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In my business management roles in large companies as well as startups, I have seen different cultures for increasing productivity, growth, and profits. The best focus on developing people, while others focus primarily on developing processes. I’m a strong believer that your people are the most important assets in any business, especially in today’s environment of rapid change.
In my view, it takes the right people to implement and manage repeatable processes, but companies with a great process focus often still struggle with long-term success and low employee engagement. Customers as well these days judge a brand primarily by perceived people relationships, through social media, phone conversations, and sales experiences.
Consequently, in my mentoring with aspiring entrepreneurs, I always highlight the advantages of people-centric leadership first. The key benefits I see include the following:
1. Processes without people never signal a need to change. Repeatable processes need to be continually updated, based on market changes, new technology, and ease of use learning. That requires team members who are monitoring business metrics and sensitive to customer feedback. Fixed processes can rapidly make you non-competitive.
2. People-centric leaders get thinking outside the box. Business growth and competitiveness requires constant innovation and creativity, rather than just business-as-usual processes. Business survival today requires taking calculated risks and constant change to customer processes to keep up with market trends and new challenges.
3. Higher people retention and lower turnover. Great employees are less likely to move on from organizations and management that prioritize their needs. Thus people-centric leadership saves your business time, resources, and training by limiting turnover. In addition, experienced team members are the key to understanding customer needs.
4. Increase team engagement and commitment. Highly motivated team members are proactive in making effective updates to repeatable processes. This leaves more time for top business leaders to focus on future needs, rather than micromanaging individual processes and team actions. Be sure to incent and reward individual and team efforts.
5. Invest in employee coaching and career development. Too much focus on repeatable processes results in training classes that skip personal career needs and opportunities. Implement mentoring at all levels to build internal relationships conducive to improved commitment, personal motivation, and a mindset of long-term success in the business.
6. Every process impacts your overall customer experience. The days are gone when price and customer service process set your overall customer satisfaction. Customer retention demands more customization and personalization from people in every aspect of their buying experience, from solution search, through the purchase transaction and feedback.
7. Employees need to understand current business values. Processes need to be updated as business goals change, but this can’t happen without two-way communication between all levels of the organization and management. Leaders must nurture relationships with team members, rather than assume working processes are adequate.
8. Demonstrate trust and respect to get loyalty in return. If you treat team members as a fixed part of a business process to be repeated without change, you will not get the engagement and commitment to suggest and implement pivots as required. You need all the people help you can get to keep up with today’s highly competitive global economy.
9. Promote self-sufficiency and a lasting legacy of value. The ultimate accolade for any leader is seeing the business run effectively and change proactively even when you are gone on vacation or moved on with your own career. Neither team members nor clients will remember or appreciate the number of fixed processes you have managed.
Of course, the key to a really great business is finding that balance between repeatable processes and committed people. Process leadership is an important priority, but it is just not effective alone as a long-term solution, without people leadership first. I view people leadership as the bigger challenge, so you need to start today keeping it in the forefront of your priorities.
Related: Top 10 Drivers for Success in Creating Multiple Businesses