Why do you need to check that standards are in place?

When I am struggling to think of something to write about, I normally find some inspiration from what’s happened over the past couple of weeks. In this short article, I am going to link the leadership behaviour of ‘checking standards’ to food poisoning…

My wife and I decided to take a couple of nights away over the Easter weekend. We’re having our second child in July and are not going to be able to take much time-off between now and then. The Easter weekend gave us an opportunity to get away for a couple of nights without our daughter who was being spoilt by her grandparents.

To cut a long story short, on the second and final night of our stay, I got food poisoning from the hotel restaurant.

We’ve all had it and it’s not pleasant but my view is that ‘if it’s not going to kill me, it can’t be that bad’. This adds a bit of perspective when I am feeling sorry for myself!

Anyway, after a long night, we checked out and told the manager of the hotel that I had suffered food poisoning from last night’s dinner.

His response was disappointing because he started to ask questions about ‘whether I’d had this verified by a GP’. It was clear that he was looking to avoid responsibility for what had happened.

This brief moment tarnished the entire experience of our stay – which had up until this point been very pleasant.

It’s been said that when someone has a good experience they tell a few people about it. But if the experience they have is negative they tell many people. Unfair? Maybe. But that’s the game.

In an age of social media, this is only going to get worse. One bad experience is all it takes for someone to share something negative on social media. A couple of taps on an iPhone and seconds later, your organisation’s reputation has taken a massive hit.

You cannot afford to leave a customer dissatisfied. It undermines all the money you spend on marketing – eroding it like inflation.

I started to think about this from a leadership perspective. If that were my business – how would I prevent this issue?

Well, I’ve written before about the need for leaders to check that the standards that they have set – remain in place. In this instance, this is an issue connected to standards.

Standards are ‘what good looks like’. They’re a clear articulation of ‘how we do things around here’. They make it clear where the line – what is acceptable and what isn’t.

They’re not just the processes to follow.

It is a leadership responsibility to check that the standards you think are in place – are in place. If you haven’t checked, you’re failing to do a fundamental part of your role as a leader.

This isn’t about trust. This is about making sure that the important things are being done to the right standard. As soon as you stop checking, standards slip because the underlying message you have told your people is that – this is no longer important.

During my seven years in the Corps, I trusted every single one of the Marines under my command. All of them.

But I still checked that they had unloaded their weapons correctly at the end of every day on the firing range. I still checked that they’d cleaned them properly the following day. They were clear on what ‘good looked like’ and although I didn’t like doing it, there were consequences for not maintaining the standard.

The key point here is that all organisations need standards – and all leaders need to check them. The act of checking them is the red line – the friction that holds your standards in place.

So what does this mean for a business?

Using my recent experience – If I was in an operations role in the Hotel chain’s leadership, I would offer a few vouchers to some contacts I knew on the proviso that they gave me very detailed feedback on their experience. This would be a valuable insight into the journey that my customers were taking. This would tell me where the ball actually was in the above diagram. Not where the the guy who was in charge before me told me it was, not where the brochure said is was – where it actually was – based on gathered facts.

This would give me an idea of where we were. We could then start to move forward by coaching people using the standards.

I would also run some group exercises along the lines of, ‘how would you cope with the following situation – a customer complains about having food poisoning…’ This would create an opportunity for some conversations within peer groups to see how others would cope in a similar situation. It would create an opportunity to see how people think and react in different situations. This shared learning would be valuable in improving performance by aligning people on best practice.

Leaders put standards in place and they spend time checking them.

If you’re not checking your standards, don’t be surprised when they’ve slipped – not if, but when.

Lastly, when someone complains I would get my staff to treat it as an opportunity – a chance to rebuild and improve the relationship. Do whatever it takes to make that customer feel special. If you do, you stand a good chance of them telling many people how marvellous you are. If you don’t, you might as well water down your marketing budget.