2.6b Reading: How Customers Can Rally Your Troops Part 2

A Leader's Guide to Outsourcing Inspiration Relatively few companies seize opportunities to create motivating connections between employees and end users. Many leaders are simply unaware of those opportunities; others may be concerned about abdicating their roles as visionaries. But as I noted earlier, strong leaders are essential in effectively outsourcing inspiration. In my recent studies of sales and government employees, I found that inspirational leadership and connections to end users operated in tandem to motivate higher performance, measured in terms of revenue as well as supervisors' ratings. End users complemented rather than substituted for leadership, bringing the leader's vision to life and strengthening employees' beliefs that their contributions mattered. To outsource inspiration effectively, leaders must build and leverage their networks to find end users, collect their stories, invite them to the organization, introduce them to employees, and recognize workers' contributions. How can they accomplish this? Identify past, present, and future end users. Many leaders mistakenly assume that they know who their end users are. For example, researcher Michael Tushman writes of senior managers at a large food products company that sold jars of pureed, strained, and chopped foods, such as meats, fruits, and vegetables. The managers were marketing the jars as baby food, assuming that their customers were parents of infants. But during a routine trip to a grocery store, one of the Florida sales team members discovered a hidden end user: elderly people, who were buying the products because they needed food that was easy to eat and digest. In addition to opening up a new market segment, this discovery alerted the company to a new category of end user who valued the company's products. To connect with the broadest possible range of end users, ask leaders, managers, and employees at different levels of the organization to identify various groups of clients, customers, suppliers, patients, and other recipients who have benefited, currently benefit, or could benefit from the work that employees do. Dig up feedback from past end users. Many organizations regularly collect useful information from focus groups and customer surveys that ends up trapped in silos or viewed strictly as marketing research to facilitate customer outreach and product development. This kind of feedback, no matter how old, can provide powerful examples of a company's impact on end users. For example, when Bob Austin joined Volvo in 1970 as a customer service representative, he received many unsolicited letters from people who had been in accidents and were writing to say that medical professionals and police officers had told them that they would have been killed if they had not been driving a Volvo. Two decades later, Austin became the head of public relations and created a club for Volvo drivers who believed that one of the automaker's cars had saved their lives. He tracked down past letters and invited the customers to join the club. Since then, Volvo's contributions to customers' lives have been more visible. Similarly, in my studies with fundraising callers, I discovered that the organization had a database of thank-you letters from grateful scholarship recipients. Managers had simply never considered sharing the letters with the callers. Seek out new stories. When employees lack a strong sense of impact, appreciation, and empathy, or when a particular group of end users is invisible, managers and employees can go into the field. At Medtronic, more than two-thirds of procedures using the company's medical devices are attended by an engineer, salesperson, or technician. As former Medtronic CEO Bill George explained to me: Employees need to remember when they get frustrated that they're here to restore people to full life and health. If I'm making semiconductors, how do I get to see the impact on patients? If I'm doing software development and there's a glitch in a defibrillator, people could be harmed or killed. Put it in those terms, work becomes very personal…It's very important that employees get out there and see procedures…it's a way of communicating what we're all about. Of course, these stories are most effective when they are shared not as vehicles for maximizing the bottom line but as genuine efforts to bring greater meaning to the work. Leaders who consider it their moral responsibility to help employees see the actual and potential consequences of their work are likely to inspire their employees; those who attempt to connect with end users just for a performance boost risk fostering cynicism and skepticism among the workforce. Set up events and meetings where end users can share their experiences. My research shows that although stories and letters can be motivating, a face-to-face connection with end users has a stronger emotional impact on employees. These sessions are most inspiring when they include end users whom employees do not normally see. For example, Deere & Company invites farmers who are buying tractors to visit the factories with their families. Assembly line employees get to meet the farmers, hand them a gold key, and watch them start their tractors for the first time. At Raytheon, military troops speak at divisional meetings, describing how a division's product saved their lives. An employee reflected that “putting names, faces, and stories with the individuals using our products certainly portrayed the point of our mission.” (See the sidebar “When You Can't Find End Users” to learn how to outsource inspiration when face-to-face meetings aren't possible.) Turn employees into end users. Employees who have little experience with the company's products or services often contribute more after they spend some time in customers' shoes. For example, at Four Seasons Hotels, employee orientations conclude with a “familiarization stay” in which housekeepers and clerks spend a night in their own hotels to experience the service firsthand. As a vice president of learning and development explained, “They're learning what it looks like to receive service from the other side.” At outdoor gear company Cabela's, retail employees can borrow fishing and camping equipment and write a review, which helps them understand the customer's perspective. Find end users inside the organization. Internal end users—such as a customer-facing team audited by backroom accountants or investment bankers who give client presentations prepared by junior consultants and analysts—are prime sources of feedback. For example, Francesca Gino and I found that when a manager from another department visited a call center to thank employees for their contributions, those employees increased their effort by 51% during the following week, whereas employees in a control group did not. Connecting with internal customers can be a powerful step toward reducing misconceptions and conflict between groups and departments. Engage employees who currently do low-impact work. Finding ways to connect end users to employees who seem to deliver few direct, lasting benefits can require a bit more creativity. One way is to leverage their unique knowledge and expertise. For example, Best Buy has created Twelpforce, a service that lets employees across the company, regardless of their job descriptions, use Twitter to respond to customers' questions and inquiries. In its first year, more than 2,600 Best Buy employees from across the company—including those who did not normally play customer-facing roles—joined Twelpforce and responded to more than 27,000 inquiries. At Whole Foods, employees whose jobs involve unpacking boxes and stocking shelves have the opportunity to educate shoppers about allergies, organic food quality standards, sustainable agriculture, and environmental preservation and recycling; some even teach cooking classes. Of course, it is important to make sure that employees have the knowledge, skills, and time to take on new responsibilities. Spread the message. Outsourcing inspiration is in large part a communications task. It is useful to organize events with end users, create videos, and post their stories on websites and intranets. For example, St. Luke's Hospital hosts a Night of Heroes event, during which patients are reconnected with the trauma teams that saved their lives and all team members are honored for their contributions. Senior leaders speak at the event, demonstrating its importance. Recognize high-impact contributions. Because leaders are often unaware of episodes of excellent customer service, coworkers can help identify them. Zappos, Google, Southwest Airlines, and Linden Lab all have peer bonus and recognition programs in which employees can commend and reward coworkers who have made outstanding contributions. When stories about these contributions go viral, they can be particularly potent: Spontaneity can signal that colleagues are genuinely motivated to make a difference. Outsourcing inspiration can have a significant, lasting effect on employees' motivation, performance, and productivity. When customers, clients, and patients describe how a company's products and services make a difference, they bring a leader's vision to life in a credible, memorable way. Employees can vividly understand the impact of their work, see how their contributions are appreciated by end users, and experience stronger concern for them. By connecting employees to end users, leaders can motivate through their actions, not only their words. Their inspirational messages become more than lip service.