To SERVE without reserve is the focus!
Technology and products are the lifeblood of what we do as companies. Amazing products and leading technologies are the mainstays of competitiveness in todays extremely rapidly changing world. They are the “table stakes” in the game today. AND they are not enough on their own to win the game!
Winning by serving the client to the maximum is the only way to achieve our objectives. This comes from delivering something unique to the client, from co-creating something unique WITH the client. AND the only uniqueness comes from how we SERVE our clients. Differentiation comes only in how we SERVE. Solutions that matter to the client only happen with how we SERVE. Products matter. Outcomes matter. Of course! How we SERVE is the what, where, when, why, of making a “difference” that the client acknowledges as mattering to THEM! This applies whether it is in person or if it happens virtually through all of our web-based actions.
To SERVE endlessly is a continuum, a circle of life that commits us to help the people that we have chosen to SERVE to do better for THEIR world and those that they SERVE. To SERVE without regard for the “return on investment” of your own time and effort is a pragmatic challenge that you must believe in. SERVE endlessly, without reserve, and know that your effort will benefit ALL of those involved in the FAITH we must have. Our history proves it is true. Our future counts on it. Our today demands it…if we are to succeed!
Your challenge is now to execute it; SERVE endlessly, because you CARE greatly and UNDERSTAND deeply!
Our next step is into PURPOSE. You, your company, your clients, and the people that you chose to SERVE.
We will dig into PURPOSE starting next week. It will be all about the definition, impact, and understanding of the power of PURPOSE.
OK, LET’S ROLL!
To the power of PURPOSE!
Mitch
To SERVE is to give freely of yourself!
To SERVE “really well” requires intent, focus, and perseverance.
To SERVE really well says that we will SERVE relentlessly, SERVE endlessly, SERVE without reserve!
Relentless is a great word. It means that we do it aggressively, with intent, with an eye to getting the most done and we don’t give up when obstacles are thrown at us. It means that we stay the course and never give up….working to help someone else achieve their objectives.
When we SERVE endlessly it means that we do not slow down or falter. Even if a project comes to its end, we continue to SERVE. Our quest is a long-term client engagement that likely never has an end in sight. While the objectives may shift, and new challenges come up, we continue in service to another person. This matters because the folks that we serve need to clearly understand that we are involved, as a choice, with no limit on time or effort.
To SERVE without reserve needs some clarity. It is the pure form of serving another person WITHOUT expecting anything in return. Nothing! Yep, that truly means you will be doing a LOT of work, helping another person achieve what THEY wish to achieve, AND in your heart and soul, you are doing so purely for the benefit of the other person. No expectations on returns in any way. Not in terms of business, profits…nothing. That’s a tough point to reach, yet it is the ONLY way to benefit everyone involved in the work. If in your service you start to set up expectations of getting something in return (bookings, billings, etc) for your effort you will start to alter the effectiveness of the service itself. That will be seen by all. It will be obvious, and it will negatively taint every action, and you will look like every other person calling on the client looking to meet their quota to get their commissions; undifferentiated, self-serving, and otherwise boring!
With a focus on the process of serving you leave the big block outcomes to themselves and trust that great things will happen because they WILL!
Let’s see you all plug that aspect into an “opportunity review” with all those that don’t do the work you do, it will drive them crazy! This aspect needs some time spent walking through its implications with a team to see how it all plays out. It DOES, it’s proven!
To SERVE requires our best in fundamentals of PLAN/DO/REVIEW! With a pure focus on the objectives of the client and diligence to stay true to the basics… relentlessly, endlessly, and WITHOUT reserve!
OK, LET’s ROLL!
To SERVE one another!
Mitch
IT’S TIME!!!
We have dug into the concept of CARING and why that makes a difference, UNDERSTANDING, and what that takes to really make it work, and lastly we will dig into PURPOSE and why we do what we do. But for now, let’s care enough to understand what it takes to truly SERVE someone else.
To SERVE…. What does it mean in our case in what we do with our clients? You can look up the word SERVE on the web and find a bunch of different perspectives on the meaning of the word itself. With respect to what our team does with our clients, here is my thinking.
