Can you feel it?
One of the aspects of my job that I love to describe and that motivates me is that I “feel the business”. I feel the impact of administrative dollars to the financial income statement. I feel the impact of delivered services by talking to sales executives and customer service management. I read customer requirements and customer complaints. I look for opportunities to talk to positive minded employees that are making an impact in the organization and to our customers.
Feeling the business means understanding how customer requests are turned into finished product. It means understanding how my specific job impacts the bottom line. It means understanding how a colleague’s job impacts the bottom line.
I use the imagery of ‘feeling’ with employees during coaching sessions and reviews. Feeling the business transforms a job to a new level. It involves the employee, creates commitment, and influences better performance. I used to think of it as a featured aspect for select jobs. But now, I see that it’s much larger. We all have an opportunity to feel the business. I believe, that it is an unstated factor that distinguishes the high performers from the average employee.
Serving notice to technology professionals.
I don’t advocate a culture where technology professionals are hidden from the business. IT shouldn’t be just a cost center on the income statement with team members that do their job in a bubble. Technology professionals need to step-up and understand how their work impacts the success of the company and the customers who buy the products and services.
But listen. This isn’t any easy thing. IT professionals are put into cultures where the goal is to follow a process. The goal is to check-off all the boxes and the procedures list. When this happens, it’s easy to lose site of the reasons the processes exist. It’s easy to lose site of the customer. It’s easy to not feel the business because IT is feeling the task and the process.
Create the culture to feel the business.
If we want everyone to feel the business then we have to create a culture that encourages others to see it, accept it, and value it. Here’s some specific examples how I encourage others to get a feel:
- Get out of email and pick up the phone – Email has a place in our communications. But an effective way to feel the business is to hear a customer speak about a need or complaint. We had a service incident this past week that affected the ERP for a division of our organization. After the dust settled, I called the organizational leader. I wanted her to hear my voice when I spoke about the problem rather than me writing an email response. I wanted to hear her response rather than read it.
- Share the financial results of the company – Help employees feel the business by sharing financial results with them. I pass down financial metrics like company revenue, profit, and expenses to employees. It sends the message that they are participants in the financial results of the company. Employees are concerned about the health of an organization, and they should be encouraged to exhibit behaviors that influence positive results.
- Tour operations and understand the flow of work – Operations is where customer requests turn into products and services. If employees want to feel the business they need to understand this. Last year, I contacted a plant operations manager and arranged a plant tour for our entire IT group. The results were spectacular. IT employees were making comments to me like, “I had no idea this is what was happening” and “this really helps me understand a few things.”
- Measure results after a project completes – A few months ago, we completed a project that automated a manual purchase order process to an electronic workflow. After the project completion, I asked the manager of the group that was processing the purchase orders to list all of the tasks that were eliminated. We put an approximate time by each task as well. It was a powerful statement. We had used a similar list as part of the ROI for the project. But reading through it post-production release allowed us to truly understand the impact the programming had to the business. We certainly could feel it.