Strategy exists — results don’t: where a leader loses touch with the business

In today’s fast-changing, multitasking business world, a leader constantly faces new challenges. As my coaching practice shows, success in overcoming them directly depends on how smoothly and effectively the system is functioning at the moment. When analyzing the effectiveness of current operations, I often encounter leaders’ mistakes, which most often consist of losing touch with five key points: the goal, employees, clients, colleagues (business partners), and oneself (burnout). In this article, I would like to focus on the three most dangerous ones — the goal, employees, and clients.

Everything begins at the stage of losing touch with the goal — this can be the source of many mistakes. This is especially noticeable after strategic sessions if leaders do not support their teams through the change process. As a result, at the end of the reporting period, instead of receiving results, they are forced to listen to excuses.

To set movement toward the goal in motion, it is necessary to use a whole set of tools. It’s worth starting by organizing regular working groups and training in the competencies required to implement what has been planned. Training should be conducted on the processes the company is working on at the moment. This will ensure high motivation and a strong retention rate, since regular practice is precisely the key to successful learning.

As part of our collaboration with a company providing accounting and legal services, we organized training meetings twice a month and weekly meetings to monitor progress. By the end of the first reporting period, the leaders had already begun introducing the practice of engaging training meetings, the standardization of business processes, onboarding, and hiring.

Employees are sometimes the only point of contact between the leader and the client, and that is another mistake. A client’s needs and pain points can change, and employees may not always be able to notice this quickly. Here, NPS measurements (Net Promoter Score — willingness to recommend) and live meetings with clients will help a leader. It can also be important at times to try going through the customer journey yourself, trying to shift into an observer’s position.

When I once took a job at one of the major banks, I was pleasantly surprised to discover they had a practice of sending new head-office employees to branches as a “mystery shopper.” Their feedback questionnaires go to the manager and help them get a snapshot of the situation at that point in time. For me, as a newly hired employee in the training department, this was very useful for understanding what was going on.

I’ll share more details on how not to burn out at work and how to build effective collaboration with colleagues and business partners in the next article…

A unique event will take place soon — the International Real Estate Business Forum, where, as part of the experts’ club on September 10, we will raise the topic of communications and effective management in an open dialogue.