Page 286 - Performance Leadership

Chapter 15 Telecom Performance Network • 275

parties should be recognized for the results that are being generated,
such as revenue, profit, and growth. With even a single party missing
in the process, the results wouldn’t be what they are. Even if it is pos-
sible to break down revenue or profit by department, division or func-
tion, this should not be attempted. Departments should be recognized
for the full result that was achieved by all parties involved, in order to
drive the right behavior, which is seeking ways to optimize the overall
process. When outcomes are broken down by department, the usual
suboptimization will start to appear again.
In transactional relationships, customer satisfaction surveys are often
a once-in-a-while activity, typically reactive after informal feedback
becomes hard to ignore. Projects are started to improve satisfaction,
and business returns to normal. However, a transactional focus on man-
aging the department doesn’t invite managers to continuously mind
customer satisfaction. Yet, this information should be continuous and
driven down to the people on the work floor who interact with cus-
tomers every day. External customer satisfaction surveys should be a
continuous process. Within internal joint-value relationships, an inter-
nal customer satisfaction survey is not even needed. As the manage-
ment teams between divisions collaborate all the time, there is a
continuous stream of feedback.
Trust is usually not even relevant in transactional relationships;
there is a focus on doing transactions only, not on recurring business
within the organization. This is hard to understand, as departments
need to work with each other every single day. However, with vertical
alignment, only reporting up, there is simply not much horizontal dia-
logue. Trust by customers is bound to be not very high if all depart-
ments work in isolation and cannot commit to a certain customer
result. The best way of measuring trust, and providing that feedback
to all departments, is to measure customer referrals. If customers are
happy with the service, then they feel comfortable endorsing the com-
pany to their friends (the so-called net-promoter score); this is the true
measure of success.
In order to reach flawless execution in a complex and fast-moving
environment, joint-value relationships are required. Performance indi-
cators focus on external results and on internal collaboration. In order
to build trust, right first time, order to fulfillment time, and customer