It’s never what you want to hear. Maybe you knew it was true; maybe it was news. Ideally the message was delivered directly. So, what happens next?
Your consultant, brought in to help you get results, has just shone a light on your operation, and you realize it’s a house of cards. My team and I deal with this on many engagements, and it is often the first stepping stone for leaders to turn their results around.
How do we go from UGLY to AMAZING?
Great Leaders Listen
For many organizations, the hardest part is acknowledging the situation and the root cause. People naturally want to stay clear of blame, and in some corporate cultures, the norm is to either ignore what is going on or to blame others. Emotions can run high and hot.
The first step is to listen. Ask questions, check the context, dive in. Allow any owners or leaders involved the opportunity to share their perspectives.
When we at Blue Orbit have to give “ugly baby” news to clients, the first thing we do is check our facts and the context. No one wants to give bad news, but real results only come from those willing to shine a light on the problem and the possible solutions. We also work hard to strip down our language: make it simple, make it direct, remove the adjectives and adverbs, and support the story with data.
Our best experiences driving outcomes with clients are with leaders that listen to all sides and then ask “so what do we do about it” with a focus on actions and results.
Great Leaders Focus on Going Forward
UGLY news is rarely fun, but it can be constructive. My client Mark knew his baby was UGLY – in fact, he dared me to say it early in the collaboration and he pushed me on my careful choice of words. I reminded him that I was not afraid to say it, but I wanted the thought energy to be on the problem and not on whether I picked the right words. He also jumped immediately to where we wanted to go: is everyone aligned on what we are solving, the issues at hand, and what we will do to solve it?
Before we solve Mark’s issue, though, what about the rest of the client team? When we collaborate with clients, we make sure that the story is socialized with the process, operations, or technology owners participating in the engagement. We explain our point of view, we listen, and we look for ways to incorporate critical points of view. Turning the UGLY into AMAZING requires alignment on the problem and enrollment in the solution at multiple levels.
Great Leaders Look at Business Value
At Blue Orbit, when we partner with clients, we set this conversation up on multiple vectors:
- What needs to be done - and done now versus later?
- What requires little effort or a lot of effort - and how does that map to business value?
We do it this way to put the control in our clients’ hands. They can prioritize based on what is likely to succeed in their environment. We stay present with our point of view on solutions, best practices, and what might work every step of the way.
We collaborate with client teams on solutions – sometimes we call them building blocks – and we emphasize thinking of all the possibilities. Then we prioritize across team members what it takes in terms of effort plus what is gained in value.
The idea of building blocks allows us to group things together and move them around. The intertwined ideas of effort and value give us context for prioritizing what should happen next.
In the case of Mark’s team, these conversations were detailed and complicated. The stakeholders did not agree at first on what was really critical through multiple conversations. We went back to the data, we reviewed best practices, and we developed the funnel based on where they ultimately aligned. It may not be every best practice, but it is right for them right now.
We brought back the building blocks to Mark and his peer group. They listened. They focused on going forward. They decided where and how to act. They were willing to make bold choices and bet on what it took to get from UGLY to AMAZING.
Our approach in this arena is one of the things that makes Blue Orbit different. If you need help on your UGLY to AMAZING journey, please reach out anytime.
If any of this resonates with you or your organization, take a moment to share this newsletter with your colleagues who may be struggling with similar challenges.
Blue Orbit Consulting guides you through methods that will transform your IT team and contact center’s operations into a world-class experience.
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I founded Blue Orbit Consulting in 2014 after running staff organizations in contact centers and building consulting practices in customer service, process improvement, complex program management, and channel operations. My approach – and my firm’s approach – is fundamentally pragmatic, and our clients often achieve benefits in excess of 10x their investment. We develop and deliver world-class customer interactions for our clients, whether it is troubleshooting and optimizing what they already have in place or creating strategic transformations to deliver outstanding customer interactions every time.