Posts Tagged ‘Management’

Leaders On Being Leaders at WOW!

In: Culture

By: Sherry Zachary on Jun 15, 2010 at 8:00 am

I’ve spent a lot of time talking about what makes WOW! a unique, great place to work because it is my mission to talk about our culture here.  I have not however, talked much about our leadership team and what it takes to be part of the group who sets the Servanthood tone and reinforces our other values (Respect, Integrity, Accountability) on a daily basis.  I started to write about what it means to me to be part of the leadership team here and had one of those AHA! moments:  Why not ask some of our leaders?  So I did. 

I sent an email to a handful of WOW! managers across all locations and their answers  gave me warm fuzzies over and over again.  I asked them to give me two or three brief statements about what it is like being a leader at WOW!.  I said, “Be honest.  What is good about it, what is challenging about it, what keeps you here?”  I asked that they respond quickly with instinctive, gut reactions.  I so enjoyed their responses that I will probably do this as a recurring ‘Culture’ event.  (Besides, there isn’t room to fit them all in one blog!)  Here are the first three:

“It’s so many feelings wrapped up in one ball.  It’s challenging because our culture demands that our leaders remain positively electric to keep our front line supercharged while performing at near perfect levels.  Leading in our world is high energy, extremely humane, FUN, and rewarding because we have so much contact with our employees that we really can make a positive difference in someone’s life each and every day.”
-  Lucy Kasiorek, Vice President Telephony and Dispatch Operations

“For me the WOW! culture is the most balanced workplace I’ve ever experienced.  We have the freedom to take chances and make changes.  We are rewarded for our successes and allowed to learn from our failures.  Doing right by our employees and customers is never questioned and this helps keep us moving in the right direction.”
-  Darrel Schmitz, Director of Business Operations

“I am so grateful to work for a company that empowers its leaders to make decisions on the local region’s behalf.  My team can provide suggestions such as which communities to build, what the next employee incentive campaign should be, what community outreach programs do we want to do… all at the local level and we can implement in a very timely manner.  The biggest challenge we have is fighting the competitive battles against much larger corporations that have significantly larger marketing budgets.  Thankfully our employees are very engaged to provide a high level of customer service, giving us a competitive edge that many consumers truly desire.  It’s great to work in a company culture in which the vast majority of our employees have embraced our core values and objectives.” �
-  Kirk Zerkle, Vice President & System Manager

WOW! Leadership - One Big Team

WOW! Leadership - One Big Team

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Undercover Boss: The WOW! Way

In: Culture

By: Sherry Zachary on May 18, 2010 at 8:00 am

I’m sure many of you have seen the reality show ‘Undercover Boss’ whereby a CEO or someone of equally impressive status gets all dressed up in a disguise and spends a day interacting with what we call Front Line People.  Of course the highlights of the program are all around the surprises to the CEO as she/he learns about the reality of processes, tools, equipment, and the snafus and other not-so-good conditions of their employees’ daily work.

Personally I’ve never watched it, even though it gets talked about around the water cooler here.   Why not?  Because we’ve been doing this since day one at WOW!.  We call it ‘Customer Contact.’  But before I tell you the reasons we do Customer Contacts, it’s important to define Front Line People.  These are the folks who work for WOW! who truly add value to our business.  They are the people who directly interact with our paying customers.  Whether Sales Reps, Customer Care Reps, or Technicians, these employees are the face of WOW! to our residential and commercial customers and even to the general public.  Front Line People define the customer service experience for WOW!.

Ok, back to Customer Contact.  The WOW! Customer Contact standard says all managers, especially senior level managers, are to spend half a day every calendar quarter with someone on the front line.  The objectives are simple, important and so obvious that it surprises me every company doesn’t do the same:

1. Witness and appreciate what it’s like to walk a mile in their shoes. (Translation:  no one is too good or too lofty to do what the folks on the front line do.)

2. Get a chance to see and feel the customer service experience we deliver to external customers.  (Translation:  Is our training effective?  Do our employees learn what they need to learn in order to deliver exceptional service?)

3. Look for ways to remove barriers, provide better tools, improve processes and systems, and eliminate communication issues between inter-dependent departments.  (Translation:  What isn’t being sent up the flag pole?)

Simple, right?  Obvious, right?  Oh, all right, I confess.  There are two more reasons for doing this so it’s maybe not as simple as all that.

