«People will not value you for how good you are, but for how good you do to others»
Juan Antonio Corbalan
One aspect that makes some outstanding organizations very special is the way they “invert the pyramid”. The origin of this innovation, in many cases with a highly disruptive component in terms of organizational culture, arose in those primary stages in which many companies began to shift from a product focus to a customer focus, in the last decades of the last century.
How placing the customer at the center was not so easy to implement and it was Karl Albrecht, one of the greatest management gurus in terms of service excellence, who at the end of the 80s proposed the concept of serving the customer and, above all, to serve those who serve…
The conjunction of these two simple ideas, not only from the perspective of the client but also from the people, suggests a type of leadership that allows us to align everyone’s commitment around those who receive what we offer. Let’s delve a little deeper into these two approaches:
- Serving the customer: It involves placing the priorities of those who receive our product/service (customers, users, beneficiaries, etc.) at the top of the pyramid (level 1), and at the following levels, from top to bottom, the direct service provision (level 2), support processes (level 3) and, finally, strategic processes (level 4). We can call this pyramid the “hard pyramid”, the technical structure.
- Serve those who serve: If we identify in that pyramid, at each level mentioned, the stakeholders (or segments thereof) involved, we would have the following correlation: priorities of those who receive our product/service: customers (level 1); direct service provision processes: customer service professionals (level 2); support processes: technical staff (level 3); strategic processes: management personnel (level 4). We can define this structure as the “soft pyramid”, the organizational, power structure, in short.
Does our current organization chart reflect this “order”, this hierarchy? How far is the current status quo from these approaches? Who is at the top of our pyramid? How do we represent our organization chart? What are the implications of inverting the pyramid in practice?
And some slightly more incisive questions: Do we really serve our customers? Do we serve those who serve? Do we really understand that it is the “front line” staff, or direct contact with clients, who make everything we are (and want to be) as an organization a reality before the client? Is the top management at the service of who matters? Or do we have the feeling that who we really serve is management and, behind it, shareholders?
Three tips that seem essential to help drive this transformation:
- Real empowerment of people through effective leadership. If high levels of autonomy and interdependence are not promoted in the people in direct contact with clients or in those who support them (with resources of all kinds), we will not materialize expectations into realities. If people are not empowered so that they can create their “natural decision space,” we will not be agile or respond with excellence, mortal sins today. Very interesting, in this sense, the reading of “Leaders eat last” by Simon Sinek.
- Mainstreaming or how to keep in mind -all the people and all the time- the client’s priorities. If in my department, area or team we are not able to clearly see the client (external or internal) at the beginning and at the end of everything, to identify their key expectations and to obsess over checking if we are giving them what they expect from us from their point of view (direct perception), perhaps we are not as “transversal” as we think.
- Technology for immediate, real-time access to key customer parameters by frontline personnel. Information systems on key processes and activities (care/service provision) or their monitoring mechanisms are essential for monitoring our performance or monitoring feedback in real-time. If we do not have these systems or they are not well designed, we will not be able to be effective.
If you ever find leaders with high doses of humility, who minimize the impact of their particular role but maximize that of their team, who are governed by a significant purpose, focused on developing and driving others at the same level as the achievement of results, and that they say, much more frequently, “how can I help you?” instead of “what about mine?”… Attention! It can be an excellent indication of an “inverted pyramid”, of an organization that is clear about who has to be served and that makes, from the action of serving, a competitive advantage…