To SERVE our clients, our team, our family, or whomever we choose to engage with is, for me, the same thing. And it is not too complex. Fundamentally it means ACTIVELY helping someone else achieve what THEY hope to achieve. A couple of key elements are involved here. ACTIVELY means we are directly, personally, individually involved in helping another PERSON get something done that it is important to THEM.
While corporations and companies are the frameworks behind much of what we work to accomplish, the reality is that the key to SERVING is that at its best it means involvement with a specific person. Often times as a part of a group of people, a team, a department, a formal or informal structure. We SERVE at the personal level, helping to accomplish individual goals that most times are in fact tied to corporate outcomes. All of this is ACTIVELY planned, done, and reviewed (PLAN/DO/REVIEW). Well-understood, carefully orchestrated actions that co-create the outcomes that we understand matter greatly to those we serve. That is where THEM comes into play.
The plans created, the process executed, and the outcomes aimed for, must all be built with the person you are serving as the center of the universe. Everything must focus on THEM! Timing, details, objectives, measurables, risks, rewards….everything must be built around the world of the person that you are choosing to actively help.
The text below is a bit of an extract from many of the forums on the web on Servant Leadership. I have substituted the “client engagement” words in many cases for the word leadership. You will see the great similarity in the two concepts. I can make the case that Servant Leadership is in fact a client-based set of values and actions and you can swap the terms pretty easily.
Servant client engagement encourages everyone to think outside the box and considers every perspective when tasked with moving the needle forward. The final decision is the byproduct of collective collaboration and the exchange of ideas. Power never rests with one person, but with everyone on the team contributing to the end result.
How can client engagement teams build a higher level of trust? By being crystal clear about everything. All communications need to be specific and disseminated to every single level of the organization, top to bottom. If you are not transparent and fail to serve a clear purpose, no one is going to care. Being transparent foments trust, which has a direct correlation to successful outcomes. Remember, trust is earned, not given. Have you earned your client’s trust?
It’s not about you. It never was and it never will be. It’s about the people who make it all work. Great client engagement teams help facilitate the success of others and make everyone feel valuable and that their contributions matter to the overall success of the effort.
Fostering service to others comes in many forms, including coaching, mentorship, and growth. Take the time to teach someone the ropes, to offer words of encouragement, and answer questions that others have for you. Great client engagement teams give back. They are able to put together a diverse group of people from all parts of the organizations that they serve and that they are a direct part of.
Servant client engagement professionals give more of themselves not because they have to, but because they want to. They are transparent, honest, and yes, even vulnerable. That sounds like it would be a weakness, but it actually can help build you up as a client engagement professional and let others see you as a human being, with values that matter to all.
OK, LET’S ROLL!
Time to SERVE, relentlessly!
Mitch
Time to PIVOT!
From our continued chats about UNDERSTANDING we left off with last week’s perspective of the challenge of helping others, our clients, our friends, and all those we serve, tackle the monumental perspective of CHANGE! Introducing that idea was the following…
…Simply, the harsh reality is that if we are going to gain market share, grow the number of clients we have, and grow within those clients we already serve at some level… we must help them to CHANGE their thinking about the work and the decisions that they reached in the past with respect to their choice of suppliers in a given solution set. We must help them CHANGE their thinking, to CHANGE their beliefs, to CHANGE their actions… and choose US. And that is the complex part…CHANGE!
However complex it might seem or be, we CAN achieve it. It is quite doable. We know how, and many of you are good at it already.
Next week we will look at the magic in the use of SMEs and the PIVOT, in helping guide our clients through the CHANGE process.
So let’s dig into the movement from UNDERSTANDING and how we use that perspective to enable the people we are working with to develop their own desire to change.
It must be understood and completely clear that YOU cannot get another person to change their mind. I cannot get another person to change their mind. NO one can get another person to change their mind. The brain does not work that way. No words you speak, no action you take can make that happen. Just the way it works. The reality is clear, only the person themselves can flip the internally operated switch that causes a shift in beliefs.
