Behind the Scenes at Global-Roam

Another pause for thought last week with respect to Jim Collin’s classic statement.

For those who have known us for a number of years, you might recognise that we’ve come a long way from our “wilderness years”  – we’ve taken some big steps in getting the right people on the bus, and (just as importantly) in the right seats.

However this year we’ve still made a couple mistakes – which has been costly and painful for all involved – and has not helped us in our goal of putting customers first:

In meeting these challenges, I found Jim’s “five things to consider” useful – along with the other materials on the site.

In more general terms, I have also found that there are sections in “Execution – the discipline of getting things done” (part-way through reading) that have been useful.

Looking forward, there are a number of things that we will be looking to do over the coming 12 months or so:

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In reading the book “The One Thing you need to know” by Marcus Buckingham recently, I came across the following paragraph (p162 in my copy).

I thought I’d clip it here in a short post as it is closely aligned with one part of what I mean by calling “Autonomy” a Core value:

The author paraphrases Brad Anderson (CEO of Best Buy until 2009) by noting that

“Brad is exceptionally vivid in showing employees whom their primary audience should be.

What he is saying … is that a leader must not be clear on all points, and that one of the areas in which he should allow significant ambiguity is in the strategies and tactics selected by his employees.  Yes, he should be clear about who he is trying to serve, but then he must actively encourage his employees to devise novel and as yet unproven ways of serving them”

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On Friday 5th March, we began a process of brainstorming about what it means (to us) to share our primary value of “Customers First”.

The following Friday (March 12th) we continued this process – to talk about our 2nd Core Value – that being a Relentless Drive^{(see note)} to learn more, to improve and grow as people – and hence to deliver ever-increasing value to our customers.

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On Friday last week (5th March) at Beer O’clock, we brainstormed about what it means (to us) to share the primary value of “Customers First”.

We will continue this process in subsequent weeks with the aim of identifying the specifics of what each core value means to us, and how we (and others) can hold ourselves accountable.

The following is a shortened list of some of the points made during the brainstorming session (a fuller list is here as a restricted post).

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