At the after lunch key note on Friday, Faith Gaudino, Senior Vice President at Experian, and Beth Wheat, Director of Global Program Management at Experian, spoke on “Creating a Client Centric Organization / A Strategy for Sustainable Success.”
Experian provides credit analysis, decision analytics, etc. “We help our clients to make better decisions.” It has sales of $4.2 billion, 15K employees, and is a worldwide company whose US headquarters are in Costa Mesa, CA. Experian also provides community services, teaching financial literacy. Their part of Experian, Global Product and Technical Services, has 3000 employees. It is the IT arm of Experian.
Success depends on execution, and execution depends on people.
Experian’s People Strategy: As a strong product and program management company, they recruit and develop talent, and transform careers to keep up with technology. Each employee has an individual development plan of strengths and opportunities. They are a matrix organization, and have a talent exchange program, that allows you to temporarily work in another area. They seek employee engagement, aligning individual and company goals, and client centricity.
Employee Engagement: Having enough passion, understanding your role in the organization. Employee engagement has to benefit clients, leveraging the gifts and talents of the individual.
They put clients at the heart of everything they do. Their pillars are culture, tools, and metrics.
Tools: They use Sharepoint 2010. Rolled out in September 28, it has already created vibrant online communities.
Culture: They are a matrix organization.
Metrics: Net Promoter Score.
Not a Program, But a Transformational Movement: Movements are described in Seth Godin’s Tribes. A movement is thrilling. It has a narrative that tells the story of who we are and what we are building. It has micro leaders all over the organization. It creates a vision of the future.
Superior Service Wheel: This provides a line of sight to client mapping sessions.
The speaker (I didn’t record which one of the women was telling any particular story) told a story about reporters visiting NASA and asking a man pushing a broom what he did. He replied, “Gentlemen, I put men on the moon.” Every employee should be that engaged with the company’s larger goal.
Execution, Leadership, and “New Work”: Consider the impact of relational database technology. Leadership is changing as dramatically as databases once changed, to a role of mentorship, coaching, and removing obstacles. Social media like Sharepoint 2010 and Agile methodology are transforming leadership.
Young people may understand technology, but they aren’t necessarily being groomed with the communication skills they need to lead. Today’s leaders need to be masterful coaches.
Employee engagement is also a very important metric.
See Deep Change: Discovering the Leader Within, by Quinn.
The older generation has a problem with social media.
Becoming Client Centric and the Positive illusion: We tend to think we’re already OK. We need self-direction, curiosity, lifelong learning, and the ability to manage our emotions, in order to welcome 360 degree feedback, communicate, and be productive. These are the skills high schools need to teach. We need more project management skills and intercultural sensitivity.
Google the Ten Imperatives of High Performance.
1.Hire for the right fit
2. Create greater clarity between roles and objectives
3. Clarify the link between pay and performance
4. Help managers provide constructive feedback
5. Provide high-impact on-the-job-learning opportunities
6. Empower employees to impact the organization
7. Build connections that allow employees to better execute work activities
8. Align employee interests with job opportunities
9. Remove organizational barriers to manager effectiveness and impact
10. Redirect leader behaviors to meet changing business needs
What would it be like if everyone you worked with were truly inspired? We want employees to be engaged and look at work as more than a paycheck. A blue whale takes a long time to turn around, but a similarly large school of sardines turns fast, because there are always a few swimming against the flow. Change can happen fast: the Internet, the Berlin Wall, the revolution in Egypt. Be committed sardines.
“Teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”