Now, the harsh reality many times we all spend so much time and effort in communicating to another that they may simply give up, get tired of hearing our babble, and play into your hand of believing they have changed. Submission does NOT equal acceptance! Many people will outwardly appear one way while still believing another way. Just the way it works.
SO…what do we do? Give up? Change our “pitch”? Find another target?
Really, no to all of the above. Our challenge is actually a response that is quite powerful as it is rooted in the desire to help make a difference with others.
It is called simply “The Pivot”. In it’s short form The Pivot requires an absolute acceptance of the other person’s perspective as true and viable, to them, and offering up an ADDITIONAL alternative idea that can ALSO be true.
Studying and executing this requires a bit more time and interaction than this email can accomplish. It can certainly be done virtually and some of its best outcomes have been developed with this in “face to face” video mode.
Properly created and executed, a one to one video call is even more personal and influential than the old sterile conference room hole in the wall conversation could ever be.
The magic in SME utilization comes in the form of the “alternative idea” that can ALSO be true for the person you are serving. A SME has a natural sense of neutrality if introduced into the program properly. A SME must have an open approach and a clear belief that their own way is NOT the only way to create great outcomes. And that neutrality is kept whole as you provide more and more SME’s with increment expertise and solution sets.
The client engagement manager is the project manager for ALL things that take place with a client. It is their challenge to bring as much expert help into the conversation with the client as they can possibly create.
With all of our experience with this metric and it’s known or unknown use over thousands of projects it has never been seen that it is possible to provide TOO MUCH help! Keep asking the client… what more can we look at?
OK, LET’S ROLL!
Time to SERVE, relentlessly!
Mitch
Changing outcomes is also a PROCESS! Helping someone else change their past decisions is a bit magical!
Before we move on to the element of SERVE let’s take one more look at the challenge of UNDERSTAND….
I was reminded this week of an aspect of today’s world, and the balance that exists between what is, and what we want to have happened.
Today, our clients have a supplier source for every single product that they use today in their manufacturing. They have spent decades in many cases, tons of money in the selection, qualification, system-level evaluation, and manufacturing of every single part of every product that they make today.
And they have spent tremendous amounts of time and energy in making all of these decisions about all these things.
They have had design engineers, component engineers, quality engineers, manufacturing engineers, safety engineers, and every kind of product and technology expertise we can imagine, all put their official stamp of approval on every component level source decision needed to build their end products.
Decisions have been made, deployed, accepted, and lived with for their current end product offerings, and in reality, those same decisions will likely stand for almost all of their next generation of new end products created by our clients.
We like that stability when we are the chosen “one” and their use of our solutions starts, stays, and grows.
We don’t like that stability as much when we are NOT the chosen source for their solutions in our offering space.
There is the challenge.
The reality in most product offerings of any kind in our world today the new solutions offered for use by our clients in their own end products are for the most part “evolutionary” in nature and seldom offer a truly competitive differentiation that will make a significant difference to our clients versus solutions already offered in the market place.
To state that the world of products in general (ours and our clients) is pretty much one giant commoditized bag of the same stuff is a bit harsh, but not totally untrue. Incremental improvements and feature expansion do certainly add to the discussion levels and give us something to hang our “ours is different” hat on. At least at the surface level.
The table stakes in today’s environment is having great products amongst all of the elements of price and delivery as well.
NOTE… we have GREAT products, technology, and tools…absolutely!
So where is this going with respect to UNDERSTANDing our clients?
Well, that is simple AND complex.
Simply, the harsh reality is that if we are going to gain market share, grow the number of clients we have, and grow within those clients we already serve at some level… we must help them to CHANGE their thinking about the work and the decisions that they reached in the past with respect to their choice of suppliers in a given solution set. We must help them CHANGE their thinking, to CHANGE their beliefs, to CHANGE their actions… and choose US. And that is the complex part…CHANGE!
However complex it might seem or be, we CAN achieve it. It is quite doable. We know how, and many of you are good at it already.
Next week we will look at the magic in the use of SMEs and the PIVOT, in helping guide our clients through the CHANGE process.
OK, LET’S ROLL! Thru the change!
Mitch
