THIS topic obviously throws-up result-oriented signposts of evident-based adaptive actions successfully executed along with anecdotal and story-based activities by a leader who has been successfully leading his organisation in weathering the storms of these challenging times.
This smart helmsman leads with first-rate intelligence with his creative solutions and also integrates innovative models with breakthrough ideas. His organization is always a step ahead of others. His understanding of adaptive frameworks and contexts gives no room to the one-size-fits-all model. His outlook is not linear and his sales enablement efforts are not driven by the usual transactional buyer-seller model only, but context-understanding and co-creation of values to satisfactorily meet customer’s needs, wants, demands and motivation.
He regularly organizes, analyzes and improves interactions with customers throughout the entire sales cycle. His understanding of customers’ needs, preferences, and behaviours is to deliver exceptional experience and drive loyalty, advocacy, customer-loop and lifetime partnership. His organisation thrives not by acquiring new customers, it relentlessly focuses on building lifetime relationship and mutually beneficial partnerships. He regularly oversees customer loyalty programmes to reward and retain valued customers and offers exclusive benefits, discounts and personalized services.
It is worthy of note that when you actively engage with customers and painstakingly address their concerns, you build trust and loyalty which ultimately lead to long-term satisfaction and word-of-mouth loop as well as advocacy. A key component of customer management by the leader-who-wins is customer segmentation. His organisation’s customer base is divided into different groups according to their purchase history and behaviour. This segmentation enables personalized offerings and customized experiences. This leader, in managing organisation’s customers, adopts a comprehensive approach that encompasses various aspects such as understanding customer needs, segmenting the customer base, actively and diligently seeking feedback, building value-adding relationships and involving various departments in his customer-centric organisation.
The hallmark of this leader’s smart organisation is an integrated value/production chain with thinking employees and learning culture. Processes and procedures are aligned and therefore, work together. Activities and functions are efficiently and effectively coordinated to such an extent that there is always a seamless link and conflicts and mistakes are resolved quickly and easily. The result of this integrated chain is a seamless alignment of internal integration, external integration, internal and external relationship integration, measurement integration, technology and implementation integration, and customer interaction.
Customer integration, for instance, is the competency that enables his organisation to offer long lasting, distinctive, value-added offerings to the customer who represents the greatest value in the entire value/production chain.
This strategically integrated value/production chain is a critical tool and vehicle in the hand of the leader who wins. He uses it to satisfy customers and deliver high-quality services. Productivity is enhanced while assets and resources are efficiently utilized.
Strategic Control Tools are also very handy for nimbleness by the leader who wins. He combines tactical performance with adaptive performance. The Balanced Score Card or organisation’s 4-perspective Holistic View: that is, Financial Health, Customer Retention, Internal Business Processes, Learning and Growth; is effectively combined with Adaptive Dimensions that are result-oriented and values-based. These dimensions include: Creativity and Continuous Learning, Agile and Collaborative Problem Solving, Gait in execution and also Innovation.
The leader who wins always exhibits some unique qualities. He leads the workforce with optimism and hope. He champions ideas, and is relentless in his push for growth and profitability. He galvanizes positive “reinforcements” for the organisation from colleagues and associates. He harnesses the power of rewards and recognition always. He encourages values-enhancing flow of information (including feedbacks) in the workplace. He enjoins managers and supervisors to be leaders-that-give-support and not bosses who are “immune” to mistakes. He stands out as a builder of internal and external networks and he is always on the look-out for opportunities and new angles for improved execution.
His daily business activities are purpose-driven with focus on customized value creation for customers. He demands “absolute eye” on customer experience with persistence and passion. In his organisation, any sign of complacency is immediately done away with.
Let me conclude with the leader-who-wins’ definition of leadership. Leadership, according to him, is an activity. It is something that happens. It is a muscle that can be progressively trained. Every colleague in the workplace must be mobilized to add distinctive value and regularly move the organisation forward. Leadership is an activity that you carry out and can therefore, get better at. Individual employee’s leadership emerges in the context of creative and innovative solutions in the face of challenges and problems. When every employee in an organization goes about his responsibility with the mindset of commitment that enables progress, a culture of value-adding leadership is enabled. This mindset spurs every employee to do innovative things and make genuine progress. Every employee must internalise the fact that it is not just the CEO that is leading but the entire staff members.
However, it is incumbent on the leader-who-wins that he creates the awareness and fosters actions that guarantee full realization of the four (4) core competencies of emotional intelligence. They are: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management.
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