Case Study: Building a customer-focused culture in Enterprise Rent-A-Car ( Source: HBR, July 2002)

Through customer feedback Enterprise Rent-A-Car, an Americanbased car rental company, identified that its customer service was not as good as it could be, or as good as senior mangers wanted it to be. However, one of the difficulties that the organisation faced was that of getting its field managers, who worked largely autonomously, to accept that there was a problem that needed fixing.

The first step for the organisation was to get their managers to recognise and own the problem. Senior managers worked with field managers, and others in the organisation, to develop a more robust customer satisfaction survey tool. While adopting this approach meant that the survey tool took longer to develop, it had the advantage that the approach helped get management buy-in.

As part of the change process, senior managers agreed to other changes suggested by the field managers themselves such as separating out customer satisfaction results by individual branch and switching from postal to telephone surveys.

A couple of years on from initiating the change process, the organisation identified that there was still room for improving performance, so it turned up the heat, introducing more changes. One particular change was revising the criteria for promotion. The new criteria meant that field managers were not allowed to move up without having achieved customer service satisfaction scores at, or above, the company average. Having adopted this standpoint the organisation then had to stand its ground, which meant having to take the tough decision not to promote managers who had achieved good growth and profits, but who hadn’t met the criteria for customer satisfaction scores.

This case study is a classic example of real leadership in action, i.e. making tough decisions and being prepared to stick with them in order to move the culture so that it is in line with the strategic goals. That said, in a discussion that I had recently with a KM practitioner about how to motivate certain individuals, e.g. sales people to share their knowledge, the response was ‘Most organisations are not willing to use a “stick approach”. If a salesperson is bringing in revenue, then organisations will not penalise them for not sharing their knowledge’. The big question then is should they? If knowledge-sharing is crucial to the future success of the business, should this be reinforced through rewards and sanctions? If business leaders aren’t prepared to get tough on this, shouldn’t HR? At what point should this topic enter into the dialogue?

Help Demystify Knowledge Management

As we saw in the earlier chapters in this book there are many different definitions of knowledge and indeed of knowledge management. This can be very confusing for individuals. If individuals cannot get a clear picture in their minds about what a knowledge-enabled culture looks and feels like then they will not be able to contribute. HR then has a critical role to play in helping senior managers articulate what a knowledge-centric culture means to them, why it is so important to the business and what this means in terms of the changes that need to be introduced.

This is also an important stage for HR to start to drip in some of the behavioural changes that will need to be developed in order for the organisation to move forward. This includes the leadership behaviours that will be required. It is here that HR will need to demonstrate their political awareness and influencing skills – given that their senior colleagues may not be so willing to change their own behaviour.

Develop A Knowledge Awareness Programme

Individuals cannot engage in a dialogue about knowledge management unless they have an understanding of what it is, its importance to the business and what that means for them. The previous chapter set out some of the different roles and responsibilities relating to knowledge management. Where HR could add value is in producing a knowledge awareness programme, or even producing a toolkit that can be used as a learning tool. The Department of Health, for example, has introduced the Knowledge, Learning and Information Management Toolkit – KLIMT, for short (Knight, 2001). This contains assessment activities, workshop materials, questionnaires, white papers and measurement tools, designed for use by teams to get them started on their knowledge management journey.

Communicate, Communicate And Communicate

Communications is often a much under-estimated and underexploited tool in change programmes. And yet communications is a vital way of building relationships with key stakeholders during times of change. It is the means by which individuals are helped to engage at the intellectual and emotional level.

Q: Why do you need to communicate and keep on communicating? A: Because as individuals there is a limit to how much information we can take on-board at any one time; much of what gets communicated gets screened out by other background noises.

When communicating change managers, and HR practitioners, need to consider what is the most appropriate communications medium given the type of change being introduced. Often a large percentage (around 80 per cent) of an organisation’s communications resources go into communications approaches that fall into the formal/conscious category. However, the biggest impact (again 80 per cent) falls into the informal/unconscious category, indicated in Figure 5.1.

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Figure 5.1: Relationship between communication resources and impact (Source: Oxford Group, Consulting & Training. Reproduced with permission)

One of the areas to be considered, and one where HR can be particularly influential, is helping managers understand the relationship between the medium and the message, thereby ensuring that the right communications vehicle is selected.

As Figure 5.2 shows, in situations where the level of complexity of what is being communicated is low and the level of emotion is low, then communicating via notice-boards and e-mails is probably OK. However, as the level of complexity increases and emotions are likely to be higher, more personalised communications approaches are required, such as team briefing and onetoone conversations.

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Figure 5.2: Relationship between communication’s medium and message (Source: Oxford Group, Consulting & Training. Reproduced with permission)

What we need to remember, however, is that these are ‘rules of thumb’ and that we should not forget the person-situation factor, such as individual preferences for the way things are communicated. However as Kotter and Cofen (2002) argue, it is only by acknowledging and working with individuals’ feelings that organisations can bring about change. It is important then to appeal to their hearts, not their minds. As Kotter and Cofen point out some individuals will only change when presented with extreme examples of real-life problems. This reinforces the need for organisations, seeking to bring about change, to see communications as a strategic tool in the change process.