Can You Build a Great Reach Without Values?

Having referenced my last experience attempting to find some type of sustenance from the building beside those large golden arches, I’ll challenge you to think back a few decades for what you could expect. When I was a kid, it was such a treat! For years, there was only one location in our area - and that didn’t even have a playground. The kid’s meals had great toys and the milkshake machine was never broken. We lived about thirty miles out of town so any visit was a special occasion. Oh, how times have changed…

Fast-forward to today. I can list at least a dozen locations within a half hour of me where I could order the same thing I did as a kid, but what I’d get in the bag will be a far cry from what it was all those years ago - and we all know the milkshake machine will be broken! With all this in mind, that company still has incredible visibility worldwide. However, I can't say that what they’re known for lines up with their values.

Now think about where you go for God’s chicken sandwich. The number of locations throughout the Shenandoah Valley seem to be similar to what I remember of those prestigious arches some forty years ago, but I’m sure you’d agree that what we can all expect when we visit one is a wildly different level of service (and quality) than what we could ever hope to get anywhere near those arches today. Since our son had two years of hands-on experience making God’s chicken sandwiches while finishing up high school, I had the opportunity to get a glimpse many likely haven’t had. At the owner and operator level, as well as at the corporate level, that organization does more than just make a drive through run smoothly. Their core values aren’t just printed in a manual or on a website, they’ve instilled those values into the behaviors each team member is expected to use while serving every customer.

While I can’t make a comparison using current prices, having been several years since I’ve been willing to stop at the arches, I don’t recall the two companies ever being very close. Still yet, the drive through line can frequently wrap around one of them at any time of day where you’d rarely be three cars back at the other. Even then, the line will likely move all the way around the former before the third car gets their food at the latter.

Both companies have a huge reach. In fact, the arches are one of the most recognized brands in the world. But what you and I have come to expect today is significantly different from each of those companies. Although they’re not directly competing with one another on price, both are typically considered to be operating in the same space. Based on what I’ve experienced with each over the last decade, how the organization has built their core values into performance at all levels directly impacts their reach - positive or negative.

A great marketing campaign can certainly increase the number of people who know a company’s name, but how the people within that company model its core values will play a critical role in determining whether or not those people are excited to do business there. With that in mind, let’s look at some of the consequences of violating our business’s core values.

Not Just Broken Milkshake Machines…

While I was intentional about not mentioning either organization’s name previously, I have no doubt that you had a very clear picture of the one with broken milkshake machines and the one serving God’s chicken sandwich. And you certainly weren’t alone! A cxtoday.com article called “McDonald’s Is Failing on Customer Satisfaction, Report Finds” opens with this:

A customer satisfaction report has found that burger behemoth McDonald’s is the poorest-performing major restaurant in the US.

Conducted by the American Customer Satisfaction Index organization (ACSI), McDonald’s received the lowest ACSI rating across all full-service and fast-food restaurants.

At the other end of the scale, Chick-fil-A claimed the top spot for the 10th consecutive year, strengthening its position as the King of fast-food customer satisfaction.

I cited an article called “The Poetry of Purpose: Inspirational Purpose Statement Examples” in Leading With A Clear Purpose that used McDonald’s mission, purpose, and values statements area as an example of how far companies can vary from each listed these as the core values holding up those golden arches: serve, inclusion, integrity, community, & family. Serve, the first listed, was defined as “we put our guests and people first.” I’ll ask you, if that value was being modeled by leadership - even remotely - throughout the organization, is it likely that they’d be receiving “the lowest ratings across all full-service and fast-food restaurants”? Seems like that may be more than even the most reliable milkshake machine could fix…

Truth be told, I only bring up the milkshake machines because it’s become a running joke. For any joke to resonate, though, there needs to be at least some validity woven in. And just like most of us have been denied ice cream or a milkshake, it’s clear that many others have had similar experiences where the folks behind the counter did not put the guests first. It’s also clear that what I observed while our son learned all about those amazing chicken sandwiches wasn’t exclusive to our local stores.

The moral of this part of the story is that you and I have both made decisions, as consumers, about which organizations we’re willing to regularly do business with. Those decisions typically tie directly back to whether or not the leaders in these companies choose to model their organizational values, and how they’ve set clear expectations for their teams to do the same. From time to time, we see raging boycotts that make headlines because a company has alienated some of the customers. More frequently though, we vote silently with our money and opt to do business with those we’ve seen upholding values that align with our own.

Make no mistake, I’m not suggesting that it will ever be a cakewalk for any leader to consistently model the core values defined for their business. It’s just as challenging to set high expectations for their team members to exemplify those values and to maintain accountability when someone falls short. That said, failing to do either kills profitability in many areas of that business - and I detailed these two issues in back to back chapters of What’s KILLING YOUR Profitability? (It ALL Boils Down to Leadership!)... Building the foundation of our organization on values, consistently, will always require making hard decisions.

Taking the “West Point” Approach

While we may be able to throw enough marketing dollars around to ensure our brand has an extended reach, the consequences of not consistently modeling our core organizational values - for our team and everyone we hope to reach - won’t stop at dealing with broken milkshake machines. Leaders failing to provide a strong example will not only struggle to rally their team around the values printed in the handbook, but they’ll also impact the way clients interact with the business - sooner or later… As leaders, though, we can avoid all of that. That choice, however, will not be the path of least resistance.

My first direct interaction with a man who’s made a tremendous impact on my life over the 25+ years since was in January 1998. I had heard tales of a character named Terry Ward for several months before that but never met him personally. Terry covered two of the sixteen hours involved with the initial behavior-based safety training I was squirming through. The content he covered taught me a lot about human behavior but his delivery left an even bigger impression. Being new to the Shenandoah Valley (from Massachusetts) and having recently left the United States Army, his approach was a bit different than anyone I had experienced to that point in my life. If someone yawned, which is nearly impossible to avoid when putting a dozen press operators in a training room for two straight days, he’d throw a candy bar at them. He was nothing short of intense, and I had no idea at the time how much he’d sew into my life over the decades that followed.

Terry’s topic during those two hours was the role consequences have in how each of us choose our behaviors. Rather than attempting to cover all that here, I’ll stick with the part that still resonates with me today. Terry rarely talks about himself; he’s incredibly humble. But through a quick story during that session, he shared what was instilled in him during his time at the United States Military Academy. He said one of the primary tenants that was drilled into him was the importance of consistently choosing the harder right over the easier wrong. He went on to explain that choosing a safe behavior would always be harder, requiring more time at a minimum, than performing a task in a way that created more risk. He’s rarely mentioned his West Point experience since but that single reference was enough.

As leaders, we’ll have that same choice regarding how we do (or don’t) model the core values of our organization. On any given day, it will be far easier to skirt the edges or justify how our choices are good enough. Eventually though, failing to choose the harder right will permeate the team around, impacting the clients we should be serving at the highest level possible and the community we’re a part of. From there, it’s only a matter of time until going with the easier wrong takes a toll on our company’s reputation as well as our bottom line results. We’ll look at that more soon. Before that though, we’ll work through some simple steps we can each take to exemplify our values for our clients and community.