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Whether your the employer or the customer, these are words you don't want to hear. And yet all to often, they are exactly the response you'll receive. Organizational life in the 21st century has many challenges. All of these challenges are now more poignantly experienced as a result of the recession we're not having. Businesses today know that in order to succeed, they must make the customer king. Maybe that's why Business Week's recent list of most innovative companies is proliferated by company's who have a reputation of listening intently to customer feedback and delivering accordingly. These are organizations who employ people that know it is everyone's responsibility to deliver excellence, consistently. Perhaps the most offensive of the aforementioned excuses, are the ones that disavow total responsibility for the outcome of their actions. Whether it's "that's not my job" or "you'll have to talk to someone else" each indicates a lack of interest in the situation. As a customer the last business that you want to do business with is the one that has absolutely no interest in you. A friend once told me that when they worked at Intel the role was if you discovered a problem, you owned the problem, until the solution was found. Even if the problem was in a completely separate department, and you had notified the appropriate leaders, it was your responsibility to see it through to resolution. There was no passing the buck if that never occurred. Owning problems that are our own is challenging enough in today's environment. No one ever wants to admit fault. Owning someone else's problems requires a wholly different level of commitment. But if someone sees a problem that is not their own through to resolution, than the likelihood is that they can be counted on to see any problem through to the end. In the final analysis, the one who owns the problem, also is the own that gets to decide how it will be solved. We call these people leaders. |
