PRINCIPLE #4: Crisis Calls for an Emotive Purpose
By: Rodd Olmstead
Tags: Teamwork, Motivation, Retail, Crisis Management, Leadership

In this series of articles on transformation and success in the face of constant crises, so far we have; compared the notion of all things being equal versus the ever evolving global reality that all things will never again be consistently equal, looked at external and internal influences toward the identification and realization of new competitive advantage then, in the article that immediately proceeded this article, we established a process to identify and empower the ‘few’ core people throughout the organization that have the ability to influence and facilitate change quickly and effectively.

What of the many?

The ‘many’ within an organization can range in number anywhere from one thousand to ten thousand or fifty thousand front line employees.

Photo by Stefan Lehner on Unsplash

Given this large volume of employees will be focused on tasks connected with the easily repeatable methods that ensure the operational output of the organization on a day-to-day basis — it is imperative that we now look at how today’s leaders can ensure that the many are behind the process of transformation toward the rapid implementation of new, often now digitally-centric, easily repeatable methods.

Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) may not be the most exciting topic for leaders, however these basic guidelines must be in place to facilitate clear job roles, training and the day-to-day basics that ensure your customers experience a consistent level of service. If you have not put in the fundamental work here you need to get busy! That said, it is worth noting that SOP will, on average, only facilitate the delivery of 70% of what is required from your front line workforce.

Even with SOP in place, you’re still going to have to dig deeper to engage your largest group of employees toward 90%+ effort — and that’s when all things are equal.

External forces can indeed be useful, there is nothing like a problem that is bigger than the organization to force change within an organization. But, whether the factor driving the need for change is an external crisis, or perhaps the digital transformation of your business, the same human insight applies equally to either task.

If success in operational transformation is reliant on an ability to mobilize a large-scale front line workforce, the key questions for operations leaders at this stage are:

What are the true motivators of the front line workforce?

What emotive purpose will the team buy into?

Which leads us to Principle #4: Crisis calls for an emotive purpose.

When I think about the most inspiring leaders I have worked for and with, all of them had one thing in common, an innate understanding of the human dynamics of a large-scale, front line workforce. They all possessed an understanding of human truth and human performance — very specifically how everyday people live, what it takes to inspire everyday people to perform better and, therefore, how to mobilize a workforce toward significant outcome.

Photo by Tim Marshall on Unsplash

In my years of experience it has been evident that, at the operational level, there needs to be recognition of the competing realities for front line employees. Being hands-on, front line employees are the most crucial in the operations effort yet they are often the least well trained and the least well paid in the whole organization. In addition the list of variables for this key group of employees is as long as the pool of employees is vast — these everyday variables include the strains of physical labor, hours worked, level of pay, rate of turnover, tools, training, work environment, natural ability and personal motivation.

Consider the day-to-day reality of a distribution center employee. Their tasks are repetitious to the extent that they may be repeated up to 100 times a day, yet a high standard of completion for these tasks is crucial in order for the organization to meet (or exceed) customer service standards.

Even with a well-designed SOP in place, the required tasks are not going to vary or become more interesting.

Seems appropriate then that we examine an important personal driver, that being motivation. If we’re to look to answer the question ‘what are the true motivators of the front line workforce?’ we would have to acknowledge that, at the implementation level, the reality of humanity is often that work risks becoming just a means to an end.

From a top down perspective; boardroom dynamics, vision statements, financial incentives, the corporate P&L, or perhaps even inspiring offsite events provide both professional and personal motivation on a regular basis.

From a bottom up perspective the overt incentive is limited. At the same time SOP is often presented to frontline employees as a poster on a wall in a lunchroom….

If you want your front line team to move, if you want to mobilize the largest segment of your operations team, you need to connect with them emotionally. This is the secret ingredient in any given transformation — how you choose to engage your largest group of employees to become part of an emotive purpose. That is what will take your team from a 70% effort to a 90%+ effort.

In order to motivate you’re looking to fuel the need people have for a purpose. There needs to be a noble cause, with a benefit beyond the everyday, to involve hearts and minds. Perhaps even to enable them to see themselves as the hero of the story.

Ask yourself this — what emotive purpose will the team buy into, NOW?

The emotive purpose starts small on a day-to-day basis. Let’s say, in the world of retail, bringing in technology such as digital payment on phone or self-service at the point of sale — previously a front line employee would have completed the transaction for them. The digitization of this process could now be seen as providing less for our customers, unless perhaps front line employees are encouraged to look at the reduced costs of business meaning price savings passed onto the families being served.

Therefore the personal impetus to support change is values based and the front line employee/s can get behind the digital transformation by helping customers utilize the new technology.

Be mindful that all transformations require a human story, a human reason to embrace the new benefit.

Be sure to take your front line employees with you on the journey, by leveraging your established framework of the few. Consider not only what you say but also how you say it — because giving the team something worthwhile to believe in allows them to embrace fighting the good fight with and for you.

Be sure to follow me on linked in and feel free to comment, reach out or contribute to the conversation!

Rodd.

As always I would like to acknowledge the assistance of Rennae Long in writing early drafts of this article series with me.