Caremark Thanet: Our Philosophy
I’m the
managing director of a domiciliary care company, Caremark Thanet. We provide
homecare for the residents of Thanet in Kent. We cover the whole of Thanet
including Margate, Westgate, Birchington, Broadstairs, Ramsgate and the
surrounding villages. We have a very simple philosophy: Our aim is to provide outstanding domiciliary care
to each of our customers. On that aim we will never compromise.
We call this
a philosophy. I use the word philosophy to mean a system of principles that
guides the way we conduct our practice. Some people might refer to this as a
mission or a vision or some such other business sounding term. I don’t really
mind what people call it. I do mind that it is something that is easily
understood by our care and support workers and by our customers.
I should
certainly accept that it is a strategy – what might be called a
transformational strategy. Let me explain further about transformational
strategies.
Mission Statements and Vision Statements
Have you
heard the one about the Chief Executive Officer and her senior management team
at their business planning meeting? The CEO asks ‘Who can tell me our mission
statement?’ No-one could say what it was. Two of longest serving managers
thought it was still the statement that had been changed five years ago, the
finance director proudly recited word for word a competitor’s mission statement,
when the CEO told them what it was no-one could agree on whether this was the
mission or the vision of the company and no-one could explain what it was
actually saying. “So what does this mean?’ asked the CEO. An anonymous whisper
answered: ‘It means we don’t know why the hell we’re here.’
That story
may not be true, but like all good stories it has a moral. It doesn’t matter
whether it’s a small business with two or three employees or a multi-national
with thousands: a business must have a direction. If staff can’t say in a
sentence or two what the business is there for, someone, somewhere in the
business should seriously think about the message that is being given out not
just to staff, but also to customers.
Words Move Minds
Do you know
your mission statements from your vision statements? Do you know the difference
between your strategic objectives and your strategic milestones? And would you
know how your strategic intent relates to your core competencies? Business
people and managers may know all of these things, but it won’t be much help if their
businesses do not have very simple message that says what it does and where it
is going – a message that everyone understands and can buy into. Here’s some
sound advice from smalibusinessvoodoo.com:
‘Business
strategy can be written, sketched, oral or perhaps a combination of all three.
It doesn’t matter what it looks like as long as it means something to you, and
indelibly imprints itself into your subconscious.’
http://www.smallbusinessvoodoo.com/ten-pillars-of-small-business-planning/small-business-planning-pillar-2-strategy/
If it
doesn’t mean something to those in control of the business, the message
probably won’t mean anything to anyone else. Whether it’s called a mission,
vision, strategic intent or something else, a business needs to have a clearly
articulated message that is short, unambiguous, understandable, memorable and
motivational. Words move minds but not if they’re jewels of jumbled jargon,
wrapped in verbosity and tied up with confusion.
Transformational Strategies
If businesses
are going to get the people in the organisation to buy into where managers and
owners want their businesses to go there needs to be something everyone can
unite behind. This can be called a transformational strategy. Lisa Magloff, writing on
smallbusiness.chron.com says:
‘Companies may undergo
transformational change in response to crisis, or in order to reposition
themselves in the market. Transformational change also occurs in response to
changes in technology, or as companies adapt to take advantage of new business
models.’
http://smallbusiness.chron.com/examples-transformational-change-18261.html
I should add
that for a business to have a transformational strategy there need be no
crisis, just a desire to succeed.
On the 25
May 1961, President Kennedy said: ‘…I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal,
before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him
safely to the earth.’ There are few better examples of a transformational
strategy. It has all the elements that are required. Although this was spoken
as part of a much longer speech, it’s very short and straight to the point;
it’s crystal clear and unambiguous; eminently understandable, and given the
context of the cold war and space race, highly motivational.
Kennedy was advocating a transformational
strategy for a whole nation, and he did it in one crisp clear sentence. Another
example of a transformational strategy is afforded by the true story of how
Antarctic explorer, Ernest Shackleton, led a party of twenty seven crew to
safety after their ship, The Endurance, became trapped in ice. Shackleton and
his crew had to abandon their ship, which was eventually crushed in the ice.
Shackleton’s unconquerable optimism and heroic leadership help to ensure that
everyone survived until they were rescued some two years later. Shackleton’s transformational
strategy was a very clear and highly motivational one: survival. If ever there
is an example of a group being united behind a common aim, the example of
Shackleton’s Endurance expedition is it.
In the
business world, the perfect example of a transformational strategy is that of
Canon who in the 1980s set out to be the number 1 in the photocopier market. At
the time, Xerox was the world leader and the idea that Canon could challenge
them was regarded by many as nothing short of total absurdity. Canon’s
transformational strategy was very clear, unambiguous and about as memorable as
anything can be: “Beat Xerox”. And they did just that.
A very
interesting example of how a company can unintentionally set itself a
transformational strategy is given by the British businessman, Gerald Ratner,
who in the 1980s was the chief executive of his family business, a chain of
jewellers. In 1991, he gave a speech to the UK’s Institute of Directors where
he referred to the products sold in his shops by saying ‘It’s all crap’.
Following this the value of the business went into free-fall and a new term,
‘the Ratner effect’, entered the business lexicon.
Caremark Thanet: Our Philosophy
I am more
than happy for our philosophy to be called a transformational strategy. Our aim
was to have a message that pretty much covers all the criteria of a transformational
strategy. A clearly articulated message that is short, unambiguous,
understandable, memorable and motivational. It is something that our care and
support workers can unite behind. It is an unambiguous message delivered to our
customers. And it’s more than just words; it is something that we practise, and
it is something upon which we can be held to account by our customers.
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