Pretty girl promoting lap top on the beach

Do you know who in your group or associated with your group is a honest to goodness promoter of your charity along with your group? How about your detractors? Are passives easy to identify?

This concept is very well presented in the business book by authors Fred Reichheld and Bob Markey, titled “The Ultimate Question 2.0, How Net Promoter Companies Thrive in a Customer-Driven World”. In the second of the book series on Net Promoter companies the authors continue and refine their ideas on how customers fall into one of three very distinct categories, promoter, passives, and detractors. They go into very good detail on how to use analysis and statistics to find each group and why it pays off to make this determination for various ROI  identifies or just in loyalty sales and future growth.

When you think of people who promote things, often what comes to mind is megaphones and loud speakers. But promoters are just people who manage to talk up your cause or your group in a positive way. They may wear hats or shirts with the name of the group as well. They are inspired and promotional of the groups message and image. They show passion for the cause.

These members identified as promoters and associated friends and family live the message of the cause and they are very strong advocates of the other members who are also promoters!

Promoters are the most likely to be in tune with the “voice of the customer”. This concept stems from the many management plans which promote quality and is the single biggest concept behind the empowered volunteer. For many of you in business or having taken business courses quality plans from the past included Total Quality Management, Six Sigma, Lean Manufacturing, and of course combinations of those labeled Lean/Six Sigma.

For a while during the 90′s even the U. S. Navy had Total Quality Leadership (TQL), with mainly the name as the only difference between TQM and TQL. Today the U. S. Navy has Six Sigma quality systems and reportedly embraces the concept of the empowered worker where it most certainly did not support lower rank empowerment before. This is because the sea going service was not mature enough to allow empowerment of it’s non-managerial members (read enlisted volunteer members) when TQL was instituted. From what I have read Six Sigma has made healthy contributions for today’s Navy!

In my past I have been trained in all of these and hold certifications in several continuous improvement training methods. They all have a concept that includes empowering the lowest worker with the most responsibility and accountability as well as listening to the customer, both internal and external customers. The empowered volunteer is simply another application of the empowered worker from Lean Manufacturing teaching.

All volunteer groups have the potential of supporting three types of customers, those from the cause they serve,  their group members and associated family, and the general public or businesses from which they develop relationships and derive much if not all of their resources.

So how do you identify promoter types for your group?

The authors of The Ultimate Question 2.0 suggest something so simple that it even applies outside industry and I am suggesting it would apply nicely to volunteer groups who want to add to their SWOT analysis. Survey your three customer groups and ask them one question, “Would you recommend this volunteer group to your friends?” On the survey have a range of responses from zero to ten, with ten being the best and zero the least. The authors say that a promoter is someone who responds with an eight or better.

Nothing brings in willing volunteers like proper passion for a worthy cause!

Knowing who your promoters are and being able to motivate them on the behalf of the group is worth more to the future success of your volunteer group than just about anything else you can do! If surveys are not in order another way to identify the promoters is through their passion observed over time!

I have written about passion in volunteer groups before, use the search feature on this blog to find some of those posts for further reading. 

Proper passion directed for worthy causes is one of the biggest draws for new members. When people enjoy themselves the volunteering becomes less work and more fun. People flock to fun things! Birds of a feather flock together and promoters like to be among other promoters and also to enrich or uplift passives into promoters! This is one feature of successful leadership which can’t be over emphasized. One really likable passionate promoter in a group can transform that group into a bunch of promoters over time. That is one huge way to ensure the future of the group will be a long and healthy one.

I will write in future posts about how to motivate and focus promoters as well as identifying and converting passives and detractors. The authors of The Ultimate Question 2.0 targeted their book towards business and the collection of data.  The subsequent data collection and analysis over time is much more trouble than the average volunteer group can justify. I will provide some ideas and suggestions for finding each group without all of the data search needed.

The empowered volunteer by the way would almost certainly be a labeled a promoter!

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As the empowered volunteer what good are habits for you? Besides the habit triggers previously posted on how to use the ABC’s of selling (Always Be Closing) as a habit cued by a buying question or statement, what else is a habit you should develop?

Glad you asked!

From Charles Duhigg’s book, The Power of Habit, Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business we can glean several helpful strategies for good habit formations.

First off, know that individuals have habits, groups have routines! This is important only to know that they are the same thing. Routines are procedures in most cases that are written down and formal. Sometimes they have what is called, Standard Operating Procedures (SOP’s) for specific instances that may come up, receiving, shipping, natural disasters, whatever. In the military, we lived by SOP’s.

