Photo by Joshua Hibbert
I’ve been thinking about purpose a lot lately. This could be due to a few sessions that I have conducted on operational planning, values and purpose or just my own troubled thoughts about what I am doing in the twighlight part of my working career. This is not an epiphany, as it has been brewing away for quite a few years, but I realised after a training session last week that if you examine most organisation’s strategy and purpose, generally increase shareholder return, the values, which typically include being customer centric, are then compromised. It is just inevitable. Simply put, if your purpose is to make ever increasing piles of money you are going to compromise on the majority of your values and you will upset your customer base at some point in your blinkered pursuit of profit.
I have noticed over the last few years that many participants in my classes have realised this without really being able to put their finger on the simple truth above. A typical question goes like “why are we here learning how to be better at customer service when the organisation keeps screwing our customers with inflated prices?” A good and fair question one that I find I have been struggling with. I have formulated a response though that has really helped me and goes along the lines of “Yes, that maybe what your organisation is doing but you are the person the customer deals with and I know that you do care about your customers and you provide the best service you can. You should continue to do that as you are providing a service that people value and that will provide you with a great sense of personal satisfaction and pride.”
Imagine if your overall purpose and strategy was to please and delight your customers. No mention of profit or shareholders. There would be no conflict with the standard values and employees would not be conflicted. In today’s world your customer base would grow due to word of mouth and you would inevitably become more profitable. There are organisations out there who do this. I’d like to be a trainer in those organisations.
To my real dilemma though. Education, training and teaching has lost its connection to purpose. It was never meant to be about profit and shareholder return but it is now and hence the values and website rhetoric is disturbing and frustrating and has created a general lack of confidence amongst our customers and clients. I got into teaching and training because it was about learning, helping others and personal growth. I often think now that it is more about entertainment, teaching for assessment only and the achievement of client satisfaction. Satisfaction meaning were you entertained and did we provide the answers to the assessment.
My believe is that if you started a training organisation that provided excellent learning, personal growth, enriched learning experiences and ongoing growth development and you charged appropriately and forgot about the profit and shareholder return you would have an organisation that would attract clients who really wanted to learn, not just complete an assessment, and profit would increase. You would have more business than you could handle.
Ah, it is an ideal I know but wouldn’t it be great to work there, be a participant there, be apart of that type of learning and development. Interesting challenge.
PS: I probably come across as a pretty frustrated and disgruntled trainer in this post but I’m not. These thoughts crop up now and then, especially when filling in 40 pages of a currency matrix to prove my value. My line to participants that I quoted above is also my mantra as i know it is for many of you.
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