The modern contact centre can be a challenging environment to stay focused on the strategy, deliver value and build engaged and connected teams who have the tools and capability to deliver for customers.
Creating the ability to adapt under the pressure of disruptive change takes a systematic approach. So we have codified the 12-keys and broken them down to help you get started.
The first key element is ALIGNMENT.
Teams are coherent in their understanding of themselves, their work and where they are heading together. Alignment promotes connection within teams – they feel and know they are all in it together.
1. Vision:
Where does your team want to be? Having a shared destination makes the journey clearer for team members and gives a north star pulling the team into their desired future state. Vision statements should be inspiring and inform a team’s roadmap and objectives.
2. Purpose:
This is the motivational force that drives the team, it’s their ‘why’. A purpose should be meaningful and long-lasting and drive the teams’ behaviours and actions every day. When teams clearly understand their purpose, they will adapt quickly to change to stay focused on their purpose.
3. DNA:
We believe that a team’s DNA should represent a team’s collective traits, similar to a set of values for your team, this is how they show up in an organisation. Clearly stating what a team wants to be known for externally - to their customers and to the rest of the organisation, is paramount for a team’s success. A team’s DNA, like our biological DNA, is what they are made of.
The 2nd key element is DIRECTION.
Once teams have an inspiring vision, they will need clear direction on where they should focus their energy on, otherwise, each team member might end up focusing on what they believe is the right work. Having this shared understanding will not only promote better outcomes for a team but also alleviate any anxiety teams feel when working with unclear objectives.
4. Strategic Drivers:
We believe that a strategy shouldn’t sit in a drawer and the strategic drivers are the pillars of a team’s direction. Based on the vision for a team, the strategic drivers should be well thought out to support the team’s path and inform initiatives. If the work doesn’t align with a team’s strategic drivers, there are two questions worth asking: should we be doing the work? Are our strategic drivers still relevant to where we want to be?
5. Objectives:
What we observe with teams is that they have plenty of work to do, but they can’t confidently explain the ‘way forward’. Collaboratively defining the outcomes for each strategic driver is the first step for a team to work in one, cohesive direction.
6. Roadmap:
A roadmap is about a team’s intention for the future, not planning out the entire path and trying to stick to it. We like to work with three to five-year roadmaps, with a team’s vision being long-lasting. Thinking ahead is important for the team to understand what the opportunities for the future are, however, there needs to be a willingness to adapt their strategy as they uncover new pathways and pivot to market conditions.
3RD key element: Capability
Mindsets are formed from ideas we once had that became beliefs, so as easily as we can form new ideas, we can form new mindsets, and perhaps this could be the linchpin to the 12-keys.
7. Capability:
Developing emotional intelligence around both self-awareness and relationship-awareness will enable teams to improve the way they work together and build high levels of psychological safety that will foster idea sharing, question the status quo and take responsibility for mistakes.
8. Collaboration:
We need to “break down siloes’ is a catch cry we have all heard, these are the invisible barriers to solving problems and creating value.
Teams that think about the customer and organisation as their first priority over an above team and individual needs are able to collaborate and share common goals and objectives. Often how teams are measured creates these siloes, so look at the metrics and search for team based metrics over individual.
4TH key element: Rhythm
This is what agile is known for and is a vital element in any team looking to become more collaborative with a focus on personal growth. Teams that take advantage of visual management tools to foster meaningful conversations will stay ahead, self-adjust and get the right work done. These are the two steps under rhythm:
9. Visual Management:
What gets visualised gets talked about and what gets talked about gets done. Organising the work in a visual representation that suits each team is a powerful step in our work with clients. Leaders who foster transparency of work will experience a positive shift in their teams: more communication about what matters, collaboration to deliver the team’s outcomes and true ownership of the work. It’s not rare for teams and leaders to come up to us to share how happy and engaged their teams have been after they started visualising their work. We’ve seen teams outperforming their own expectations by shifting the work from computer files to a transparent way to display and talk about the work. There is no one best way to visualise the work as there are no rules. The key here is that the most high-performing teams we’ve seen live and breathe the agile mindset, therefore evolving the visualisation of their work.
10. Operating Rhythm:
Visual management is only as good as the operating rhythm that goes with it. The operating rhythm is the frequency at which the visual work is talked about. We find that the closest teams are to their customer, the more frequently they should meet; daily or more often if the information changes quickly. More strategic teams might talk less frequently (maybe weekly, fortnightly or even monthly) about how their initiatives are moving. Whatever the operating rhythm, the value is in the team conversations that happen around the visual representation of the work.
5th Key Element: Review
The power of hindsight is only as good as a team’s willingness to learn and adjust their ways of working and the work itself to continue to improve what they do. Teams that pause and take a moment to review their work, celebrate success and re-calibrate are able to harness their collective insights, outperforming teams that get stuck in the rut of doing the work. These are the two steps under review:
11. Continuous Improvement:
Continuous improvement is so often talked about but so often put on the back burner in preference of the actual work. Prioritising reflection helps teams learn what they need to improve and take action to make those improvements. A regular rhythm of reflection is a trademark of high-performing teams. It improves the collective’s awareness of themselves, each other and the system they operate in.
12. Metrics:
These should be created in alignment with your objectives. It is very important that metrics are used to understand how a team is going in the achievement of their objectives, and ultimately their vision. Leading indicators are incredibly useful in informing decisions for how to proceed and lagging indicators can sometimes be helpful in understanding the achievement of results, as long as they are not the only metrics a team relies on. We recommend that teams use shared metrics and KPIs over individual, with the exception of quality metrics, this fosters collaboration and a singular focus on the customer.
Think of these steps as a map to take your team to a place of high achievement, particularly in the fast-paced contact centre.