4. Get to know the people on the front line on a personal level… and give them a chance to get to know their management team

5. Share what we learn with other managers, especially those with the power and resources to implement positive change.

I should probably point out one more thing.  We don’t use any pretext and we don’t disguise ourselves, in fact we usually set up an appointment so the employee knows before it happens.  We dress like they dress so we can actually help them do their work.  (Maybe I can’t read a signal meter, but I can hold a flashlight, hand a tool up a ladder, assemble a welcome kit and find a street address as well as anybody.)  In the end, I believe everyone enjoys these experiences and I know for a fact that some really great anecdotes come out as a result.  They may not be TV-worthy, but employees (and managers) get a lot of laughs when they talk about their own experience with the ‘not-quite-undercover boss!’

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Accountability the WOW! Way

In: Culture

By: Sherry Zachary on Dec 29, 2009 at 7:03 am

Accountability is one of the four core values at WOW! and therefore it is one of the most important influences on our company culture. It’s a big word and if you Google it, you will get an explosion of concepts and theories being marketed by trainers and consultants with labels such as ‘Employee Accountability,’ ‘Personal Accountability,’ ‘Team Accountability,’ ‘Leadership Accountability,’ and so on. At WOW! the concept is simple and it’s personal: Own your part of any situation and work toward a solution.

We’re not taught a lot about accountability as kids. We had responsibilities, like chores, homework, cleaning our rooms, and we were accountable to do them. If we didn’t, there were consequences or punishments such as no allowance, being grounded, or losing TV privileges. At the end of the penance, we got a fresh start to be good again. As we transition to adulthood, however, responsibility becomes more connected to accountability. In a work environment adults have job duties and responsibilities and when there is a failure to execute, there’s usually a negative business impact, sometimes with a rippling effect. Do we get grounded or sent to our rooms? No. If we aren’t accountable – if we don’t ‘own’ our failure to the boss and the boss finds out some other way, the consequences can be serious. There may be coaching or formal discipline for the failure and a string of such failures can lead to termination.

What happens however, if we are Accountable by WOW!’s definition? We will be the first to tell the boss about our failure and we will offer to work toward a solution. (This doesn’t mean we always have the solution.) Most likely the boss will appreciate being told rather than surprised, the boss will be more likely to forgive the failure than issue discipline, and the boss will be more likely to support us and empower us to take corrective action.

Being accountable also builds trust into work relationships. When a member of a team ‘owns’ an error or a missed deadline without pointing a finger at someone else or at an external factor, the other team members start respecting and trusting that their teammate is honest and intends to be reliable… in spite of the failure.

‘Leadership Accountability’ at WOW! means management keeps employees current with the state of our business. Leadership Accountability credits our successes to the employees who make them possible, and shares profitability with the employees whose performance drives our growth. Finally, Leadership Accountability means the management team is first to openly admit their mistakes and drive Accountability by example.

At WOW!, holding employees accountable and having a leadership team accountable to employees eventually led to one of the company’s most frequently repeated mantras: Learn Faster, Execute Better. This little motto provides room for people, teams, and managers to make a mistake and move past it, with a focus on improved performance in the next effort. Learn Faster, Execute Better does not mean discipline never occurs, rather it is tightly tied to Accountability. Those who own their mistakes get a chance to correct them and those who don’t reap the consequences.

Accountability IS a big word, and at WOW! if you have it, it contributes to your success.

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Culture for the Cable Guy?

In: Culture

By: Sherry Zachary on Dec 22, 2009 at 6:15 am

Why would a cable company include a section about culture on their blog? Perhaps because within the company there is heartfelt commitment to the philosophy that satisfied, engaged, and appreciated employees will create happy, satisfied, loyal customers and ultimately the company’s success in a competitive service industry. When it proves to be true, it is worth talking about.

Respect, Integrity, Accountability and Servanthood are the core values by which WOW! manages its strategies and its day-to-day operations. They are the framework of our culture. Here’s how WOW! defines them:

Respect : Treating others as you wish to be treated
Integrity: Choosing correctly between right and wrong
Accountability: Owning your part of any situation and working toward a solution
Servanthood: Embracing the attitude and honor of serving others rather than being served

People who embrace these values at a personal level are attracted to WOW! …and are successful at WOW!.  Those who do not, are not.

What does it mean to live by these values in an employment situation? It means WOW! fosters a Servanthood perspective in an environment that is respectful and holds people accountable. Who do we serve? First we serve our customers. Therefore, the most important employees at WOW! are the people who interface directly with them. The rest of the employees at WOW are there to serve and support those front-line employees.

