievers.

    My view is that for a company values business value management approach to be sustainable, it needs to be built on four distinct pillars:

    1. Values must be embedded organisation-wide to provide a platform for common purpose and promote an understanding of a company’s strategic mission.
    2. Values must be at the core of business engagements and be transparent in day-to-day operations.
    3. Values must be aligned with customer expectations of an organisation operating in a trusted relationship.
    4. Values are company-defined, value is customer-defined.

    There are 7 key areas to focus on to make it successful:

    1. Strategic focus: Customer value – winning by creating and delivering superior value to customers.

    2. Growth driver: Selective demand – sell deeply to existing customers.

    3. Offerings: Customised vertical solutions. Collaborate with partners to design and deliver solutions. Horizontal products with limited customisation. Delegate solutions design and delivery to partners

    4. Pricing strategy: Value-based pricing to align value creation for customers with value capture for the firm through subscription pricing and gain sharing arrangements.

    5. Sales organisation: Customer-centric organisation organised around key customer segments or customer accounts, with a single face to customer

    6. Marketing operations: Emphasis on ongoing customer engagement and customer value assessment/tracking.

    7. Success metrics: Customer satisfaction, profitability and growth. Declare success when customers experience success.

    8. Monitoring and tracking: Periodic surveys of customer satisfaction with products. Ongoing tracking and continuous improvement of the total customer experience.

    By focusing on defining value as customers do, designing your offerings based on what customers value, and measuring you performance in terms of the value that customers experience, you will be well on your way to creating successful customer relationships.

    Values must be embedded organisation-wide to provide a platform for common purpose and promote an understanding of a company’s strategic mission. Values must be aligned with customer expectations of an organisation operating in a trusted relationship. How a company delivers is as important as what it delivers.

    A high performance-orientated culture based on clearly defined values clearly provides business results, but while values are company defined, value is customer defined. Values must be at the core of business engagements and be transparent in day-to-day operations.

    Does that help Kim?

  2. Step 1) Reward selflessness
    Step 2) Encourage communication
    Step 3) Provide positive feedback

  3. Provide them with opportunities to serve. Allow each team member to visualize, set up, and manage their own service oriented activity using the team as support. Sometimes the mindset comes from action.

  4. Ideally something simple but sincere.

    An approach such as public thanks to the person is a good start.

    Ah-hoc awards are also good.

    Regularly given out awards (employee of the month etc.) become routine, but an award for service is a direct recognition of a particular act or acts of service.

    I guess the point I’m trying to make is to keep it personal and not institutional.

    Sometimes, service is seen as a requirement and rather than praising those who offer it, we denigrate those who do not.

    I believe that is the wrong approach.

  5. I don’t know that you can. I suppose the best one could do is to hear about reports of more service being done. Or perhaps an increase in more volunteers for an initiative.

    Like I said, though, I don’t know that one can measure whether s/he was successful in changing the mindset of a group of people.

  6. If your perspective is Gospel / Church oriented, then I think any attempt to develop such a mindset will fail. Moral agency and the freedom to choose needs to come before any attempt to change the behavior of the congregation.

    All you can do it focus on teaching correct doctrine, helping the group feel the spirit, and let the change come from within. Then your measurement of success changes from measuring the behavior of the group to measuring how effective you are at delivering your message and to what degree you felt the spirit. Those are things you can control and you leave the change up to the individual.

    I think one of the greatest challenges this church has to overcome is to stop measuring success by the actions of other and start measuring it by how effective we are at teaching doctrine and feeling the influence of the spirit within ourselves. If we are able to create a learning and discussion environment in which we can feel the spirit strongly, participants will also feel that influence, depending on how in-tune they are. That is really all we can hope for. That is really the only way to help people change.

    The more we focus on programs and false measurements of success, the less effective we will be and the greater our failure will be.

  7. To develop a service mindset in a group of people, you have to find service opportunities that fit with their abilities and interests.

    Example: As a teenager, it seemed like the only projects that Laurels could think of for their personal progress achievements were some kind of game day at the nursing home. I participated, albeit with extreme hesitancy, and when it came time for me to do a Laurel project, I never did one, because I thought that I had to do something at the nursing home and I wasn’t excited about that.

    Now, here’s the funny part. I had been taking piano lessons for 12 years and my piano teacher gave “mini-recitals” frequently.. at NURSING HOMES and I had NO PROBLEM doing that!!! In fact, that didn’t scare me at all. I wish I had thought of doing that.

    It took me TEN YEARS to realize my mistake.

    Once I realized that I needed to look for opportunities to give service according to my abilities, I began to find them. And then I started to really enjoy giving service. Now, the word “service” evokes a sort of magic for me.

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