“Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change” is a powerful quote from Wayne Dyer that perfectly encapsulates the life safety industry and our businesses. There is a growing recognition that being open to new ideas, change and really diving into how you run your business — including the customer experience — is key to continuing to deliver to your customer and your team.

Building your team with people of diverse backgrounds, ways of thinking and interacting with the world can fast-track the changes that you need. Great ideas can come from all corners of your team if you foster the right environment for open communication. We all love to see the movies, shows and stories where the game changing idea came from the most unexpected person. So why not foster that in your team? This is not change for the sake of change; this is advocating with your team to be open to change when needed, and openly discussing changes in the industry with customers. 

Communication

Communication with and within your team requires different approaches, from communicating to the entire team through town halls, newsletters, and group emails, to other means like team meetings and one-on-ones. Each plays an important role in providing a means to share information and collect feedback from your team. When you do not use the correct communication method, you can completely change the outcome of the message or leave it up to employees to create their own interpretation. It is human nature to want to be the first to know about corporate news. But “water cooler talks” about corporate change are often not productive or based on the worst-case scenario. 

From the top-level executive standpoint, being able to effectively share the strategic direction of the company; connect each person to their direct contribution to the company values and purpose; and explain how they impact the customer and the bottom line is critical. Why are we changing, adding or removing a product, how we go to market or how we enhance the customer experience? We must ensure the change is communicated by leadership in a clear and concise manner and then repeated often. 

Middle managers also have an interesting and critical role in communication. You are to encourage and evaluate progress on your team’s alignment to the strategic direction while also providing feedback to the executive staff on what is needed for success. It is crucial that you show alignment with the executive team and lead by example. It is also critical that you do not communicate executive or personnel related challenges to your team. Always communicate that directly to your executive team. 

Getting feedback from the team regarding potential changes can be obtained by a simple method such as a “start, stop, keep” exercise within departments or teams: What are three things we should start doing, three things to stop doing and three things to keep doing? However, it is important for strategic or vision changes to ensure that requesting feedback doesn’t lead to unwanted sharing of information.

Process Improvements 

We all know the famous “that’s how we have always done it” moniker by now. We laugh about it and then realize, how many of those processes exist in our business? What is holding us back from being better and more efficient? What can we do to make things easier for the team so they can deliver to the customer? How does this process feel to the customer?

This is where the open and clear communication and the start, stop, keep exercise can work together to deliver results. What is preventing you from analyzing your processes to see if you are making your teams’ jobs harder? Are you easy to do business with? Are you using your AR information to make changes to your operational process? 

What if you challenged your team each year to think of ways to be more efficient, and the winner got a percentage of the savings as a bonus? Or some additional PTO? This makes efficiency lucrative for both the business and the employee, which creates an understanding that “when we win, you win.”

Un-Silo Your Business

There is an obvious need to have people specialize in particular areas of your business, but that doesn’t mean they have to be completely separated, not sharing ideas and information.

For example, if a team member learned their lack of adding notes in an order or not adding the specific details needed when you established a customer or vendor in your system created hours of work for another team member, then they could collaborate to develop an improvement to the process. This would bring efficiency to the organization and partnerships that could greatly improve the company and communication between departments and as individuals.

A great starting point could be to gather team members that have a process that touches several departments and together find a way to make it more efficient. Everyone gets to hear how that process impacts them, what it takes for them to complete that process or the impact of a lack of following the process. They can then design a process that is more efficient, creating a better understanding of the business and buy-in on the process they created. In addition, they will be able to clearly articulate the change to their teams, the purpose of the change and how that impacts the teams. 

Share the Information

One fantastic feedback and team tool is the project review — not just when something doesn’t go well, but just as importantly, when your team knocks it out of the park. Meet with everyone associated with that project such as salesperson, project manager, purchasing, engineering or design, programmer, technician, etc. 

Say, “Here is how we performed against the budget. This is why we purchased 10 of these instead of 15 of those. Here are some things we didn’t know that we need to look for next time in similar projects and how it impacted the project.” This is all about information sharing so the team can improve or share how they won so the team can continue to use the same processes to win next time. 

You can gather a lot of information from this review, and when a problem or recurring problem is exposed, it’s a great opportunity to have those diverse viewpoints and experiences coming up with the best solutions for future projects. 

Change is often seen as something monumental, but sometimes it’s the small changes that make the difference. Having your teams working together, solving problems together and easily adjusting processes when business dictates it will make them change agents. Communicating effectively, encouraging process improvements and creating an un-siloed business will make for a profitable, efficiently executed company with engaged team members all working toward a common goal, a common vision and making your customers happy. That sounds like SUCCESS!