WOW! has a unique organization structure that demonstrates the interdependency and support status of all departments; it shows how we serve the employees who serve our customers. We call this our Internal Service Structure and it is the brick and mortar to the core-value framework of our business.

Would you call these statistics indicators of a successful business?
- 22 consecutive quarters of customer growth
- 37% new customers from existing customer referrals
- 10 J.D. Power & Associates Customer Satisfaction Awards in the last five years
- 5 consecutive years of profit sharing distribution to employees
- 94.3% overall employee satisfaction

These truly are measures of success and the leadership team at WOW! is convinced our culture drives such performance. Our commitment to Servanthood means we don’t assume basic compensation, decent benefits and a safe work environment for employees will cause them to happily exceed customers’ expectations. Our culture seeks to value, nurture and reward the human spirit – recognizing that employees are people first and wage-earners second in the hierarchy of their needs. We work hard to recognize accomplishments, reward performance and appreciate when someone goes above and beyond. We create opportunities to have fun at work. Most importantly, we encourage everyone in the company to do these things for each other.

The business indicators listed above are only one measure of our success. We get literally hundreds of customer compliments and ‘atta-boys’ every month. Our customers and our employees are passionate about ‘The WOWWay’ of serving and our mantra has become ‘It’s not what we do, it’s how we do it.’ Employees are proud to represent WOW! and customers are anxious to brag about their service experiences, or WOW! Moments as we like to call them.

So that’s why we have a category for ‘Culture’ on our blog. Future articles in this space will include stories that demonstrate our Core Values and our commitment to Servanthood… because these are what make us a successful little ‘David’ to our competitor ‘Goliaths.’

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A Blog Editor? Really?

In: About, Culture

By: Sherry Zachary on Dec 02, 2009 at 6:50 am

Imagine my surprise when I was invited to become the ‘Culture Editor’ for the new blog on our company website… when most of my peers know I only just registered for a Facebook page. I don’t tweet, am barely LinkedIn and am only slightly aware there are Blogs out there. Sure I’ve read ‘em. Participate? Never.

Okay, I thought to myself, focusing on the role of ‘Editor.’ Someone must have heard about my minor in Journalism. I asked around. Nope. Only the manager who hired me nine years ago knows anything specific on my resume. So why, I wondered, would I be asked to be a Culture Editor for a medium I know next to nothing about? Maybe the keyword is Culture. Hmmm – I am a Director in the Human Resources Department. Aha! The light bulb went on.

Do I appreciate the culture at WOW? As a human resources professional for the past 20+ years, you bet your last paycheck I do. I consider working in MY field at a company like WOW! to be the gift I will never take for granted in my career. So I followed my journalism-honed instincts and decide to gather some firsthand facts.

> Fact: I was at the leadership meeting when we selected the 4 core values that would define our management approach: Respect, Integrity, Accountability, Servanthood.

> Fact: I have nine years of experience watching a company grow from 60 employees to 1300 employees and in the last 5 years I watched WOW! earn 10 J.D. Power and Associates awards for Customer Satisfaction.

> Fact: I know in my heart it is our commitment to Servanthood that drives our employees’ eagerness to create the customer experiences that earn those awards.

> Fact: We faced an incredibly tough budget process for 2009, following the economic crash at the end of 2008; we had to make some sacrifices this year that affected everyone in the company. We did not cut out the line items dedicated to rewarding and recognizing employee performance and accomplishments.

Next I wondered how employees were feeling about WOW! after three-quarters of this really tough year, and I did what every good human resources manager would do: I sent out a survey. I asked employees on a voluntary, anonymous basis this question:
“If you like working for WOW!, please let us know (in order) the reason you like working here.” I gave them six choices: Compensation, Benefits, My Boss, My Team, The Overall Company Culture and ‘Other.’

It was my guess that our overall culture would be more important to our employees than their benefits or even their compensation. The chart you see below is the result.

Survey Results Graph

Almost half (204) of all responders picked Overall Culture as the #1 reason they like working here. Our employees’ responses are the ‘proof in the pudding’ that culture can drive performance. I invite you to learn more about our culture by finding your way here again next week.

You know what? I think being Culture Editor for the WOW! Blog is going to be fun.

- Sherry Zachary, Director of Human Resources, Field Operations

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