Habits for individuals are very seldom committed to paper. Also, most individuals don’t have SOP’s for anything, they are more casual or to put it more loosely they “wing it”, meaning they have no formal plan and the make up their path as they go. This can work sometimes, but it is not a good path for the long term success in most instances.

If you want to make your personal structure a habit or routine if it is at the group meeting for instance, then know that it is a bit more complicated than just saying to do it.

If it were just saying do it, then the group Weight Watchers would not be needed. No habit change is that easy!

Groups have tons of habits or routines. Opening procedures such as the Pledge of Allegiance to the United States Flag is frequently found. In the Optimists International group meetings they read the Optimist Creed at the end of the meeting, which is a great send off for the members when it is read aloud by everyone present.

Empowered volunteers can have or develop good habits that help them locate and develop a network of people who have the potential to join the group.

I would encourage all empowered volunteers to do at least a six month time frame for their prospecting. Anything less is apt to produce ineffective habits for the long term. If possible commit to a year. That is much safer for creating and embedding good habits that will stay with you in your later endeavors.

For most empowered volunteers, your prospecting will be done at times when you are not occupied at your place of employment. Never endanger your vocation. This means that you will find a couple of hours here or there to prospect. This is why habits are important.

Set them up with care when you start out. Cultivate the same way you initiate a conversation and how you introduce your prospect to the offer. Make is natural and smooth. Practice in front of a mirror before ever trying it out in a real situation.

The idea is to have keystone habits, ones which are the corner stones to all of your other ways of prospecting.

Keystone habits create a structure for encouraging other habits to flourish. An example of a keystone habit from Duhigg’s book is a food journal for weight loss. The keystone habit is a trigger mechanism that can impact the structure you want to create, in this case how to lose weight.

All habits follow cues. A cue can be many things. For movie goers, cues can be popcorn for movies. If you identify the keystone habit, you can make small wins. This is if you set up the right cues, and rewards. So keystone habits set up structures, cues trigger habits either good or bad, and rewards can also be good or bad. If you find a bad habit, say too many pauses or “uhhh’s” in your speech then change the cues to change the habits and ensure you reward yourself for every good change until it becomes a habit.

Groups use keystone habits more than individuals.

Examples from business listed in Duhigg’s book include IBM’s research and selling routines, Alcoa’s removing of parking spaces for senior executives to encourage people to show up early to get better parking, and Godlman Sachs’ risk assessment is conducted for every decision.

In the U. S. Navy in the 90’s a new program was rolled out by the management in Washington, D. C. They wanted the ship’s captains to allow a new quality program which was sweeping the civilian sectors and manufacturing circles. It was revolutionary and it promised to make great strides in efficiency for each command, so the promises went by the senior officers who visited each ship and promoted the message.

Trainers were sent to ensure all enlisted would participate. But the issue was, if an enlisted person was going to make “suggestions” for the Captain to implement it was seen as empowering the enlisted at the expense of the officers. For two hundred plus years officers wore the gold and made all decisions and they were not going to stop that process now, senior flag officers or not! The program died a withering death on all ships eventually, on most ships the groups that tackled a problem were hard pressed to get cooperation to even evaluate the problem properly, let alone find the group time to evaluate it and propose a solution.

The senior flag officers had made a very big mistake in leadership, they did not convince the officers on the ships that it was in their best interest to do this new program.

It was not sold, it was shoved down the throats of the ship officers and commanders. This did not breed an atmosphere of trust or empathy. The program was Total Quality Leadership, from the civilian programs of Total Quality Management and I was one of those trained in the process only to see it die a very fast death on my ship.

Don’t let your group get caught up in habits or routines that hurt your prospecting. Develop habits which support your group and if necessary set up keystone habits for the group to support your new members when they arrive.

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Lean Team Cap

The caption above was the reward for the author’s membership as a Lean Team leader for a Lean Event. Lean training was held at Old Dominion University and then those of us trained were expected to take an issue and solve it using the training in Lean Manufacturing that we had practiced.

Individual employee empowerment was a concept sweeping the manufacturing and service industries with quality programs such as Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma. As global competition forces many business to find ways to become more efficient, many companies have decided to adopt business models which more successful businesses have already created.

Quality History review with regards to empowered workers, short version.

Quality history is credited with starting in America with Dr. W. Edwards Deming (1900-1993). He was influential in assisting American War Manufacturing during WWII with his statistical concepts as applied to production. After WWII, he tried unsuccessfully to bring the benefits of his statistical quality applications to American manufacturers.

When this effort failed in America, he was asked to bring the concepts to the aid of the war-defeated country of Japan by Douglas MacArthur in 1950. The Japanese had already employed many of the production inspirations from Henry Ford, who unknowingly had innovative elements in his production line, which later became the first stirrings of Lean Manufacturing.

