What happens when you change your perspective by 180 degrees? 

Have you walked in the shoes of your workforce recently?  You might learn some interesting things about your organization by taking a trip to the front lines.

Most leaders in an organization look at their companies from the top down.  They collaborate with fellow leaders and come up with great ideas and strategies to drive the success of their brand and to fulfill their promise to customers. 

What happens to those great ideas when they’re passed down the ladder? Are they working? Are the expectations realistic? Do your teams understand why they’re being asked to do things a certain way?  Is the mission and vision clear?  Do they know how to successfully & consistently deliver your promise to customers?

When leaders take the time and exercise the patience to put themselves in their associate’s shoes, they can have an eye-opening experience. Put yourself on the front lines and take a look back up the ladder.  What do you see?  How are messages delivered?  Talk to your front-line associates.  Find out what really happens in their day as they interact with customers.  Dig in to see if they’re clear on their role and truly understand their accountabilities.

Armed with this valuable information, you can regroup with your fellow leaders and start to identify all the places in your organization where you might be misaligned.  Then you can re-shape existing programs, fine tune messages, streamline and prioritize communication, and make any other needed shifts so that you’re on the road to aligning your workforce with the promise you’re making to your customers.  

In more than 20 years of experience working with some of the world’s leading brands, our experience has shown that when leaders make that trip to the front line, they always find opportunity to increase alignment throughout their organization.  When they take an authentic look at the world through the eyes of their associates, they discover ways to simplify processes, amplify messages, reduce clutter, and improve results.  It’s all about leveraging energy.  When you’re able to increase the effectiveness of several thousand people (or more), think about the exponential results that are now possible!

What’s going on at your organization’s front lines?

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