Morale, Trust & Partnership

Throughout the world, companies are restructuring their operations to become more responsive to customers: redesigning their business processes, flattening organisational hierarchies, and building autonomous units and teams. These developments are making many businesses more competitive. At the same time, they are creating some new problems and challenges for managing business relationships and employee morale

This is also Billy's most used article over the years.

This paper addresses  a frequently neglected aspect of organisational life, namely  the moods of a company.

Do you Believe in Trust at First Sight?

Winning customers' trust is a top prize for brands. And when that trust is lost, its very difficult to regain. So how can you get ahead of the competition with your trust-building strategy? In an Interview with Fraser Allen, Dr. Charles Spinosa offers a fresh perspective. 

Read the interview here.  

'Seminal HBR Article on Commitment-based Management "Promise-based Management - The Essence of Execution" 

'By examining the commitments people make to colleagues and customers, executives can figure out why work stalls and how to get it moving again''.

In many companies, critical strategic initiatives keep stalling. Important work sits un- done. And emerging opportunities fall by the wayside.

Read the PDF version of the HBR article here, or read a version in your browser here, 

6-Sector Enterprise Map

The 6-sector enterprise map is framework for thinking about an enterprise holistically used for example when we design an operating model.

Political Map (also called an Alliance Map)

A Google Sheets example of a Political Map that we use as part of our stakeholder management practice.  Once you have the Google Sheet version displayed in your browser you can download an Excel version with File>Download menu entry.

Royal Sun Alliance (RSA) Video

RSA asked VISION to show that a service promise and new mid market broker experience can increase gross written premiums of 10 tough South-of-London brokers by 40% and that a newly designed fulfilment process will enable cutting staff capacity by 15%. 

Watch here as our client details the impact VISION made on their company.

NCR video

This video from our NCR project shows an entirely different transformation in New York City from the transformation in RSA, (View that video  here.)  However, we expect you'll see that we used the same techniques on our NCR project in Manhattan, as we did the RSA project.  (NCR is the the world's largest ATM supplier.)

Communicating with Customers 

We believe that companies need to expand their view of communications beyond advertising to customers. A company needs to give equal weight to communicating with customers. By communicating with customers we mean listening to customers about their concerns and talking to them about these concerns.

Communicating with Customers is our contribution to a book called "Kellogg on Advertising and Media" published by the Kellogg School of Marketing. Read it here.  

The One Number You Need to Grow

If growth is what you’re after,  Frederick F. Reichheld says you won’t learn much from complex measurements of customer satisfaction or retention. You simply need to know what your customers tell their friends about you.

Read the article writen by Frederick F. Reichheld that introduced Net Promotor Score to the world.  Frederick F. Reichheld was a partner in Baine Consulting at the time, and published his article in the Harvard Business Review.  Read the PDF version here.

Rebuilding Customer Trust in Banking 

The message is simple: Trust has been lost and the digital world is here. Successful relationships with customers in the digital world are high-trust relationships. It is time for bankers to rebuild trust at the same time as developing all the communications and analytical advantages of digital technology.

 Successful relationships with customers  in the digital world are high-trust relationships.  Read the article here on how to rebuild trust when its been lost in an article by Charles Spinosa for IBM.

Introduction to Learning Teams 

For a team to learn fast you need a coherent and consistent way of observing and assessing competency that lets you coach the team members to a higher level of performance. The Learning Teams approach gives you that. Here is a three-slide summary.

Guide to Learning Team Practices  

The Learning Teams Program provides facilitation for applying the approach. Learn here about the four key activities within a Learning Teams approach, the key practices, how it all works and how to implement the practices on a week-by-week basis, among more. 

Resolver Loop map 

For a PDF on the typical resolver process showing the typical coordination required to put a blocked process back on track, fast, click here.

Since you are interested in the Resolver Loop map, you may be interested in our How to Guide on How to be an Effective Resolver, found here.

For an excellent PDF example of how we used the resolver structure in Southern Water, click here.

This article details a Resolver Role Design. It includes a full process example of conversations and actions in relation to each step and working element throughout the project. 

Resolver and Continuous Improvement

You can see here in this detailed PDF slide how using the Resolver Role in the ongoing design and implementation stages of a typical project works and ensures continuous improvement. 

The slide outlines pilot project rhythms, continuous improvement and the Resolver Role in relation to daily customer interaction, twice weekly fixing and resolving as well as weekly design in action. 

The Story of Why

This PDF of The Story of Why provides good context for our work mobilising the Investment Manager role in major construction projects, click here for more details.  

It includes details on why we are the leaders of this change, how to access the old way, implement the new way and thus, create value, as well as operational practices among much more.