Dr. Deming was asked by his friend General MacArthur to teach the Japanese his statistical quality methods. Deming was inspired during his lecturing to the heads of Japanese businesses in 1950, and he made this now-famous prediction: If the Japanese learned and adopted his quality systems, they would become an exporting nation within five years, and be well on the way to producing the world’s highest quality and most in-demand products.

America did not “rediscover” Dr. Deming’s methods until the 1980’s, when Dr. Deming was also in his eighties. This gap in management decision making to address quality gave the Japanese manufacturers about 30 years of quality culture and learning over the less efficient American manufacturing methods. For the automotive competitors outside of America this was a tremendous advantage.

As a testament to how influential Dr. Deming was a US News & World Report cover story named Deming’s contribution to the world as one of only nine “Hidden Turning Points in World History,” along with events like Columbus’ discovery of America, and Napoleon’s conquest of Europe.

Dr. Deming eventually created his famous 14 principles of management. Principle number 14 is to “involve everybody” in the process of manufacturing. This point was eventually modified with some others and became the empowered employee principle. The idea was to push down the level of responsibility for decisions to the very lowest rank of workers possible.

In the military while I was in during the 1990′s, Total Quality Leadership (TQL), a version of the famous quality program Total Quality Management making the rounds in the civilian world was introduced onto ships and other commands in the US Navy. The program was very popular with enlisted personnel, including yours truly who was trained in the new methods and procedures. However, the program were a complete failure. Unfortunately, senior Naval Officers saw the empowerment of enlisted as a threat to their authority, which was simply not true.

On my ship the whole program never got serious consideration and we were never allowed to make our recommendations to the chain of command. It is my understanding from talking to other enlisted personnel that other commanders felt the same way. I never heard of a successful TQL project, but their may have been an isolated case that actually produced results.

Updated news, today’s US Navy has embraced Six Sigma and has been training Black Belts for a few years now. This is due to forced budget cuts and other economic factors. This progressive attitude was only possible by the complete change of attitude by the senior management that previously failed to sell the concept properly.

Empowered employees in Lean Manufacturing environment for instance like at the old Saturn Plant, a division of General Motors was given the rare (for GM) authority to stop the production line if they found a defect, authority that was preceded in Japan by many years for empowered employees. American manufacturing had some catching up to do if they wanted to be competitive. GM has not been able to keep the company and Saturn was dismantled as a company when GM entered into corporate restructuring when it accepted a US Government financial investment. Other GM divisions were also dismantled.

Toyota Motor Company has been the leader in Lean Manufacturing for many years now. The techniques, which have employee empowerment at the forefront and evolved into Lean Manufacturing were in the past called The Toyota Way and have been part of the car company culture for over 50 years now.

According to many business publications Toyota is poised to take over as the world sales leader from GM. This is an incredible achievement for a car company physically located outside its main markets of North America and Europe. The Toyota Method in quality, which evolved into Lean Manufacturing was truly ahead of its time.

From a quality perspective Toyota is one of the leaders in the field and continues to use Lean Manufacturing continuous process improvement techniques. US car companies have demonstrated a dedication to quality in the last two decades or so but they seem to be reluctant to fully engage the total package of quality techniques like Toyota has.

Toyota has empowered employees, source suppliers, and many other stakeholders within the support structure needed to produce their products. This one act of empowerment is so powerful that it is still considered a vital portion of the continuous process improvement program, even after so many years.

Just-in-time is a concept which has resulted from partnerships with suppliers and is supported by empowered employees of both groups, suppliers and production workers. The idea is that very little inventory is held on the plant site, rather the supplier takes on the burden of keeping the supply bins or areas properly stocked with just the right amount of product and at just the right time for production needs. Obviously this concept needs a supplier who is highly involved in the production and forecasting of the plants needs and supplies. Suppliers become partners in this procedure, with supplier employees taking on even more responsibility for the product distribution, in essence they become empowered employees for the production plant even though they work for the supplier.

The bottom line is that Lean Manufacturing works very efficiently. Employee empowerment is one core concept of this quality method, which was first articulated by a small town boy from Sioux City, Iowa named W. Edwards Deming and then recognized by his friend who had a serious need for experts to help rebuild Japan, General Douglas MacArthur. Just in time and other associated business concepts will not be needed by the empowered volunteer. It is only mentioned to show how revolutionary this concept of Lean Manufacturing really is. So is the empowered volunteer within volunteer groups.

As a side note, General MacArthur was a Freemason, as was Henry Ford. Dr. Deming belonged to the American Society of Quality (ASQ). However, all of these people understood the value of the empowered employee, and a volunteer is an unpaid employee who can also become empowered.

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