106. Role Reversal

Dear Erik,

I agree with you. I believe the ideal organization will have a management team that facilitates. This ensures that staff who are in daily contact with customers and suppliers have all the facilities at hand to do their job well. I think the most important part of this is that these people are well trained and have mastered even the smallest detail of their task. They need to have all the essential instruments at their disposal and be able to take decisions independently. Management facilitates and serves the needs of their colleagues. Strategy is defined and investment decisions are taken based on their experiences. So in this way, roles are reversed.The big advantage for the team and the customer is that you can respond immediately to what the customer wants or manage his complaints on the spot. Problems are solved right away and no consent is required from superiors, so that problems do not end up with someone far away from the customer, which can increase the probability of a wrong decision and lead to frustration among colleagues and clients in addition to the time wasted.

I have tried to implement this at our company with varying degrees of success. In my opinion, the key ingredient for success is training, training and further training. This is enormously time-consuming and halts when my attention is claimed by other things.

A second pitfall is that if the result is disappointing, for example, development is too slow or if there are problems which the relevant colleague cannot solve, I immediately intervene. Instead of patiently coaching, I solve the problem. The result is the process remains dependent on me; the colleague has no chance to develop and does not make progress due to my intervention. I achieve the opposite of what I intended: I intensify dependence and make the colleague uncertain.

A third pitfall I see amongst leaders is that they have a lot of trouble accepting that the colleague might do things differently than them and that not only leads to unnecessary intervention but also undermines motivation, independence and the development of the colleague in question.

Fourthly, in addition to training and coaching, the constant motivational support of the colleague is essential, and of course all the essential resources must be made available.

And the respective colleague? He or she should of course want and be able to improve. He or she must be willing to take risks and accept that they will make mistakes, which is fine as long as they learn from them and apply this experience. This is where training and coaching are again essential, as not everyone can mentally handle their mistakes or actually see and understand what went wrong.

However, if you have all this under control, you have implemented the new way of sales.

Sincerely,
Gerard