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Employee buy-in produces sustained success "Engaged" employees of "Level 7" agencies have clear vision of owners' goals By Penny Ciaburri Sustained success is the ultimate accomplishment. Regardless of economic variables, market conditions, client demands and the other associated pressures of business, having your company predictably achieve financial targets is the goal of every CEO. Beyond that, what would it be like to confidently expect continued employee engagement and flawless service to clientele—no matter what? This requires courage, conviction and unending commitment to do what it takes. Few companies are ever able to claim this. As a matter of fact, small business failure rates abound; on average the numbers are often quoted at greater than 80% in the first year. Retired Harvard Business School professor John Kotter, whose work is considered definitive, outlined eight key concepts, which organizational leaders must address.i These include concepts such as establishing a sense of urgency, building coalitions, creating and communicating a clear vision, empowering the workforce to participate fully and ultimately institutionalizing fundamental behaviors and practices so that success continues. Kotter comments: “In failed transformations, you often find plenty of plans, directives, and programs, but no vision. In one case, a company gave out four-inch-thick notebooks describing its change effort. In mind-numbing detail, the books spelled out procedures, goals, methods and deadlines. But nowhere was there a clear and compelling statement of where all this was leading. Not surprisingly, most of the employees with whom I talked were either confused or alienated.”ii Our Level 7 Accreditation Program (see sidebar) empowers companies to develop a process for measurement of their organization’s vision. This provides the framework Kotter discusses and is the process followed diligently by the agencies we work with and who are achieving sustained success. The core fundamentals for certification in Level 7 are the three P’s. They are: The People (extent to which our workforce is engaged and confident in our company’s structure and predictability of success); Productivity (financial targets) and the Practices (high performance infrastructure that keeps the company moving.) Failing to plan, planning to fail Without an integrated approach, most companies are destined for fairly dismal outcomes. They either repeat past mistakes, attempt to solve everything with “more training” (not the answer) or look for the latest, greatest “next fix.” Of course, none of this works and typically serves only to fuel the company into a never-ending spiral of reengineering, reorganizing and what employees appropriately term “here we go again.” If you are seeking long-term success, the solution is first understanding the problem and then applying the appropriate fundamentals. Whether it is the performance review process, compensation, target tracking, training, leadership or hiring talent, our Level 7 Agencies understand this. They have steadfastly committed to this path and are sustaining brilliantly. Chris Schenck, principal of Knapp, Schenck & Company Insurance Agency in Boston, comments on their sustained success: “Linking our strategy to the various Level 7 Systems of target tracking, compensation and ongoing feedback is not a one-time event for managers but a company-wide effort involving highly engaged employees.” The Sylvia Group of Insurance Agencies in Dartmouth, Massachusetts, is an excellent example of how everyone in the organization understands exactly their role in securing the agency’s long-term performance. Sylvia Group, having exceeded their agency financial goals for several years, was recently recognized as a top-performing, woman-owned business. CEO Maureen Armstrong says: “Our organization has experienced tremendous growth since embarking on our journey toward Level 7 Certification. Our employees have developed the skills essential to function as peak performers in a ‘totally accountable culture.’ By focusing on the crucial client-centered skills of communication and conflict resolution as well as professional skills such as high-level thinking and self management, we have built an organization in which everyone contributes to growth.” Whole company approach Companies that sustain strong and predictable results utilize a “whole company approach” where each person clearly recognizes the concept of “everyone involved in production.” Level 7 companies speak a common language, understand individual and collective accountability and have tremendous determination to stay the course. A committed leadership team is absolutely essential, once the decision has been made to take your company to the next level. The executives/principals must step up and take first responsi-bility for leading the charge. Level 7 Leaders continually monitor and assess the workings of the organization while keeping the conditions of high performance in place. Notice, it is not “make it happen,” but rather “set the conditions.” There is a difference. Leadership must create the framework for optimal performance and then rely appropriately on the surge of a true Level 7 workforce. The impact of the “right people” given the benefit of the “right conditions” is extraordinary. Newer members of Level 7 are already experiencing the momentum and excitement that emanates from taking charge and “building it to last,” as Jim Collins (Good to Great) would comment. Geoff Feltner, principal of The Feltner Group in Spencerport, New York, is just eight months in. Feltner’s excitement is infectious. He says: “Level 7 is like having a secret weapon in your arsenal that helps you win battles every day. Level 7 has helped us create an atmosphere of ‘can do’ enthusiasm, which is contagious among our staff and customers. Working with Level 7 has helped give everyone of our staff the tools and confidence to really make a difference, and every day is now full of excitement.” Tom Murry, CEO of the Insurance Center, Inc., in El Dorado, Kansas, comments: “Beginning with our very first conversations about Level 7, our company was energized. The notion that we could improve our employee culture and productivity, while becoming a ‘sales driven organization’ was very attractive. The Critical Indicators process was extremely challenging. We gained clarity on the most important indicators for our agency—new business revenue and renewal revenue. The entire agency is now focused. All departments and individuals have targets which are specifically measurable.” The Herlihy Insurance Group of Massachusetts, based in Worcester, is concentrating on the initial Level 7 fundamentals. After taking the Company Snapshot (assessment tool), diagnosing key opportunities and improvement areas, the entire organization enthusiastically began work on a performance management system that focuses everyone on production and the all-important target tracking strategy of Level 7. Owner Jim Herlihy says: “The owners agreed that we wanted to bring our business to the next level. Not only did we want to improve on our P-C income growth, but we also wanted to make our agency a better place to work for all employees. We wanted to turn our agency into a business where every employee is focused on accountability and achieving agency, department and individual targets. “We looked at several different programs and Level 7 had everything we were looking for,” Herlihy continues. “The systems within the program help us to focus on what’s vital to the success of the agency. We are in the beginning stages of Level 7 and already we can see a change in attitude in our agency. We are implementing the Performance Appraisal System (PAS) for every employee. This system ties in our agency goals to every department and employee. By doing this, employees know exactly what they need to do to contribute to the agency’s success. They can actually self manage themselves to personal successes while helping their departments and the agency reach its goals.” Key learnings So … what does it take? Let’s go right back to the work of Kotter. He concluded after years of working with both large and small companies that there are two key learnings. First, he said: “The most general lesson to be learned from the more successful cases is that the change process goes through a series of phases that, in total, usually requires a considerable length of time. Skipping steps creates only the illusion of speed and never produces a satisfying result. A second lesson is that critical mistakes in any of the phases can have a devastating impact, slowing momentum and negating hard-won gains.”iii The agencies identified in this article, new as well as veterans, all understand if we are to “build it to last,” the undertaking must be serious, sequential, predicated on fundamentals and must involve the entire agency, over time. Level 7 is a hard-earned credential, taking an initial 24 months to implement and then two to three years following to certify. Is it worth it? Ask Universal Insurance Services of Grand Rapids, Michigan, a success story of Level 7 that is identified by the Grand Rapids Business Journal as the “Cool Place to Work,” or any of the other successful companies that have taken the time to master the Level 7 Certified performance fundamentals. For those that do—and then institutionalize their hard-earned peak performing culture, not only is the future successfully predictable, but work becomes a great place to be. * The author
i Kotter, John, “Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail,” Harvard Business Review, March-April 1995, reprinted in January 2007. |
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