How to change your thinking to avoid being mauled by rising expectations and tightened resources.
Whilst the years since the pandemic have been challenging for membership organisations, all but the most optimistic business leaders believe they’re about to get even harder. In the UK, all businesses are facing a considerable level of uncertainty caused by factors such as a potential change in government and the possibility of further economic downturn. Many membership organisations also have to contend with the “Jaws effect” where they are being mauled between increasing customer demand and decreasing income and investment.
Improving organisational efficiency to deliver improved services from the same resources will be an absolute pre-requisite to survival. But with membership organisations already dealing with significant inflationary pressures in their cost base, how can this be achieved?
Conventional advice would be to focus on simple efficiency gains. But after the last five years, these low hanging fruit have all been taken. Similarly, internal restructuring will make it feel like positive action is happening, but there is little guarantee of lasting improvement. The temptation has traditionally been to invest in pure technology to deliver change but with 70% of digital projects and 55% of CRM projects failing to deliver a measurable ROI, this on its own is clearly not a safe bet.
Turning the problem on its head
We believe that these types of “top down” approaches will not solve this seemingly impossible challenge. We need to look at it in a different way.
In most organisations, the front-line staff already understand the problems, with many no doubt having a view on how they should be solved. And in every canteen, we might hear phrases such as “why on earth do we do it that way?” or “wouldn’t it be so much simpler and quicker if we just did this?” But these ideas rarely make it all the way up to the leadership teams who can test and implement them.
There are three core reasons for this.
- Beliefs: Change is always made “top down” so staff don’t believe they have permission to make changes, even if they are for the better.
- Behaviours: Staff are often treated as though they can’t provide answers to seemingly complex organisational issues. In doing so, we fail to use their full talent and capability because of our belief that business leaders should always know the answer.
- Opportunity: Staff may correctly understand what needs to change but rarely have a proper process for making it happen. This means that the change is either forgotten or rushed through without the necessary analysis and support. In this case, the negative effect is doubled as any failure will strengthen the beliefs above and reinforce a fear of change.
The most progressive organisations know that the answer lies in harnessing the talents and capability of your entire team. Change must be able to occur from the bottom up, the top down or even horizontally throughout the various departments of the organisation.
Approach problems from the outside in
The Jaws effect requires membership organisations to address an increasingly diverse and complex range of member expectations. To do so, its thinking, behaviour and capability must advance in step.
In the same way that front-line staff understand operational issues, the member perspective is the only source of unfiltered information on how these expectations are being met. Tapping into this via an “outside in” approach means developing strategies to engage with members, gather knowledge about what matters to them and then use this to change the ways in which the organisation thinks, behaves and works.
After doing this, members will be understood as fully intrinsic to the organisation in terms of strategy as well as cashflow. Service levels can continuously improve, capacity can be created by focussing only on important areas and the organisation can develop its offerings to bring more value with the same level of resource.
The importance of a framework for change
Most people come to work wanting to do a great job, make a positive difference to their customers and be valued for what they do. However, difficult working methods, poor processes and weak member satisfaction strategies hamper these aims and reduce morale, motivation and energy for change. Avoiding this requires a robust change framework within which managers and staff can experiment together in a safe environment. They can experiment jointly and focus more on refining the working models, processes and products that bring results.
This new way of working drives job satisfaction for staff as they gain back some of the autonomy and meaning in their roles. They can concentrate on developing more efficient and interesting ways to deliver services to customers whilst using the real-time information on hand to steer their efforts.
Similarly, managers are free to focus less on conventional managing and more on employee engagement and service improvement. Doing so will demonstrate how staff performance depends far more upon how well the “system” supports the individual in being the best they can be than it does on supervision. And as they shift from reading reports to continuous improvement, the organisation will benefit from far more accurate and timely observation and feedback on overall performance.
When this happens, the leadership style evolves away from managing people and moves towards leading, facilitating, and empowering staff to improve services. In doing so, increased satisfaction and change become the new normal.
Where to get help
Intercloud9 is obsessed with helping membership organisations to deliver change successfully. We work only within the membership sector and over the years, our team has supported more than 50 organisations with a total of 38 million members. We also have decades of experience working with leading vendors in the industry.
This gives us unique insight into avoiding pitfalls, ensuring all stakeholders and appropriately engaged, and helping organisations to achieve the outcomes they need.
Our approach is underpinned by a solid focus on change management and designed to ensure clients achieve their objectives. We aim to bridge the gap between organisations, their technology partners and their vision by providing a one stop shop for all things change management. Learn more at www.intercloud9.co.uk.
