“Our clients are seeking to build and maintain a satisfied, loyal customer base1. This enables them to maximize the stability of their business. The way they do this is to manage the “points of connection2,” the contact opportunities with customers, to be as effective as possible.

As you see on this diagram, three major elements support excellent performance: strategy3, leadership systems4, and operations systems5. We do not generally get involved in the technical, operational side of your business. Our philosophy is that you work in your business every day, and the content of your operation is your specialty, not ours.

Related to the other components of the model, we provide processes to help clients develop strategy and implement plans, to develop the culture and skills for effective leadership, and to create the climate where employees, the internal customers, can perform effectively and consistently. All of our efforts are to assist our clients in the achievement of their ultimate goal—to attract and retain customers.”

DETAILED EXPLANATION OF THE FORMULA:

PBC

PBC represents positive behavior change. Wouldn’t you agree that in order to achieve improved results your people will need to behave differently?

Goals

Doesn’t it make sense that if people had goals to focus their energy on, it would make it easier to change their behavior in a way that can be sustained?

S+K

S+K represent the skills needed (the how to do something) and the knowledge needed (the where and when to do something).

One thing that we noticed over the years is that many, many organizations have sent their people to various training courses in soft skills areas, without seeing any noticeable improvement in bottom line results. This caused us to ask ourselves, “What’s missing?” From our perspective, the answer to that question is the attitudinal component.

A

The A stands for attitude (the want to). Our approach, Management by Commitment, is a result-oriented philosophy that involves first developing a goal-oriented attitude among people within the company. Attitude is more of a multiplier of skills and knowledge that will directly influence the goals they set and achieve. They will directly determine in many cases whether they turn a problem into an opportunity, or succumb to it; whether they behave in ways that benefit the entire organization or maintain fiefdoms; whether they expand the client base and services provided or allow atrophy to set in; whether they diligently look for continuous improvement, or remain satisfied with the status quo. Since this has proved so critical to others’ success, we wanted to go further in our exploration.

v&b

v&b represents our values and beliefs. Research tells us the great majority of the attitudes we still carry with us today were developed when we were between 0 and 5 years old. During that period of our life, we were not judging what input we would accept and which we would not. We were more like giant sponges that accepted that which was being washed over us. The reason that this is so significant is because it is estimated that approximately 77% of the input we received as infants and young children was negative vs. 23% that was positive. When you think about the first three words that kids understand … isn’t it mom, dad, and no, not necessarily in that order? The “no’s” then became more sophisticated “don’ts.” You can fill in the blanks from your own experience. For example, don’t write on the (wall) , don’t talk with (food in your mouth) , don’t play in (traffic) , and the classic, don’t talk to (strangers) . That last one is wonderful advice for someone in client development activity, isn’t it??? As we approach our world as adults, the “don’ts” have had a tendency to migrate into “I/we can’t.” Think about those times as a manager when we were attempting to roll out a new procedure to a group of people. How often did we only get a portion of the way through our explanation when we suddenly heard, “Oh, that’ll never work?” Our first reaction tends to be more negative than positive. If you have any doubt in your mind, think about the following scenario. Your phone rings at 11:45p.m. Is your first thought, “I wonder who just hit the lottery?” or is it, “Who’s hurt, what’s wrong, what’s the matter?” This leads us into the next area of discussion.

88%B (f) C

This represents the fact that during approximately 88% of our day our behaviors are below the conscious level. We are on automatic pilot as a function of prior conditioning. We don’t typically have to think about tying our shoes, driving a car, or figuring out how we are going to get to work. We perform those tasks automatically.

Why is this so critical to understand? If you agree that we need to change our behaviors in order to achieve different results, and if you accept that 88% of the time we are operating below the conscious level, then we need to think differently at the subconscious level in order to have sustainable behavior change that leads to better results.